A sign along Aurora Avenue North in Shoreline marks where a person was arrested by federal immigration agents in June. (David Mendez/The Osprey)

by David Mendez

Federal agents driving unmarked cars chased an unknown person through residential side streets at high speeds in Shoreline’s Parkwood neighborhood on Sunday.

The Osprey witnessed the chase, in which agents drove through neighborhood streets at high speeds with flashing lights and sirens, before it ended near Stone Avenue North and North 161st Street.

Witness video taken by a neighbor showed apparent federal agents wearing tactical vests with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement patches. Some were seen wearing facial coverings while others covered up once they learned they were being recorded — all apparent violations of Washington State law. Video then showed the agents getting into unmarked vehicles and driving away, apparently without the person they were chasing.

James Rietzke’s used to hearing sirens from his backyard — his home is a long stone’s throw from Aurora Avenue. But as he heard the sirens getting louder, he realized they were coming down his street.

“We saw a car drive by, saw another car drive by, and I was like, thos are unmarked vehicles — was that ICE? So we ran out of the gate and came around the corner immediately,” Rietzke told The Osprey. He heard yelling as agents identified themselves as “police” and “ICE” and took out his phone.

Soon after agents saw him, they left the area. It wasn’t immediately clear that they had detained anyone. The civilian car that was being chased — a blue sedan — was initially left behind at the scene.

According to additional witnesses, federal agents were chasing a man before he hastily parked his car on the side of the road, jumped out and hid on a nearby residential property. ICE agents sought access to the property, but were denied entry by the person living there, a resident named Kyle.

Neighbors were shaken up. Kyle was in his driveway, working on his car, when he heard the commotion.

“I got up, was looking around, and this guy runs past me. He ran through my yard and then I lost track of where he went,” he said, adding that the person they were chasing appeared Hispanic. When agents asked if they could search for the man, Kyle said no, and looked himself. By then, he said, the man was gone. “So I assume he just kept going through people’s yards to get away.”

The agents repeatedly told Kyle that the man they were chasing was a felon. “I’m not really sure about the validity of that,” he said.

About 15 minutes later, the abandoned car was gone. According to neighbors, the man — clearly distressed — emerged from a nearby hiding spot, retook his car and drove off.

ICE policies regarding “emergency driving” are governed by a 2012 handbook, which asks agents to consider if the “severity of the criminal offense outweighs the danger” to the public before deciding to engage in a chase.

But ICE has been criticized for aggressive tactics that have lead to deaths and injuries across the country this year. On Monday morning, ICE agents allegedly shot and killed a person in a vehicle in Maine. Last week in Houston, agents shot and killed a man during a vehicle stop. ICE chases led to two crashes in Detroit in May and June, leaving both civilians and agents with injuries. A woman was killed in Georgia in February by a man who was fleeing from ICE arrest.

ICE has yet to respond to a request for comment regarding the agency’s policies and tactics.

“I hate hearing about ICE activity in our community. It does not reflect our values, it does not reflect who we are as local citizens or as local leaders,” Shoreline Mayor Betsy Robertson told The Osprey on Monday when asked about the incident.

“This activity is not welcome in Shoreline. It’s wildly frustrating that these agents are fanning their noses at the laws that have been passed in our state,” Robertson said, urging that residents document “illegal activity” — such as ICE agents violating the state’s mask ban for law enforcement — with police reports and video recordings.

“It sounds like documenting might have defused the situation,” she said.

Federal agents abduct one, leave another when confronted

Documenting ICE activity prevented another arrest last month, according to Shoreline residents who testified before the city council. Last month, federal agents reportedly arrested one person, then apparently gave up an attempted arrest of another when onlookers approached with cameras.

During the public comment period of the Shoreline City Council’s June 22 meeting, Nicole Solano said she and a group of friends were stopped at a bank when they saw apparent federal agents surrounding a woman outside her car.

Solano pulled out her phone and began recording. The agents quickly pulled up their masks, got into their cars, and drove away, leaving the woman alone.

“I rushed in, and I pulled this woman, my neighbor, into my arms. I held her, and I told her how sorry I was. I'll never forget how she sobbed against my shoulder," Solano said through her own sobs. "I don't know how long I held her there. I wanted her to know she wasn't alone."

She later learned that the woman’s partner had been arrested by federal agents, and realized that her intervention had kept ICE from arresting the woman she hugged.

Solano had previously publicly lobbied the council to take action against ICE agents in Shoreline, insisting the city do more to protect her neighbors and fellow residents.

“Months ago, we told you this was going to happen. We asked you to do something to prepare,” she said, admonishing the council. “You did nothing.”

Earlier this year, the Shoreline council passed resolutions outlining the city’s “role and responsibilities” regarding immigration enforcement, as well as a ban preventing ICE from staging on city-controlled properties.

But Shoreline can’t direct its police officers to counter ICE tactics. The Shoreline Police Department is staffed under a contract with the King County Sheriff’s Office, and its officers are subject to KCSO policies.

Solano’s husband, Norbert Steel, then slammed the council from the public’s lectern. “Your unwillingness to fight has culminated in groups of masked, armed men abducting and attempting to abduct people in this city,” Steel said. “You may not have thought you’d be signing up for this, but you did. This is your f—king job.”

After the meeting concluded, a handful of council members accompanied Solano to the Shoreline Police Department to make a report.

“I’m so glad you were there,” Councilmember Annette Ademasu told a still-shaken Solano as they waited to give a report to Shoreline police.

“I was really trying to enjoy my Saturday. I just wanted to go to the farmer’s market, go to a garage sale,” Solano said.

“And you saved a person from being abducted,” Ademasu replied.

The Richmond Beach Strawberry Fest takes place on Saturday, June 6, at Richmond Beach Community Park. (David Mendez/The Osprey)

by David Mendez

A Richmond Beach tradition returns this weekend, as the Richmond Beach Strawberry Festival will once again open the door to summer in Shoreline.

The festival, a fundraiser put on annually by the Richmond Beach Community Association, is one of the most popular events in the city — and they can prove it.

“The average person stays for 110 minutes!” said Renee Smith, one of the lead coordinators for this year’s festival. That figure, she said, comes from the City of Shoreline, which can analyze how many people are in a given area, and for how long they’re there. Smith has volunteered with the event in some capacity for nearly all of the 20-some-odd years of her family’s time in Shoreline.

“For 10 years, strawberries were cut at my kitchen by volunteers of all ages who would come over,” Smith said. But now the festival has grown too large, and the pile of strawberries has grown to around 400 pounds each event, leading RBCA to get the job done in a commercial kitchen ahead of the festival. As is tradition, the store at the corner of 196th Street and 20th Avenue will keep the processed strawberries cool before Saturday’s event. But this time, the newly-opened Richmond Beach Foods will carry the torch. (Fittingly, the store bears a pair of strawberries in its logo.)

The 400 pounds of strawberries will go into the event’s signature strawberry shortcake, the cornerstone of the fundraiser — and a link to the neighborhood’s history.

Once upon a time, Richmond Beach was synonymous with strawberries. Historical photos within the Shoreline Historical Museum’s collection show strawberry fields strewn about the community dating back around 1905. One local farmer’s variety, called the ”Richmond Beauty,” won a top prize at a Seattle expo celebrating the best of the Pacific Northwest. The local baseball team was nicknamed the “Strawberry Huskers,” complete with strawberry sleeve patches.

The 1908 Richmond Beach Baseball team, the Strawberry Huskers. Photo via Shoreline Historical Museum.

The latest incarnation of the festival dates back to the late 1990s. It started, Sheri Ashleman said, as a sort of music festival set up in the corner of Richmond Beach Community Park. “There was a handful of people. I mean, it was very small, turnout was very small,” Ashleman told The Osprey. “We rented a popcorn machine from Syre Elementary, made popcorn, and that’s it.”

As the years passed and people kept coming, the festival grew. Different community organizations — bands, drumlines, a taekwondo demonstration, children’s groups — signed on to perform. Restaurants, like the dearly-departed Pizza Mia and Dale’s Deli, provided food.

These days, the food is covered by food trucks. This year, La Casa De Amigos — providing Honduran cuisine — and Vulpine Espresso are among the providers. Music this year will be provided by Elere, which is bringing salsa music to Richmond Beach, and Souled Out, a ‘70s funk and soul band. 

This year’s children’s parade is themed as an “animal adventure,” inviting kids to dress as whatever critter strikes their fancy, whether they be from the jungle, the forests, or the waters of Puget Sound. The only limit, as they say, is a kid’s imagination. Otherwise, kids will be invited to play carnival games, make crafts, play on the playground or jump around on inflatable slides — weather permitting, of course..

The Richmond Beach Strawberry Festival is the only major fundraising event for the Richmond Beach Community Association. Proceeds from the festival are used to fund the neighborhood association’s other events, like the movie in the park, the Thanksgiving turkey trot, the Christmas ship concert at Saltwater Park, the neighborhood garden tour and the Halloween carnival. All of which serve a community that’s grown and changed with the times.

“I think the great thing about the festival is, it’s still always somewhat similar,” Smith said. “I know there’s going to be live bands playing, I know I’m going to see some people that I know, I know that kids are going to run around everywhere and that it’s a safe place to gather. The beauty is in the expectation, the tradition.”

The Richmond Beach Strawberry Festival is the only major fundraising event for the Richmond Beach Community Association. Proceeds from the festival are used to fund the neighborhood association’s other events, like the Thanksgiving Turkey Trot, the Christmas Ship concert at Saltwater Park, the garden tour and the Halloween Carnival.

Though strawberries are the foundation of the festival, the heart is the community and its volunteers.

“When I moved into the neighborhood over 30 years ago, a tradition of volunteering was already in place,” Ashleman said. “I know that people who move in here love how connected this community is, and how many opportunities there are to meet other people. It’s a legacy that has been there forever, and we continue to make it happen.”

The Richmond Beach Strawberry Festival takes place Saturday, June 6, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. At Richmond Beach Community Park, 2201 NW 197th St, Shoreline. The festival’s “Animal Adventure” children’s parade will line up at 10:45, though kids don’t need to be in costume to walk, it’s certainly recommended. Food will be sold on site, and music will be played throughout the day. Free to attend.

A photo of Times Square billboard designed by artist Mitch O’Connell, depicting Donald Trump as a ghoul. (Photo by David Morales on Unsplash)

by David Mendez

Like so many other people in the early 2000s, Shoreline College professor Eric Hamako was inundated by zombie fiction. Films like “28 Days Later,” comic books like “The Walking Dead” and novels like “World War Z” and “Zone One” spoke to a renewed fascination in the living dead and humans surviving an apocalypse.

On one hand, those stories can speak to collectivists who are inspired by the power of community and hope in the darkest times.

On the other, they can become power fantasies of strongmen who want to rebuild the world through force, annihilating inhuman, animalistic monsters.

On Tuesday night, Hamako — an American Ethnic Studies professor at Shoreline College — will join the Public Knowledge Speaker Series at Drumlin in Ridgecrest to talk zombie fiction and its ties to modern political culture. The lecture, “Zombie Orientals Ate My Brain!” will look at connections between zombie media and anti-Arab and anti-Asian themes — and how fascists make foreign “others” into inhuman monsters to justify their superiority.

There are common threads among zombie tales: that hordes of inhuman invaders have overrun communities, demolished resources, devoured animals and humans alike, destroying the communities and societies of good people.

“I realized, those are stories that resonate very much with the kinds of stories that get told about groups of people today. Really, a lot of those stories are reiterated over and over again to whoever the villainized group of the day is,” Hamako told The Osprey. “In thinking about that, I started drawing connections between those stories that have been told — about Native Americans and Filipinos and Chiniese and Japanese and Mexicans, and now Arabs and Muslims, in the United States — and the stories that get told about zombies.”

Zombie stories migrated to the U.S. from Haiti, where folktales spoke of reanimated corpses raised by sorcerers. These zombies weren’t flesh-eaters, but mindless bodies bound to serve their master, even in death. If you notice a slight connection to slavery and imperialism that’s no coincidence. It lines up, Hamako said, with the concept of Orientalism — the way that the Western world builds itself as superior to other nations with stories of foreign “primitives” and “barbarians.”

The second wave of zombie stories, in the 1960s and ‘70s called to mind non-white, non-Christian villains, in line with the rise of Black Muslims and Black Power groups.

“I would suggest that it’s not coincidental that around that time, again, stories about an inferior but numerical enemy that was a threat from within, was consuming resources, that was a threat to white womanhood and white purity and was potentially taking people’s jobs,” Hamako said.

Around 2003, during the third wave of zombies — fast, angry, rage-filled monsters — Hamako started thinking about these stories and their connection to the world.

“What was this fear of societal collapse? This fear of a decadent society that was past its prime, that maybe was rotting and needed to be renewed through violence, which very much was the story post 9/11,” Hamako said. Violence — both in zombie media and in post-9/11 America — became about re-purifying the world and eliminating threats from within, he suggested.

Hamako has taught this subject as a quarter-long course at Shoreline College with the title “Nazi Zombies Ate My Brain,” as an opportunity to examine the world through culture.

“Fascism relies on a number of traits, including a sense of renewal, the idea that through violence we will get rid of those people who do not belong — we will become stronger again, we will become pure again. Fascism relies on a kind of putting down of the other, a demonization, to justify that violence,” he said.

For instance, you might remember September 2024, when far-right agitators and neo-Nazis spread lies that Haitian immigrants were stealing, butchering and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. You might remember that those lies were amplified and repeated by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance as they sought to win the White House. You might also remember that Trump in 2024, as he did in 2020 and 2016, made anti-immigrant fear and hatred central to his presidential campaigns.

Hamako believes that political conservatism and fascism are not hand-in-glove concepts — that many conservatives are opposed to fascism, and that he’s never once had a student speak in favor of fascism. But his course, he said, is a learning opportunity.

“I am opposed to fascism, but also I am in favor of teaching people about fascism, and I’m in favor of helping people grapple with what their own values are,” he explained. “I think we live in a society where fascism is increasingly valued by some people, whether they would call it fascism or not.”

“That’s why I talk about this idea of ‘Nazi zombies ate my brain,’ turning on its head that fascists often cast the other as the zombie,” he added. “I want to suggest that maybe it’s fascism that has a zombifying effect on people.”

A rendering of the planned “Leisure Pool” feature, via City of Shoreline.

by David Mendez

The Shoreline City Council appears ready to add a measure to November’s General Election ballot in the hopes of building a new pool for the community, finally replacing the city’s long-demolished Shoreline Pool, which permanently closed during the height of the COVID pandemic.

To build the new pool, the city plans to ask voters to approve the creation of a metropolitan park district — a district that would then levy a new property tax increase to pay for the new pool facility.

Unlike the city’s last attempt at getting voters to buy-in — a 2019 bond measure that needed a 60% supermajority vote in favor — this would only need a simple majority vote to get the pool project rolling.

“It’s really exciting that we are on the precipice of asking our voters to say whether or not they do want to see a public pool back in the city,” said Councilmember Chris Roberts.

“I mean, there was a lot of disappointment when we had to close the Shoreline Pool. There was a lot of disappointment when the previous levy failed. But I think there's been a lot of, and continued to be, a lot of interest in this,” Roberts added.

The original Shoreline Pool opened in 1971, built using money generated by 1968’s King County Proposition 6 parks bond. That bond built more than 250 programs around the county, including construction of and improvements to a handful of parks and facilities in Shoreline.

For nearly 50 years, the pool was well-used by the Shoreline community, including everyday swimmers and local swim teams. The pool clearly showed its age as of the 2010s, faced with a series of closures for repairs, forcing the City of Shoreline to plan for a successor. In 2019, the city placed a parks and pool bond measure on that November’s ballot. That bond measure would have added a $0.056/$1,000 of annual appraised value to property taxes in the city — meaning that homes valued at $1 million would have $560 added to their annual property tax bill.

But, despite receiving 54% of the vote from Shoreline residents, the 2019 measure failed. Per the Washington State Constitution, municipal levies must win 60% of the total vote to pass.

The city scheduled the pool for closure in 2021. But the COVID pandemic explosion pushed forward the timeline, and when indoor activities were shut down, the pool was locked up for good. The pool facility at Shoreline Center was finally demolished in 2022.

The city began moving forward on a new pool in 2024, and after a series of community scoping and input sessions, came up with a preliminary design for a facility totaling about 48,000 square feet, expected to be built at the Shoreline Secure Storage facility at Midvale Avenue and North 178th Street. Per a city staff report, the design includes:

The one-time cost to build the facility is expected to total around $100 million, including construction, design and permitting and the cost of the land itself. Taking into account an expected $5 million King County Parks Levy Grant, Shoreline plans to be on the hook for $95 million to be paid for through construction bonds.

To raise that money, the city will likely ask voters to form a metropolitan park district, which is considered a “junior taxing district” — under the law, any taxing district outside the state, county, city, town, port public utility or county road district — which may then levy a maximum total property tax rate of $0.75 per $1,000 of assessed value.

But that’s only the maximum allowed under the law. Staff says it would recommend the city start with a tax rate of $0.55 per $1,000 of annual value — or about $550 in additional taxes on a $1 million home.

On Monday, the City Council seemed all but united in their interest to put the matter to the November ballot.

The only outlier appeared to be Councilmember Valerie Snider, who was concerned that homeowners would unjustly bear the burden of the new tax district plan. Under the Multifamily Tax Exemption program, property owners holding large, multiunit apartment complexes — such as those along the Interstate 5 corridor and Aurora Avenue — would be exempt from paying property tax on their buildings for the life of the exemption. (Though those property owners would still be taxed on the value of the land under their tax-exempt buildings.)

“I’m wondering if there is a way to balance it somehow, if we could marry up the exemption versus who is paying for the facilities — which is really, strictly, residential homeowners and a handful of large businesses and mostly small businesses,” Snider said.

Councilmember Keith Scully pushed back.

“I don’t want to even go down the road of trying to come up with some complicated way to somehow level things out with a particular class of persons, which are the single-family homeowners, for two reasons,” Scully said. “One is, it’s not fair. Two is, it is not true that those folks are paying a disproportionate share of the burden. This tax is imposed on all properties, not just on single-family residences.”

When reached later by The Osprey, Snider reiterated her concern that, as a result of the multifamily tax exemption, “this is introducing another levy borne by residential homeowners,”adding that she’s looking for “a way to spread the burden” of potential new taxes.

Not all residents are enthused about the pool facility, as currently designed. Shoreline resident Dan Adams told the council that he felt the amenities are targeted to “young children, teenagers and the elderly, while working-age adults are an afterthought.”

He’s advocating for a design that allows for quick transitions between a hot tub, diving board and a sauna. He believes that a hot tub, which is missing from the current design, would be well-appreciated by Shoreline residents, especially given that Lynnwood’s pool facility includes two tubs.

“Worker bees need this amenity,” Adams argued, saying that working adults would make great use of the tubs for decompressing sore, stressed muscles. “You need the support of households without children to pass the measure. As the plan stands today, unfortunately, I would have to reject it.”

When asked, city staff said that many pool facilities they’ve spoken with called their hydrotherapy pools the “most used body of water in their pool,” adding that maintenance costs for hot tubs are typically far greater than those of hydrotherapy pools.

The City Council will revisit the matter at the June 1 meeting, when it will vote whether or not to put the park district measure on the November ballot.

May proclaimed Jewish American Heritage Month in Shoreline

From left: Shoreline Mayor Betsy Robertson, Councilmember Keith Scully, Nevet Basker of Washingtonians for a Better Future and Rabbi Sadya Davidoff of the Chabad Jewish Center of Shoreline. (Photo courtesy Rabbi Sadya Davidoff)

The Shoreline City Council issued a proclamation that May 2026 would be known as Jewish American Heritage Month, bringing aboard Jewish faith leaders from the community to celebrate.

“For a considerable amount of time since 1933, there has been some hatred toward our people, toward the Jewish people,” remarked Rabbi Sadya Davidoff. “Proclaiming Jewish American Heritage Month in Shoreline, as well as in other cities and counties, affirms and undoes a wrong done for many centuries, where government didn’t quite accept the Jewish community. Here in Shoreline, I’m proud and honored to affirm that the Jewish community feels right at home.”

“B'tzlem Elokim Bara Otam — every single human was created in the image of God,” Davidoff said, quoting and translating from the Book of Genesis within the Torah. “That includes people of all races and creeds and every single background and affiliation they could possibly come from.”

The city’s proclamation, he hoped, will “serve as an inspiration for other municipalities and cities and countries around the world to follow suit.”

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson helped kick off the Lake Forest Park Farmers Market’s 21st season on Sunday, May 10. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

by David Mendez

King County Councilmember Rod Dembowski was scheduled to help kick off the seasonal opening Lake Forest Park Farmers Market on Mother’s Day Sunday, May 10, celebrating the market’s 21st year. That is, until late last week, when extenuating circumstances forced him to cancel.

Fortunately, his friend Bob was able to help him out.

Washington Governor Bob Ferguson, Dembowski’s predecessor on the county council, jumped at the chance to step in.

“It’s just a pleasure to be here — I probably would have been here anyway, picking up flowers and checking out the bookstore — but I just so appreciate everybody who does so much to create that third place,” Ferguson told a crowd watching the market’s opening ceremony. “That’s what we really need more than ever right now, when times are challenging: coming together and sharing our values.”

Third Place Commons Board Chair Aaron Stadler rings open the Lake Forest Farmers Market’s 21st year as Gov. Bob Ferguson, center-right, and community leaders cheer on. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

As the representative to King County Council District 1 from 2004 to 2013, Ferguson represented Lake Forest Park as well as Shoreline, Kenmore, Bothell and Kirkland, as well as parts of Seattle and Woodinville.

Ferguson’s remarks were well-timed, as the market on Sunday also distributed funds to flower vendors whose farms were affected by severe winter flooding.

“The floods, as you know, were historically devastating for thousands of Washingtonians across many different counties in western and eastern Washington. We’ve been working hard — we’ve got FEMA recognition, FEMA funding coming, which is great. But no government can really help everyone, right? That’s where we need individuals and communities coming together to support folks who they know,” Ferguson told The Osprey.

“That’s what makes Washington a great state, is people pulling together and looking out for one another,” he added.

Yeng Garden, Yang Lee Lao Flowers and Long Farm each received $1,500 checks from funds raised by Third Place Commons, the farmers market’s parent organization.

“When we heard that our flower vendors — three companies that have been with us for over two decades — had suffered hardships in the December floodings, we had to act,” said Third Place Commons board member Randi Sibonga, who thanked the farmers for bringing “vibrancy and beauty” to the community.

Flower bouquets bloomed from the plastic pots Yeng Garden and Yang Lee Lao Flowers arranged in their stalls. Yeng Garden’s tables overflowed with lilacs and peonies, which were ready “just in time” thanks to the region’s warm spring, Yeng Vue said as she held a bouquet she had just prepared.

“Lake Forest Park really reached out to help in so many ways,” she told The Osprey on Sunday.

Vue acknowledged that Yeng Garden, her family’s farm, is “still behind” in its recovery, and that their variety isn’t where it would normally be, though the forthcoming crop of flowers will be ready soon. The next challenge is dealing with the structural damage. They’ve had to replace a greenhouse, their sheds are damaged, and plenty of flower bulbs — including lilies and gladiolus flowers — were washed away. The support from Lake Forest Park, which will go toward recovering from those losses, was deeply meaningful for Vue and her family.

Yang Vue, of Yeng Garden. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

“This is why we love this market. We’ve been with it since it opened, and it’s not just this time; when COVID happened, the community really came together and supported us too,” Vue said. At the height of the pandemic and social distancing, customers would place orders that Vue would drop off at a longtime customer’s home to be picked up in the driveway.

“That’s a great thing about farmer’s markets; you help your community, your farmers, and we grow everything we sell here,” Vue said as she, her niece, and a troop of “free range children” ran around, bundling and arranging bouquets in the booth. “They work hard, and we work hard, and we just love it here.”

Mother’s Day flower bouquets sit ready at Yeng Garden’s booth at the Lake Forest Park Farmers Market. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

(Osprey News/David Mendez)

by David Mendez

The Lake Forest Park Farmer’s Market will mark the opening of its newest season on Sunday by reaching out a hand to care for three of its own.

Three long-time flower vendors — Yeng Garden, Yang Lee Lao Flowers and Long Farm — will each be gifted money that the LFP Famers Market and Third Place Commons gathered in a fundraiser to help support the farms. Each experienced tremendous losses during the severe winter floods that wracked western Washington in December.

“They’re all family farms, and like we say, we’ve known them for generations,” said Lake Forest Park Farmers Market Manager Christina Martin. “We know her daughters, her granddaughters, her grandson, who all come to the market and help. And same with Long Farm and Yeng Garden; we’ve known them for generations, and they are family for us, too.”

Checks will be presented to the farms during the market’s opening ceremony on Sunday, which is expected to include a special guest. On Friday, the Lake Forest Park Farmers Market announced that it will be visited by Gov. Bob Ferguson, as well as the Mayor Tom French and members of the city council.

Instagram post

The ceremony will mark the farmers market’s 21st year of operation as a community-driven program focused on bringing fresh, quality food to the town. And the operative word, Martin suggested, is “community.”

“What makes this market so unique is that, in 21 years, if a farmer misses a market, the shoppers find me — ‘Where’s Alex? Is he OK? Did something happen to his kids?’ No, his truck broke down on the way to the market,” Martin said. “It reminds you how wonderful people and society and community can be.”

The floods were devastating to the farms. The fields of Yeng Garden, Martin said, were under water for two weeks, causing them to lose most of their perennials and all of their tulip bulbs. All of them, she said, lost flowers and important equipment.

“People don’t realize how much money goes into these flower farmers, how much money they spend on bulbs and perennials every year to make sure they have the best flowers at the market,” Martin told The Osprey. One of the farmers, she said, has spent $6,000 to replace their tulip bulbs alone. And though Yang Lee Lao and Yang Gardens will be at Sunday’s first Farmers Market of the season,  Long Farm won’t be for the first two weeks of the season.

Missing market sales early in the season can be devastating for farmers. For the most part, farmers don’t even begin to break even until late summer or early fall, after they’ve caught up on paying for seed, bulbs, fuel and other supplies.

“For any farmer, whether it’s a flower farmer or a vegetable farmer, the first few weeks of the market is vital for survival, because they haven’t made any money basically through the winter,” Martin said.

After learning how much flood damage the farms experienced, the Third Place Commons board began raising funds in February to offset damages, including a GoFundMe page.

All told, the checks will amount to $1,500 each.

“I think it’s easy for people who weren’t directly impacted by the flooding to forget how lives were changed from that flooding,” Third Place Commons Executive Director Silje Sodal told The Osprey. “It’s important that, as a community, we support our farmers and our vendors. They are a part of our community, and they have been for many, many years.”

The Lake Forest Park Farmers Market opens Sunday, May 10, and runs every Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. until October 18. For more information, visit www.thirdplacecommons.org/farmers-market.

Washington’s 32nd Legislative District Rep. Lauren Davis and Sen. Jesse Salomon at the state capitol in Olympia. (Legislative Support Services, via House Democratic Caucus)

by David Mendez

State Senator Jesse Salomon and State Representative Lauren Davis weren’t shy about the difficulties the state is facing going forward on Sunday, as they led a town hall at Shoreline City Hall. Residents of the state’s 32nd legislative district — which includes Shoreline, Mountlake Terrace, Woodway, Lynnwood and Seattle — packed the city’s council chambers to hear from the legislators.

The two ran down a list of legislative accomplishments — Salomon touted his work to chip away at housing costs through reforming building codes, while Davis spoke to her work developing programs to support domestic violence survivors and to reform behavioral health programs. (The two recently sent out mailers recapping their legislative work.) 

But the state’s wobbly budget cast a shadow over the event. Anyone keeping a eye toward the state capitol has heard that legislators are making hard decisions about their funding priorities, and that a key issue going forward is generating revenue, including tax policy.

“It’s not sustainable, the situation that we're in, and so we really need to think about a wholesale restructuring of our tax code,” Davis said. “I think we made a significant step forward this year, but there's a heck of a lot more to do.”

In March, Governor Bob Ferguson signed the state’s “Millionaires Tax” into law — a tax on annual household wages greater than $1 million, with the first payments due in 2029. But given the long runway until that tax begins filling state coffers (and barring any successful challenges to the tax at the ballot box), lawmakers will still need to find ways to cover priorities in the state’s budget.

Salomon said he’d like to more closely examine programs that aren’t carrying their weight — or doing what they promised. He serves on the Joint Legislative Audit Review Comittee, which reviews spending and budgets to ensure programs are effective and efficient.

“I don’t think we have a robust enough system to catch problems,” he said, referring to the Digital Navigator Program, a $92.5 million initiative that, according to a state audit, neither properly vetted grantees, nor paid attention to how grant money was spent. The Digital Navigator Program was shut down by the state’s Department of Commerce in January.

“I fear there’s embezzlement happening, criminal embezzlement, and we’re just not looking at it enough,” Salomon said. “I can say I tried. I think it would be great to have a broader partnership in my caucus to do it.”

As for revenue, Davis — a public health policy expert — looked toward ”sin taxes,” or excise sales taxes on substances. Washington has taxed products like beer and liquor since the 1930s (a $1 per barrel tax was enacted on beer in 1934; hard liquor began being taxed at 10% of wholesale in 1935), with new taxes levied on gambling, tobacco and cannabis over the years.

“It’s well documented in academic literature, if you increase the price of a pack of cigarettes, people smoke less; if you increase the price of alcohol, people drink less,” Davis said. “I see an advantage to that of people drinking less or smoking less or using less cannabis. But you would generate additional revenue, obviously, through the fee increase or tax increase on those substances.”

Many constituents were looking for answers to their worries that the Trump-led federal goverment is overstepping and putting people at risk. One person asked how the state is going to enforce a law banning ICE agents from wearing face masks while on patrol; another asked how legislators could ensure Washingtonians will protect statewide mail-in voting.

In both cases, Salomon said that he believes that Washington State — and its executives, such as Attorney General Nick Brown and Secretary of State Steve Hobbs — would adamantly and zealously defend the state and its systems.

Washington is one of 23 states suing to block an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that seeks restrict voting by mail. The United States Supreme Court is also expected to decide whether or not states can accept ballots that arrive after election day — which may throw primary elections that count on mail-in ballots (and last-minute ballots that arrive under a grace period) into turmoil.

When reached after the town hall, Solomon said that his constituents’ concerns with the federal government stuck with him.

“They’re focused on wanting to feel that they have an effective, confident government that looks out for a fair system of laws while we are under, I guess you could say, a constitutional attack by the federal government,” he told The Osprey. “States, within a broad constitutional allowance, run their own elections…it’s actually dangerous for the federal government to start getting involved, because then they’re going to try to tune it the way they want it.”

Davis came away from the town hall struck with a desire to learn how best to support businesses and how she can encourage economic development in the district.

“There’s a lot of rhetoric right now about big companies and small leaving the state, are not going to do business here and..you can’t oversimplify it to, oh, we passed taxes,” she said. “It’s more complicated than that, but it would also be naive to suggest that those have no impact. So how do I make sure that we’re not making our businesses so unfavorable that we don’t have jobs?”

As the town hall wrapped up, a man named Dan Adams stood up to speak, reading aloud a list of pointed questions to the legislators, because, as he said, he believed his questions wouldn’t be selected to be read aloud and he would “[have] to play hardball.”

Over the next few minutes, as people began to filter out of the room or line up to chat with the legislators, Adams accused the legislators of supporting legislation that he says violate the state constitution, including a ban on law enforcement wearing masks on duty, as well as the Millionaires’ Tax. He grew frustrated that the legislators seemingly refused to hear him out — until Davis spoke with him for about ten minutes, for which he later gave Davis credit.

Davis figures that’s just part of the job, she said while she spoke generally about the day’s turnout.

“We hjave a very curious, educated community. I find tremendous value in hearing what’s on peoples’ minds and hearts, and my job is to try to, as best I can, collect all of that and act on it,” Davis told The Osprey.

The town hall marked the beginning of campaign season in earnest, as the legislators-turned-candidates look to Washington’s Aug. 4 primary election.. Both Salomon and Davis are up for reelection this year. Salomon will face off with Davis’s 32nd District colleague, Rep. Cindy Ryu. In turn, Davis is being challenged by Imraan Siddiqi, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Washington. Washington’s primary election falls on August 4; votes must be submitted by 8 p.m. on election night.

Ridgecrest Books co-owner Kevin Roberts minds the counter alongside staffer Mary Elliott, rear, during Seattle Independent Bookstore Day 2026. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

by David Mendez

Ridgecrest Books was humming on Saturday, as bookshops around Puget Sound celebrated Seattle Independent Bookstore Day. New customers and regulars alike strolled in to check out the shop and add stamps to their “passports” — checklists of participating shops, redeemable for prizes — while the staff passed out free stickers to anyone who bought a healthy stack of books or other goodies. Eyes lit up as people stepped through the doors, taking in the hundreds of books lining wooden shelves and tables. Sharp ears could hear people saying “I’ve never been here before,” or “I didn’t know this was here,” like they’re at the end of a treasure hunt.

While they were just finding out about the shop, Ridgecrest Books has been building up its name in Shoreline and around Seattle, holding author events, vending at Seattle Arts and Lectures events and running school book sales around town. But at the heart of it is serving their neighbors.

“It has been really special to be a part of this neighborhood,” co-owner Kevin Roberts told The Osprey. “There’s pride. We’re proud to be here, and there’s the pride of the neighbors having a shop — like, hey, there are cool things happening here. This community deserves cool things too.”

Booksellers, matchmakers

Ridgecrest Books opened for business in March 2024 as a joint project of Kevin Roberts and Becky Merilatt, a pair of booksellers that began working together at Ballard’s Secret Garden Books. They were joined by fellow Secret Garden alumna Mary Elliott, their first employee.

The pair were once in talks to buy Secret Garden, though when that fell through, Merilatt sought to move on quickly. She’s lived in the Ridgecrest neighborhood with her husband and kids for about four years. After research found that opening up in Shoreline would fill a void, they jumped on the storefront blocks away from her home.

“I think it all ended up being for the best, because there have been so many things about being in my own community where I’m living, where I’m raising my kids,” Merilatt said. “It’s just been so much more rewarding than I think it could have been otherwise.”

Merilatt’s been selling books for about 20 years, beginning with a work-study gig in college at Secret Garden. Her love affair with reading began in earnest during high school, leading to a degree in English Literature and a wide-ranging taste in books.

“I tend to read the weird stuff,” she said — stories that most people haven’t heard of or wouldn’t have sought out, but that Merilatt can sell on her enthusiasm alone. “If I say, this is the weirdest book I’ve ever read, this book is all about cannibalism, it’ll make you rethink all of your morals, people will say ‘oh, OK,’ and they’ll actually take it, which I love!” Merilatt said.

Which is where Kevin Roberts comes in. He’s the resident nonfiction and horror specialist — if something in the shop has got a dark edge to it, it’s probably gone through his hands. (“I used to read a lot of horror…and that was between very depressing nonfiction and depressing fiction,” Kevin said, laughing. “Just bummers all around.”) He leads the shop’s “Slow News Day Book Club,” which this year he pitches as “read with good people so that you feel ready to go do good.”

Ridgecrest Books staffer Mary Elliott checks the stacks of the store’s children’s section. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

Meanwhile, Mary Elliott helms the shop’s used book program while keeping her ears to the ground for great general fiction — books that are heartwarming, funny and character studies are hallmarks of her picks — and the best of the best-sellers. “Mary has, like, acolytes now,” Merilatt said. “She has people who are like, ‘what has Mary been reading, because I need the next book she’s been reading!’”

They all cover different areas of the store, and all have an eye for what their community of readers are searching for. There’s an appetite for nostalgia — a new edition of “The Princess Bride” popped off around the holidays, while a golden-era mystery from “Winnie the Pooh” creator A.A. Milne has been flying off the table — but Merilatt is struck by how open-minded her customers have been.

“One of the things I appreciate about a lot of our readers is that they walk in saying ‘this is what I have read, but I want to try something new,” Merilatt said.

“We like to talk to a person, find out what that person reads and what they like and then match — or maybe push their limits a little,” Elliott said. “It's almost like friendships, you know. You want the book to be something that they're looking forward to spending time with.”

The Ridgecrest Books feature table, like all other tables in the shop, showcases its books face-up to show off cover art. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

The first time someone walks into Ridgecrest Books, they may be struck by the store’s layout. Aside from the children’s section, no books are shelved below the average book buyer’s waist. Instead, shelves start about hip-high, and a majority of the new and featured books lay on tables and shelves, covers facing up, a change that makes all the sense in the world once you think about it.

“I’ve noticed that nothing sells below the knees,” Merilatt said. And, since customers do, indeed, judge books by their covers, giving books “face out time” makes them more likely to sell. 

Authors have come to enjoy their time at the shop as well. Elaine U. Cho is a Seattle local who also has a history as a bookseller. When the Seattle Times profiled Ridgecrest in its first year, Merilatt shouted out Cho’s debut novel “Ocean’s Godori,” a space opera centered on its characters’ relationships.

“It was really, really wonderful to hear that someone had read it and enjoyed it, and that someone was a bookseller, someone who reads for a living,” Cho told The Osprey.

Cho popped into Ridgecrest soon after, where she spotted a shelf talker — a usually hand-written staff recommendation — written by Merilatt, praising her book. After some nervous faltering, she went back in to ask if she could sign a few copies. The staff happily accepted her offer.

Ridgecrest later brought Cho back for an event promoting her second novel, “Teo’s Durumi,” and the praise for her books is still effusive. Building a relationship with booksellers is grounding for an author, Cho said.

“It’s about the joy of reading, about the different kinds of things you’re figuring out or trying to say through the books,” Cho said. “Booksellers are the doorways, the portals for the readers and for the writers.”

Seattle-based author Elaine U. Cho visited Ridgecrest Books on Jan. 23, 2025, signing copies of her first novel, “Ocean’s Godori.” (Instagram/@ridgecrestbooks)

Pancakes and Jellyfish

Highland Terrace Elementary School’s librarian was ready for a change. 

Every year, the elementary school’s book fair coincides with the school’s longstanding, locally-beloved PTA-run pancake breakfast, still running strong after more than 65 years of feeding friends and neighbors.

But for 2026, Joy Burke decided that the book fair’s long-standing vendor, Scholastic, was no longer the best fit for the school’s students.

“It was great, but there were a lot of gaps, the big ones being that the Scholastic book fairs bring in a lot of non-book items, and the selection. You never know what you’re going to get; it comes in a truck, and it’s a mystery truck,” Burke told The Osprey.

Scholastic’s book fairs are famed for having scores of books — and scores of toys, knick-knacks and tchotchkes that often come packed in with those books.

“In past years, it was more around, oh, we got this keychain, or this pencil, or this poster,” Highland Terrace Principal Lara Drew said of students describing their hauls.

So in 2025, Burke invited Roberts to check out the school’s pancake breakfast, and the size of its book fair — the largest that Burke has worked with in her school librarian career, and one she said was classified as an “XL” book fair by Scholastic, receiving more than a dozen crates of books and goods for each event.

The sale lasts for a few days during the school days themselves, but the biggest sales come on the day of the pancake breakfast, which draws in current students and families, alumni, prospective families, grandparents, neighbors and any passers-by who might be hooked by the scent of pancakes on the air.

“This one was big. It’s this very well-established thing that they’ve been doing in the community for years and years and years,” Roberts said. “And then for us to take it on, it was an honor, but a lot of pressure too…and then, yeah, it went great.”

The book sale drew about $15,000 in sales — 20% of which went directly back to the school library, for use in updating the library’s collection and getting books to supplement lessons in classrooms across the school.

Working with Ridgecrest came with a range of benefits and flexibilities that Scholastic couldn’t match. The range of books available was much wider, running the gamut from kindergarten-aged books to those targeted at adults, including options for former Highland Terrace kids who were now in middle school. For families on a budget, Ridgecrest collected boxes and boxes of donated and gently-used books to help set up a $2 and under table. And they were able to bring in books from a variety of publishers, not just Scholastic and its brands — or authors.

Seattle-based author and illustrator Ben Clanton is best known for his Narwhal and Jelly series, starring a happy-go-lucky narwhal and his anxious jellyfish friend. Clanton has known Roberts and Merilatt dating back to their days working at Secret Garden Books, which was his local bookshop.

“It can’t be stated enough…if a bookseller truly believes in a book, the difference that it can make for connecting that book with a reader or with a family,” Clanton said. When Ridgecrest opened up, they maintained their relationship with Clanton and his team, working with him on a handful of events and signings.

For the Highland Terrace fair, they reached out to Clanton, getting him to sign a “mountain of books” — which were centrally and prominently located during the sale. Clanton then held court at an assembly at the school coinciding with the fair.

“It was just like, kids saying ‘I saw him, I met him, I know him!’ at the assembly. It was just really special,” Burke said.

“It was fun to be in the main foyer and seeing families come in, and that excitement in the kids, then seeing them leave and they were sharing more about the books,” Drew said. “There was just a real difference.”

The relationship has continued beyond the book fair, as the school has set up a student book club partnership with Ridgecrest. Twenty percent of each book club selection goes back to the Highland Terrace library, and each book is stocked and ready for sale at Ridgecrest. And the relationship between bookstore and school library has given Burke a chance to use book fair funds on texts that teachers are asking for — like books on immigration that are accessible for second grade readers.

Building that relationship with kids and their families has been gratifying for Roberts, himself a recent parent of two young kids — so recent that he interrupted family leave for his second baby to help at the Highland Terrace fair.

“When we go into a school, it’s really cool because a lot of the time you’ll see kids that are like, ‘oh, that’s my bookstore!’”  he said. “Because it’s kind of a small community within a larger city, within a larger metropolitan area where there’s this sense of — that’s mine, that’s my shop.”

Ridgecrest Books co-owner Becky Merilatt shows off art from local artist Janis Howes, one of the many local artists whose goods are sold in-store. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

Purveyors of ‘fine rare gems’

At its heart, Ridgecrest Books is founded on a deep appreciation for the power of literature.

“It’s about boundless enthusiasm for literature and sharing that,” said Susan Scott, an artist and former bookstore manager with past professional ties to Ridgecrest’s owners and staff. 

“They’re all insatiable readers, and once they’ve read something, they are ready to share it around with their customers and friends…I think that’s what literature, for me, is all about: sharing. And that’s what they’re doing.”

That fits the mission of their landlord, Megan Kogut, owner of Ridgecrest Public House and Drumlin Cafe and Bar.

“The point of all this is giving people a place to go that’s clean and intentional,” Kogut told The Osprey. Drumlin has become a go-to community space, becoming a venue for music, community conversations and neighborhood meetups alike. Getting a bookstore, she said, is like “winning the lottery” to her. 

There’s a synergy there; readers can (and do) buy books in the pub and swing by the cafe to read with a cup of coffee, and the store has hosted a few author events in the pub over the years.

“It’s all contributing to a neighborhood center that people can call their own,” Kogut said.

Ridgecrest Books celebrated its second anniversary in March, though they opted against a party. Merilatt dismissed the idea, not wanting to make a big deal of it, but the occasion was meaningful to one of the shop’s neighbors and regulars.

“They’ve made it past the two year mark, so they’re going to succeed,” said Jamie Lutton, a shop regular whom Ridgecrest has featured a handful of times on their Instagram feed.

“They’re tuned into what the neighborhood wants. They’re doing readings from authors, they have a good buying policy on their used books — they’re very selective about their used books,” Lutton said, and she would know. For nearly 40 years Lutton has run Seattle’s Twice Sold Tales, an institution in Seattle’s literary community. “I go in there and I find used books that I want, which is tough to do.”

“It feels like a lot of people who are walking in the door are looking for the hidden gem, and that’s what we do,” she told The Osprey.

“I would be happy to be known for that. I think it would be pretty cool,” she said, smiling. “Known for being a purveyor of fine rare gems.”

The Osprey is a news site based in Shoreline, Wash., focused first on news in Shoreline, as well as our neighbors to the north, south, east and (sometimes) west. We started in October 2025 with an idea: If we’ve got a question about something in our town, we’re sure that other people do too.

I’m David Mendez, your friendly neighborhood newsman and Shoreline resident. I’m a reporter by trade — I’ve worked in small towns and big cities, and I’ve covered everything from chalk art festivals to waterfront development to national elections. (Check out my past work here!)

I love writing about the community I live in and the people who live there, and that love is central to The Osprey.

We’re working to cover city council decisions, school board meetings, local elections, neighborhood events, local businesses and the people who make up our town — and anything else that we think is interesting.

Please feel welcome to email me with story ideas, questions, comments or letters to the editor at david@ospreynews.net.

This is our community, I’m just here to write about it.

David Mendez
Editor, The Osprey

Staff

Editor & Co-Publisher
David Mendez, david@ospreynews.net

Operations Manager & Co-Publisher
Holly Mendez, holly@ospreynews.net

A Flock Falcon camera, installed in the Home Depot parking lot of the Aurora Village shopping center. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

by David Mendez

The Shoreline City Council has cancelled a planned meeting with Flock Safety, a security technology company that’s been under increasing public scrutiny for the growing presence of its camera systems.

The meeting was planned for the city council’s April 27 dinner session, a kind of meeting in which council members hear reports from vendors, partner agencies and community groups. Shoreline residents have joined the growing wave of opposition to Flock over the last year, especially as ties between the company and federal law enforcement have been revealed.

“Several council members expressed concern that this was not a good time, and not something that they were interested in pursuing,” Shoreline Mayor Betsy Robertson told The Osprey on Friday. “There are no plans to pursue a conversation with Flock,” she added.

A meeting with Flock was planned at least as far back as Jan. 22, according to an archived snapshot of the city council’s agenda planner. On April 16, an updated version of the agenda planner stated that the workshop dinner meeting was cancelled.

A screenshot of the Shoreline City Council’s agenda planner, archived on Jan. 22, 2026. (Retrieved April 16, via archive.org)

A screenshot of the Shoreline City Council agenda planner, updated April 16. (Retrieved April 16, via shorelinewa.gov)

The meeting, Robertson said, was planned as an information-only session requested by Shoreline Police Chief Tommy Collins, to learn about Flock and its operations.

“I have a tremendous amount of respect for our chief and I wanted to honor his request,” Robertson said, adding that she was uncertain about how the meeting with Flock would be accepted by the community. “It became really clear that it’s going to be a nonstarter for Shoreline.”

Since its founding in 2017, Flock has grown its business by selling automated, solar-powered license plate recognition cameras to homeowners associations, private businesses and law enforcement agencies. The company has grown to offer real-time video and data collection, gunshot-detection audio systems, surveillance cameras, drone systems and software that ties ALPR data with public records and commercially-available data. A cornerstone of Flock’s business is its “National LPR Network,” which the company says is “fueled by shared data from across the country.”

In Shoreline, Flock ALPR cameras can be easily found in the parking lot of the Aurora Village shopping center, Aurora Avenue North and North 205th Street, near entry points to and from the Home Depot parking lot.

Flock’s “national LPR network” and relationship with federal law enforcement has generated controversy across the country. (Osprey News/David Mendez)

Last October, the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights published a report revealing that at least eight Washington state law enforcement agencies enabled the ability to directly share their Flock system networks with U.S. Border Patrol, and that Border Patrol had “back door” access — access without explicit permission — to at least ten agencies across the state.

Flock’s own security practices have raised alarm among technology and security experts. Tech news outlet 404 Media, in particular, has found instances of Flock leaving its cameras unsecured to the open web, and kept track of questionable use of the automated cameras by law enforcement officers.

Growing uproar has led cities and towns across the country to pause or end relationships with Flock, including the neighboring Lynnwood Police Department.

Lynnwood began using Flock’s ALPR system on June 29, 2025. Two days later, on July 1, the department “discovered that a vendor feature had created broader data access than intended, and promptly disabled it.” The Flock program was “formally paused” on Oct. 30.

At the Shoreline City Council’s April 12 meeting, resident Nicole Solano chastised the council for scheduling the meeting with Flock.

“If you are even considering Flock at all, there’s a lot of community members that are very, very afraid that you’re even having this meeting with Flock and a representative from Flock,” Solano said. “I think it would be prudent to cancel it. I think that would make the community that's the most vulnerable right now, the most afraid, feel a bit more comfortable, to actually stick to what we passed, all of us, in Resolution 560 — that we stand with our immigrant community, that we cherish them.”

Though Flock doesn’t feature automated speed cameras among its products, residents have feared the company would offer speed camera solutions to Shoreline as the city builds its school zone speed enforcement program.

Though Robertson does not yet know which companies would be in the running for providing speed camera services, she said that Flock won’t be among them.

“Flock is not going to backdoor their way into Shoreline through our traffic camera program,” Robertson said.

Shoreline City Hall (The Osprey/David Mendez)

Shoreline saw an overall drop in reported crime in 2025 according to the city police department’s annual report, which was presented at Monday night’s city council meeting.

Property crimes dropped by 14% from 2024 to 2025 and violent crimes fell by 6.26%. Though “crimes against society” — drug, prostitution and weapons-law crimes — ticked up by more than 58%, Shoreline Police say that’s a sign of its Special Enforcement Team working properly.

“Those are actually things that are happening here in the City of Shoreline, and they are identifying them and putting them to a stop,” said Police Captain Neil Woodruff. “It’s not a sign of, hey, there’s more drug and narcotics offenses and more prostitution. It’s the fact that we have people out there that are identifying them and putting a stop to them.”

Like nearly half of the 30 cities in King County, Shoreline contracts with the King County Sheriff’s Office to provide police services — as in, the city’s police department.

Shoreline has pledged $36.5 million toward SPD in the current 2025-2026 biennial budget, representing 24.33% of the city’s total operating budget. That’s a 28.9% increase from 2023-2024’s budget for SPD, which was $28.3 million.

On a per capita basis, Shoreline effectively pays about $252 per resident, which is on the low end compared to many neighboring cities. According to data reported by The Interurban Canopy, Seattle ($732), Lynnwood ($531), Bothell ($418), Lake Forest Park ($414), Edmonds ($394) and Kirkland ($381) all pay more than Shoreline in per-capita police spending.

Crime by the numbers

Property crimes, like motor vehicle theft, larceny, residential burglary and robbery, all fell from 2024 to 2025, with the biggest drop coming in commercial burglary. Commercial burglary fell from 184 reported crimes in 2024 down to 75 incidents in 2025 — a 59% decrease.

Violent crimes — termed as “crimes against persons” in federal reporting databases — dropped slightly as well. The total number of assault, homicide, manslaughter, human trafficking, kidnapping and sex crimes fell by 6.26% from 2024 to 2025.

Crimes against society — or breaking laws intended to stop certain activities — increased, as the city made a point of policing drug-related crime through its Special Emphasis Team. “With the team back at full staffing, it is expected that our enforcement stats would increase for drug and sex trafficking type activity,” said the city staff report.

Shoreline Police Department’s “Crimes Against Society” data from page 18 of the 2025 Police Services Report. (City of Shoreline)

Shoreline’s police service report is, essentially, a data dump building a narrative from the numbers. And those numbers look good to Shoreline Police Chief Tommy Collins and his staff.

Captain Brian Angelo was happy to report that average response times for violent and high-risk crimes — the highest-priority emergency calls — were the fastest they had been in three years, taking officers about 4 minutes to arrive. Response times also improved for lower-priority calls, per SPD data.

Among all of the positive data, Collins noted that SPD currently has nine vacant positions. The department’s officer vacancies have hovered around that figure — sometimes eight, sometimes 10, and at one point 13 openings in 2024 — for more than a year. Shoreline has budgeted for 53 total staff in 2025 and 2026, with 50 officers and 3 civilian staff members.

A major point of pain, Collins said, is traffic — and the community has let him know about it. “The number one complaint I get on my desk is traffic,” he told the council. “The thing is, I can’t actually expand anything without getting the calls for service, the 911 calls handled.”'

Staffing shortages, summer soccer support

Being short-staffed has taken officers away from traffic enforcement this year. Since late January, Shoreline PD’s only dedicated traffic unit — which, among their duties, includes monitoring school zones — was redeployed to patrol, including responding to resident and business calls for help. The traffic unit, Angelo told the city council Monday, was brought into the city last year and has been key to enforcement. In 2025, 1,261 traffic citations were issued — the first time since 2020 that citations broke 1,000 in a year, and over 500 citations more than in 2024.

The cavalry is coming, though, Angelo told The Osprey. The officer is expected to return to traffic duty on April 21. Further, an officer within the city will move over to boost the traffic unit in June, focusing on DUI enforcement.

Shoreline is also asking KCSO to provide additional officers this summer during the FIFA World Cup. Seattle is scheduled to host six games at Lumen Field — four games in June, two in July — and Collins has requested 10 additional deputies for patrol in Shoreline, in addition to the department’s usual complement of officers.

The report also highlighted successes with the Regional Crisis Response Agency, commonly referred to as RCR (pronounced “racer”). In 2017, Shoreline became the first city in the region to launch a program giving officers training to de-escalate crises at scenes with behavioral health issues. The RCR was started in 2023 to help police departments from Shorline to Kenmore share information and resources.

In 2025, RCR responders — including officers and mental health experts — provided services to 562 people in Shorline, over 1,122 encounters.

Councilmember Chris Roberts was pleased with the program’s work, but asked if the police department could deploy mental health professionals to more calls. At a recent council dinner meeting — a public study session usually featuring reports from the city’s partner agencies — an RCR representative said it wasn’t being deployed to all of the calls its professionals would be suited for.

Collins hedged his answer.

“It’s call dependent. There’s calls for service that are absolutely appropriate for a mental health professional to go to, and there’s other calls for service that aren’t,” he said, like calls asking police to document a vehicle break-in. Further, Collins added, RCR was short-staffed for a “significant period” in 2025.

Roberts noted that it’d be helpful for the council to see an analysis of past calls that could have used RCR assistance. Collins said he’d get back to the council with that information.

by David Mendez

An informed community is a stronger community. And that starts with strong local news.

As learn more about what’s happening around us, we get smarter. We get to know each other better. Sure, we debate and we argue, but we think more. We ask more questions of ourselves, and of the people we elect. And we stop being afraid of one another.

That’s what I believe, deep in my blood, in my bones, in my marrow. The more we know about who we are, where we live and who lives around us, the better we all get. And that’s why I do this thing you’re reading right now.

So I’m proud to be participating in Local News Day this year. More than 1,300 newsrooms are participating to help folks learn more about their local news outlets and the journalists that staff them.

I’m going to be at Drumlin (522 NE 165th Street) from 9:30 a.m. to noon on Thursday, April 9 — the day you see this, ideally. I’m going to be there to hang out, to drink coffee, to trade story ideas and to chat about whatever folks are interested in chatting about. Because I want you to know who I am, and I want to know who you are and what you care about.

Trust in media, and in journalism, is at an all-time low. Only 28% of people trust mass media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. Part of the problem there is that local news is shrinking (Washington has lost 31% of its newspapers statewide since 2005), leaving only national and larger regional outlets to pick up the slack. But they’re dwindling too, and their resources are drying up.

Shoreline hasn’t had a full-time local newspaper since 2009, when the Shoreline/Lake Forest Park Enterprise folded. Since then, a few outlets — Shoreline Area News chief among them — have sought to pick up the slack. Our other friends around town and nearby are working hard too, like Oliver Moffat at The Interurban Canopy, and Teresa Wipple and her team at My Edmonds News and the My Neighborhood News Group.

My job, as I see it, is to make sure you know what’s happening around you. For me, that starts with local government, where I focus most of my energy. I’m working to make sure that folks can find out what’s going on in city hall, even if they can’t make it there themselves. That reporting builds conversations. Those conversations build community.

And while government is at the center of what I do, I’m working on stories about other pillars in our community — businesses, parks, schools. People trying to make things better for everyone. Places and events that we all can enjoy.

I do this because I care about where I live. I’m curious about the people and places I see around town. And I’ve got a feeling that other people in this city are curious too.

So, come see me at Drumlin on Thursday. Let’s talk about what you love in Shoreline, what’s bothering you and what you want to learn more about.

Take care,
David Mendez

A winter sunset in Richmond Beach. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

Editor’s Note: Why we do what we do

Hey folks, welcome back to the Osprey Update. I’m David Mendez, your friendly neighborhood newsman and reporting resident of Shoreline, Wash.

So, my journalism career started in Arizona — more on that another time, surely — but I fell in love with actually being a reporter when I moved Los Angeles for a job and a girl…and kept the job.

I was at a weekly paper, where I covered a town of about 67,000 people: city council, schools, public safety, housing, the whole lot. I met people riding bikes across the country and rowing boats across the Pacific. I spent afternoons with mourning families to learn about their loved ones, and stayed up late to make sure people knew what their officials were doing with their tax money. I got laid off during the height of COVID, and landed at another, larger organization where I did work I’m proud of, but it wasn’t quite the same as meeting neighbors and finding out what they cared about.

When my wife and I moved our family here last year, I was burned out on the news business. But before last November’s local election, I needed to know more about who was asking for my vote. And I knew that if I had questions, other people did too. So I started this, and I’m proud of what I’ve done here so far, from election coverage, to city council stories, to meeting business owners, to learning about a project that feeds hundreds of people each week. Frankly, I’m just getting started.

On Thursday, we’re going to be one of more than 1,300 local newsrooms participating in Local News Day. Local newsrooms like The Osprey, the Interurban Canopy and My Edmonds News work very hard to keep our communities informed. We’re here because we believe that people need to know what’s going on in their neighborhood. And, personally, I just love the work.

Join us at Drumlin on Thursday, April 9! For more, visit localnewsday.org.

If you want to celebrate Local News Day with The Osprey, we’ll be at Drumlin in Ridgecrest from about 9:30 a.m to noon on Thursday, April 9. Come down, grab a coffee and a snack, and let’s talk about what you care about. We can share story ideas, complain about the Mariners’ hitting and get hopeful about the Sonics coming back. We can chat about schools, about businesses, about politics, about whatever. (And if you’re interested in learning how to support our work financially, we can talk about that too — we’re working on it!) I’m happy to chat about any and all of it. This is our town, our community, and every time we learn something new about ourselves, we get just a bit better.

Thanks for reading.

Featured Story

Meridian Park Elementary School will soon be the site of automated speed enforcement cameras. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

Shoreline City Council approves speed cameras

Last week, the Shoreline City Council voted 6-1 to allow speed camera installation in school zones, starting with Meridian Park Elementary School. The vote was a win for an overwhelming amount of families with kids in that neighborhood, but others were worried about privacy and about speed camera fines harming low-income folks. The first cameras are expected to start running in January 2027, and it’s so far unclear if they’ll be installed anywhere else. (We also got into the background of the speed cameras here, shortly before the meeting! Check that out here.)

Check it out here: Shoreline City Council approves speed cameras, sets multi-tier penalties 

Bringing back Richmond Beach history

Richmond Beach Foods is expected to open this spring. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

The ‘Little Store’ is no more, but a little store is coming soon

For months, the local duo of Norene Roberts and Lauren Peterson have been dropping bits of knowledge about their forthcoming business, Richmond Beach Foods. They’re taking over the building once occupied by the Little Store at Richmond Beach, planning to introduce a grocery store like the one they went to as kids growing up in RB: a place for the community to meet and mingle, for folks to grab a quick bite and for kids to grab a candy or soda on their way to or from school.

Read more here: 'Little Store' no more: Lifelong best friends to revive Richmond Beach Foods 

Shoreline city council report

Shoreline City Hall (The Osprey/David Mendez)

The Shoreline City Council discussed two potential ordinances at its April 6 meeting. One would update the city’s stormwater code to align with (some) requests from a neighboring water district, while the other would codify a ban on civil immigration enforcement on city property.

The council didn’t take action on either ordinance. Both ordinances are expected to come back on April 27.

Read more: Shoreline, neighboring water district at odds over water source protections 

(The Osprey/David Mendez)

by David Mendez

The Shoreline City Council on Monday night weighed an update to the city’s drainage code, as a water district serving neighboring cities is asking for more protections to a local water source. No decision was made on Monday, but city staff will incorporate the council’s discussion into its next proposal, which will be up for an approval vote later this month.

Olympic View Water & Sewage District is a special purpose utility district that serves water to Edmonds and Woodway, as well as parts of unincorporated Snohomish County. Olympic View has been asking Shoreline to put new protections in place over the Deer Creek Wellhead Protection Area, at the potential expense of landowners and housing developers.

A map of the Deer Creek Wellhead. The wellhead’s buffer area, outlined by the black dotted line, stretches down into Shoreline. (City of Shoreline)

Up a creek

The Deer Creek Wellhead is a spring-fed stream, largely within Snohomish County, that provides about 40 percent of the Olympic View district’s water supply. A portion of the wellhead’s buffer area stretches down into Shoreline city limits, across both sides of Aurora Avenue. About 45 properties in city limits — including 42 homes and 3 properties zoned as “mixed business” — fall in the buffer zone.

In December the city adopted an ordinance amending its Critical Areas code, intended to protect important environmental resources and water sources. That ordinance didn’t designate Deer Creek as a critical aquifer recharge area, or CARA, which Olympic View wanted. A CARA designation effectively signals that a governing agency will take strict steps to protect the area’s ground water from contamination.

“It’s important to recognize what protections are typically included in a critical aquifer recharge area framework that are not addressed by a stormwater code,” Olympic View General Manager Bob Danson told the council, including land use protections, early notice for developers and requirements for storing and handling contaminants. “Without those elements, this proposal does not address land use risks in a durable way.”

Per the city’s December report, “City staff do not believe the buffer of the wellhead protection area meets the definition of a critical area and do not believe the critical areas code is the correct tool to address Olympic View’s concerns.”

Instead of giving the buffer zone a CARA designation, city staff wanted to update the city’s stormwater code to address the district’s requests around water quality. 

The Considerations

In 2023, Olympic View updated its Watershed Plan, where it established water supply protection guidelines for district staff, agencies with jurisdiction over land use in its service area and the general public. The guidelines seek to prohibit land uses that would risk contaminating the water supply, including some that aren’t expected to be issues in Shoreline, like new onsite sewage disposal systems, mining, wood treatment and landfills. It also recommends a handful of regulations for any new development in watershed protection areas.

While the city believes it generally meets Olympic View’s requests, it notes some areas of difference. Staff recommend against requiring hydrologic impact reports for all developments in the area, and they don't want to ban the use of underground injection wells within the area. Generally used for stormwater management along roads and in parking lots and to collect roof runoff, UIWs are shallow structures used to let liquids drain from the surface to the dirt and rocks that exist a few feet below ground-level. Olympic View believes such structures could lead to aquifer pollution.

City staff said that Olympic View’s main pollution concern is PFAS, long-lasting “forever chemicals” that have been pervasive in consumer and industry products since the 1940s and can find their way into water sources. According to the EPA, PFAS can increase cancer risks, weaken immune systems, interfere with natural hormones, cause developmental defects in children and decrease fertility. 

The city believes that banning all underground injection wells would effectively shift PFAS contamination from one area to another. In this case, the pollution would be prevented from seeping into the soil and instead allowed to flow into Lake Ballinger, McAleer Creek and, ultimately, Lake Washington. 

“The threat to humans that those PFAS presented has not been reduced, just moved to other sources,” staff wrote in Monday’s report. “Given that organic soils are known to sequester PFAS, staff suggest that discharging into the ground is a less environmentally impactful option compared to directly discharging it to surface waters.”

Bob Danson, the Olympic View general manager, disagreed with that assessment.

“Infiltration does not remove contaminants. It transfers them to the subsurface where they enter the drinking water aquifer,” Danson said. 

What’s next

Members of the city council seemed inclined to an idea spearheaded by Councilmember Keith Scully: make sure that Shoreline is doing what its neighbors are doing over the same water source.

“I don’t want to rewrite our whole code. Just make it look like Edmonds,” Scully said. “I want to achieve the same level of protection that Edmonds has, so there’s not a jurisdictional boundary to how we protect drinking water.” He also cautioned staff to ensure that the ordinance’s next iteration doesn’t create permitting delays for housing or commercial developments.

Councilmember Annette Ademasu asked staff to include a few options going forward to create language identifying specific land uses that could present contamination risks, as well as language that ensures applicants for certain permits describe how they will mitigate and contain water contamination risks.

As far as he and his colleagues on the dais were concerned, Councilmember Chris Roberts seemed to sum up the discussion fairly well.

“We’re fighting over the last inch, it seems like,” Roberts concluded.

The city council is scheduled to make a decision on the wastewater code ordinance at its April 27 meeting.

Carving out ICE

The City Council also discussed an ordinance that would block civil immigration enforcement activities — like those carried out by ICE, Customs and Border Patrol and other federal law enforcement — from using or staging on city-owned property.

Shoreline is following in the footsteps of jurisdictions like Seattle, which took similar action earlier this year.

Staff estimates that 50 aluminum signs stating the ban would cost about $10,750. Though members of the city council were curious how the proposed ordinance would be enforced. The ordinance is categorized as a civil matter.

“There’s no criminal violation here. It’s not a gross misdemeanor or misdemeanor for ICE doing this,” said assistant city manager John Norris. “There’s limitations about what our police department can do, from an enforcement perspective.”

“Obviously going to court doesn’t happen within a half hour, right/ So I think we’re pretty eyes-wide-open that if four SUVs go into a parking lot, we’re probably not going to get injunctive relief to stop that behavior,” Norris said. The ordinance would give the city standing to take complaints to a judge and get an injunction…but only if the city, or the public, is aware of federal enforcement setting up.

The city council is expected to vote on the ordinance April 27.

Crossing guard Jen Johnson watches as Meridian Park Elementary students and parents cross 175th Street at Meridian Avenue. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

by David Mendez

The Shoreline City Council on Monday approved a new ordinance allowing the use of automated cameras to enforce speed limits in school zones. Should everything go according to plan, the cameras will be online and issuing citations to speeding drivers by January 2027.

“I’m absolutely convinced that there’s a safety crisis happening at that intersection, and that it is our responsibility to make this community as safe as possible for the people who live here,” Mayor Betsy Robertson said ahead of the vote. “Over the years, we’ve done several things to be a welcoming city in lots of different ways. I think we have to be a safe city and a welcoming city for the families who live here and are trying to get to and from school.”

The council vote came down 6-1 in favor of the camera program, with Councilmember Keith Scully as the lone dissenter.

The council’s vote approved a new ordinance creating and governing an automated traffic camera system program. It limits cameras to enforce only school zone speed limits, and restricts the cameras to focus solely on cars and their license plates. It also states that photos may not show the faces of drivers or passengers in a car photographed for speeding and that photos can’t be used for any reason other than enforcing speed camera violations. It also states that a speed camera vendor shall not use, sell or share data captured by the cameras.

Read more: Speed cameras up for discussion at Shoreline City Council meeting 

It also sets the amount of fees for speeding in school zones. In the case of Meridian Park elementary, the school zone speed limit is set at 20 miles per hour. Drivers caught going between 4 to 9 MPH over the speed limit would be fined $50; drivers caught going between 10 to 13 MPH over the speed limit would be fined $130; and drivers caught going faster than 14 MPH or more would be fined $260.

A speed study conducted by the city in fall 2024 found that nearly four of every five drivers on 175th Street were breaking the school zone speed limit during morning rush hour, and that about 30% of all drivers were going faster than 35 MPH.

Shoreline’s newly-adopted speed camera penalty schedule. (City of Shoreline)

Scully’s nay vote, he said, was a matter of principle. He wanted two things: first, he wanted a lower fine threshold for drivers who break the limit at relatively lower rates of speed, which the council agreed to. He also wanted an amendment codifying the times during which the speed cameras are active.

“Because if it is simply ’when children are present,’ you can’t know what the speed limit is,” Scully told The Osprey after the meeting. “What in truth happens when that is set is that there are operating hours, because the camera can’t detect children. So you just have to guess, is this within the time frame that the camera is supposed to target?”

That addition failed.

In other words, Scully wasn’t against the cameras as a tool to encourage safe driving.

“My big concern here is that, although it’s couched as public safety, it doesn’t do enough to accomplish that goal. But it does a lot to cause economic harm,” Scully said.

State law does allow a person to request a mitigation hearing for traffic infractions like speeding tickets. In those cases, a person admits to the violation and essentially asks the court to reduce the penalty they were first assessed. However, state law appears to prevent a person from waiving, reducing or suspending a penalty for speeding in a school or playground speed zone.

While economic equity was chief of mind for most council members, a few members of the public were especially concerned about privacy in the age of Trump.

Shoreline resident Shannon Collier drew on her experience as a software engineer to argue that, despite assurances that might be set in contracts or an ordinance, a traffic camera may be collecting more data than intended.

“It’s pretty common for software systems in general to collect as much data as they can, and then they filter that down to what’s relevant,” Collier said. “That extra information is being kept even if you don’t see it…it’s probably not just the picture of the license plate, right? It’s gonna be the whole picture. This isn’t necessarily malicious, but it still matters.”

If data is collected, she said, it may be subpoenaed, and the company would be compelled to share it with entities like the federal government.

“You can decide that the benefits of this plan outweigh the drawbacks, but the point is the privacy risks here are real. Think carefully,” Collier said.

Councilmember Valerie Snider told The Osprey that she found the woman’s testimony compelling, and that those points can be used to shape the city’s request for proposals on the cameras: how data is captured, where data is kept and what rules they may have to follow with their own hosting service.

“Certainly we need to specify that Shoreline owns that data and that it can’t be distributed or sold to third parties regardless of any subcontractors they might be using,” Snider said. “The agreement needs to be between us and the contractor,” and any contract would also need to set up dates for purchasing data.

The city expects to issue a request for proposals from automated camera vendors this month.

Council votes to remove race- and development-restrictive covenants from North City pump station

Also on Monday, the Shoreline City Council voted to release a pair of covenants on city-owned parcel in the North City neighborhood.

Read more:Shoreline to discuss removing race- and development-restrictive covenants from city property 

One covenant was racially-restrictive and sought to ensure that only white people could live on the land. Such covenants have been illegal and unenforceable for nearly 60 years, but still linger on property documents across Western Washington to this day. State law has simplified the process for land owners to remove such covenants from their properties.

Lots impacted by the 1947 covenants. (City of Shoreline)

The second covenant limits development on properties to one detached single-family home. Monday’s vote doesn’t automatically remove the covenant. Rather, the city is just one more property owner who has signed on to remove the covenant from all 30 of the affected lots. A covenant can only be removed from these properties if 75% of property owners in that tract agree.

Per city staff’s report, nine of 20 total properties owners have not yet determined if they’ll release their properties from the development covenant. But if they do, they may be in line for a call from a friendly developer looking to make a deal. The properties within the subdivision have been assigned MUR-70 zoning, allowing mixed-use residential and commercial building development up to 70 feet tall. Developers are almost assured to show interest, seeking to take advantage of the block’s location near the Shoreline North/185th metro light rail station.

Meridian Park Elementary School crossing guard John Norris stands at the edge of a crosswalk at 175th Street and Wallingford Avenue. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

by David Mendez

Aurora Avenue and Ballinger Way are built to bear the load of traffic. They’re state routes designed to move cars and link communities, and they’re two of the three busiest streets in Shoreline. The third, however, is 175th Street, which links Aurora and Interstate 5 for thousands of students, commuters, bus riders, emergency responders and commercial drivers.

At its heart is Meridian Avenue. Spend some time there during morning or afternoon rush hours and you’ll see one of the busiest, highest-trafficked intersections in the city. Meridian and 175th has been reported as one of the spots with the most crashes in Shoreline. It’s also the northeastern edge of Meridian Park Elementary School, which serves more than 600 students from kindergarten through fifth grade.

On March 30, the Shoreline City Council will discuss an ordinance that would allow automated speed ticketing cameras in school zones. The first set of cameras would be installed outside of Meridian Park Elementary. If approved, the cameras would snap license plate photos of any car breaking school zone speed limits, and send a citation and a fine to the vehicle owner’s address.

After years of asking, many parents, neighbors and school staff now have what they hope will be a solution to the close calls and near-misses they see on an uncomfortably regular basis. They hope, at least, that this can get drivers to change.

John Norris, a retired Navy Commander who has been a Meridian Park crossing guard for three years, said that he hasn’t personally had any close calls.

“Well, not close, like I thought that I was in danger, or the kids. But every once in a while, you know—” he grimaced, emphatically urging an imagined car to “stop!”

“But that’s pretty rare. Maybe once a month,” Norris said. “Which, you know, tell a parent that, and that doesn’t sound rare, does it?”

Meridian Park Elementary School crossing guard John Norris watches as students and families cross 175th street. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

Let’s put it this way: If you visit the crosswalk at 175th and Wallingford on a Friday afternoon when school lets out, crossing guards will be there for half an hour — 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after the bell rings. During that 30 minutes, you’re bound to see a handful of cars rolling through the crosswalk, even after crossing guards like Norris step out, waving flags and staring drivers down. Some of those drivers will weakly wave as they roll through the painted crosswalk. Some will hardly hesitate as they continue through. Others will stop, but only a foot or two outside the crosswalk. If you peek into the cars, you’ll see folks looking for their kids or their friends; you’ll see people waiting (with boredom or anxiety) for traffic to get moving again; and you’ll definitely see people fiddling with their phones.

“It’s funny. I don’t think they’re aggressive. I think they’re not just paying attention. Cell phones are a big problem,” Norris said. “I had a guy the other day. The guy, coming up in the middle lane, just kept coming. Kids behind me, I had the flag out, he kept coming. He didn’t stop until he was halfway in the crosswalk. And he had his head down, looking at his lap, had his headphones on.”

That’s not to say there aren’t aggressors. Multiple folks mentioned an incident in which a driver’s car hit a crossing guard’s flag; the driver then allegedly got aggressive toward the guard. Others recalled a van, associated with a local radio station, that slowly rolled through a crosswalk active with kids.

“Sometimes you get speeders too, going through,” Norris said. “That’s what the traffic cameras will help.”

Speed cameras have been on Shoreline’s radar for more than two years. The city began considering them for use in 2024, when city staff were asked to study driver habits around schools across the city. After two months of data collection, staff found that Meridian Park Elementary School had the highest instance of cars breaking the 20 MPH school zone speed limit each day.

The 2024 survey measured traffic going both east and west from Meridian Park Elementary along 175th Street, as well as traffic going south on Meridian Avenue during school zone hours. More than half of drivers measured were found going at least five miles faster than the posted 20 MPH limit. During morning measurements, 79% of vehicles — four out of every five cars — on 175th were measured going faster than the 20 MPH school zone limit. Nearly 30% of all traffic was found to go faster than 35 MPH.

A 2013 study found pedestrians face a 10% risk of being killed when hit by a car going 24 MPH or lower. As vehicle speed increases, the odds of surviving being hit by a car fall along a curve. A person hit at 32 MPH has a 25% chance of dying. For a person hit at 40 MPH, survival becomes a coin-flip, with 50% odds of death. And vehicles with taller front-ends (like nearly every late-model truck or SUVs) have been shown to cause serious injuries even at slower speeds.

So the question is, how does a city work to slow vehicle speeds, especially in places like school zones, where some of the most vulnerable pedestrians are around in high concentrations?

Molly Chapman has been asking that question for years as one of the parents urging the city into action. She observed that there are already nine different safety measures set up at 175th and Wallingford, at the northeastern-most edge of Meridian Park Elementary School. There’s a painted crosswalk, flashing school zone signs, crosswalk signs that flash when a pedestrian presses a button. Crossing guards set out an A-frame sign, wear bright vests and carry flags. Signs warning drivers abound. But there are still instances where drivers simply aren’t paying attention.

Chapman is a Meridian Park mom and a former president of the Meridian Park Parents Teachers Students Association. She’s spent many mornings walking her kids to school, and experiencd her share of close calls and alarming incidents. After learning that the City of Edmonds was installing speed cameras near its schools and speaking with its traffic engineers, she began carrying a petition around town.

It wasn’t long before she had gathered more than 180 signatures in support of installing speed cameras.

“It’s like I was handing out free money,” she said.

Speed enforcement cameras are generally accepted to make drivers slow down, and one nearby speed camera bears that out. Speeding citations near Broadview-Thompson Elementary School, at 130th Street and Greenwood Avenue, dropped from about 17,001 in 2013 to 6,242 in 2023.

The rate of traffic citations outside of Seattle’s Broadview-Thompson Elementary has fallen significantly between 2013 and 2023. (Image via City of Shoreline)

At issue Monday is whether or not to approve an ordinance allowing the city to use automated cameras to enforce speeding violations. Cameras likely wouldn’t be installed until the end of 2026, and tickets wouldn’t be issued until the end of a 30 day warning period, pushing the effective date of the cameras to January 2027 at earliest.

But before any of that is resolved, the city would need to make a deal with a vendor. And that’s where Norbert Steele’s problem with the plan comes in.

“So, speed cameras do work. There’s tons of studies on how they do reduce speeds and change behavior. But my main problem with the cameras are primarily that the city is planning to go to an outside national security contractor,” said Steele. “There’s no reason to use these companies. Also, they’re going to charge you $100,000 a year for one camera. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in my life.”

One city staff estimate suggests the cameras would cost $250,000 in annual costs to an equipment vendor. Another estimated that the cameras may cost around $100,000 annually, depending on the length of the contract with the vendor.

Steele believes that the city could cut costs by bringing the job of building and operating the camera program in-house. To do so the city would have to build out its information technology staffing — though Steele believes the city could easily pay a few salaries with the savings.

“What do you mean you can’t spend, like, $150K on two IT nerds to set up your IT infrastructure and not end up contracting that work out to somebody else at like, $500K a year?” Steele said.

The city believes it can negotiate clauses into its contract with a vendor insisting that citation data not be shared with third parties unless required by a court order. City staff also believe that costs for the cameras can be evened out — and start generating revenue — at about 4,000 annual citations, starting at $130 per violation.

Image via City of Shoreline

Gracie Mathieson, 12, is a Shoreline sixth grader. She’s well acquainted with the dangers of her neighborhood — her family lives close enough to 175th and Meridian that they can hear car crashes from inside their home, her mother said.

In Gracie’s last year at Meridian Park Elementary, she joined the student patrol, a program that gives students a chance to take care of their campus and their fellow students. During her time on the patrol team, she had two two-week shifts on crossing duty.

“When I first started, I knew there were a lot of red light runners, so I was kind of expecting that. I just wasn’t expecting how many there were,” Gracie said, estimating about 15 red-light runners each week.

Ironically, her closest call came not on last year’s crossing guard duty but just a few months ago on her way back from middle school. Her bus drops her off next to Meridian Park Elementary School, leaving her to cross 175th and Meridian again on her way home. “And every day when I get off the bus, I have to cross the busier side of the intersection,” Gracie said.

“I looked at the car behind me, and they waved at me to let me know I could go. So I stepped into the crosswalk and then they came speeding around the corner, so I had to step back,“ Gracie said. Now, she has to keep her head on a swivel.

“It was just a little shocking at first, because they signaled that I could go, then they went ahead,” she said. “Now I check over my shoulder very often and stay away from the curb…I don’t want that to happen twice.”

The city-owned “micropark” and surface water pump station at 10th Avenue NE and 185th Street is one of 30 properties with covenants that will be discussed at the March 30 city council meeting. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

by David Mendez

The Shoreline City Council has called for a public hearing at its March 30 meeting, as residents and a local real estate agent want to remove a pair of decades-old restrictive covenants from a set of North City properties less than a mile from the city’s light rail corridor.

Thirty properties — including one parcel owned by the city — are affected by the covenants, which are legal restrictions imposed by the original land-owner and tied to a property’s title.

One of the covenants that’ll be addressed at the hearing says that property owners can only build single-family homes on their lot. The other is racially restrictive, a kind of discriminatory, unlawful and unenforceable clause that was meant to ensure that only white people could live on the property.

The first covenant, restricting what can be built on the property, is a major driver of the hearing. Real estate agent Jack Malek brought the matter to the city after a handful of folks reached out to him, he said. Malek declined to name the people he’s working with on the matter, though he said he’s obtained signatures from 17 property owners who are interested in having covenants removed.

“These are people that want to sell their property. They’re not listed yet, because the market is soft. But, you know, leading up to that process, it’s best to go through with a lot of these detail items that would otherwise slow a developer down or have them choose not to purchase you in lieu of another parcel, because those restrictions had been removed,” Malek told The Osprey.

This hearing wouldn’t necessarily strip the covenants from every property all at once — a decision by the council would only affect Shoreline’s property. But the city’s decision may be necessary for all 30 land owners to remove the development restriction. Per the list of covenants, 75% of the landowners of the affected properties must agree to changing the covenants.

While the City of Shoreline’s plot of land would have those covenants stripped, the city doesn’t plan to sell it off to a developer. The plot of land at 18351 10th Avenue NE was given to the city by King County, and it functions as a surface water pump station and micro park, a city staffer told The Osprey.

In 2024, the city council approved its 20-year Comprehensive Plan, which updated the city’s zoning map to allow land developers to build more multi-family housing across Shoreline. The city’s property — as well as that of its neighbors — now sits in MUR-70 zoning, a land definition that allows construction of buildings up to 70 feet tall, or seven stories tall, which may have both apartment-style housing and commercial uses like shops and office spaces.

The rezoning is meant to take advantage of the area’s closeness to nearby Sound Transit light rail stops, especially the Shoreline North/185th Station, which is just more than a block away.

Two covenants attached to a property owned by the City of Shoreline, as well as 29 other nearby properties, will be discussed at a March 30 Shoreline City Council meeting. (Image courtesy City of Shoreline, edited by David Mendez)

The properties were developed and filed onto a public parcel map, or platted, in 1947 by Evergreen Homes. The development-limiting covenants were a symptom of the time, Malek explained.

“As they were platted, they were restricted in terms of utility. Everybody wanted them to be nice, darling little neighborhoods, which is great when you’ve got a low-density population [like] around World War II,” Malek said. “You were not allowed to have businesses out of the home or located right next to the home, so as to protect people from doing something other than a neighborhood store, like a business — especially something more manufacturing-based or noisy.”

Racially-restrictive covenants were also a product of the eras immediately following World War I and World War II. Shoreline’s Innis Arden development became somewhat infamous for past advertising, touting its status as a “restricted residential community” in a brochure dated to the 1940s. (The Innis Arden homeowners’ association deleted the discriminatory covenants in 2006, using a state law tailored to the neighborhood’s situation.)

In its “Declaration of Protective Restrictions,” Evergreen Homes included a series of 15 covenants for its development in what was then known as “Northend Country Estates.” Covenant 8 states:

Discriminatory covenants were ruled as unconstitutional in 1948 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, and race-based housing discrimination was made wholly illegal after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, part of Civil Rights Act of 1968. And while racially-restrictive covenants have been illegal for decades, they linger in many deeds and agreements across the country — and in Shoreline — like a stubborn mold, as a reminder of the influence bigots and racists have held across American history.

In 2022, a Washington state law came into effect, allowing property owners to remove unlawful, discriminatory covenants from property deeds and have them struck from historic property records.

It’s worth noting that this development covenant would open a land owner up to legal liability should they attempt to build a building that breaks its restrictions. Per the original list of documents, anyone who owns property operating under the same original agreement from 1947 would be able to sue anyone for “violating or attempting to violate” the covenants, either to block their efforts or recover monetary damages.

Kim Lancaster has owned and lived in her home on the same block as the city’s plot since 1984, and her land is subject to the same set of covenants. She confirmed speaking with Malek previously, and knew of the racially discriminatory covenants. “So we signed a declaration, or an affidavit, saying that we wanted to do away with that,” Lancaster told The Osprey.

She wasn’t aware of the single-family home restriction, she said. She’s heard talk of folks in the neighborhood who are looking to group up and sell their land to a developer — including a pitch that involved her own home — but she hasn’t heard anything solid in quite a while.

When asked if she’s planning to sell her home, she shrugged.

“At some point. But we don’t want to be this little house and all these tall buildings around,” Lancaster said. “I’m thinking that big apartment complex over across from the train station, they’ve got to fill that first.”

Two complexes sit next to the train station. Kinect @ Shoreline, a 240 apartment unit project, opened in April 2025, while Alexan 185 is under construction across the street from the station along Eighth Avenue NE.

“It just seems like the development of this area, which we thought would happen when the train station went in, has not happened. And, you know, there’s properties you can see across from the train station that are still sitting,” Lancaster said. “But we love our house and we’re happy to live here for as long as we can.”

Malek, a recent candidate for city council, has long advocated for building more homes and business space within the city.

“These areas need to be developed. We need them, not just as a city, but as a state and a nation. We need to get people off the streets, we need to find housing,” he said. “I’m hopeful that there’ll be some businesses that want to locate here and fill in the infrastructure that we really need.”

by David Mendez

The Shoreline School District is among the first recipients for an inaugural statewide award seeking to recognize the best-performing school districts across Washington.

The Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction — the state agency overseeing public schools across the state — named Shoreline as a winner of the State Superintendent’s Award for Educational Excellence last week, honoring the work the district and its students have done over the past school year.

“Receiving this award is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our entire school community,” SSD Superintendent Susana Reyes said in a press release. “From our teachers, administrators, and support staff to our students, families, and community partners, this recognition reflects the collective commitment to ensuring every student has the opportunities and support they need to succeed in Shoreline schools.”

Honorees were chosen based on a calculation of 11 measures including student attendance, kindergarten readiness, reading scores for 4th and 8th grade students, math scores and abilities for 8th graders, participation in dual credit programs, student progress for ninth graders and four-year graduation rates.

District students topped state averages in every category the award measures according to a measure of 2024-’25 school year data, including a four-year graduation rate of 92.1%, compared to a state average of 82.6%; and respective eighth grade math and English language arts foundational knowledge rates of 71.1% (state math average is 57.3%) and 80.9% (state ELA average is 70.2%).

The award is a state-level replacement for the National Blue Ribbon Schools Award program, which was cancelled by the U.S. Department of Education in 2025. No Shoreline schools were National Blue Ribbon School awardees during that program’s history.

“It is an honor to recognize Shoreline Public Schools for their dedication to student opportunity and success,” State Superintendent Chris Reykdal said in a release. “From high-quality instruction, to targeted strategies to improving attendance, to ensuring all students have access to advanced coursework, Shoreline School District is an inspiring representation of Washington’s outstanding public schools.”

Shoreline School District will receive a banner and a plaque from OSPI to commemorate the award.

A “coming soon” sign, painted on butcher paper by Leah Lee, hiding the remodeling of Richmond Beach Foods. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

by David Mendez

Let’s get this out of the way early: the proprietors of the future Richmond Beach Foods know that their business will always be known by locals as the Little Store. But they’re also happily reviving a bit of local history from their own past.

“Do we still call it the Little Store? Yes, we do,” said Lauren Peterson, one half of the team taking over the long-time corner store. “It was that in its inception.”

“It’s been called that for millennia. Dinosaurs were walking by the Little Store,” quipped Norene Roberts, the other new owner.

“We’re going to return to the name that we called it as kids,” Roberts said.

Folks around Richmond Beach have been curious about what’s coming to the old corner store at the corner of NW 196th Street and 20th Avenue NW since its last occupants, Sun and Sung Gwak, announced the closure of the Little Store last year. Their farewell post set off mournful tributes, as well fears as that the building was due to be demolished and turned into some kind of huge development project.

Then brown butcher paper covered the windows, teasing that a new store is “coming soon.”

(The Osprey/David Mendez)

Roberts and Peterson are Richmond Beach natives who have been best friends effectively since birth. “Our moms are best friends and we were born two days apart,” Roberts said. “The story goes that when her mom was being wheeled out of the hospital, my mom was being wheeled in and they essentially high-fived each other,” Peterson added. 

They’ve remained close ever since. The two grew up a block away from one another, they went to the same schools, were the maid of honor in each other’s wedding. Their oldest children were born three months apart, and their youngest kids were born less than a year from one another. They even get joint family pictures with Santa.

“My favorite joke when we started this was, hey, we finally found a way to be legally bound to each other! We didn’t have to get married, but we may as well be,” Peterson said.

Though their lives have been entwined for decades, the two split professionally. Roberts is coming to Richmond Beach Foods as a career social worker, most recently working with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. Meanwhile, Peterson spent more than 20 years at QFC, doing “just about every job you could do in the store,” until moving to the corporate office.

“I still care deeply about that company, but I’m really happy to be doing something on my own and spread my wings a bit,” Peterson said. “I’m really excited to get back and do it again; in fact, a lot of my customers here will be customers at my old store. I see them now and I’m so excited.”

The building that houses the Little Store has stood for nearly 100 years, per county documents, with one suggesting that the building went up in 1927, operating as a meat market and a grocery over the years. A 1998 story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that then-owner Alan Gross began to carry “an unusual combination of groceries and gift items…whatever captures his fancy” in the store. Neighbors, the story said, would head to the shop to drink coffee, trade gossip, and do business at the post office counter in the shop.

The market business changed hands a few times over the years, though Gross still owns the building. The most recent operators of the store, Korean immigrants Sun and Sung Gwak, ran the shop for 19 years until closing their doors on Sept. 30. Last year, the Gwaks told KING5 that Gross, “without warning,” said that he wasn’t renewing their lease. Gross did not respond to multiple phone calls requesting comment. Roberts and Peterson told The Osprey that they couldn’t speak to any disagreements between the Gwaks and Alan Gross. “It’s not our place,” they said.

Though the occupants have changed, the building remains. With that, Roberts and Peterson to restore the same kind of place they loved growing up.

“When we were kids, it was definitely the center of the neighborhood,” Roberts said. “There was coffee and bluegrass jam sessions on Sundays and fresh food prepared. I could stop in there when I was walking to Syre (Elementary School) if my mom gave me some money to go buy lunch.”

The plan is to provide grab-and-go sandwiches and salads, or upscale groceries that folks can grab in a pinch between trips to markets like Town and Country or QFC. They want to be a place for folks to get a coffee and hang out, or even grab a pint of beer and relax. They also plan to have an “absolutely stellar” candy section, as well as a selection of gifts, seasonal merchandise, flowers and anything a person might want to grab on their walk around the neighborhood.

The neighborhood, and their neighbors, are already helping to shape the store, Roberts said. One woman came by, saying that she loves to work on puzzles, and asked if the store could set up a puzzle library. Roberts said that she liked the idea so much that she’ll bring in her own puzzles to set up a designated puzzle table.

That intersection, where 195th Street, 196th Street and 20th Avenue meet, feels like a space in transition. It’s the home to the well-loved Blackbird Cafe, as well as a small fire station and a few services. But the former home of the Wild Horse Bar and Grill sits empty, as it has since the business shut down in 2005, despite a spate of remodels.

The Richmond Beach Foods Stick Lending Library, built on a lark by shop owner Norene Roberts. (The Osprey/David Mendez)

Richmond Beach Foods is still not ready to welcome neighbors inside. They originally hoped, back in December, that the shop would open in February. But, as of this writing, the timeline keeps sliding. Permitting delays at the City of Shoreline are preventing further work. Peterson said that they now hope for the shop to open in April, or perhaps May.

“It’s something that we heard would be a challenge,” Petersen said, and she emphasized that the business has plenty of support from folks they know and have worked with in city hall.

“We’re doing what we can. The floors are done,” as well as much of the painting, Petersen said. Exterior paints aren’t yet done, though paint tests linger on the south-facing side of the building. But the business’s new exterior sign has been approved and the sign itself is ready to go; she’s cautiously optimistic that it will be installed in March.

Staff has been hired as well. Ten people — a mix of full-time and part-time employees — have been brought on board, from industry veterans to college students.

Meanwhile, small and fun projects have gone up, popping onto Instagram for the sake of a laugh. A photo of a Stick Lending Library (“take a stick, leave a stick,” the sign suggests,) went up on Instagram in early March. Petersen laughed when asked about it, saying it’s something that she and Roberts just thought it would have been something they loved as kids.

“Norene executed it beautifully on her own,” Petersen said. “It was something to distract herself with.”

Roberts and Petersen have quite the opportunity in front of them, and they recognize it. Their store has the potential to become an anchor of the community as folks make their way to the library, to the park, to the strawberry festival, or as they head down to the water.

“We know how special that building is to so many people, and we will do it justice,” Roberts said.

“Generations of Richmond Beach residents are very emotionally attached to that store, and we don’t take that lightly,” Peterson said. 

“Just be honest and take care of people. That’s a recipe for success, in my opinion,” she added.