The Kirkland City Council held a study session from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. followed by a regular meeting from 7:30 p.m. to 10:39 p.m. on April 1, 2025. The study session included discussions on Houghton Village financing options and an update on the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) strategic plan. The regular meeting featured proclamations, public comments, approval of a consent calendar, and business items including the 2025-2027 Planning Work Program briefing, adoption of the 2025-2026 City Work Program, an expanded community engagement plan, and a 2025 legislative session update. The council also entered an executive session to discuss agency litigation.
Councilmember Tim Chishon. Councilmember Black. Here. Councilmember Sweet. Here. Councilmember Falcone. Here. Councilmember Pascal. Here. Deputy Mayor Arnold. Here. And Mayor Curtis. Here. Our study session tonight is on two items. First, we'll have a discussion on the Houghton Village financing options. Second, we will receive an update on the SCADA strategic plan and implementation. We expect to reconvene our regular meeting at 7 30. City Manager. Thank you, Mayor. Deputy Mayor, members of the Council. So our illustrious finance director unfortunately has a very scratchy throat. So I would normally introduce him to introduce this topic, but uh and there's a swallow of us, so I'm gonna go ahead and introduce Kevin Pelstring, our financial planning manager, uh, who's gonna talk about the topic. I also want a lot to council on all this. This is about refinancing the bonds, but in the memo, we talk about potentially waiting till the RFP for Out Village comes back. So I've also asked Allison Zyke, our deputy director of planning ability to just give a quick update on the RFP itself as part of the presentation. So that I will turn it over to Mr. Pellstring. Thank you, City Manager. Um Madam Mayor, Deputy Mayor, City Council, members of the community. Uh we have a short presentation tonight. Uh city manager mentioned on uh some options for uh paying back the interfund loan that we used in twenty twenty-two uh to purchase the Houghton Village property. Um so state regulations are that we um have a plan to pay that back within around three years. So we're coming up to that deadline, although planning is still going on on you know exact usage. So we have casting characters to uh a cast of characters to to kind of lay out some options for you all, get some feedback tonight, and we'll bring back some uh next steps at a future meeting. Um so in addition to Alex Alison Zike, before we pass it off to her, uh we have Maggie Marshall uh from our financial advisor, PFM, senior managing consultant, as well as Deanna Gregory, our bond counsel from Pacific Law. Um so we'll give a brief update from uh Alison on the RFP and then we'll dive right into some of the details. Perfect. Awesome. All right, I think that makes me character number one. Um evening, council. Um just wanted to quickly remind you kind of where you've been on the Houghton Village project as a whole, and then what's going on right now with the active request for proposals. So to remind you, the last time that you talked about the planning part of Houghton Village was back in January when we brought you the draft uh development plan for the site and got some input from you. At that point in January, we had a pretty good idea of what could fit on the site, how many units we might expect to be able to produce on the site, what types of community benefits and or commercial spaces we thought were possible on the site within what we've now come to call the development framework. Um had council kind of prioritize potential community benefits, and that's all incorporated into the draft development plan that we're now calling a draft development framework. So that was where we got in January, which is also when you told us, hey, before we really take the next step on adopting something like a development plan, let's take this out and see what the market is and see if anyone's interested in actually doing this with us. And so that's where we're at now. So as of right now, the city has issued a request for proposals to seek a potential uh developer or development team for the property. Um the RFP request is that people give us proposals that are general generally aligned with the development framework that you've been working on. We do I did want to note that we are allowing for submittals that might um vary from what's laid out in the development framework, such as someone that might want to propose developing only three stories on the site, someone that might want to propose more. All we ask in the RFP is that if they do propose something different than the framework, that they explain how it still is achieving the types of community benefits that council has laid out.