FHNA members’ Meeting and Board Elections – January 18, 2023

Here’s summary of what happened at the meeting:

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• Board elections: FHNA’s current board members and a new addition, Susan Carlson, were elected unanimously by acclamation. The board members and their terms are listed above.

 

• We’re especially pleased that Susan Carlson has joined as a director. She took the spot on the board recently vacated by Emily Mrowicki (our new project manager – see below!). Susan has an extensive background in environmental advocacy and education, and she was instrumental in launching the St. Edward Environmental Education and Research Center at St. Edward Park. You can read her and the other board members’ bios here.

 

• FHNA’s new project manager – Emily Mrowicki: We announced at the meeting that FHNA has engaged a project manager to help us ramp up our environmental and community engagement activities. We’ve known for some time that to serve Finn Hill we need more than just volunteers. Fortunately, some generous donors stepped forward with funds specifically for a part-time manager. And Emily was the perfect choice. She has a passion for the natural environment and has been a valuable member of our board since joining it in 2022. Her bio appears at the end of the director’s bios. Regrettably, Emily didn’t come to our meeting because she came down with COVID earlier that day, but she sent us this video introducing herself. 

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• Park funding ballot measure: Hillary de la Cruz from the City’s Parks and Community Recreation Department gave us an overview of the work that’s being done by the Parks Funding Exploratory Committee (PFEC) to prepare recommendations to the City Council for a park funding measure to be voted on Kirkland citizens in November. The PFEC is looking at plans for an aquatic and recreation center as well as other park projects and programs – including the Finn Hill Green Loop.

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• Council member Kelli Curtis, the Council’s representative on the PFEC, and Council member Amy Falcone, a Finn Hill resident, were in attendance and answered questions from the audience. Several Finn Hill PFEC members were at the meeting, too. You can watch Hillary’s presentation on our video of the meeting (beginning at 18:45) and you can look more closely at her slides here. We plan to email updates about the PFEC’s activities in February.

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• 2019-2022: We briefly touched on FHNA activities during the pandemic. These are summarized in our 2019-2022 report. A notable accomplishment was preserving 7 acres of green space on Juanita Drive, just south of the lacrosse field in Big Finn Hill Park. FHNA hosted a celebration with the City of Kirkland and King County, who partnered on purchasing the land, in May last year. A short video of the event can be seen here. Read more about the acquisition on our Green Loop webpage.

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• 2023 objectives: Board members concluded the meeting by reviewing FHNA’s objectives for the coming year. See the slides accompanying their remarks here.