At its study session meeting on Sept. 8, Redmond City Council followed up on a number of city issues that have been on the docket, off and on, for the last few years.
TRAFFIC ON 166TH
The first item they discussed was the rechannelization project on 166th Avenue Northeast, which was completed about a year ago.
“166th has been controversial,” council member Hank Myers acknowledged.
As previously reported, prior to the project’s completion, residents and commuters had expressed both support for and opposition against the rechannelization.
Myers said one of the issues they have run into since the project was completed last year was some of the medians and islands in the middle lanes of the street. These barriers were installed to prevent people from driving in the center lanes and using them as “express lanes.” However, Myers said, some islands and medians inhibited people from even turning onto 166th Avenue Northeast, from either side of the road and council has received complaints on the topic from residents since the project’s completion.
As a result, Myers said a couple of these barriers have since been removed.
Rob Crittenden with the city’s Public Works Department was in attendance to share some of city staff’s findings on how the rechannelization has affected traffic along the road — one of which was regarding traffic speeds. He discussed some of the dips they observed — which occurred before and after school as well as during rush hour.
Council also discussed the traffic situations throughout the local area.
Council member John Stilin noted that not all of the drivers are from Redmond — many are probably from surrounding cities, just trying to deal with traffic and driving through Redmond to get where they are going. Stilin said having the empirical data to back up these anecdotes and casual observations could help if they approached state lawmakers. He said they could show that some of the traffic on the city’s arterial roads is “pass-through” traffic and it would give lawmakers a reason to build up the regional road network.
MARIJUANA UPDATE
Council also revisited marijuana in the city.
Since marijuana was legalized statewide, the city has had a moratorium on the issue — not creating any sort of policy while staff researched the law.
Myers said Initiative 502 first passed in November 2012, and some of the restrictions and definitions written into the law have been adjusted and clarified.
Some of those adjustments has been to zoning policies.
Myers said a marijuana-related business still needs to be at least 1,000 feet away from schools and parks, but with the latter, it would be parks with playgrounds — where they know children will be. He noted that when I-502 passed, a common tactic some cities took to prevent marijuana businesses to open within their jurisdictions was to create and rename certain areas as “parks” so a business would not be able to open.
Myers said according to election data in 2012, 62 percent of voters in Redmond voted “yes” on I-502, which warrants the city and council to look seriously into the issue.
He said the Planning Commission is currently reviewing the issue to see what can be done in Redmond and are scheduled to have something to present to council by late winter or early spring 2016.
AFFORDABLE HOUSING
At last week’s study session, council also discussed affordable housing within the city.
Myers said in developing the city’s second urban center in Overlake (the first being in downtown), 10 percent of the multi-family units being built are required to be affordable housing — but affordable for Redmond.
He acknowledged that Redmond has always been in a higher price bracket for housing, noting that rent usually runs around $2.50-3 per square foot. This would have a 1,000 square-foot apartment running between $2,500 and $3,000 a month.
“To me, that’s not really affordable housing,” Myers said.
To help encourage the development of more affordable housing in Overlake, Myers said council has discussed sunsetting waivers for developers that would not require them to develop and rent affordable units. With these waivers, Myers said developers would be able to rent all their units at a full market rate.
Only about 25 of 100 of these waivers have been claimed, so Myers said council is looking into sunsetting the remaining 75 or so. This means the waivers would have an expiration date on their availability, which they do not currently have.
Myers said city staff is now looking into a timeline of when they could sunset the waivers.
