On February 24, 2025, I attended my very first full city council meeting as a city councilmember sitting at the dais! It’s been quite the whirlwind the last two weeks of getting set up with everything I need to do the job of city councilmember – HR paperwork, getting a new work laptop and work phone and all of the associated tech setup there, not to mention getting up to speed with all of the city-level issues. Luckily, this month’s agenda packet was short – a mere 279 pages. (I’ve heard that other times the packets can be up to 1000 pages…)

Some of the main topics of the night included:

🌬️Bomb cyclone recovery update: The City of Issaquah is projecting about $3.8 million in costs for bomb cyclone recovery. This is the second-highest amount for any city in King County, second only to Seattle. The storm hit us hard. Typically, FEMA covers about 75% of the cost to local governments of recovery from these types of events. Unfortunately, the presidential declaration of disaster for this event is sitting on President Trump’s desk, and there is significant uncertainty about how much cost recovery the city will get from the federal government.
📊Economic development update: The Economic Development Manager presented the annual report on economic development for the city. Overall, new business creation is up (great!) while sales tax revenue is slightly down (not great). It seems like that’s primarily due to a decrease in construction sales tax receipts due to decreased construction activity. The Economic Development Manager also gave me a copy of the manual on “How to Do Business in Issaquah,” which other councilmembers received last year when it was first published.
🚆Mobility Action Plan: The City’s Transportation Department updated the Mobility Action Plan, based on actions that had been completed, a transit study that was conducted between 2022-24, and the comprehensive plan update in 2024. This plan now includes planned actions for 2025-28, including mapping out what the future light rail station in Issaquah will look like. The City Council unanimously approved the updates to the MAP (7-0).
🌲Open Space Acquisition: The City’s Parks Director requested authorization to proceed with acquisition of two properties totaling 17.66 acres. The first property, the Kelkari property, is 17.55 acres adjacent to both Squak Mountain State Park and another 20-acre open space property the city acquired in 2022. The second property, the Kinnune property, is 0.11 acres on the SW side of East Fork Issaquah Creek, across the creek from existing open space owned by the city. I was incredibly excited to be able to vote for these in my very first council meeting – after all, these major acquisitions happen only once every few years! Both acquisitions were unanimously approved by the City Council. You can learn more about these acquisitions on the Issaquah Alps Trails Club website.

What’s coming up?

I have quite the packed schedule this coming week, with city-related activities almost every day:

🏛️Meeting with the city’s senior leadership team and city attorney (Tuesday)
🌲Mountains to Sound Greenway board meeting (Wednesday)
🤝Onboarding with the Council President and Deputy Council President (Thursday)
🤓All-day training in Tacoma with the Association of Washington Cities (Friday)
🏡City council retreat (Saturday)

Upcoming city council events include:

March 4: Planning, Development, and Environment Committee – expecting to discuss comprehensive plan updates
March 10: City Council Committee of the Whole – expecting to discuss an upcoming utility rate study for municipal utilities (water and sewer)

Part of my commitment as a city councilmember is to help keep the public informed about what’s going on at City Hall and beyond. Please let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to see on this blog!

First Day on the Job!

What’s coming up?