Mayor Curtis Declares State of the City is "Flourishing"
Published on May 02, 2024
Last month, Mayor Kelli Curtis delivered the annual State of the City address to the Kirkland Chamber of Commerce. During her speech, the Mayor declared the state of the city is "flourishing."
Mayor Kelli Curtis State of the City Address
Thank you for that wonderful introduction. Thank you so much to the Chamber of Commerce for inviting me here today to speak about the State of the City. And on behalf of the City Council, thank you to all the businesses in this room and throughout Kirkland. Your goods and services are part of the fabric of the amazing quality of life we all enjoy, and we are so appreciative that you choose to locate here.
It is a happy coincidence that an Environmental Horticulturist, former Master Gardener, and lover of trees is before you today during Earth Month and as we welcome the refreshing April showers of spring. Spring is a time of renewal and new beginnings. I am honored to be chosen by my colleagues as your new Mayor, and we are all excited to partner with our new Chamber Executive Director Jessica Hoover. This month is a chance to reflect on our impact on the Earth that sustains us, to be grateful for the abundance we have around us, and to rededicate ourselves to taking the bold actions necessary to protect and enhance our community and our planet both for today and tomorrow.
There is an old Greek proverb that says that a society grows great when its people are willing to plant trees under whose shade they will not sit. Our great community is blessed to benefit from environmental, social and economic trees planted by those who came before us. We are lucky in Kirkland to enjoy the legacies of visionary leaders who made wise choices. We owe them for beautiful waterfront parks, the Cross Kirkland Corridor, our safe streets and great schools, welcoming Google to our city, the thriving new Village at Totem Lake, the bustling Kirkland Urban and so much more. The willingness of those in the past to plant and tend the civic garden has made Kirkland a model for the region in the present. Now we have the privilege and responsibility to do the hard work to plant saplings of our own and grow the garden for our future generations.
Fortunately, we have an exceptional, hardworking team of Councilmembers who are willing to amend and care for our city soil and build a safe, welcoming, inclusive, green, and sustainable vision for our future. It is my privilege to introduce each of them to you and briefly highlight their individual passions for serving Kirkland and the region.
Deputy Mayor Jay Arnold is an acknowledged regional expert on transportation, planning, and environmental sustainability. He serves as the Chair of the Eastside Transportation Partnership, Co-chair of the Eastrail Regional Advisory Council, serves on the King County Cities Climate Collaborative (K4C), and was appointed by the Governor to the State Building Code Council. He leaves no stone unturned to advocate for Kirkland’s interests.
Councilmember Neal Black is a passionate environmental advocate who is both an attorney and an engineer. He is the new chair of our State Legislative Work Group and is Kirkland’s Principal Assembly member on the Regional Crisis Response Agency. He also sits on the King County Cities Climate Collaboration, is a representative to the Eastside Transportation Partnership, a member of the Regional Transit Committee, and is the Vice Chair of the Regional Law, Safety and Justice Committee. Councilmember Black has his fingers in many pots.
Councilmember Amy Falcone plants seeds to grow a community where everyone belongs. She was a passionate founding member of Kirkland’s Human Services Commission. She sits on the Sound Cities Association Executive Board, chairs the Eastside Human Services Forum Board and the King County Affordable Housing Committee Caucus. She also serves on both the Sound Cities Association and Association of Washington Cities Equity and Inclusion Cabinets.
Councilmember Jon Pascal advocates to build our safe garden paths. He is a transportation professional and chairs our transportation ad hoc work group. He combines the expertise from 8 years on the Transportation Commission and 6 years on the Planning commission with his time on the Council. His state appointments include the Washington State Cooper Jones Active Transportation Safety Council and the Washington State Transportation Improvement Board.
Highlighting everything that former Mayor and current Councilmember Penny Sweet does for our City and King County could be its own 30-minute presentation. She is a recognized and respected regional leader in water supply, water quality, solid waste, and community safety, as well as serving on the Executive Board of Hopelink. She always grabs her gloves and rolls up her sleeves to pitch in wherever is needed whether it’s a regional committee or a local community need.
And our newest member, Councilmember John Tymczyszyn, was elected to the Council after tilling the soil for eight years on the Planning Commission. His attention is focused on land use planning, new housing, increasing school capacity, and ensuring a fair system of justice. He will be working with the Chamber as a member of the Kirkland Chamber Policy Board.
Last year then-Mayor Penny Sweet told the Chamber that the City was prepared. In 2022 and 2023 this tireless Council, supported by our exceptional Kirkland employees, planted seeds to prepare to respond in any emergency when you need us. We prepared to create a more equitable Kirkland for everyone. We prepared to provide attainable housing for all, and to help our children safely walk and bike to school. We prepared to provide dependable streets, sidewalks, water and sewer service, and abundant parks to support your quality of life. And we prepared to protect the quality of our air, land, and water, and keep Kirkland one of the best places to be in America.
We did all this to keep growing a community that is uniquely Kirkland. A Kirkland with people-centered spaces, where no matter who you are, what you do, or why you are here, this is the place you want to be.
And today, in 2024 we are seeing the fruits of our labor. Today, the state of the city is flourishing!
Our businesses are flourishing. Google houses thousands of high-tech jobs at both Kirkland Urban and Sixth Street South. Amazon’s Project Kuiper facility in Totem Lake is now manufacturing over three thousand low earth orbit satellites that will revolutionize the internet by 2026. On March 29, Veeam Software, one of the top data protection companies in the United States, valued at over five billion dollars, announced it will move its global headquarters to Carillon Point.
Throughout 2023, the number of business licenses in Kirkland rose from 12,587 to 13,901 and are still climbing. Many of these businesses have been attracted to Kirkland’s two thriving centers of Kirkland Urban and Totem Lake. Kirkland continues to invest in small businesses through Shop Local Kirkland, Start-up 425, and more. Over the past few weeks, forty aspiring entrepreneurs attended City-sponsored marketing and pitch classes. And last week, we hosted our first ever Pitch Competition at the Kirkland Performance Center, where nineteen of those start-ups vied for three five-thousand dollar checks to launch their business ideas.
And this very month, construction began on the first phase of reinvigorating our beloved downtown by investing over $3.6 million in the Lake Street Pedestrian Scramble. When completed this year, one of Kirkland’s signature downtown corners will have new landscaping, new sidewalks, new traffic signals, and brand-new stormwater infrastructure. And to attract those who live, work, and shop downtown, it will create Kirkland’s first ever “all cross” intersection for pedestrian and bike safety. The scramble is just the first example of the opportunities to enhance the safety, beauty, and vibrancy of our downtown.
People-centered communities are flourishing. Our goal of creating livable, walkable centers with jobs, services, and housing options served by transit are springing up right where we have planned. Nearly 4400 housing units, including over 1000 units of affordable housing, are in our permit pipeline. 900 of these units are under active construction with projects such as Polaris in Totem Lake, the King County Housing Authority Kirkland Heights Apartments expansion, and the Ardea project near I-405 in Totem Lake.
Kirkland in 2020 became one of the first cities to adopt missing middle housing codes. Since then, 316 permits have been issued for Accessory Dwelling Units, cottages, duplexes, and triplexes around the City and we see this upward trend continuing. This right-sized housing creates more attainable and affordable choices for our seniors, our students, and our workforce to live in Kirkland.
Commercial and educational options are flourishing. Over 600,000 square feet of new office space, 424,000 square feet of commercial space, and over a million square feet of institutional expansions for the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, Northwest University, and the Lake Washington School District are in some stage of permit review.
Our Parks and Recreation Programs are flourishing. Last summer we held the grand opening for the amazing new 132nd Square Park. The turf fields and lights have tripled our playing capacity for the north end of our City and are crowded from dawn to dusk with kids and adults playing sports of all kinds. We will continue to expand our park capacity and over the next few years our local parks will receive new amenities like swings, play structures, and picnic tables. In 2023, our Parks Department took over the Fourth of July celebration and over ten thousand people attended the festivities. This year it will be even better!
New Park-sponsored community events like the Harvest Festival, Lunar New Year, and El Día De Los Muertos are quickly becoming Kirkland traditions. Our pilot program for teen indoor and outdoor adventures was a smashing success for hundreds of young people and the Council has made these teen opportunities and teen mental health programs permanent, all anchored in a renovated Kirkland Teen Union Building that will reopen in the fall of 2024.
Our organization is flourishing. Kirkland has emerged from the pandemic and the great employee reshuffle stronger than ever. Most of our vacancies are now filled. New innovations such as leased electric cars for police officers and a childcare pilot program for employees have helped us attract and retain talented Kirkland employees who provide the services our community needs and expects.
Kirkland is also keeping our community safe. We are fulfilling our commitments to the voters who approved Police Proposition 1 in 2018 and Fire Proposition 1 in 2020. Because we only hire the best, our highly trained, experienced, and diverse officers in the Police Department are far more than Kirkland’s finest; they are the region’s finest. Our ProAct unit is solving property crimes and just this year have arrested two organized theft rings – one targeting retail businesses, the other targeting the Eastside’s Asian populations.
On the Fire side, we are fully staffed and all twenty Firefighter/EMTs approved by the voters have been hired, trained, and are on the line. Renovations for Fire Station 26 and 21 are underway. The renovation of Fire Station 22 is completed, and new Fire Station 27 will celebrate its grand opening in May.
And we are doing all of this while balancing our budgets and living within our means. Kirkland ended 2023 within our projected revenues and expenditures. Outside agencies confirmed just how financially sustainable we are. Earlier this year the City once again received a clean audit from the State Auditor’s Office. The city’s strong internal controls have prevented any audit findings for over 16 years. And just this month, both Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s re-affirmed Kirkland’s AAA credit rating. Both cited Kirkland’s sound financial planning and disciplined budgets as the key reasons. One agency applauded that Kirkland “has very high reserve balances when compared with peers,” and “strong management, with good financial policies and practices.” Standard and Poor’s rates us higher than the U.S. government, stating “we think the city can maintain strong credit characteristics relative to the nation.”
We are creating a more equitable Kirkland that increases the safety and respect of all community members so that everyone has an opportunity to flourish. We made our highest ever contributions to human services grants, record setting investments in affordable housing, and added a new Homelessness Outreach Coordinator to help those who need it most.
In 2023, our Council formed a regional partnership with the cities of Bothell, Kenmore, Lake Forest Park and Shoreline to help those in behavioral health crisis with something more appropriate than a police response. The “Regional Crisis Response Agency affectionally known as “Racer” – is an award-winning new model of public safety response and we celebrate our first year of operation in June of 2024. All ten mental health professionals have been hired and are providing critical services in each of the five cities. These crisis responders have served 883 individuals in crisis during 2696 encounters. There is a one-page annual report at your table that shows who has been served and how important these services are.
This coalition also joined forces to site a behavioral health crisis clinic in Kirkland. This summer the Connections Behavioral Health Crisis Clinic will open and provide a 24-hour crisis facility expecting to serve over 14,000 people annually. This facility helps our mental health professionals and our first responders in Police and Fire to redirect those in crisis to appropriate care rather than depending on emergency rooms or jails.
Our transportation infrastructure is flourishing. Earlier this year the Council approved issuing bonds to invest over $26 million dollars in pedestrian and bike safety projects to create safer routes to school and complete active transportation projects. These bonds are financed by a $20 vehicle license fee that began in 2024, and all projects will be completed within the next three years.
We are assuring our streets, sidewalks, and non-motorized mobility investments support our community and keep Kirkland one of the best places in America to bus, bike, walk and roll. The Totem Lake Connector Bridge opened last summer, linking Woodinville and Snohomish County to the Village at Totem Lake and the Spring District in Bellevue through our beloved Cross Kirkland Corridor.
Bike lanes, sidewalks, and safety improvements for 100th Ave NE and Juanita Drive are under construction. WSDOTs new 132nd and I-405 ramps to Totem Lake are nearly complete. Sound Transit’s once-in-a generation Bus Rapid Transit station investment at NE 85th Street has broken ground. And the multi-million-dollar K-line RapidRide line which will connect Totem Lake, the BRT station, and Bellevue is in design.
Despite all this good news, there are also parts of our community that are not yet flourishing and need cultivating.
While the City has much to be proud of with the thousands of new units underway, attainable housing for Kirkland residents of all ages, abilities, and incomes remains out of reach. We cannot be a complete community if only some can afford to be part of it. The healthiest forests are not monocultures, but groves filled with abundant biodiversity. Like plants, humans depend on each other to prosper. We must create opportunities for our baristas, artists, carpenters, and teachers to live where they work. Kirkland must redouble our efforts at the local, regional, and state level to create more housing.
And that housing is essential if we are to live up to our responsibility of helping those experiencing homelessness. In the region of Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, no one should be allowed to live outside. Later this month the Council will take up a resolution setting forth our person-centered framework to combat this generational challenge and find safe shelter for everyone. In the meantime, if you see someone who is unhoused and needs support, you can share this information with our new Homeless Assistance and Response Team, or HART. HART is a highly trained, compassionate, and caring interdepartmental team from Parks, Public Works, Police, Planning and Building, RCR, and the Municipal Court. A HART member will contact the person and help connect them to the resources they need. HART may be activated through Our Kirkland or by calling the Police Non-Emergency number. Each of you has an overview of our HART team and how it works at your table. You can find out more about HART on our webpage at kirklandwa.gov/homelessness.
Likewise, we must continue to help those struggling to meet the basic needs of food, clothing, housing, and health care. In this current budget we made our highest ever contributions to human services grants and record setting investments in affordable housing. Yet the need continues to outpace the resources. Requests for human services funding this year will likely be more than double the revenues available. While we will do what we can, government cannot do this alone. We will need our most successful companies to help.
We must also cultivate a new strategy to bring the NE 85th Street Station Area plan to life. The City spent years zoning the land around the new bus-rapid transit station on 405 to achieve a “thriving, new walkable district with high tech and family wage jobs, plentiful affordable housing, sustainable buildings, park amenities, and commercial and retail services linked by transit.” But just after the plan was adopted, the technology sector stalled, and Google cancelled their new campus on Rose Hill. The City will be seeking new ways to attract businesses and housing to the new transit zone to catalyze the area and make this vision a reality.
One potential spark for the Station Area might be an intriguing proposal by the Seattle Kraken to locate two NHL sized ice-rinks on the City-owned Houghton Park and Ride property nearby. The Council has authorized our staff to explore this proposal, but no decisions have been made. The new ice rinks would serve the hockey and ice-skating needs for all genders, incomes, ages, and abilities for tens of thousands of Eastside families. Visiting NHL teams would practice at the rinks, driving tourism to Kirkland. The facility would also host tournaments and events to fill our hotels and restaurants. And the Kraken have offered the possibility of co-locating a 15,000-foot community center, which is larger than the Peter Kirk Community Center and more than twice the size of the North Kirkland Community Center. But there are many questions still to be answered and much to be negotiated. The Council will not approve anything unless we can articulate the clear public benefit of any agreement. But this potential partnership with a major league ownership group provides exciting opportunities for economic development and civic pride for our residents and businesses.
Finally, our work is never finished as we protect the quality of our air, land and water through the next round of actions identified in our Sustainability Strategic Plan. In 2024 we must do more to preserve open space, protect our environment, and be stewards of our streams and Lake Washington. We must create a sustainable city where green roofs, solar panels, trees, and green infrastructure are the norm and not the exception. We will need the understanding, innovation, and the support of the private sector to succeed in these efforts. Together we can look beyond short-term costs to long-term savings. And most importantly, to combat climate change and care for the only planet we have.
Each of these efforts and much more will be captured in our 2044 Comprehensive Plan update that sets our course for the next 20 years. I encourage you all to engage in that process now.
I would like to close with some thoughts on a quote by Audrey Hepburn who once said, “To plant a garden is to dream of tomorrow.” How true that is! And the same could be said of the vocation of each of us here today. To start a business is to dream of tomorrow. To serve the public or run for office is to dream of tomorrow.
But how do we make our dreams for the Kirkland of tomorrow a reality? In honor of Earth month, we turn again to the magic of gardens. Famed British Horticulturist Gertrude Jekyll wrote that “A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; and above all it teaches entire trust.”
Gardens teach us that to make things grow, you must first understand them. Gardens teach us that many hands make light work. Gardens teach us creativity, responsibility, and respect for nature. Gardens teach us the importance of emotional and spiritual connection with each other and with the world around us. Gardens teach us that life works in cycles. And that hard work pays off. Gardens teach us that not everything we plant will bloom, but to plant anyway. Gardens remind us to live in the present to create the future. To celebrate small beginnings that will grow into a greater harvest. Gardens teach us to add beauty to the world.
Above all else, gardens teach us the power of hope.
If as a community we can master the lessons of the garden, we can sustain the foundations of that great society imagined by the Greeks. Together we can plant trees under whose shade others will sit.
And under those trees, they too will flourish.
Thank you!