Author: Randy Corman

Note:  This is the third installment of a three part series about Renton seeking equitable service in Sound Transit 1, Sound Transit 2, and (this entry) Sound Transit 3.

As Sound Transit 3 was being formed, it became ever more apparent that the structure of Sound Transit was repeatedly leaving Renton out of a fair share of service.

Sound Transit is its own taxing district with its own governance board. It was structured by the legislature to have four “sub-areas” that are each supposed to receive as much benefit as they pay in.  The legislature placed Renton in the Eastside sub-area, along with  Bellevue, Redmond, Issaquah and other eastside cities.  Under the legislative structure, certain current city elected officials were appointed by the County Executive to represent these subareas.  This structure unfortunately has a built-in conflict for those appointed; do they represent the sub-area overall, or give preference to the city that elected them?   The County Executive picked elected officials from Redmond, Issaquah, and Bellevue to represent our eastside subarea.  These three cities will receive Sound Transit light rail service in the coming years.  Renton has been left out of rail service, and will only receive two Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) stations.

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Guest Author Marcie Palmer,  community caretaker and 12-year former Renton Council Member, fills us in on Renton’s planned use of speed “cushions” for slowing down traffic.  Thanks Marcie!

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By Marcie Palmer:

Can it be????   Speed “cushions” for traffic calming in Renton?! 

During  my  3 terms on Renton City Council, I was Chair of the Transportation/Aviation Committee 11 years (1 year as Council President).  The most asked question from neighbors across the City was “How do we get speed bumps to slow traffic?”  And all those 12 years, the answer was “NO, speed bumps ARE NOT ALLOWED IN RENTON.”  Concern by Public Safety officials, particularly the Fire Department, was that it slowed down their vehicles too much. 

And what to my wondering eyes do I see?  …..  Lake Washington Blvd N Speed Cushions, between Burnett Ave N and Houser Way N.

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The above document can be accessed here

My previous blog entry covered Sound Move, and how we in Renton passionately worked to get our promised share of funding.   Today I’m providing some history of Sound Transit 2, in my own words at the time.  Renton officials were working hard to get a fair treatment for Renton commuters and taxpayers.

Here is my blog entry four months in advance of the election, when Sound Transit was again offering us less ridership opportunity than other cities for our money.

Here was my write-up following bond approval

(Click here to see above document)

In recent blog entries I’ve discussed the high cost of Sound Transit service to Renton residents, around $1000 per year per family.  Renton taxpayers have paid about a BILLION dollars so far for just five stops by two bus lines in our city and about $20 million in capital improvements to Rainier Ave.  Other cities have received multiple Link light rail stations, Sounder heavy rail service, parking garages, and even expensive artwork paid for in part with Renton’s money.  This topic is important now because Sound Transit is breaking commitments to Renton again,  and we need to act to fix it. Over the next week I intend to go deep into the history of how we got to this point.

It’s a 26 year history that takes us from the original Sound Move, to Sound Transit 2, to Sound Transit 3, and all the discussions and promises that went with each.  It may get a little complex as there were countless discussions over many decades, and it is important  that Renton residents understand as much as possible about the background and details.

For my introduction into the topic, I’ll ask you to read my first post on this topic in 2007, where as a 14-year council member at the time I recounted the work Renton had done to maintain our promised fair-share of Sound Transit funding, and the ways that had been taken from us.  In entries later this week I’ll pick up the story from 2007 until the present, using letters and exhibits that many people have never seen before.

Here is my 2007 post.  Please read it, remembering that when I speak of now, I’m talking about 2007.

Senator Bob Hasegawa will hold an in-person town hall on Saturday March 18, from 10:00- 11:30 AM, at the Teamsters Hall at 14675 Interurban Ave South, Suite #307, Tukwila, WA.  The official announcement can be found here.

His morning town hall will be followed in the afternoon by a town hall in Renton with his legislative colleagues Rep. Steve Bergquist and Rep. David Hackney, where residents who have appointments can meet with the legislators.

It’s a little unusual for our 11th district to separate the house and senate town halls, as most of our neighboring districts appear to be combining them, especially when house and senate colleagues all represent the same party.  I encourage Renton residents who are concerned about public safety issues to attend both town halls as there is enough time for a trip from Tukwila to Renton and a quick lunch between them, particularly if you book a later appointment at the afternoon town hall.

Senator Hasegawa has appeared out of step with the City of Renton’s official legislative agenda this session on drug use legislation, police pursuit, and other public safety issues, and these issues are still before the legislature.  So if these issues are of concern to you, this town hall is a good time to share your views with Senator Hasegawa face to face.

It is very important that your legislators hear from you first-hand, in-person about your public safety concerns.  Legislators typically will be most responsive to in-person conversations, then to your emails, and probably last to your social media posts (if they see them).  So please try to make time for these town hall events!

Yesterday I covered a recent vote by Renton City Council regarding the best way to provide reasonable financial protections for renters to help keep them in their homes when possible.  Today’s story serves as a reminder that not all evictions are about rent payments.

A Renton landlord with a home on Wells Ave in North Renton explained to KOMO news that he was trying to evict a tenant for a year and half who was generating complaints in his neighborhood.  After months of King County Superior Court and Sheriff’s delays, gunfire at the home killed one man and wounded another.  The murder led the Sheriff’s office to finally complete the eviction, but then fire destroyed the home.

Just like tenants sometimes need protection from predatory landlords,  landlords also need to be able to reasonably evict challenging tenants before a dysfunctional rental situation spirals into bloodshed.  It’s important to keep this in mind as local Council Members for jurisdictions like Renton and King County blunder into the complex minefield of writing their own landlord-tenant laws.

Here is the story on KOMO news.

The subject of renter protections has been on many people’s minds lately as the region works to solve the ever-worsening homeless crisis.  Anything that can be done to help renters keep their homes is worth discussing.  Preventing jolting rent increases, unfair landlord practices, and unjustified evictions certainly deserves discussion.  Part of keeping tenants in their homes is keeping landlords from quitting the business, which has happened 3000 times in Seattle in the last few years, adding about 6000-9000 new renters to the displaced tenant pool. An increasing number of landlords have found there is not enough profit in offering rentals any more, particularly Mom-and-Pop landlords who are used to operating on very little cash-flow margin, or none at all, as they’ve worked to keep rents low for tenants while taxes, utilities,  insurance, and now interest rates climb rapidly.  As landlords drop out, their rental houses sell to owner occupants, reducing the number of new homes built for this market, and lowering construction in the region overall. The reduced construction raises prices for everyone.  Because of this necessary market balancing, it’s important to use accurate data and get thorough public input before making any significant changes to the rules covering landlord and tenant relationships.

The State of Washington has several bills working their way through committees that attempt to address these issues, and the legislature has been taking public testimony and gathering data on these bills for months.  The state process will not likely be completed in this legislative session, but there is a good chance it will be completed later this year.

At the February 27 council meeting a representative from the Housing Justice Project asked the Renton City Council to consider adopting new tenant protection laws ahead of any state action; rules that some other jurisdictions have adopted, including unincorporated King County.

The council was split on how to proceed, with four members (Rivera, Prince,  McIrvin, and O’Holloran) choosing to give the issue to the city administration for study and a recommendation, and three members (Alberson, Perez, and Van) suggesting that since the state is already doing the work and is ultimately in charge of statewide landlord-tenant law (which could supercede any work done by the city), it would make sense to simply let the state finish the job.  The group wanting to leave the job to the state pointed out that Renton planning staff time is a scarce resource that could be better spent on many other urgent Renton issues that the state is not trying to solve for us.

If I was still on council I probably would have voted with the second group, as our city staff and even our City Council have a number of other very important activities they should be dedicating time to.  For instance, they need to devote resources to other ways to help solve Renton’s homelessness challenges, rein in the burgeoning drug overdose problem, and remedy the increasingly dangerous streets.  And we should be dedicating Renton staff time and Council focus to trying to getting Sound Transit to give our residents a fair share of future transit opportunities.  Housing is not as good if people can’t get to work or access services from it.  It’s possible the administration could come back with a recommendation to leave it to the state for these same reasons.

The Renton Reporter ran a recent article on this council discussion, and included a quote from early in the testimony of the representative from the Housing Justice Project.

“Tran-Larson (from Housing Justice Project) said Renton makes up 4.7% of the total population of King County, while the unincorporated areas around Renton make up more than double at 10.8%, yet their number of evictions are nearly the same. She said this means that renters inside the city limits of Renton are nearly twice as likely to be evicted.

Tran-Larson suggested that this difference is due to the regulatory environment for tenants in Renton, as she cited that unincorporated King County saw a “significant decrease” in eviction filings from 2021 to 2022, a year after they passed their tenant protections in the county.”

I personally got sidetracked at this speech opening as I watched the testimony, as it is an apples-to-orange comparison.  While I accept that the unincorporated areas primarily to Renton’s east may have twice as many residents as in incorporated Renton, these areas, per state growth management, are much less dense and far more likely to be single-family homes than the residential areas of Renton.  On a population basis, one would expect to see far fewer evictions from single family neighborhoods, where maybe 19 out of 20 own their homes, than in apartment neighborhoods where everybody rents.  So unless Tran-Larson had accidentally abbreviated her comment, or else we all heard it wrong, she appeared to base her testimony on a questionable statistic.  Finding the truly relevant data, like “when comparing a significant number of like-rentals in the county compared to the city, do eviction rates differ?” will take time and resources.

The Renton Reporter reached out to a landlord-tenant attorney, Devin Glaser, who emphasised the difficult financial climate many tenants are in, and I tend to agree with everything he said in the story.

One comment of his I found interesting was after mentioning different minimum notice periods different cities have adopted for rent increases, he said “Ironically, this means that someone could have very different protections than their neighbor living across the street depending on which city they live in and whether or not it has officially been incorporated as a city or is unincorporated county land.” 

To me, this is exactly why we should encourage the state to come up with harmonious, consistent protections for tenants statewide, and not spend precious Renton resources further adding to the disparate, confusing rules that both tenants and landlords are continually sorting out.

A few days ago I posted a blog entry  about our two 11th district legislators helping bury the House bill that would allow police to crack down on car thieves. Then 12 hours later  six teens stole and recklessly crashed a car into another car after running a red light at the corner of Airport and Rainier, sending three of the teens to Harborview in critical condition.

Today KOMO news informs us that the teens stole the car from a resettled Ukrainian family that had already endured a difficult year, and desperately needed their car.  Furthermore, they had not been able to secure insurance for it, since the wave of spiraling car thefts has made Kias nearly uninsurable for new owners.  Without reasonable law enforcement, the pain just goes on and on.

Serving in any public office can be a hard job, and school board director can be one of the most difficult since the job is about people’s children.  Renton school board directors do not get paid for their service. It’s important to keep this in mind when contentious issues arise.  I’ve heard a petition is being circulated, so I thought people may want to know more about why.

While I was not personally in attendance at the Wednesday Renton School board meeting, some Renton parents say they were surprised by the quick 2-0 vote from a normally five member board that will set future elementary school boundaries.

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Everyone in Renton who’s frustrated with our escalating crime rates should watch the above brief video in which Senator Mark Mullet (D, 5th District, Issaquah) makes an impactful speech in yesterday’s State Senate debate on police pursuit.  Senator Mullet brings honor and intelligence to this debate, and specifically expresses the needs of our city even though he only has a small part of Renton in a corner of his district.  Senator Mullet deserves Renton’s gratitude.

Thanks in part to Senator Mullet’s critical support and his compelling speech to the full chamber, the State senate surprised many of us by getting SB 5352 approved in the full chamber (26 to 23) after it had languished in committee for many weeks.  This bill will now go back to the House, where the legislators had just buried their own version of the bill the day before.  They would ordinarily now consider this Senate bill (unless opponents devise a way to procedurally bury it), and Renton officials and residents should encourage them to pass it.

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A few weeks ago Renton Council members and Mayor Pavone traveled to Olympia to discuss legislative issues including the law limiting police pursuits that has caused a skyrocketing number of stolen cars to be driven recklessly through our streets.   Would-be car thieves have figured out police can’t chase them, so they have been stealing cars and racing them hazardously, often ending in accidents, smash-and-grabs, or other crime sprees.

Representatives Steve Bergquist and David Hackney assured our city delegation they would both reliably support a sensible House bill restoring some police pursuit authority, and were even listed as co-sponsors of HB 1363 that did this.  But yesterday they voted against  a call for a vote of their bill on the house floor, potentially killing it for this session, and deeply disappointing several Renton elected officials and many of their Renton constituents.

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Julie Andrews (yes, like Mary Poppins) cares for a flock of five hens in Renton Highlands. They are each paying her back right now with an egg a day.   With the days getting longer, most of Renton’s backyard flocks have completed their annual molt and have started laying at full speed.

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The State House of Representatives just passed a sweeping housing bill, HB 1110, that some are bragging finally gets the NIMBYs (Not in My Back Yards) to stop blocking new housing.  Except the legislature didn’t actually do that.  The truly wealthy enclaves in our area, like Medina, Hunts Point, Yarrow Point, and Clyde Hill are not impacted at all, as they fall below a city size threshold included in the law.  And anyone who owns a home covered by an HOA, which is about 80% of our newer homes these days, and includes many found in expensive areas including all gated communities, typically won’t be impacted either.

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