State of the City Address 2025

The following speech was delivered by Mayor Kelli Curtis at the State of the City and Community Appreciation Night event on May 15, 2025. 

Good evening, everyone! I am Kelli Curtis, and I have the great honor of being selected by the City Council to be your Mayor.  Welcome to the State of the City address and Community Appreciation Night!

Tonight is the first time we have combined the State of the City, traditionally given at the Kirkland Chamber of Commerce, and Community Appreciation Night.  I would like to thank our Chamber for partnering with me to share this address with all of you. 

And what could be more fitting? We recognize that Kirkland is exceptional because of the contributions of everyone in this theater. Together, our dedicated and talented City employees, our tireless and passionate volunteers, our insightful and thoughtful Boards and Commissions, and our innovative and dynamic businesses make Kirkland one of the best cities in America to be.   

On behalf of the City Council, I would like to thank each and every one of you for your love of our City, and for all you do to ensure that Kirkland is a magical place where everyone truly belongs. 

I am so proud to be joined tonight by my outstanding City Council colleagues. Each of them is far too accomplished for me to cover in one short speech.  But you can see from the biographies provided in your program that this group exemplifies leadership and public service and is the hardest working Council in the region. As I call on each of them to stand and be recognized, I want to share with you something else they do beyond public service and tells you a little about them as people. 

First, Deputy Mayor Jay Arnold. Jay is the son of a city manager, rebelled by pursing a computer science degree, and enjoyed a career in software development working on Microsoft’s MS-DOS. He recently resurrected his interest in music playing drums in the classic rock cover band Vlad and the Dads. 

Next is Councilmember Neal Black. Neal was born on a remote island in Alaska, raised beef cattle throughout his childhood, once answered a wrong number and talked a man out of taking his own life, and spends his Sundays with the New York Times Crossword puzzle.

Following Neal is Councilmember Amy Falcone.  Amy put herself through college waiting tables and doing other jobs. She volunteers as an art docent in local schools, has season tickets to Broadway at the Paramount, and never passes up any opportunity to see Hamilton.

After Amy is Councilmember Jon Pascal.  Jon is always up for outdoor adventures, whether it’s camping in an Alaska grizzly bear sanctuary, kayaking the entire Nā Pali Coast in Hawaii, or backpacking the Pacific Crest Trail.  

Next, Councilmember John Tymczyszyn. John has lived in China for a year, is a licensed pilot, has survived a plane crash, and can be found many summer evenings coaching little league.  

Our final Councilmember is also our former Mayor, Penny Sweet.  Penny needs no introduction to most of you here, but it is my honor to give her one anyway. This will be the last Community Appreciation Night she attends as an elected official. This December thirty first, Penny will step into a well-earned retirement after sixteen extraordinary years serving on the Council. Penny is simply a living legend in Kirkland. She and her husband, Representative Larry Springer, moved to Kirkland in 1985 and owned and operated the Grape Choice for thirty four years.  Penny chaired the Market Neighborhood Association and has been a guiding light for the Chamber of Commerce, the Kirkland Downtown Association, and the Kirkland Arts Center. In 1999, she founded Celebrate Kirkland to bring back the annual Fourth of July celebration now enjoyed by over ten thousand people every year. There is so much more that could be said.  Many people express their love of Kirkland.  Penny truly makes Kirkland the place we all love.  Please join me in thanking Penny Sweet for her decades of community service! 

You will see our hardworking Councilmembers again later tonight as part of the Community Appreciation portion of our evening.  

The State of the City address is my opportunity as Mayor to highlight our community’s achievements and our community’s challenges. To outline our priorities and our vision for the future.  

2025 is the one hundred and twentieth Anniversary of the incorporation of Kirkland in 1905!  The present we have today and the future we hope to create are built on the visionary legacy of our past. 

Over the last decade, how did the Mayors who came before me describe the State of the City? In 2014, Mayor Amy Walen highlighted that our city was poised to accomplish great things.  Over the next ten years, many of those great things such as the beloved Cross Kirkland Corridor and the vibrant Village at Totem Lake came be! In the following years, Mayor Walen used such words as strong, blossoming, and striving for excellence.   

In 2019, our new Mayor Penny Sweet celebrated that the city was booming and described the excitement of the new metropolitan energy. In 2021, the entire Council solemnly described how our community came together to support each other and endure the pandemic.   

In 2022, after rebounding from COVID-19 and responding to the renewed call for racial justice following the murder of George Floyd, Mayor Sweet stated that the City was engaged in going boldly into Kirkland’s future where everyone is welcome, everyone is safe, and everyone belongs. In 2023 she proudly noted that we were prepared to serve people from all walks of life in our wonderful City.   

The great accomplishments over the past decade created the Kirkland that is thriving today. To keep Kirkland safe, together we passed Police Proposition One in 2018, creating our ProAct unit to fight property crimes, adding new Neighborhood and Community Resource Officers. They join over one hundred highly talented, experienced, and diverse officers that won Lexipol’s Gold Award for training excellence for the sixth consecutive year, demonstrating that our Police Department is far more than Kirkland’s finest, they are the region’s finest.   

Kirkland voters also passed Fire Proposition One in 2020, protecting our homes and our lives by improving emergency response times while investing in the health and safety of our firefighters.  We hired twenty new firefighter/EMTs. We built a new Fire Station Twenty-Four in Juanita and the new Fire Station Twenty-Seven in Totem Lake. We modernized Fire Station Twenty-Two in Houghton and Fire Station Twenty-Five on Finn Hill. And this year, we will complete the final fire investments when we finish renovations and re-open Fire Station Twenty-Six in North Rose Hill and Fire Station Twenty-One at Forbes Creek. We will also add new fire training props next to Fire Station Twenty-Four to keep our firefighters the best trained and most effective team in the region. 

We know that our residents and businesses expect healthy lakes and streams, clean air, clean water, and safe streets to travel.  We invested hundreds of millions of dollars upgrading and improving our stormwater, wastewater, and drinking water systems.  We repaved 84 miles of arterials and protected one hundred seventy-three miles of neighborhood streets with slurry seal.  We added one hundred twenty-three new crosswalks and installed sixty-five new rapid flashing beacons throughout the City.  We created over twenty-five miles of new bike lines and filled in key sidewalk gaps, also adding five hundred and sixty-seven new ADA ramps to make it easier to use them.  We are assuring that our investments keep Kirkland one of the best places to bus, bike, walk and roll.   

We expanded and improved our beloved park system. The Cross Kirkland Corridor opened, connecting public parks, our community, and uniting the City from North to South. We cut the ribbons on the new award-winning Totem Lake Park and the spectacular Totem Lake Connector Bridge which just won the “Best City Project” Award of Excellence by the Washington State Department of Transportation.  

We renovated Juanita Beach Park into the crown jewel of the waterfront.  We rebuilt 132nd Square Park into the first major turf field in Kirkland, nearly tripling the capacity for our children to play year-round.  We restored Edith Moulton Park and David Brink Park to greatness and bought acres of forest land on Finn Hill to launch the Green Loop Trail.  We partnered with Google to create Feriton Spur Park, we built new dog parks, and added the new Fisk Family Park with the iconic red cottage along the CKC.   

And great accomplishments continue to happen.  We are currently investing another twenty-five million dollars in bike and pedestrian safety projects near schools.  We reopened the Kirkland Teen Union Building to provide teens a place to gather, share, and grow together. We launched delightful new annual events that have quickly become traditions for residents and visitors alike, such as the Harvest Festival, Lunar New Year Celebration, and my personal favorite, See Spot Splash!  We established the temporary Houghton Park and Play, inviting our community to try pickleball, pump tracks and pea patches.  These amenities have been so successful that the Council will relocate them throughout the City to permanent locations.   

Kirkland’s history of sound financial planning and disciplined budgets are the key reasons we can invest in these accomplishments. Kirkland has strong fiscal management, with solid financial policies and healthy reserves. We have received clean audits from the state since 2007, receive awards every year from the Government Finance Officers Association and proudly maintain a Triple-A credit rating from all national credit rating agencies.  

We also have a prosperous private sector. Hundreds of middle housing units have been built throughout the city. This right-sized housing creates more attainable and affordable choices for our community members. And today, there are three thousand, four hundred units of housing in our permit pipeline including over nine hundred affordable residences that will soon be homes for our seniors, our students, our workforce, and our own family members. 

The popular Village at Totem Lake and Kirkland Urban emerged majestically from the ground, providing us new shops, new restaurants, new homes, new jobs, and new places to meet our friends and neighbors.   

Our cherished institutions of EvergreenHealth, Northwest University, Lake Washington Institute of Technology and the Lake Washington School District are investing in our community with over one million square feet of expansion and renovation underway.   

Kirkland added nearly four hundred new businesses in 2024 bringing us to almost seven thousand, four hundred overall. Nearly six thousand employees joined our local economy and we now have over forty-three thousand working in our city every day.  Many of these businesses are national and even global leaders.  Luly Yang is bringing international fashion to Kirkland. French company Chargepoly has placed its US electric vehicle charging headquarters in Totem Lake.  EA Sports, creator of video games such as Madden Football, has just moved to Carillon Point. 

Google continues to be a good neighbor and grow thoughtfully at both Kirkland Urban and Sixth Street South. And, as we saw hinted at the beginning of my speech, on April twenty-eight, Amazon celebrated the inaugural launch of the first twenty-seven low-orbit satellites built right here at the Project Kuiper facility in Totem Lake. 

Truly, as I declared in my first State of the City address in 2024, Kirkland is flourishing.   

What do these words, striving, blooming, booming, flourishing, and all these accomplishments have in common?  They don’t just capture the state of the city over the years, they embody the heart of this city.  And for 120 years, that heart of Kirkland always has been, and always will be, the joy of building community together. 

Since Kirkland was founded in 1905, we have become who we are by welcoming others into our hearts and into our community. New and old, working together to create this city that we all love.  In 1968, the Town of Houghton joined with Kirkland.  In the 1970s and 1980s Kirkland grew stronger as we embraced North Rose Hill, South Rose Hill and Bridle Trails.  In 2011 we enthusiastically welcomed our new neighbors in Finn Hill, North Juanita, and Kingsgate, setting our final boundaries and cementing the foundation for the past decade of growth and prosperity. 

But we must remember that building community together is so much more than celebrating times of plenty. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”   

The foundations of our success also create our greatest challenge. The job opportunities and desirability of Kirkland and the Eastside leave our region unaffordable for too many.   Home prices and even monthly rents are beyond the reach of those who are essential parts of our community -- our teachers, our construction workers, our delivery drivers, our service providers, our waiters, and our grocery clerks.   

The affordability challenge has compounded the enduring effects of the pandemic on those with the smallest paychecks -- hurting our very own community members.  We saw this plainly during last fall’s budget process with more of our neighbors falling through the cracks. The City Council funded our highest ever contributions to human service grants, investing millions of dollars in food programs, emergency shelter, rent assistance, affordable housing construction, job training, healthcare, and much more. And even this record level of investment funded just 58% of the requests, because the need is so great.    

We know we are building community together when we help those who have too little and struggle every day. 

We know we are building community together when we house our neighbors and feed the hungry among us.   

We know we are building community together when our nurses, our childcare workers, and even our own parents and children can afford to live here. 

We also know that the chances are high that these challenges will get worse, not better.  Each of us - government, business, religious groups, and neighbors, must do what we have always done, solve this problem by building community, together. 

And I pledge to everyone here that the City will continue to do our part.  For example, once again the Kirkland City Council proudly funded the Regional Crisis Response Agency with our partners in Bothell, Kenmore, Lake Forest Park and Shoreline.  The “Regional Crisis Response Agency,” affectionally known as “Racer” – is an award-winning new model of public safety response consisting of trained mental health professionals supporting those in behavioral health crisis.  We will celebrate RCR’s second full year of operation in June.   

The five RCR cities also secured the Connections Health Crisis Clinic in Kirkland, which opened last August to provide behavioral health services to anyone who needs them. Since then, the clinic has already served over two thousand people and is helping over three hundred, fifty patients per month.  

We converted our Homelessness Outreach Coordinator from a pilot program to a permanent position.  Our amazing coordinator has built relationships with nearly two hundred individuals and families experiencing homelessness and helped dozens find stable housing already.   

And this January, Kirkland became the first city in Washington State to receive the Welcoming Cities Certification by Welcoming America, reflecting our commitment to equity and inclusion for those who immigrated to our country.  Certified cities are recognized globally as leaders in building communities where everyone, regardless of background, can thrive. We should all be so proud of this certification. 

Other than the First People, everyone in this theater is descended from someone who immigrated to America. Immigrants are entrepreneurs who start businesses that create jobs and diversify our economy. Immigrants are families and friends that become a dynamic part of everything we love about this city. They add to the rich fabric of our lives by bringing diverse traditions, art, music, food, culture, and languages. This certification acknowledges yet another way that Kirkland builds community, together.   

Now, let’s turn to our city’s future. We will keep building 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. 

The City’s efforts will be guided by the initiatives in the 2025-2026 City Work Program adopted by the Council on April first. These twelve initiatives are included in your program.  I will highlight five that are focused on building community.  

We will spark redevelopment of the Station Area on Rose Hill to become an even more exciting version of the Village at Totem Lake.  Imagine exploring our vibrant new walkable district served by regional and local transit, with green buildings, new parks, plentiful affordable housing, new family wage jobs, new entertainment options, new restaurants and retail shops -- more places for us to connect with our friends, family, and neighbors. 

We will partner with the Seattle Kraken to develop a state-of-the-art iceplex that will host NHL teams at the former Houghton Park and Ride property including a new community center and community benefits. The iceplex and community center will provide exciting new spaces for thousands of families to exercise together, play together, skate together, learn together, and laugh together.    

We all love our beautiful waterfront parks and our nine and a half miles of accessible shoreline. Learning to swim in Kirkland is a lifesaving activity and every child should have that opportunity.  Yet each summer, we have thousands of names on our wait list for swim lessons. We will explore strategies for covering the Peter Kirk Pool to enable year-round operations to enhance aquatic programs for Kirkland residents of all ages and abilities. 

As I stated earlier, a complete community houses the unhoused and feeds the hungry. This year, we will implement a Homelessness Response Action Plan so that homelessness in Kirkland is rare, brief, and non-recurring. We will take care of each other and invest in actions to prevent homelessness.  We will provide outreach, emergency shelter services, temporary shelter, and permanent housing in ways that keep both those we are helping and our residents and businesses safe. 

To continue our journey as a diverse and welcoming community, we will stand by our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging efforts and update our DEIB 5-Year Roadmap with new tasks identified by our community and the Council.  

The City builds community by investing in our community. I have shared with you a glimpse of how we will keep doing our part. And I will end this “Heart of the City” address by thanking you for your many, many contributions and asking you to keep doing your part.  How will each of us keep building community, together? The Dalai Lama said “An open heart is an open mind.”  I know we will succeed together, because I have seen the open hearts and open minds of our community in action time and time again.   

On April ninth, this very theater hosted the second annual Pitch Competition. Energetic entrepreneurs presented innovative ideas for new businesses and services to an enthusiastic audience.  And on April tenth, hundreds of residents came together to share their Love of Kirkland, hosted by the Kirkland Community Foundation.  Attendees wrote post it notes about what makes our city so special.  There were so many wonderful examples like the lake, the trees, the Cow and the Coyote, the Cross Kirkland Corridor, and nearly every one of our spectacular parks.   But right next to these, others had placed “teachers”, “my neighbors”, “friends”, and one simply said “people.”  Whoever placed that post it note is in the company of literary giants.  William Shakespeare himself wrote “what is the city but the people?”   

The people are what makes Kirkland special.  Each of you here tonight make Kirkland special. And the amazing diversity of people outside of this theater, representing a tapestry of cultures, life experiences, abilities, and beliefs, make Kirkland truly special.   

Now, more than ever, we must embrace all people with open minds and open hearts. Oprah Winfrey said when you live with an open heart, unexpected, joyful things happen.  At both the Pitch Competition and the For the Love of Kirkland events, I saw joyful, unexpected things. Once again, the people of Kirkland gathered to share their love for Kirkland. Just as you show your love of Kirkland with the contributions you make through your volunteering and giving back. 

Inspired by these events, by the better angels of our nature, and all of you, let us show the world the beauty and heart of Kirkland.  Let us show the world how we are a caring city of equity and opportunity for everyone.  Let us keep building this beautiful community, together. 

Thank you!