City Council is not doing right by the citizens of Kirkland. Why?

The last major project in downtown Kirkland was shot down based on a campaign waged by by people whose views would be comprimised by development at the corner of Central and Lake Washington Blvd.

This one (BoA) is more political, not less.

What do I want?

- I want city council to be responsible about approving projects which are within the zoning guidelines
- I want a vibrant downtown
- I want the backward looking bunch of no-good-niks to realize that they are hurting, not helping our city and community
- I want more parking so the merchants can have a reasonable shot at covering their rents
- I want Kirkland to be the place that people who don’t want Bellevue, but do want “today” to look towards

With all that we have going for us, the list above - and much more - is not too tough. We’ve got a great opportunity to be a model in the US and the world. Efficient, semi-urban living with a repsect for our environment, that maximizes its place on this planet. More important, we can do more for the people who live and work in our community.

We have an amazing home city, with tremendous potential to be much more special than it is today. Settling for anything less is sad. Our elected leadership needs to broaden its view, open its eyes and ears and take charge of the opportunity we have.

Unfortunately, those who have the most opportunity to be “active” on issues like this don’t reflect the views and desires of the majority.

I’m in agreement 100% with what you have stated above.

EOM

I can’t help but think that politically speaking, that the Council is looking for a way to basically “take the temperature” of the reaction of the public to either accepting or denying an application, such as the SRM BoA project. I feel that if an organization existed, such as I defined above through CPAD (I think I initially got the acronym incorrect), that could give the council a pretty good temperature of “for/against” for any one project. Right now, the Council may hear “pin-point” views of people in support of a particular project, but on the flip-side, they have an “organization” of an unspecified number of people that proclaim to represent the “people” of Kirkland, but with no published list of members…which could be 10 maybe! I think the vision for CPAD should be transparency, published members, open meetings where the Council or any other group within the City is invited to attend in a respectful, non-threatening environment. If the reputation for CPAD were to grown such that the Council and Developer’s respected it’s input, felt it really represented a cross-section of Kirkland area citizens/residents and even people that come here for work but don’t live in the downtown area, this would dilute the effectiveness of groups such as CiViK that keep unpublished member lists, etc. In otherwords, that campaign donation, legal as it is, would have less influence on a voting member of the Council, or other City members for that matter.

My $0.02 worth.

EOM

In another thread that was blasting the Sun and Mr. Gilday they asked us to do some “Googling” about cottonwood trees and the roots of The Eastside Sun, so we did. We came up with one amazing quote from a planning department employee -

“While it may look on the surface that he is getting a raw deal or that he tried to work legally, by the letter of the law he broke the law and has to pay the penalty”

Are you listening Mr. Hodgson?
Are you listening Mr. Lauinger?

We enjoyed the Recall meeting last night and just wish it hadn’t been on the same night as the council meeting but I guess there were fireworks enough for both!

sign the petition!!!! http://www.kirklandrecall.com/

Watching B. Nahon blather on about her (and CiVik’s) concern for “all of Kirkland’s citizens” made me laugh (in a sick way). What is clear is that CiVik has a limited universe of very private interests.

I’ve commented here, and in newspaper letters, that the Mayor and his close allies don’t seem to have any “vision” for Kirkland. At one time, private conversations with Lauinger made me think that he had a decent vision of Kirkland’s future, and sad to admit, I contributed to his campaign and actually held a sign for him at a rainy intersection. Now I see that the Mayor’s capabilities are limited to a very strict and doctrinaire reading of the legal and guiding documents of the city.

In this way he is an ideal tool for CiVik’s reactionary approach to development. The substance of the development is irrelevant. They will use the imperfect placement of commas and semi-colons to back up their semi-legal arguments in favor of preserving the views of their condo cohort. As Councilmember Burleigh observed –12 inches is the difference we’re talking about.

And, in the end they have carried this day with their “Rovian” schemes. It would be too kind to say that Nahon and CiVik have “allowed the perfect to be the enemy of the good.” It seems that their aim is not the “perfect” but merely a literal interpretation of the documents at hand.

jiminkirkland

sign the petition!!!! http://www.kirklandrecall.com/

Perhaps starts a neighborhood group called something like, “Citizens For Pro-Active Development” (CAPD). It’s a group, with a published list of members that are in support of new development projects for the downtown Kirkland area. The group:
1. Takes a very active role in the existing public review process for projects submitted to the DRB for approval.
2. Holds townhall meetings with Council members where all citizens can attend, to discuss the pros/cons of downtown Kirkland development.
3. Represents the views of people who are for downtown Kirkland development and do not want to see small exclusive, well-funded and well-connected groups that make key campaign donations kill projects.
4. Has the clout to work with developers, in fact to be sought out by developers as a general stamp of citizen and neighborhood approval for projects.
5. Is not a “rubber stamp” group, meaning the group is not just “pro development”, but “pro development” with the idea of supporting the construction of attractive, functional and balanced buildings that support a vision for the downtown Kirkland area.”

I THINK THIS IS A GREAT IDEA! And that this topic will be moved to a new thread. Don’t be surprised if you have some CiViK supporters on CAPD. Like you, I do not know the membership of CiViK other than the visible two or three, but I feel strongly that CiViK’s objectives have been grossly mislabeled and misunderstood. I know many of you disagree, but let’s not rehash what has been said and try to move forward - proactively.

We’ll never get away from back door politics until we clean house.
Our house won’t be clean so long as Mayor Lauinger keeps his seat.

Period.

I don’t think it would have mattered if SRM had shaved off the 5th floor. If SRM had punted the bank off the first floor entirely, the project might have been approved. IMHO, the “superior retail” argument is the only thing that was holding up the approval. If you listened closely to last night’s meeting, SRM, I believed stated, that BoA stipulated that no other bank could be on the site for 30 years. However, that doesn’t mean that BoA had to remain at this spot for 30 years. In the unlikely event that BoA decided to lease its space out, retail could have moved in.

Did CiViK actually offer any changes to SRM’s design to meet their needs? Since the deliberations between CiViK and SRM were secret, we’ll never know. Perhaps CiVik did offer some suggestions, perhaps CiViK could never meet with SRM, the public will never know. Regardless, CiViK does not represent the City and has no say over what should be approved. After last night though, I’m not so sure.

EOM

EOM