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Dear City Council Member,
I am a Kirkland resident writing about the tool library contract that will come back to you for final approval. I am asking you to vote against it, and I want to explain why in the Council's own terms.
For two years, the City told us this would work like Shoreline's. On November 5, 2025, the City Manager said plainly, "that's the model that's used in Shoreline," and staff said the $100,000 would be startup funding, with the operation eventually "supported via subscription fees." That comparison is the whole case for this project. It does not survive contact with the facts.
What Shoreline actually is:
— Four public funders launched it — the Washington Department of Ecology ($120,000) and King County Solid Waste ($99,970, applied for jointly by the cities of Shoreline and Lake Forest Park).
— Its operator pays $60,179 a year in market rent in a privately owned building, out of its own revenue.
— That operator was founded in 2008. It spent a decade small enough to file postcard tax returns before it grew into 12 paid staff and 542 volunteers.
— Even with 4,089 members, membership fees cover only about a third of its costs. Grants still make up the largest share, including another $257,828 from King County last year.
What Kirkland approved instead:
— One city, alone, putting in $100,000, with nothing committed by anyone else. On August 5, a councilmember reported that he had called the Kirkland Community Foundation's executive director the day before the meeting and was told the Foundation "has no formal position," has "pledged $0 and contributed $0." Letters of support promised months earlier from neighborhood organizations never materialized.
— An operator that does not legally exist yet, has raised no money, and has sold no memberships.
— Five years in a City building with no rent line anywhere in its budget. In May, staff was asked directly whether proponents assumed zero rent and free space. The answer was, "No promises have been made, no assumptions." The winning proposal assumed exactly that.
The plan's own numbers do not work. In Year 1, $100,000 of $127,000 in projected revenue is the City's check — 79 percent. Nearly half of that check, $42,000, pays a part-time director's salary, rising to $51,050 by Year 5, for what was presented as a volunteer-driven effort. The proposal states that its Year 3 and Year 4 deficits are "intentionally covered by reserves accumulated in Years 1–2" — reserves that are, arithmetically, unspent City money. Year 2 assumes $45,000 in operational grants from no named source. And by the operator's own $80 suggested donation, breaking even requires roughly 1,420 paying households every year; their own best-case projection never exceeds 960.
There is also the building itself. On the night of the vote, the City Manager said, "we haven't done a ton of due diligence," and that staff "just haven't had a chance to really sit down and explore all those issues yet." The last time Kirkland converted a building for a nonprofit tenant — the former PCC space at Houghton Village — code work alone was quoted at $706,550 and budgeted at $800,000, and that bought only a usable shell. This proposal budgets $25,000 for facility improvements.
I understand a tool library is a genuinely appealing idea, and I do not doubt that the people behind it care about this community. But affordability is a real problem in Kirkland, and residents are being asked to fund the operating losses of an organization that has raised nothing, secured no partners, and cannot cover its own costs by its own math — in a building we already paid for. Public money should not underwrite what is, on this record, a personal pet project. If this concept can attract the state, county, and regional partners Shoreline attracted, it will not need to be carried by Kirkland taxpayers alone.
I recognize that Councilmember Prem secured a commitment to tie payments to milestones, and that is a genuine improvement. It is not enough. A milestone schedule paces the spending; it does not fix a business model that never breaks even.
I hope you will vote against the funding of the tool library.
Respectfully,
[Name]
[Neighborhood], Kirkland
Tell Kirkland City Council: Stop the Tool Library Before It Becomes a Permanent Drain on City Money
On August 5, the City Council voted 5–2 to put $100,000 of city money toward a community tool library, and directed staff to negotiate a contract with the only group that answered the city’s request for proposals.
Here is what the council knew when it voted. The Eastside Tool Collective has not raised any money, has not sold a single membership, and has no money in the bank. The Kirkland Community Foundation — which councilmembers had been told for months was behind this — has no formal position on the project, and has pledged $0 and contributed $0. And roughly $42,000 of the city’s $100,000 is budgeted for one salary: an executive director, for something pitched to us as a volunteer effort.
The $100,000 is not the whole bill. The plan also hands this group roughly 1,500 square feet of the old Fire Station 27 building at a nominal rent — the proposal itself suggests $1 a year. By the applicants’ own math, that same space on the open market runs about $3,750 a month, or roughly $45,000 a year. That is a real cost the city absorbs every single year, forever — and the staff memo still tells council the city’s “financial commitment is limited to” the $100,000.
One organization responded to the RFP. One. Councilmember Tymczyszyn, who phoned the Community Foundation’s director the day before the meeting to check the claims, said it plainly: this is “not currently investable” — and “I don’t think $100,000 will be the end of this. I think we will get a lifetime subscription of supporting this tool library.”
The vote authorized negotiations — not the contract. The contract still has to come back to the City Council for approval, so there is still time. Tell the Council to stop this before $100,000 and a rent-free city building become a permanent line item.