The Kirkland City Council held a study session (5:30 p.m.–7:02 p.m.) and a regular meeting (7:30 p.m.–11:20 p.m.) on August 6, 2025. The study session focused on negotiations with the Seattle Kraken for an iceplex and community center. The regular meeting included a presentation of a flag flown during the Palisades Fire deployment, public comments, approval of the consent calendar, and discussions on co-living housing code amendments, police duty weapon replacement, 100th Avenue roadway improvements, AARP Age-Friendly membership, reaffirming Kirkland as a welcoming city, and human services funding. Multiple motions passed unanimously (7-0).
Nine speakers addressed the council:
You got the computer. Have you been looking for it? You don't mind. Yes. Shift change. We were really squished. Sorry. We need to be able to answer your questions, and both of us and both of us gesture a lot. I don't know if you have noticed, but Jim and I both just were a lot. So member Tim Chizen. Councilmember Black. Here. Councilmember Sweet. Councilmember Falcone. Here. Councilmember Pascal. Here. Deputy Mayor Arnold. Here. Mayor Curtis. Here. I did not have my mic on, so I am now calling to order August uh 6th City Council meeting. Um the Kraken Ice Plex and Community Center. We expect to reconvene our regular meeting at 7 30. City Manager. All right. So thank you, Madam Mayor. Deputy Mayor, members of the council. Um as you said, we have the full 90 minutes of the study session dedicated to Kraken updates. I'm particularly a focus on the negotiation updates. Um there will be no decisions tonight, except for later on under a city manager report. I'll be asking council to approve a motion for a fiscal note, which will be discussed in this presentation was included in the packet uh for some additional staffing to take this to the next level. Uh just a high level overview. We're looking for sort of awareness and understanding of the various documents. We're looking for observations and comments from the council and then any additional information need to be brought back to future council meetings as a result of this presentation. And with that, I'm gonna go ahead and turn over to our deputy city manager of external affairs, Jim Lopez. Thank you very much, City Manager and Madam Mayor and Deputy Mayor and Council. It's my pleasure to be here tonight uh with our esteemed city attorney, Darcy Eilers. Joining me. Thank you, Darcy. Darcy and I have been working very closely on this together. And we're gonna give a presentation as the city manager noted. We have a full 90 minutes. So our hope is that this is very interactive as we move through the sections, which I'll give you a little bit of a heads up as to what they are. You can enter uh stop us at any time and we will exchange and answer questions and have a discussion about it. There's a lot here, but we're trying to bring simplicity to the complexity, and we're gonna try to do that in three kind of buckets. We're gonna talk a little bit about the status of the negotiations, and I've pulled out ten key items from the negotiation that we've heard is a constant theme from the council throughout this process. There those those these ten things you can see, they're evidenced in the framework agreement that you passed, giving us guidance as to how we should negotiate it. And in doing so and giving you an update on these key um items, I'll also give a uh direction as to where in the legal documents these key items will be found. And that will be a transition to part two of our presentation, which uh Darcy will take, and she'll actually take you through those legal documents.