The Kirkland City Council held a study session at 5:30 p.m. and a regular meeting at 7:30 p.m. on May 5, 2026. The meeting included a study session on public defense and code enforcement, honors and proclamations, public comments, a special presentation from the King County Housing Authority, consent calendar items, and discussion and votes on several business items including the NE 85th Street Station Area zoning amendments, the Neighborhood Safety Program, a Housing on Faith-Owned Land pilot program, the Kirkland Tool Library, and an interlocal agreement with Woodinville. The meeting adjourned at 11:31 p.m.
You guys ready? Uh hello everyone. I'd like to call to order the city council meeting on May 5th, 2025, 26. City Clerk, will you please call the roll? Councilmember Tim Chisholm. Here. Councilmember Arnold. Here. Councilmember Prem. Here. Councilmember Falcone. Here. Councilmember Pascal. Here. Deputy Mayor Black. Here. Mayor Curtis. Here. Our study session tonight is on two items. First, we'll hear an overview of the public defense services in Kirkland. Secondly, we will discuss proposed amendments to the city's code enforcement process. We expect to reconvene our regular meeting at 7 30. City manager. All right. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Deputy Mayor, members of the council. So our first topic is a discussion of public defense. This is a staff focused conversation because as you saw in the memo, we really want to talk a lot more about the potential implications to the budget of the caseload issue that's coming up, but we will talk a little bit about what public defenders do in the court. So then the second session will be on code enforcement. That will be later. So I'm going to keep an eye on the clock for about 45 minutes each. The presentation time is committed by our deputy city manager Tracy Dunlap and our interarm senior management analyst Juliana DeCruz. So take it away, Tracy. Thank you, City Manager. I'm just going to make a brief introduction that repeats a little bit of what the city manager said is this will be a little bit different than some of the other criminal justice initiative presentations, in that we'll focus less on what public defenders do and more on the state of public defense in the state of Washington and the impacts on the city's budget. And so you saw a lot in the prosecution presentation about the process, and Juliana will touch on that briefly, and then we'll get into what's happening in the state of Washington, and then I'll I'll close with the budget discussion. We have about 15 slides, and Andriana is here, our now our government affairs manager, to also answer questions as she's been involved in this discussion as well during the legislative session and and before that. So I'll turn it over to Juliana. Thank you again. So we're gonna start with a brief overview of what is public defense. And as you know, the criminal defendant's right to counsel is guaranteed by the U.S. constitution, the state constitution, state statutes and court rules. And if a defendant cannot afford legal counsel, then an attorney is appointed to them. And this is a public defender, and they represent the defendant through the same process that was outlined in the previous uh council meeting, and which is will be briefly outlined on the screen. So typically a case is filed by the prosecutor or direct filed by police, and um when the individual comes to court for their arraignment, they usually screen for indigency, which is their qualification for a public defender before the arraignment or shortly after. And then the public defender represents them throughout the resolution of the case. And you'll hear us use the term indigent defense and public defense interchangeably throughout this presentation. A person can be assigned a public defender if they are deemed indigent. An indigency is defined by RCW 10101010, and they are considered indigent if their income is 125% or less of the federal poverty level, if they receive public assistance, if they're involuntarily committed to a public mental health facility, or if they're unable to pay the anticipated cost of counsel. The RCW also outlines how an individual should be determined to be indigent, but there is some latitude in how the screening occurs.