Mayor Schilling feigns surprise over shoreline zoning backlash—despite repeated 2024 warnings. Critics say Burien’s planning failures, bias, and inexperience have triggered yet another crisis, possibly resulting in legal action.
At the end of the council vote to ratify the new upzoning included in the Burien Comprehensive Plan, Mayor Kevin Schilling and several other Councilmembers gave credit to Three Tree Point residents for “ringing the bell” regarding the issues of the 2044 Burien Comprehensive Plan and the 2025 Burien Housing and Zoning Plan. Only Councilmember Stephanie Mora—the lone nay vote—and Councilmember Matta refrained from joining the group expression of shock and wonder at how, as a council, they could have missed the community’s concerns or the environmental issues involved.
“This was completely false,” according to members of the Lake Burien Shore Club (LBSC). Members of the neighborhood association told Burien.News that in 2024, before the 2044 Comprehensive Plan was ratified, they presented to both the Council and the Planning Commission a list of significant problems with the Comp Plan and its violations of the Shoreline Management Act (SMA). LBSC board members engaged legal counsel last year to advise them on these matters, which have only worsened in 2025.
The LBSC argued that the Comprehensive Plan and the draft Zoning Plan appeared to conflict with the Shoreline Master Plan (SMP) due to inconsistent wording. This inconsistency constitutes a violation of the Growth Management Act (GMA). It was pointed out that this issue needed to be corrected immediately. It was not. Yet Mayor Schilling, Councilmembers Garcia, Akey, Moore, and Andrade all played the part of surprised innocents.
In one of the comments on the Burien.News recap of the June 30 Burien City Council Meeting, an astute reader wrote:
“One of the major issues in this entire process is that the Director of Community Development (Liz Stead) and the Senior Planner have no prior experience regarding shoreline management, and it is glaringly obvious. At the first meeting of the upcoming Critical Area Ordinance update, the Director said she was looking forward to learning more since she has never worked in this area. So we are all paying for her to learn on the job—at our expense. Most of the elements that people are upset about regarding zoning have to do with errors made by the planning department regarding shoreline management. They will get resolved—it’s just a matter of whether it will be in the City Council or the courts.”
There are many questions in this debacle.
Did the Council get rolled by a progressive city staff and Planning Commission? After the mass resignation of the Planning Commission a year ago, the City Council chose to fill the vacancies with members who largely reflected the same mono-viewpoint. Rather than seeking a commission representing a range of viewpoints and giving voice to the city’s diversity, only left and progressive voices were appointed. Once again, a progressive was selected as chair.
As with the previous commission, this has led to poor outcomes. Not a single moderate-right or conservative applicant received a vote for appointment. Could the City Council’s left-leaning bias have blinded them and set the stage for this crisis? How long will residents be asked to endure annual upheaval caused by city staff or council missteps?
The Mayor now claims they want to work this out with the affected communities.
2 Responses
Let’s all work it out? How about do it right the first time? Know the job
Maybe contractors are donating to his campaign so he will get them more work.