City releases online survey about Edmonds welcome sign; next meeting Jan. 10

Here’s your chance to comment on the City of Edmonds’ design development process for the “Welcome to Edmonds” sign located on State Route 104.

An online survey will be available through Thursday, Dec. 20. Following that,  the city has set Thursday, Jan. 10 as its next meeting on the topic. Participants will have an opportunity to comment on several concepts for a replacement sign that will be developed based on community input, the city said.

A final open house will be held Feb. 11.

The city held its first public meeting Nov. 29 (see our report here) to gather ideas about what should replace the badly deteriorated “Welcome to Edmonds” sign on SR 104. Both the Jan. 10 and Feb. 11 meetings will be held in the Library Plaza Room, 650 Main St., at 6 p.m.

The existing sign marks the gateway to downtown Edmonds from 5th Avenue South has been identified for replacement for several years.

  1. I like that we are getting the community involved! I also appreciate the idea of having a “survey” also.
    Having said that, I suspect the survey is going to produce a wild divergent set of replies. It was not an easy survey to complete. The “OK” words made no sense to me as to why they were there.
    Keep up the efforts. We’ll get there.

  2. Love the survey nice work Carrie Hite and company. A few comments, why is the survey end next Thursday? What’s the rush? Also, under traditional sign design examples within the survey, could have included our existing “Welcome” sign as an example as was presented during first open house? This could have been an excellent opportunity to just ask the public if they would like to consider just keeping our existing “Welcome” sign as an option. (July online Poll about 1100 (70%) people voted to keep existing sign to about 400 people who wanted to see it replaced (30%)).
    Anyways, I appreciate the effort and the attempt to engage the public more. The process of who actually in the end decides what design replaces our key landmark of more than 40 years is still very flawed, 11 appointed people in a sign committee ultimately decides on what design alone gets submitted to Council for final approval by just 4 City Council member consensus,
    This has clear conflict of interest as almost all of the 11 appointed sign committee people currently sit on other various boards and commissions, and some work directly for the government, and clearly will have existing relationships with council members and leadership. 15 people alone should not in the end decide replacement of a 40-year key landmark and our marque “Welcome” Sign. This Survey is a great example of how easy it could still be to just post many various design proposals submitted by local artists along with the sign committee created designs and allow us all the same privilege to vote on what we like best, I hope this can still take place even at limited proposals created. I noticed the housing Strategy meeting starts at another location at 7pm, on January 10th, again I will have to choose where my public participation should best be allocated? You know Microsoft outlook was developed in 1992, It’s technology to share universal calendar’s among groups of people to avoid conflicts was way ahead of its time 26 years ago. Hey Director Hope or whoever is responsible for scheduling open to the public meetings, the final “Welcome” sign open house is planned to take place on February 11th at 6 pm, if you want to book this date and time for February’s Housing Strategy meeting, please do so, third time is in fact a charm. To maximize and help define public consensus, government should avoid conflicts of putting local Citizens in dilemma situation of picking and choosing where their participation could or should best be allocated.

    1. Great comments Michael. The city may be planning a sign meeting for Jan 10 and Feb 11, neither appear on the city calendar.

      1. I asked both Carrie Hite and Shane Hope about having these meetings on the same night, as I noticed that earlier this week. (It’s difficult for citizens to attend both, and we have a hard time covering two different meetings on the same night, too.) Carrie Hite apologized for the conflict, adding the city works to schedule around them. “The good thing is that the sign meeting starts at 6, and last time our meeting only lasted about an hour. So, those folks that would like to attend both could possibly come to the sign meeting at 6, and make their way up to the housing meeting at 7. I know this isn’t ideal. We will try to mitigate scheduling conflicts in the future,” she said.
        That said, I can’t speak to why the events aren’t on the city’s calendar.

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