Councilmember Craig Reynolds Shares Meeting Recap: 2026-04-21

In this column, Council Member Craig Reynolds shares his perspective on recent issues before the Mercer Island City Council as well as insight in to how he votes and shapes city planning and policies.

April 21, 2026 Council Meeting Update

Another Mercer Island City Council meeting is a wrap.

On April 21, 2026, the City Council held its regularly scheduled meeting at the Mercer Island Community and Event Center. All seven councilmembers were present in person. Key agenda items included:

• AB 6908: Revised 2026 Fee Schedule

• AB 6909: GMA Compliance – Policy Direction on Development Code Amendments

• AB 6911: GMA Compliance – Legislative Review Process

My take on each of these issues is below.

You can offer feedback on these or any city policy issue via email to council@mercerisland.gov. If you have an issue with city services rather than policy matters, email customerservice@mercerisland.gov.

AB 6908: Revised 2026 Fee Schedule

This agenda bill was a more limited scope than I had originally understood.

We had adopted a 2026 fee schedule in the fall. This agenda bill only amended the fee schedule to give the city manager authority to implement “special event” parking fees at the community Center of up to $100 at the city manager’s discretion. An easy call. It passed 7-0.

AB 6909: GMA Compliance – Policy Direction on Development Code Amendments

No final decisions were made at this time. We voted 7-0 to give staff and the planning commission three recommendations on the continuing efforts to comply with the Growth Management Hearings Board decision:

1. Direct staff to set the inclusionary zoning requirements at 10 percent of units to be affordable at 50 percent AMI when drafting code amendments to comply with the GMHB Order.

2. Direct staff to prohibit adult entertainment and warehousing in the TC-8 subarea when drafting code amendments to comply with the GMHB Order.

3. Direct staff to include policy direction in the Station Subarea Plan to review the requirement for average daylight plane, major site features, and major façade modulation during Station Subarea Plan Phase 2.

These three motions are aligned with staff recommendations and are quoted above verbatim from the agenda packet

A few comments on each…

For the first item, Councilmember Weinberg had proposed an alternative motion to require 10% in the TC-6 zone and 15% only in the TC-8 zone. The reason he stated for supporting this was that it would create more capacity for affordable housing, which would then allow us to reduce the height limits at the edge of town center without reducing net capacity. I supported it because I believed it would make fee-in-lieu options more attractive, allowing us to raise fee-in-lieu rates, theoretically increasing our pool of funds for building housing at the 0-30% of AMI level. The key reason one might oppose this motion is that it might further disincentivize building anything, leading to no progress at all on affordable housing. Given a choice between scenario 1 with more theoretical affordable housing but a risk of less actual affordable housing and scenario 2 with less theoretical affordable housing but perhaps more actual affordable housing, I understand why one might favor scenario 2 and oppose this motion. And most did, as it was defeated 5-2. We then proceeded to support the staff recommendation above.

For the second item, staff warned us that it might be illegal to completely ban adult entertainment on first amendment grounds. They will do further research before preparing specific proposed code changes.

The third item had little discussion, other than staff clarifying their response to my pre-meeting question. That is, with 8 stories, buildings in town center could easily meet the 3.5 story FAR threshold even with the identified amenities, but the effective realized FAR will be less than it would be without the amenities. Since we have to achieve FAR of 3.5 overall in the TOD zone, requiring these amenities would make us allow more height elsewhere in the TOD zone. But staff recommended we defer the decision on this until after the July 31 GMHB deadline. Council unanimously agreed.

AB 6911: GMA Compliance – Legislative Review Process

This was a quick 7-0 vote to approve the planning commission schedule for review of the staff recommendations for GMHB ruling compliance. It passed unanimously essentially without discussion. The planning commission has a huge job ahead of them, with little time to do it. They have my gratitude.