Council holds annual planning session

Published 11:28 am Tuesday, January 27, 2015

At its annual planning session on Jan. 23 and 24 at the Community and Events Center, the City Council reviewed its 2014 work plan and planned for 2015. The Council did not conduct any official business or votes, but discussed Town Center development, commuter parking, Metro service, the biennial budget and the community solar project.

Council to consider moratorium on downtown development

Mercer Island’s Town Center has been growing steadily in the past few years, and development is expected to continue with the arrival of light rail in 2023.

Some Islanders are concerned about the impacts that increased density will have on schools, traffic and city infrastructure, and have asked the Council to consider imposing a moratorium on new Town Center development while the city is updating its comprehensive plan and undergoing a Town Center visioning process.

City Attorney Katie Knight said that other Seattle area cities have imposed moratoriums, including Marysville, Sammamish and Kirkland, but that it’s a “risky legal maneuver” that’s “expensive to defend” in court, whether the city wins or not.

“As we discussed at our planning session this past weekend, the city has the legal authority to impose a moratorium but doing so could expose the city to costly litigation,” Deputy Mayor Dan Grausz wrote in an email update.

Grausz said that concerns were sparked by a picture of the Hines project — which is “a ‘massing study’ in urban design and was not intended as a visual depiction of what will ultimately be proposed by Hines or agreed to by the city.”

Upcoming projects like Hines wouldn’t be affected by code revisions or moratoriums if they are ‘vested’ before those take effect.

Councilmember Jane Brahm said that discontent with Town Center predates the visioning process and the circulation of the Hines picture.

“It’s not just a reaction to one project,” Brahm said at the planning session on Jan. 23.

The visioning process began in June 2013. An outside urban planning expert, Seth Harry, was hired last fall and presented ideas for code revisions and public gathering spaces in December.

“Future development would be dramatically different from what we have seen to date — but we would still have development,” Grausz said.

The Council is creating a public process that will enable Islanders to discuss what kind of Town Center they want to see going forward, with or without a moratorium, Grausz said.

Update: Imposing a moratorium on new construction downtown is on the Council’s Feb. 2 agenda. Click here for more information.

City works with Metro on restoring some Island bus service

Mercer Island city officials have been working with King County Metro to implement alternative transit services on the Island to partially replace some of the routes that were cut in September.

Mayor Bruce Bassett said that “big busses running around empty doesn’t make sense,” and Mercer Island’s programs could be “representative examples for other communities.”

The King County Council expanded Metro’s alternative services program last fall, and Mercer Island was identified as a priority for those services due to the level of reduction – almost 75 percent. Some of the services include shuttles, Trip Pools and community vans. Metro surveyed displaced riders to find out what would work best for them.

“The plan was never to restore that service in its entirety as doing so was not economically feasible,” Deputy Mayor Dan Grausz said.

About 65 percent of the 240 survey respondents said they would use a community shuttle more than three times per week. Metro designed routes that would run from the Presbyterian Church Park and Ride to the North-end of the Island and on to First Hill and downtown Seattle.

Metro is still identifying the vehicles that would be used. They are expected to make five trips in the morning and five in the afternoon, carrying up to 18 people. The program is expected to be jointly funded by Metro, Mercer Island and Seattle’s Transportation Benefit District.

If the financial arrangements are approved by the Council, the service will formally begin in June with the possibility of a “soft launch” as early as March, though ORCA cards wouldn’t be accepted in that time.