Among several other items, Monday’s Bellevue City Council meeting saw an update from King County Council Chair Claudia Balducci on regional issues, a quarterly review of the implementation of the City’s Environmental Stewardship Plan, and a unanimous vote to ratify King County’s Countywide Planning Priorities.
Regional Update leads to Questions about potential Health through Housing site
The city councilmembers were joined early in the evening by their former colleague, who was there to provide her annual update on important regional issues, from housing to transit to homelessness services. Some key points from Balducci:
- She noted that county-level planning, when evaluating the needs and gaps for jobs and housing, previously did not account for the housing needs at particular area median income (AMI) levels nor for the types of jobs needed and their pay. Since not doing so can lead to mismatches in housing and jobs availability, the County is looking at these factors more explicitly in planning. She also informed councilmembers that the County was in the process of updating its methodology to count homelessness in the region, since Point-in-Time counts conducted thus far likely represent an undercount.
- RapidRide K, a future frequent transit line connecting Kirkland to Bellevue, got a shoutout from the chair, who stated that she was searching for capital improvements funding in this year’s budget. Perhaps jokingly, she mentioned her goal of keeping the project’s launch “in this decade.” For what it’s worth, King County’s outreach site still mentions a service start date of 2025 (though that’s likely to be pushed back).
- Recently, King County notified the public that they were in late stages of purchasing the La Quinta Inn in Kirkland for the County’s Health through Housing program. Because the County is still conducting suitability assessments, a formal purchase decision has not yet been reached, but the council chair estimated one would be announced “in the next week or so.”
Followup questions from Bellevue councilmembers mostly revolved around this potential purchase and the use of the site for permanent supportive housing. Deputy Mayor Nieuwenhuis asked for clarification on what criteria were used in selecting the site, as well as what outreach methods would be used after a potential purchase. Chair Balducci shared that in addition to properties willing to sell, the County is looking at spaces with individual rooms with bathrooms, good ventilation, and enough units to be a reasonable purchase with the funds available.
Councilmember Stokes, referencing blatant misinformation that’s been spread in the community, like implying it will be a safe injection site (it’s not) and general fear mongering, asked that the County do more to get ahead of the falsities by disseminating accurate information, to which Chair Balducci noted the FAQs available on both the County and City websites. In response to a question about informing the community of the purchase in advance (which is atypical for a real estate transaction), she noted: “I’ve never seen people be happy, no matter what point on the scale you select [to inform them].” With similar bad-faith and inaccurate arguments emerging against the Kirkland site like the ones thrown against the County’s purchase of the Silver Cloud Inn in Redmond, it seems there might be some truth to that statement.
