Planning Commission backs 2025 comp-plan amendments, rezones donated parcel to park

The Kirkland Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend approval of the city's 2025 annual comprehensive plan amendments and to rezone a recently donated city parcel to Park/Open Space to incorporate it into Rose Hill Meadows Park. "Always a good thing when we get more parks," Commissioner Erin Jacobson said when she moved the rezone, which the commission seconded and approved without opposition.

Senior Planner Lindsay Levine said the parcel abuts Rose Hill Meadows Park and was donated to the city for park use. The site currently has a single-family home and accessory structures that staff plans to demolish later this year because of unsafe conditions to create more usable park space. The property was zoned RSX 7.2 (low-density residential); staff proposed and commissioners recommended changing the zoning and the land-use designation back to Park/Open Space to correct an earlier, inadvertent change to Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) made during a station-area process. "This specific parcel was donated to the city recently, for park use," Levine said.

The staff presentation also covered several minor and corrective amendments across plan elements: a Department of Commerce-requested wildfire-risk policy in the land-use element, updates to utilities text after completion of water-supply contract negotiations with Cascade Water Alliance, narrative edits reflecting the county's siting decision for the Northeast recycling and transfer station (a county action the city has appealed), relocation of capital-facilities tables to the city's budget web pages to reduce redundancy, and a restored transportation map reference.

Two members of the public were listed for testimony; Liz Hunt urged staff to finish publishing an up-to-date, accessible online version of the Kirkland Municipal Code, zoning code and comprehensive plan, saying the current online code can be hard for the public to verify. "The Kirkland code on the city website is not up to date," Hunt said, asking staff to complete codification by year-end. Staff confirmed the codification work is in progress.

Commissioner Jacobson moved to recommend approval of the annual amendments (separate motions were used for the comp-plan amendments and the rezone). The motion to recommend approval of the comp-plan amendments passed unanimously with six commissioners voting in favor and one commissioner absent. The motion to recommend approval of the rezone of the city-owned parcel also passed unanimously. The Planning Commission's recommendations will go to City Council, which is scheduled to consider adoption on Dec. 9.