When it comes to the Mercer Island Planning Commission, city councilmember Jake Jacobson feels the city needs to move in a different and better direction, he said at council’s May 7 meeting.
Jacobson and four of his fellow councilmembers began traversing that route during the meeting, which featured a 5-2 vote in favor of reconstituting the planning commission.
According to city documents and noted in a previous Reporter article, council is choosing to change the commission, “To increase land-use planning capacity and efficiency as well as provide additional direction to work program priorities.”
For starters, the alteration will reduce the commission from seven members to five. In a unanimous passage of Deputy Mayor Dave Rosenbaum’s amendment to the proposal document at the meeting, they are now ideally aiming to locate five Mercer Island paid experts to serve on the board if they find the right applicants. (The proposed commission makeup previously included two non-resident paid practitioners, two resident unpaid lay persons and one resident paid practitioner.)
“This motion would make what I think is a change that is responsive to many of these concerns that we’ve heard,” Rosenbaum said at the meeting. The land-use professionals’ compensation fee would be $500 each per meeting, according to city documents.
“We are in unprecedented times with urgent needs that we need to have met through this planning commission,” said councilmember Wendy Weiker, who voted for the change along with Jacobson, Rosenbaum, Lisa Anderl and Mayor Salim Nice. Craig Reynolds and Ted Weinberg voted against the reconstitution.
Weiker said that council should engage with citizens in a 2027 review of the planning commission change, checking if things went well or if they need to fix any elements.
At the start of the meeting, Weinberg asked that council remove the impending reconstitution discussion and upcoming vote from the meeting’s agenda for further evaluation of the proposed change with the planning commission chair and planning department director. His motion failed, 5-2.
Weinberg added that council received 83 emails opposing the reconstitution and that 436 Islanders signed a petition “persuading the Council to preserve citizen input on the Planning Commission,” according to some of the wordage in the petition that the Reporter located on change.org.
In the public appearance portion of the meeting — before the discussion and vote occurred — nine residents spoke to the proposed reconstitution and some asked for the elimination of paid non-residents in the document, utilize the compensation for the paid professionals to fund a non-voting consultant, and have residents help shape the policy and direction of the Island government. One resident echoed council’s later voting decision to move forward and make a change.
Councilmember Reynolds said that council had made improvements with the proposal with Rosenbaum’s amendment and more. He noted about part of his decision to cast a no vote: “I think it still allows for two off-Island people to serve on the planning commission if we don’t have paid local volunteers, from what I understand are paid professionals. I would rather have resident lay people than non-resident paid professionals on the commission.”
Rosenbaum added: “I’m hopeful that we’ll see changes that result in increased velocity as well as astute technical advice from experts in the field lining up with the issues before the planning commission.”
