Kirkland City Hall — Local services in Kirkland

If you are in Kirkland Houghton building permit FAR trap, please contact me. We are on the same boat. More details, I live in Houghton area in Kirkland for more than 5 years, and want to build new house due to newborn coming last year. I call Kirkland city last June and make sure no FAR on building permit, then start designing. We submit last Dec, and get update for some docs and pay the permit fee twice until this May. We suddenly get notification Houghton has FAR this May, and applied this Jan, but no notification from last June until this May. Because Kirkland City keep asking for more docs and push back our submission, they accept my application this year, so I have to follow this year's rule with FAR. We have no idea about what happened and keep updating our docs and pay more fees to Kirkland City until this May, but now, our plan cannot continue any more, waste all time and money. And Kirkland City get my money already, but permit cannot get reviewed because of FAR. Where does my money go? This really make my family hurting, and I never think Kirkland City will treat a resident in this way. Who vote them? And I have no way or direction now. I have already spent more than 1 year and $50000 here. Who can help me? I even know a case submitted after me in Dec and get accepted with no FAR(even incomplete one), which really make people feel unfair. They can pick whatever they like and accept them, and delay others, and use their accept date as the date for rule/code applied, so powerful, easy to ruin any family's dream. Again, please email me if you know anyone meet the same issue or cases. We need union to let City do the right things. In my case is building a new home, but in the future, will it be some...

I went to Kirkland city hall to check on a fire department code compliance question. At the customer service counter, the nice lady who works there was super nice and patient, and after hearing me explain the situation she helped me nagivate thru the system to find the right person I need to talk to. Given it was around lunch time, I was not able to talk to the fire marshal, but the lady kindly wrote down the contact information and alternative contact, even offered for me to use her internal phone to leave a voice message. Mark Jung, the fire marshal replied my request via a phone call. He did the inspection of my space two years ago, and he still remembers the configuration of our space! He helped me evaluate our situation and provided recommendation and inputs. There is couple of follow up actions on his side, and he set clear expectation with me on when the actions will be taken. Very positive experience working with the nice people in Kirkland City...

Went to get my daughter’s passport renewed today. Didn’t realize they were closing at noon until we got there at 11:20. Went to customer service counter and asked to be helped, the volunteer there told us the passport office had already closed. When we pushed and asked why published/posted hours said noon he went and asked the woman working in passport office if she could help us. We had all paperwork complete and payment ready. She looked straight at us and said no. The volunteer came back and apologized. He helped us find an office that was open. We went to the King County courthouse in Redmond and received excellent service. He even apologized for the...