Intergovernmental Affairs

The Association of Washington Cities (AWC) is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan corporation that represents Washington's cities and towns before the state legislature, the state executive branch, and with regulatory agencies. Membership is voluntary but AWC consistently maintains 100% participation from all of Washington's 281 cities and towns.

AWC provides advocacy, training, and events for municipal leaders, data and resources, and member pooling programs.

The Eastrail, formerly known as the Eastside Rail Corridor (ERC), connects some of King County's largest and fastest growing communities. In its entirety, the Eastrail 42-mile rail corridor that will offer recreation and transportation opportunities to the residents of Renton, Bellevue, Kirkland, Woodinville, Redmond, and portions of unincorporated King and Snohomish Counties.

The trail would connect commercial districts, residential neighborhoods, employments centers, and transit hubs. It would link several significant regional trails that are currently not connected, and when complete, be the most heavily used trail corridor on the eastside. Transportation is not the trail's only purpose. King County and owner jurisdictions are pursuing opportunities to install fiber optic cabling along the trail to build a more robust communications/internet network.

The corridor is owned by King and Snohomish counties; the cities of Kirkland, Woodinville, and Redmond; Sound Transit; and Puget Sound Energy. These owners work together with the Eastside Greenway Alliance and the cities of Bellevue and Renton through the Regional Advisory Council (RAC) to maintain a collaborative, regional planning process for the Eastrail.

The mission of the Eastside Transportation Partnership (ETP) is to provide an Eastside forum for inter-jurisdictional cooperation to implement coordinated, prioritized transportation plans and programs through leadership, education, and advocacy. The group is comprised of members representing Bellevue, Bothell, Issaquah, Kenmore, King County, Kirkland, Mercer Island, Newcastle, Redmond, Renton, Sammamish, and several small cities, including Woodinville, Medina, and Carnation. The ETP's goals include:

• Develop and adopt a package of transportation priorities based on adopted land use plans that improves overall mobility for people, freight and goods, and addressing peak hour congestion on the Eastside
• Jointly implement adopted priorities through leadership, education, and advocacy within communities, cities and the region
• Adopt and implement a strategy for increasing funding for transportation improvements and programs

The ETP is similar in function to the SeaShore Transportation Forum.

The Northshore Parks and Recreation Service Area (NPRSA) is a special tax district established in 1988 for the development and construction of facilities to provide support services for the area's senior residents.  The NPRSA is governed by a seven member Board composed of representatives from the City of Bothell, City of Kenmore, City of Woodinville, King County, and Snohomish County.  

King County Code 10.25.110 established the Metropolitan Solid Waste Advisory Committee (MSWAC). MSWAC (pronounced "miz-wac") advises the Executive, the Regional Policy Committee, acting as the solid waste interlocal forum, and the King County Council in all matters relating to solid waste management. The committee participates in the development of the Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan. The committee consists of representatives from over 23-member cities in King County.

The King County Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan calls for a new recycling and transfer station in the northeast subarea including Redmond, Kirkland, Sammamish, and Woodinville.

The Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) develops policies and coordinates decisions about regional growth, transportation, and economic development planning within King, Kitsap, Pierce, and Snohomish counties. PSRC is composed of over 80 jurisdictions, including all four counties, cities and towns, ports, state and local transportation agencies, and tribal governments within the region. Elected leaders from all jurisdictions direct PSRC's work through annual General Assembly meetings. Each month, a 36-member Executive Board makes decisions on behalf of the General Assembly with the input of several advisory boards made up of local elected officials with support from jurisdiction staff and representation of business, labor, environmental, and community interests, as well as input from the public at large.

In addition to regional planning, a key role of PSRC is to help communities secure federal funding for transportation as PSRC selects projects to receive over $240 million in transportation funding each year. PSRC is also a leading source of data and forecasting that is essential for regional and local planning.

The mission of the SeaShore Transportation Forum mission is to serve as an interjurisdictional forum for information-sharing, advocacy, and coordination to resolve transportation issues, and to establish priorities for implementing integrated multi-modal transportation projects and programs consistent with the goals of the Growth Management Act. The group is comprised of voting and non-voting members representing Lake Forest Park, Seattle, Shoreline, Bothell, Edmonds, King County, the Puget Sound Regional Council, the Washington State Department of Transportation, and Woodinville. Woodinville has a non-voting seat in this group.

SeaShore is similar to the Eastside Transportation Partnership and shares its stated goals.

The Sound Cities Association (SCA) represents 38 cities (all cities in King County except the City of Seattle) and was founded to help cities act locally and partner regionally to create vital, livable communities through advocacy, education, leadership, mutual support, and networking.

The Public Issues Committee's (PIC) primary charge is to review and evaluate policy positions and recommend to the SCA Board what, if any, action should be taken on such policy positions. Each SCA member has one seat and an equal vote at the PIC. The PIC is SCA's vehicle for bringing policies to member cities, and for member cities to bring policies to SCA. The PIC not only evaluates and recommends policy positions, but it also recommends regional committee and board appointments to the SCA Board of Directors.

Many regional boards and committees have seats dedicated to SCA representatives.  SCA has an annual process for filling these seats and have selected Woodinville Councilmembers and Staff to serve on a variety of boards and committees.

In 2016, voters approved the Sound Transit 3 (ST3) Plan which included new Stride Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) service from Woodinville to the South Shoreline Light Rail station along the SR-522 corridor. Both the BRT service and light rail service from Northgate to Lynnwood are scheduled to open in 2024. Sound Transit has worked with the City to determine that reallocating bus service to Woodinville from the SR-522 to 405 corridors will likely be a better use of funds for Woodinville residents.

Several intergovernmental groups were established to develop plans for 522 BRT route and service, including:

• City Manager Group (CMG), consisting of City Managers along the corridor
• Elected Leadership Group (ELG), consisting of elected officials representing jurisdictions along the corridor and other regional and state agencies
• Interagency Group (IAG), consisting of technical staff from relevant jurisdictions/agencies

These groups meet often throughout the year. While Woodinville has a reduced role in these groups due to the likely transition of service hours, there is often still participation by the City.

Watershed Resource Inventory Areas, or WRIAs (pronounced "ry-uh"), are watershed planning areas established by the Department of Ecology. Washington State is divided into 62 distinct WRIAs, each loosely drawn around a natural watershed or group of watersheds.  The City of Woodinville falls within WRIA8 along with 25 other local cities as well as King and Snohomish Counties.

The WRIA 8 Salmon Recovery Council is composed of elected representatives from the local jurisdictions, concerned citizens, scientists, representatives from environmental interests, and state agencies.  Established in 2007 through an interlocal agreement, the Council oversees implementation of the science-based Chinook Salmon Conservation Plan in the Watershed.

Salmon recovery in WRIA 8 is organized around the needs of two distinct chinook populations - Cedar River and Sammamish River - as well as the migratory and rearing corridors used by those populations. Chinook salmon (also known as king salmon) are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Funding for the salmon conservation plan is provided by the 28 local governments in the watershed.

The I-405/SR 167 Executive Advisory Group (EAG) has been advising the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) on the I-405 Corridor improvements since 1999.  EAG members include state and local elected officials, and representatives from federal and regional transit agencies.