Futurewise has put the city of Mercer Island’s comprehensive plan under the lens by filing an appeal with the Growth Management Hearings Board last month.

Mercer Island residents Kian Bradley and Trevor Reed have joined Seattle-based nonprofit Futurewise on the appeal front by contending that the city’s 20-year horizon plan update that city council adopted at its Nov. 19, 2024, regular meeting, “Violates state law by failing to determine if the city has adequate capacity for emergency shelters, transitional housing, emergency housing, and permanent supportive housing, fails to adequately increase housing capacity near the new light rail station, and fails to adopt actions that repair harms to Black, Indigenous and other People of Color households from racially exclusive land use policies,” according to Futurewise’s website.

The city’s plan focuses on land use, housing, transportation, utilities, capital facilities, shoreline master program policies, economic development and parks and open space.

At the Nov. 19 city council meeting, Mayor Salim Nice said: “The comprehensive plan sets the path for Mercer Island’s future and I’m confident our draft plan addresses the Island’s needs with efficiency and vision.”

City Manager Jessi Bon noted at that same meeting that she’s proud of the work that went into the plan, which took strategy, problem-solving and vision-setting to reach fruition. (City officials aren’t able to hold current interviews during the appeal process, the city said.)

According to a previous Reporter article, cities are required to periodically review and update their comprehensive plans as part of the Washington State Growth Management Act. Adoption of the update concludes the city’s periodic review, which has been underway since 2021.

‘Mercer Island has not done its part’

Futurewise Executive Director Alex Brennan told the Reporter that a huge portion of their current work centers on housing, which he said is a major issue and challenge in the state with rents and home costs rising.

He noted on the Futurewise website that cities need to add housing choices, especially for low-income households and locations near jobs, great schools and major investments in transit.

“For too long, Mercer Island has not done its part. It’s time for Mercer Island to take action to begin undoing that history of exclusion, as is now required by state law,” Brennan said on the site regarding HB 1220, which was passed in 2021.

Brennan touched upon Mercer Island’s expensive housing market, its location between the major job centers of downtown Seattle and Bellevue, its future light rail station and its stellar schools.

“So, when we think about places where we should be creating housing opportunities for people all across the kind of economic spectrum and also looking at racial disparities and access to housing, we want to particularly look at places like Mercer Island that have both just overall high housing costs that can be a barrier, but then also have access to opportunity kind of conditions that Mercer Island has,” Brennan told the Reporter.

One focus of the appeal, according to Brennan, is that the city, “didn’t do the planning around the new light rail station that’s required and really look at kind of how they can add housing opportunities more holistically around the station and walk shed.”

The city of Mercer Island provided the Reporter the following statement regarding the appeal: “The city’s 2024 comprehensive plan went through extensive review and analysis with the public, the planning commission, and the city council between April 2022 and November 2024 when it was adopted by city council. The city followed state law and agency guidance during the adoption process with a focus on updating the comprehensive plan to meet the unique needs of Mercer Island while maintaining compliance with the Growth Management Act, including meeting the statutory deadline of December 31, 2024.”

Within its robust comprehensive plan, the city notes that one of its goals, in accordance with HB 1220, is to “Undo identified racially disparate impacts, avoid displacement, and eliminate exclusion in housing so that every person has the opportunity to thrive in Mercer Island regardless of their race.” That includes acknowledging historic inequities in access to homeownership opportunities for communities of color.

According to the housing needs assessment portion of the plan: “The city plans to accommodate the housing needs for lower-income households in higher-density housing types.”

One of Futurewise’s major concerns is that the city of Mercer Island hasn’t submitted all the required documents to bring its plan into alignment with the King County Countywide Planning Policies (CPP) Housing Chapter, according to Brennan and an online letter to the city from the Growth Management Planning Council’s Affordable Housing Committee.

After the committee sent the letter on Dec. 23, 2024, the city submitted additional materials in January, but its documents were still incomplete, according to the committee staff’s statement to the Reporter. The committee staff said that’s where the process presently stands.

Brennan said that a couple of other cities were also late with their submissions.

Longtime Mercer Island resident Trevor Reed, who has been deeply involved in Island politics for the last 15-20 years, told the Reporter: “It seems like every time there’s an issue, Mercer Island’s approach has been to ignore how that issue fits within the broader context of building our community. There doesn’t seem to be something, a change small enough that we aren’t willing to fight tooth and nail.”

Reed added that he’d like to see the city fulfill its obligations as declared in state law. He feels Mercer Island’s involvement with the Futurewise appeal is self-inflicted.

“Mercer Island needs to comply with the same law that every municipality in the state is having to,” Reed said.

A second part of the city’s statement to the Reporter addresses what’s to come with the appeal, which is expected to go before the Growth Management Hearings Board by this July: “The city will learn more about the petitioners’ arguments as the case moves through the board’s process, which will include a prehearing conference with the board, creation of a list of documents considered during the adoption process, briefing by petitioners explaining each of their allegations, the city’s response, and a hearing before the board.”

As for Futurewise, which works all across the state on land use planning issues, Brennan said its priority is to achieve good outcomes with such appeals.

“If we get a decision from the board that’s in our favor, we’d want to work with the city to try and come up with a resolution to that. But if we have to go kind of through the full process of further legal appeals, we will also do that,” said Brennan, who added that the city could appeal the board’s decision if it doesn’t go in the Island’s favor.