Last month Adam wrote about efforts to get some more use out of the footprint of the South Kirkland Park and Ride.
The next public workshop is tomorrow night, 7pm, at Kirkland City Hall. The NIMBYs seem to always come out when upzones are on the table so it’d be nice if density advocates did too.
I went. Anybody else? Interesting. First time I’d been to Kirkland City Hall. They operated differently than any public outreach meeting I’d been at in Bellevue. Short presentation by staff (including Metro). Then break into focus groups at tables. Then “post-it” thoughts from each group. Good way to generate discussion and meet the neighbors. I’m not so sure much real information gets distilled back to planners and staff. I’d rather have seen each facilitator give a 3-5 minute summary than the “post-it” thoughts which, because they were 2-3 word “blurbs” all tended to be repeats after the first 1-1/2 tables. Turn out was “good” in that the room was at capacity. That said, it was a really small room.
I’ve been in similar meetings with Metro and ST. At the ST North Corridor meeting each small group wrote their ideas on an easel-pad and we got little stickers to place on the map where we thought important destinations were. Each group gave a summary afterward, and the staff also collected the notes to compile. In a Metro northeast Seattle meeting several years ago (late 90s?) we broke into groups and discussed streetcars vs buses vs… I can’t remember if the third option was monorail, trolleybuses, or light rail. In an ST Link meeting at the Filipino Community Center on MLK, everybody sat together and people went up to a microphone to give verbal comments.
I attend these meetings mainly to hear what other people think and to hear their ideas, and to get an idea of where most people are leaning. I do give my own suggestions if I have any, but usually I need more input on the potential opportunities or problems before I have much to say. So I’m disappointed when there’s no input session at all. I’ve been to other meetings where it’s just some posters and a chance to talk individually with the staff, and those kind of meetings always irritate me because I feel like I wasted a trip. (Please tell us in advance if the meeting will be like that.) The posters I can see online (although the originals are larger, which can be helpful when they’re maps), and if I have individual feedback I can just use the web form. I could ask the staff some questions but my main question, “What has community feedback been like?” is not something they’re well equipped to answer.