All the Lake View meetings and more than likely subsequent neighborhood advisory meetings are unnecessary. Each meeting requires many preparation hours by staff and advisory members. Each meeting generates voluminous paperwork, yet we already know what staff’s recommendations will be to the Houghton Community Council, the Planning Commission, and eventually to the Kirkland City Council. After all, hasn’t the council already adopted our current Comprehensive Plan?

The comprehensive plan has been a failure and needs to be changed. It’s the reason for most of the fee and tax increases, all the traffic jams, and the degradation of neighborhoods.

If the council really wants a change, let it happen at a public hearing. As long as there is at least one public hearing whereby the council can legally make a decision on anything said at the hearing, it makes all the previous meetings a waste of time and money. Because the council will be prone to keep the comprehensive plan they adopted, most of their minds have already been made up even before a public hearing.

The public should not be fooled about the results. Staff knows what council wants, therefore, staff will advise the council to increase housing densities and to approve the TOD (Transportation Oriented Development) at the south Kirkland Park & Ride with 250 more parking spots and heavily subsidized affordable multi-family housing. More people will be getting off busses with no way to get through Kirkland. Jams will get worse along with cars using neighborhood streets to avoid them.

Yes, our comprehensive plans need to be updated. We also need a sustainable budget without unnecessary meeting after meeting and dollar after dollar being spent that decreases our quality of life instead of improving it.

Bob Style, Kirkland