On Sunday, October 16th, Holy Spirit Lutheran Church hosted a forum for Kirkland City Council Candidates. Moderated by former League of Women Voters President Denise Smith, the event asked candidate views on a variety of issues facing our city.

One of the missions of For Kirkland is active citizen engagement in city decision making. To help Kirkland voters in their voting decisions for city council, we offer these videos of the forum.

Entire Forum
http://forkirkland.com/video

Position #2
Bob Sternoff:  http://forkirkland.com/video/sternoff.aspx
Jason Gardiner:  http://forkirkland.com/video/gardiner.aspx

Position #4
Jessica Greenway:   http://forkirkland.com/video/greenway.aspx
Toby Nixon:  http://forkirkland.com/video/nixon.aspx

Position #6:
Dave Asher:  http://forkirkland.com/video/asher.aspx

Thanks to the folks at Holy Spirit for putting on such a valuable event for our community and working with us to produce these videos.

Dear City Council Members and Houghton Community Council Members,

For Kirkland supports Transit Oriented Development. It is Win-Win-Win! We are a Washington State non-profit organization dedicated to creating a healthy, sustainable city by promoting service to the community, active citizen engagement in city decision making, and a robust, honest dialogue regarding issues facing our community and region.

While other cities are looking at how to change their existing business areas to accommodate transit, Kirkland has an opportunity to plan for a transit-oriented community in an integrated way with business development in the proposed Yarrow Bay Business District. The first step is with the Transit Oriented Development (TOD) at the South Kirkland Park & Ride.

After lengthy deliberation and much involvement within the community, the City Council will be looking at a proposal in June to change zoning to enable this TOD at the South Kirkland Park and Ride. The zoning changes would allow for housing, but also put in strong standards about how the site will develop.

For Kirkland supports the TOD and believes that these changes are a win-win-win for Kirkland.

The South Kirkland Park and Ride is over capacity on a daily basis. Commuters that have not arrived by 9:30 AM overflow into the neighborhoods and park their cars there. This will only get worse as tolling on the SR520 bridge happens later this summer and more Kirkland residents explore riding transit.

King County--which owns this Park & Ride--received a $6.25 million federal grant to increase parking capacity at the Park & Ride and wants to build a transit-oriented development. This mixed use development would provide commercial space and housing, and will add 250 new spaces to the Park & Ride in addition to the needs of new residents and businesses.

The County will include affordable housing in addition to market rate housing in the TOD. In addition to expanding the affordable housing in Kirkland, convenient access to transit would allow the residents to be less dependent on cars. Recent service increases have bus frequency to about 10 minutes.

This TOD will be an anchor for the proposed Yarrow Bay Business District. Plans could enable redevelopment of the southern gateway of Kirkland pedestrian-friendly area with new businesses, residents, and neighborhood services.

After a lengthy review period and much involvement within the community, recommendations by the Planning Commission and Houghton Community Council will address community concerns. The Design Review Board would approve the design of the TOD, provide for appropriate scale and modulation, and ensure safe, friendly pedestrian connections to the Park and Ride, and in the future to the BNSF corridor.

This kind of development--and more importantly--this kind of partnership and creativity is exactly what Kirkland needs.

Sincerely,

Dan Krehbiel,
President

For more information on this issue, the city has a summary of the project posted at http://www.kirklandwa.gov/Assets/Planning/Planning+PDFs/TOD+Fact+Sheet.pdf.

Dear City Council Members,

Our community has heard numerous loud voices saying "No" in Kirkland; from folks in opposition to issues such as development projects downtown, annexation, and opposing working regionally on the bigger issues facing our cities.  We haven't heard enough voices saying "Yes"!  We need to organize the people who will work broadly to find agreement and develop solutions in the best tradition of Kirkland.  Recognizing this need, people with diverse perspectives and backgrounds came together around shared, common goals, including a vibrant, sustainable city, neighborhoods, and community.   Together, we formed the group "For Kirkland" to look forward to the future and promote progress today.

In that spirit, For Kirkland urges our City Council to re-adopt the zoning changes for the Park Place redevelopment.  The development will be a centerpiece in the new Kirkland downtown, bringing new jobs, additional retail, and vibrant, walk able community space.  The development will help all of downtown, and all of Kirkland.

The project has undergone thorough review over the past two years to address concerns about how the development integrates with Peter Kirk Park, how to protect surrounding neighborhoods, and the design of buildings, gardens, and community space.  Citizens on the city's Design Review Board and Planning Commission have held dozens of meetings to examine environmental impacts and alternatives, provide input on the design, building heights and scale, and any mitigation.  Even with the current supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, nothing indicates that we should start over in the process.

When you look at the alternatives:  taking no action with a tired, struggling retail complex; choosing an office only redevelopment already allowed under existing zoning; or hoping for additional development elsewhere in downtown, it is clear that the City Council should move forward with the Park Place proposal.

Sincerely,

 

Dan Krehbiel,
President

For Kirkland is a Washington State non-profit organization dedicated to creating a healthy, sustainable city by promoting service to the community, active citizen engagement in city decision making, and a robust, honest dialogue regarding issues facing our community and region.

In keeping with our mission statement we ask our elected leaders to support every effort to move forward with construction of a new 520 floating bridge to replace the existing structure. The vulnerable condition of the bridge is well documented pointing toward the very real possibility of a catastrophic failure in a wind storm or earthquake.

The replacement project has been studied for nearly 15 years and the time for action is now. The current recession has created a construction environment which will save millions of dollars in construction costs. The project will also produce thousands of well paying jobs for the especially hard hit construction industry at a time when those jobs are critical to our economic recovery.

While we understand there is more work to do to resolve the issues around the final design of the west end of the bridge we strongly favor moving ahead as quickly as possible with the projects on the east side of the lake which have been designed and agreed upon. To not move forward now with those projects would be to waste an opportunity to save the taxpayers of the region millions of dollars.

It is time, past time really, to build a bridge that connects communities rather than continue the endless debate which only serves to further divide the east and west sides of Lake Washington.

Dan Krehbiel
President

Dear Kirkland City Council,

For Kirkland is a Washington State non-profit organization dedicated to creating a healthy, sustainable city by promoting service to the community, active citizen engagement in city decision making, and a robust, honest dialogue regarding issues facing our community and region.

Clearly, one of the most significant challenges facing Kirkland is welcoming the 35,000 new residents of our annexation area into the Community of Kirkland.  This issue has been with us since the advent of the Growth Management Act in 1990 and has engendered much debate, some informative and unfortunately, some less so. 

We believe the City of Kirkland and the residents of the Annexation Area have energetically discussed the idea of annexation over the past 15 years.  We applaud the City Council decision last year to move forward with the process of creating One Kirkland.

We believe now is the time to craft language of inclusion regarding the annexation issue.  Too often during the debate, and since, annexation is frequently referred to in terms of the cost to the city, the level of service in the annexation area and the assumed lower level of service in "old" Kirkland.  There has generally been an implied burden to Kirkland residents.

We suggest the time has come to embrace the difficult decision the city and annexation residents have made and to use different language.

We suggest a possible "tag line" for use in future city communications which we believe conveys a message of inclusion and a bright future.

"THE NEW KIRKLAND, WE ARE BETTER TOGETHER"

Thank you for your consideration of our suggestion.

 

- For Kirkland

Dan Krehbiel

President