HomeMy WebLinkAboutCity Council Meeting - Council Workshop - Minutes - 02/15/2000 s '
COUNCIL WORKSHOP MINUTES
February 15, 2000
COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: President Leona Orr, Tom Brotherton, Tim Clark, Connie
Epperly, Judy Woods, Rico Yingling
STAFF PRESENT: Dena Laurent, Kevin O'Neill, Don Wickstrom, Joe Mitchell, Linda Phillips, Lori
Flem, Jacki Skaught, Fred Satterstrom, John Hodgson, Jim Harris, Jackie Bicknell
Neighborhood Design Strateeies Report
Planning Director Jim Harris - What I wanted to do is the introduction tonight for the most of the
material that Kevin (O'Neill)will cover. I think you recall that just a little less than a year ago you
convened and came up with some target issues and top priority target issues. One of them was
Neighborhood Design Strategy. The council wanted to articulate its vision for neighborhoods and
define division in a Neighborhood Design Policy. The staff then worked up a Target Issue Action
Plan for the council and called it Neighborhood Design Strategy. One of the things we wanted to talk
about was the steps that are needed to address the issue and I'll just read from it: The neighborhood
issues need to be put into the framework of a coordinated inter-departmental effort headed up by one
department. The Planning Department does head up that effort. Kevin is our go-to person and he's
put together an interdisciplinary team in the city that has met a number of times to go over what we
should be doing. I think we've got a list here of what resources are necessary.
Finally, on the last page, Council Involvement—the framework for neighborhood planning should be
discussed with the City Council both at Council workshops (we're here tonight to go into some detail
on this), and at Public Works and Planning Committees. I think now it would be the Planning
Committee probably, for policy guidance. Ultimately, the approval of funding and adoption of any
neighborhood strategies and/or plans would by done by the Council.
Planner Kevin O'Neill - What I wanted to do is to just quickly lay out what we've done the last few
months, both in terms of what our process has been and then some of our preliminary
recommendations to you. Just to set this in context, we know that one of the Council's big priorities,
when it comes to the whole issue of neighborhood design, is the issue of neighborhood streets and
street layout. That, as you know, is going on its own track. We did a workshop with you back in
November. We're continuing to work on that project. I think we'll be coming back to you later in
the spring with some specific recommendations on street standards and connectivity issues. That's
something that's related to this,but really what we did on this project is much broader than just that
single issue. It's really looking at, from your one of your priority issues,the whole way the city looks
at neighborhood areas, both in terms of geographic designations and services.
It should mentioned that back in the fall we convened an inter-departmental committee made up of
Administration, Fire, Parks, Police, Public Works and ourselves. Several of those members are here
tonight and will hopefully help answer questions or tell me if I'm misrepresenting anything that we
did. What we really did in the first several meetings was educate each other about what kind of
programs we're currently doing at neighborhood or sub area level and I think we all learned a lot
about what other departments were doing. As you might imagine, sometimes we all tend to look too
much at just our own issues, and I think we learned a lot about what's going on around the city. Then
we talked about how each department looks at the city in terms of neighborhoods or sub areas, and as
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you might imagine we found ourselves all over the map, literally. There are Transportation Analysis
Districts. There are neighborhoods for parks planning purposes. There are Police Patrol Area
• Districts. There are Fire Service Districts. There are census tracks. Both the Federal Way and Kent
School Districts have their boundaries that they look at and there isn't a lot of commonality. There is
some, and I can talk about that more in a couple of minutes,but there isn't a lot of consistency in
some of those designations.
So, obviously when you look at neighborhood design strategy, one thing we have to start thinking
about is -what's a neighborhood, how would we think about the city in terms of neighborhoods?
Another thing we did as a committee was to look at some other cities around the Puget Sound region
and at what they've been doing with regard to neighborhood programs. I gave you a summary of
some of the findings that we found in our survey. And, again, there are some common elements of
neighborhood programs and some big discrepancies. Probably Seattle does the most with
neighborhoods, and we didn't even put them on the list because they're, in terms of the resources
they put into neighborhoods, they have a whole line department of neighborhoods. They're doing
neighborhood planning and in about 37-38 different neighborhoods right now. They put a
tremendous amount of financial resources to neighborhood planning and services.
Looking at several other cities in the region, this seems to be an issue that a lot of cities are tackling,
and are actually just starting to tackle. Both Kirkland and Renton, for example, have just started
neighborhood programs in the past year. Both of those cities have hired a part-time person to oversee
those programs. There's a real discrepancy in terms of how big neighborhood boundaries are. City
of Kirkland, for example, is a city of about 40-something thousand and it has 15 designated
neighborhoods. The City of Tacoma, which is a city of about 180 thousand, has eight. Again, the
whole issue of what's a neighborhood differs between communities. A lot of it has to do with
historic patterns. A lot of it has to do with natural features. I mean there's a whole bunch of issues
that figure into that.
One of the things that we wanted to talk about, as a committee, are some of the things that we could
do in terms of our existing programs that the city offers with existing staff. We're aware of some of
the fiscal and financial budgetary issues that the city's facing right now. One of the things we want
to get feedback on from you tonight, and as you consider going into your next retreat, is what kind of
programs you might want to do in addition to what we have available. We're very cognizant up front
in all of our meetings of not going forward with a really ambitious program. We have, after meeting
for several months and going through that process, made several preliminary recommendations to
you. What we want to present to you tonight, is to see if we're on the right track and to get feedback
from you where we're not.
The first preliminary recommendation is that the city should be divided into several, what we're
calling, communities. I can talk about that more in a minute, about why we're using that term instead
of neighborhoods based largely upon an existing fire department service area. One of the issues in a
city like Kent, that's growing very fast, is what is a neighborhood? I think in parts of the city, like
the Valley and West Hill, there are probably some sort of well-established neighborhoods. Scenic
Hill comes to mind, certainly. Parts of West Hill. I think as you get up to the east, the areas have
grown very, very fast. I mean neighborhoods, it's becomes more difficult to define those sort of
micro-neighborhoods. Some people think of it as their plat, their subdivision is their neighborhood or
• their cul-de-sac is their neighborhood. We were, I guess, somewhat nervous about the idea of the city
telling people what neighborhood they're in. There was a sort of social engineering aspect to that.
Particularly given the differences between the in-city Valley areas and the outlying neighborhoods.
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One of the reasons we looked at fire service areas is because these are areas that have all been built
• around an existing city facility, in this case a fire station. Obviously the fire stations are centrally
located within each of these areas. So these are existing service areas with the community facility
and so we, in terms of defining those community service areas, used this as a basis to look at the city,
the planning area and generally areas of about that size. Now this is a larger area than the city and
the planning area because, as you know, Fire District 37 goes out much further to the east than our
planning area. This is our planning area, about Soos Creek here.
In terms of what we're proposing, and I've actually got smaller copies of this I can hand out, the area
on the outline of the map is the city's potential annexation area right now, as in our Comprehensive
Plan. The city limits is the blue dash line inside of that. Essentially most of this, as ou know, is in
the city with the exception of this area and the agricultural lands down here off 277` . Our group
thought it was important, looking at communities, to look at the whole picture because these areas we
anticipate will be in the city sometime in the next ten to fifteen years,maybe sooner. We could use
this as an opportunity to start having those folks think about issues in the city and it also gives the
city an opportunity to relate to those areas, even before they're annexed. These boundaries are based
partly on those fire service districts but they're also adjusted based on a few other things like census
tract boundaries (which exist and which we get good data from), and land use patterns.
For example, this line was changed to separate out the industrial area which you know is a different
area than the rest of the city. What we've come up with is six sorts of community areas within the
city. All of which have fire stations located within them, in terms of existing community facilities.
All of which have at least one major park or community park located within them and most of which
. have several other civic facilities, particularly schools. The exception to that is the Valley, as it is
kind of the industrial area, but all of the rest of the areas have at least 3 or 4 schools located within
them, I think. We also recognize that within each of these communities there are probably several
neighborhoods, either existing neighborhoods or neighborhoods that will be formed over time.
Depending upon where we take this project, the city may at some point want to work from the big
picture down to the smaller picture.
We thought this gave us kind of a starting point of beginning to look at the city in at least some
defined areas. You know, West Hill, and what was prior to the annexation, East Hill essentially. The
Panther Lake area and this area incorporate pretty much the Meridian and Meridian Valley areas.
Then this would be sort of the historic central part of Kent here. Again, those areas would be based
around community facilities. As we start to look at things the city does, we found that existing
neighborhood programs could be better coordinated within and between departments. We started to
have some common framework citywide between departments and services about how we think
about the city in terms of neighborhoods. None of these lines are drawn in stone at this point. We're
really coming to you right now with this concept to see if it even makes sense.
Starting this year, we recommend that the council and staff, within whatever definition of community
areas we come up with, start to have proactive community meetings within each of these areas. We
recommend that we have a defined area and that we use them as an opportunity to go out to citizens
in those areas,hear what issues are of concern to them and educate them on things that the city's
already doing. Then, based in part on what happens within those meetings, is the final
• recommendation that we may wish to consider implementing new programs and designate existing
city staff to specific areas. Some cities do that. They have a standing neighborhood task force and
they have designated city staff people for certain parts of the city. Review whether we want to
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consider new programs that might have a little more of a fiscal impact. Several cities do
neighborhood level capital facilities programs for example. Some of them are very minimal -
• $25,000 a year for the whole city and then it can be matching grant programs. The programs can be
anything from planting street trees, to doing traffic circles, to whatever the neighborhood comes up
with. Essentially, I think that's where we are. At this point we really wanted to come to you and say
that given that this is one of your top priorities,we didn't feel comfortable taking it much further until
we had the opportunity to talk you and get your feedback. At this point, I think I'll stop and answer
any questions you have.
Jim Harris - We did do one little exercise. We talked about having neighborhoods around schools
and then we have people that work for us who've gone through the districts continually changing all
the time. There is a lot of controversy in some areas of the city, because your kids are going to this
school this year and this one next year. Then we saw that each fire station has a meeting room and
some of them are quite elaborate. Where you don't, lets say the fire station here 71 maybe has a
smaller room, maybe City Hall could fill in and you could have a meeting here. We could have all
the people invited to a meeting here from the old part of the city. Now, the West Hill people don't
have to worry about that because they've got a nice big fire station up there with a nice big meeting
room, and we know that there's Cambridge East, there's Cambridge. There's a whole bunch of
differently named subdivisions, and even though the people in the south end might say they don't
have anything to do with the people in the north end, we're saying for the big picture you do. Then
we might break it down as we go, to smaller areas,but to begin with we thought it would just get
unwieldy to do what Seattle's doing. We're a historical city,but it's a one square mile historical city
to begin with. It's only grown in the last say twenty or thirty years, whereas Seattle's been pretty
much what it is now since maybe 1920 or 25.
• Economic Development Manager Jacki Skaught—In Tacoma, I don't know how it was decided that it
was primarily census tracts that divided the neighborhoods. Then, too, you may know that you were
told you're in neighborhood whatever and I can say from my own personal experience that I`ve never
been to the neighborhood group meeting for the neighborhood they say I live in, because I identify
with the one across the street. What we tried to do here is, rather than define it too closely for
anybody, we make it big enough, this initial round of gatherings, that it's inclusive and we find out
how they feel and what they want. In Tacoma, we as citizens had no input. The city designed a
program and handed it to us. It's worked well, I'm not saying it hasn't,but it has divided the city
very strongly. There is competition amongst neighborhood councils for funding.
In Tacoma,they also have councilmanic districts,which are not the same as the neighborhoods, so
you have divisions. We would try to avoid that here because this is a new concept for the community
of Kent as a whole. That's why we use the word community, because that's bigger. What we need to
find out from those communities is what it is that they need in terms of community programming, if
anything. Maybe by the time they realize what we're doing,they're going to be comfortable with
that. But we can't know that now. You probably have a better handle on it than we as staff. But the
intent of this first year of meetings is education both ways. After that,we may realize that we really
do have a need to break it up into smaller neighborhoods and we will get a sense of what that means.
So that's what I feel that Tacoma has worked out well. It's very expensive, it's gotten staffing
increases yearly, budget increases yearly and as a citizen there, I have seen zero benefit from it. I
don't know what it might have done for my neighborhood, but my neighborhood's the same one it
was before and it seems that we also had no problems in the neighborhood that we wanted to address,
so it's not fair to say. This requires a huge amount of staff time just to staff it,because some other
councils are very, very active and meet a lot, and staff is supposed to be there and they're supposed to
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be implementing. Some of them, I don't know if they ever convene. So,we don't want to go that far
that quickly. Because we don't know yet what our community here in Kent wants.
• Councilmember Rico Yingling- What did the city say the benefits it expected from this program were
when they started it and when they were telling the communities about it?
Parks Planning and Development Superintendent Lori Flemm- Some of the benefits were that,
because the city was so big, it divided the city into smaller units and gave the people that lived in
those neighborhoods a contact. Every department had a staff person assigned to the neighborhoods,
so Parks had a person, Public Works had one, and we attended their meetings if they met monthly.
When everybody started to get going,we tackled a bunch of issues in the neighborhood with them,
like streetlights that had burned out and who did they go to to get a permit. The city was so huge that
a lot of people felt intimidated by the city. So, then they knew a person that they could call, even
though they might call somebody from the Parks Department to say there's a dog running around the
neighborhood, or the street light on the corner has burnt out. At least we could get them in touch
with the right city department if they needed a building permit and they didn't know where to go, or
who to contact, so just in those terms it was really beneficial to the people that lived in the
community.
A lot of good came out of the neighborhood program. Elderly people that couldn't keep up their
yards, their neighbors would go and rake their leaves or mow their grass and not charge them
anything, so this program created the feeling of belonging to a neighborhood. People caring about
each other, I think it was really just amazing. Graffiti got painted. Neighborhood businesses would
donate paint and then trees got planted, flowers. A lot of the neighborhoods had tried to come up
with logos or signs that identified when you were going into one neighborhood or another, which is
what Jacki was saying. We started dividing everything up, so as the program grew, it started getting
a little out of hand as far as competition,but there was a lot of good that came out of the program. I
think newcomers would move into the neighborhood and somebody would greet them, the old
Welcome Wagon concept, and invite them to the neighborhood meetings,neighborhood picnics, and
block parties.
Councilmember Connie Epperly- This Old Town Kent that I'm looking here, we have South Park,
North Park, East Hill and Scenic Hill which have been distinctive neighborhoods for years and years
and years. Jim, you're on Scenic Hill, and I don't think the people on Scenic Hill consider
themselves Old Town Kent. The people on East Hill, in this whole map, is the only place where I see
that there could be some conflict with people not identifying. West Hill, I think all things have been
solved as far as West Hill goes and East Hill, the Meridian Annexation and stuff.
Jim Harris -Let me try to address that a little bit. What has happened is that the old downtown and
Scenic Hill, and a little bit of the lower East Hill, and a little bit up the northwest is one square mile.
Then, the Lakes Project is brand new and when I came here, James Street didn't go anywhere. It
went to West Valley Highway and that was it. No 6e. Comfields out there. Smith Brothers grew
the corn every year. That's a whole new area that's grown up. The area up towards Chestnut Ridge,
I don't think we go there, but the lower East Hill as it goes north of James and up the side of the hill,
there are two or three new subdivisions in there so a lot of new things have come in. If we start with
"macro" first, and Connie's right, the "micro"is several bunches of little neighborhoods in here, if
you start with big first, then we can start figuring out how we deal with the Scenic Hill neighborhood.
And that's why we're calling them communities. That's because if we call them communities, it's
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bigger than a neighborhood, it can encompass several neighborhoods and I think we get a handle on
it.
• If we start small with the neighborhoods and try to work up big, we would probably get into
divisiveness. I think right off the bat that Scenic Hill people will say- I've lived here 30 years and I
don't even know who lives north of James Street and I don't care. Maybe they shouldn't,but if we
start with the community at a community meeting in City Hal,we could all come together and then
begin to figure out and filter out where we go from there. Maybe it would be broken down into sub
communities, which would be the old neighborhoods and some new ones. The Lakes is definitely a
brand new neighborhood. The area south of 208`h and east of the Valley Freeway and kind of north
of James has some new sub-divisions that have been built in the last 15 or 20 years.
Councilmember Judy Woods - I was going echo what Jim said, and he said it much better than I
would have. I think that there's room for that neighborhood identification. My one thought is that
there are some very well developed neighborhoods or neighborhood homeowners association.
There's a positive in starting in those areas where they can provide some leadership to other areas of
these communities,because some have not in any way, shape, or form yet been identified as
anything. But, there are surely some parts of the city that are.
Rico Yingling—I've got a couple of questions. Why do we have neighborhoods? What's the
purpose of the neighborhood? If we can determine what the purpose of a neighborhood is, it might
help us to determine where the neighborhoods are. Kevin mentioned that some neighborhoods define
themselves by their plat. Well, I think that's where a lot of the even older neighborhoods are based,
on their platting. Scenic Hill is a plat. North Shore is a plat. You know the other ones were all
• platted and built and the homes built and they define themselves by the streets and that kind of stuff,
and that's kind of a geographical definition of the neighborhood. There is also a cultural or social
definition of a neighborhood that we're missing here by going in and pre-defining these big splotches
of color here as communities. I think a community is definitely a social structure and not a
geographical structure. I think I'd like to see us define what we mean by neighborhood or by
community, and then see where they are then in our town. I think communities or neighborhoods are
immigrant kinds of things and they aren't necessarily well defined. I think neighborhoods don't
necessarily fill in every space in the city. I think some places are neighborhoods and a mile away
there isn't a neighborhood. It's just a group of houses and buildings and streets but not necessarily a
neighborhood.
Judy Woods - I think we'd be stepping over the line a little bit if we gave more than just general-
purpose direction, because all of these areas are going to think that the purpose is a little different,
from my point of view. They all have different needs and different aspirations, depending upon
where they live. Then we can go forward from there and let the people in the community tell us if this
works for them. Do we need to draw the lines in a different way? How do you see your
neighborhood and how do you see the community? What is the purpose that this is supposed to serve
for our neighborhood, in our community?
Councilmember Tim Clark - The characteristics of some of the areas are that some of them lend
themselves immediately to folding, for instance the school districts. We all well know that the West
Hill people only identify with the Federal Way School District. But I don't think that's the point. It
is a vehicle to connect people to their government and it is very effective in some of the communities.
It will not necessarily be 100% effective across the board and certainly in the beginning it won't be.
But that's not the point. As Lori pointed out, there are some unique opportunities here to make
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people feel a part of the city and that is, in fact, the idea behind a community. When I look at some
. of the community councils, and unfortunately I'm more acquainted with the ones in Seattle, the small
shopping districts in that area, it's a marketing approach and it works and the reason it works is
because it isn't just that they have their own special festivals. For instance I was raised in West
Seattle. I mean that's truly a large community,but the West Seattle Haiu Parade has been there
forever, to the point where it has taken on its own cultural aspect if you will. But in our particular
case we have annexed, we have developed new housing developments at a phenomenal rate and our
problem is the identity problem. I mean we all know people that have a Kent mailing address that
don't live in Kent. But they in fact still identify with that simply because they keep writing it on their
letters. They almost get upset when they don't have something to go to,because they're never going
to go down to King County Courthouse, and I think that's the point. Lori said that among other
things it's becomes a means of reattaching people to the services that they need. Even if you don't
have the answer, you know where to look and it would obviously be for the most part informal.
Council President Leona Orr- I'd like to respond a little bit to Rico. If you start with the small,
already identified little neighborhoods (Connie mentioned North Park, South Park and Chestnut
Ridge comes to mind) I'm afraid that's where you'll be stuck, with those small, already established
existing neighborhoods. I think, at least from my point of view,what we're trying to accomplish is to
get the entire city involved. We don't want to hear(as I've been out doorbelling)when you knock on
a door and someone says - you know, what's Kent ever done for me? -with a "who cares" and "I
don't fit in, I don't belong" attitude. I think if we start with areas like this and start inviting people
and getting them talking to each other, they may find that they have something in common. We may
find that some of these lines aren't where they should be and then we make changes as we go along.
I think we have to start bigger and work our way down. Yeah, those established neighborhoods will
. show up and the people from those neighborhoods will come talk to us, but I think we'll also get
some of those people that the only thing they know is their 35 house subdivision. That's the only
thing that they identify with and they find out that there is a bigger picture out there and we can start
getting them more involved in the city as a whole.
Jim Harris - One of your framework concepts and you've all got this policy out of the Growth
Management Act, quoting, "The city shall define neighborhoods to foster a strong sense of
community."I think although Rico's hit the nail on the head in that there are well-defined
neighborhoods, there are lots that aren't. I think what I find occasionally, when I go to the counter to
answer a phone call, is that people are confused about what Kent is all about. They're not sure where
they are. Years ago I got a call from a woman who lived within the Federal Way School District and
she wanted to know how I could help her get annexed to the Kent School District. That's what's
Tim's saying, they coalesce around school districts. We purposely got away from the schools
because that's such a divisive situation,where the school boundaries are always changing and,back
to Rico again, yes, we did go to a geographical area to begin with. Then I think he's also hit the nail
on the head that we need to begin to define more of what is a neighborhood, what the social side of it
is,what the cultural side of it is, and the human side of it. I'm a geographer and with my background
it's so easy to do geographical stuff. You draw lines around hills and around valleys or whatever.
Rico Yingling - I would suggest that we find out what we're trying to achieve with community or
with neighborhoods first and then let's ask what would be a good way to define those. When we
know what we're trying to achieve (and I don't mean in detail but in general), we ask what are we
• trying to achieve through stronger neighborhoods or whatever it is, and then decide what would be a
smart way to divide up the larger community to try to achieve that. What we've done here is we
created our picture of how to break up the community and what I'm afraid of is that if we do start
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here, without knowing what we're going to achieve, this thing will create some result that maybe
. isn't what we're trying to get. It's like if I built a machine at work to build something but I didn't
know what I was building. I just built the machine then whatever that machine came out with, I was
going to try to utilize because the machine's been built. This product is coming out. I need to try to
sell it. I need to make use of it. But if I start with the product first and then figure out what kind of
machine do I need to make that product, I would build a better machine and be more efficient.
Judy Woods - We can have the greater philosophical umbrella for what we would like from the
citizens. We would like them to identify with the city. Be participating in the public process. They
will tell us what they want and it will not be the same from community to community. It's going to
be different. Tom's community is going to want different things than what your community wants,
than what my community wants, and I just don't see them being out of sync. I just think that we want
to be lighthanded on this. We want to give them every opportunity to be full participants in this
process without telling them what it is we think they should get from this process.
Jim Harris --If I could just say this - maybe what we ought to do, and Kevin's chairing this
committee, is go back, not completely back to the drawing board,but take into consideration what
we've heard here this evening. Rico's got some pertinent comments I think so let's talk about these
outcomes. You want to know what do we build to get there and I think to me as a planner to me it's a
simple statement, the city shall define neighborhoods to foster a strong sense of community. I guess
you could argue about what's a strong sense of community, and maybe that's our starting point.
What is the strong sense of community? I've been here 30 years and I think we have a weak sense of
community in Kent. We have a very strong sense of downtown and the old town,but I don't think
the people that live in the Lakes get up in the morning and go to work thinking that they're in Kent.
A lot of people, newcomers, are moving into the east part of Kent and probably don't know that we
ever annexed them.
Councilmember Tom Brotherton- First I wanted to point out that this process is very good. We've
gotten people to think outside of the box. They've thought about different ways the city can cleverly
handle services. When we first brought this up, we didn't give a lot of direction, we wanted to see
what they'd come up with. What they've come up with is a lot of problems, a lot of questions. And
one of the things I find that was significant was that different departments had interpreted two
different things quite a bit differently. I just was watching the thing on the TV channel where they
were listing which Police Lieutenant served which area, and the Fire Department is obviously broken
up into regional neighborhoods. Maybe Public Works and Planning has some of that too,but it's
certainly not obvious to the citizens. This way of thinking about how we are made up of different
communities with different services and needs is a way of making our city stronger, serving people
better, and giving them more of a sense of involvement in the City. These are all the things we're
looking for, not just that they come to us and say, here's our status and where do we go from here and
they want a little more direction on which way to go from this point. I think part of our discussion
now ought to be what do we want to tell them for the next series of workshops. Is there any more
guidance we want to give them?
Connie Epperly- At one time we had talked about letting neighborhoods identify themselves and
giving them signs. We were talking about signage and providing it. I think this is a good concept but
it's going to take education to say-this is Old Kent, and it is made up of North Park, Lower East
Hill, Scenic Hill, South Park - and to package it like that. When you get up into the Meridian area,
you're going to have problems, because they aren't named. I think it might be kind of fun to take a
Operations Committee Minutes,2l15l00 9
cul-de-sac, ask what people think and let them give themselves a name. What do you think? Let the
• smaller communities definitely have their identity,but then you package them into a community.
Tom Brotherton- This is a process. I don't think it's a product yet. This is simply a way that we can
start talking to people and we need to carry it forward. One of the things I have heard other areas do
is have regular council meetings in different areas occasionally, one a year in a different area. When
you talked about that, you mentioned we don't have a full council meeting,but the thing I was most
intrigued with was where they took city hall out there. They took the services. They took people
who would show them the Land Use Maps. They'd give you permits. They made it a big deal when
we visited about four neighborhoods. I think that's a good thing. We could go out to these
neighborhoods, to the fire stations, and do a little publicity and bring along some staff so that we can
support some functions. It would take a little planning, who would go,but this would be a really
good outreach to the community to say that we don't just sit down in the valley. We do care about
West Hill and East Hill and we want to get out there. It's only a suggestion,but I'd like to see
something like that, thought out by the staff, to see if it's a reasonable suggestion.
Jacki Skaught- And we did discuss that. I think our thoughts were that if you want council meetings
out in the communities, it made sense that the first round of meetings would be more to get
information from them. It's that overture, of the government going to where they are and they're
seeing it and everybody gets a name and face and a title. I think we should spend a lot of time on how
important that is. Another example, in Tacoma, before we had neighborhood councils, we did two
things. We had Town Hall meetings in the districts where the council went out and met there. They
don't do that anymore, now that they have districts or councils. Also, there's a mall and they had city
hall at the mall. They took a weekend and all the departments had a huge display and literally created
Main Street Tacoma through the mall. Then people could come and interact with their government
officials at the mall while they were there. Those things really work well and we envisioned that as
part of this process because it's connecting and what we're trying to do is connect the government
and the citizens of Kent into a team.
Leona Orr- Judy reminded me that we have taken council meetings down into the neighborhoods.
It's difficult with the taping, so sometimes that's a consideration,but from my own personal point of
view, it's a good direction. I like what you've started out with. I think that it's important to go out in
these communities that you've defined and hold open houses or some type of rather informal get
togethers. I think that's better than taking a formal council meeting to them at this point in time.
Later on, a council meeting might be the very best thing we could do,but initially I think an informal
informational type of meeting is best, similar to what you did when some of the annexations were
taking place. I remember going to the Martin Sortun, up on the hill I believe, one night and all the
departments had a little display. It was kind of like a mini town hall meeting but it wasn't even
citizens of Kent at that time, it was an annexation area,but it was very well attended. There were lots
of people there. There were lots of questions asked and I think if you set the format up so that they
understand we were desiring input from them as to how they want to see their neighborhoods and
communities defined, I think that's where we should be heading toward. The boundaries that are
here, I think it needs to be made very clear that these are initial boundaries based on the information
you gave us tonight. Fire stations, the centrally located community facilities, if you will, and that
those are subject to change based on what we hear from them. Let them help us make the next step
as we go along.
•
Operations Committee Minutes,2/15/00 10
Jim Harris- What we'll do then, is go back in committee and start coming up with some more of
these ideas like we've heard, especially a program for very informal meetings,keeping in mind what
Rico's talking about.
Intergovernmental Update
Government Affairs Manager Dena Laurent - This first item is some draft comments that we've
developed in response to the draft Seattle/King County Work Force Development Committee Plan.
I've spoken to you about this once before. The Mayor sits as the Suburban Cities Representative.
It's a 55-member board, 50%plus business and they're trying to change the way we deliver
workforce training in King County. I just wanted to give this to you as an FYI. I'm going to be
offering it to the Suburban Cities electeds tomorrow evening. The kinds of themes that my comments
hit are things like services needing to be geographically balanced. They need to be where the people
and where the jobs are, not just in downtown Seattle. They should be spread across the industries
that are projected for growth. Not just high tech because it's sexy. And they need to be connected to
both city services and to human services. Those things that keep people from getting jobs often have
less to do with training and more to do with child care or transportation or domestic violence, so
partnering with human service agencies can help us with that as well. You don't want to be offering
a dislocated training program in a community where the Economic Development Manager's targeting
a whole different sector for growth. There are reasons to partner with human service agencies in
cities, and that's what these comments echo. If you have feedback let me know. There will be a
public hearing in Kent and I will get you a flyer on that at the end of the month.
Here is a legislative update and there's only one issue I want to tell you about. The item that I want
to bring to your attention is the second one on the first page, and you may have read about this in the
Times and The PI. This is the county's interest in taking the regional lead as the water supply
planner for King County. This issue is of concern to us, and we believe to you, because we believe
that you will want to chart the future of Kent, and in order to do that you need to have control over
your water supply planning. That's what we have now, as we are our own purveyors. So Don
(Wickstrom) and I will likely be working on a letter together expressing these concerns to the
executive for the Mayor and I thought it was interesting that they're actually pursuing this specific
authority through the legislature. I don't think they're going to get their bill passed, but the fact that
they have a question about whether or not they have that authority is advantageous for us, I think. So
if you have other questions about these items let me know. We're over the half way point looking
forward to second week of March.
The workshop adjourned at 6:35 PM.
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