Members of the Federal Way Land Use and Transportation Committee voted Oct. 6 to greenlight the design and construction of multiple neighborhood speed reduction projects up to the maximum budget of $100,000.
During discussion, Federal Way City Council members highlighted that all 13 of the proposed project locations had a high volume of school traffic each day, emphasizing improving safety for youth as an important focus of these projects, according to council members.
The next step in the process is to hold a public meeting for any proposed location that has not already had one, Federal Way Senior Traffic Engineer Jason Kennedy said. Each location will have a public meeting. After this public meeting, a ballot will be sent to residents in the appropriate neighborhoods to vote on the proposal.
“The public meeting drives exactly what we want to do,” Kennedy said. “Their input in the public meeting guides … what makes sense. But generally speaking, if people feel they want whatever it is they want within budget of course, and we agree from an engineering standpoint, then that’s what we do.”
During the meeting, members also discussed a proposal to send notice to homeowners with restrictive covenants placed on their properties.
But it was speed reduction projects that were at the core of the discussion. Out of the 55 location studies conducted by the Neighborhood Traffic Safety (NTS) program in the last two years, 13 locations met the NTS criteria to qualify for the speed reduction projects, Kennedy said.
Kennedy estimated that about seven of the proposed NTS projects are possible within the program’s budget, with an average project estimated to cost around $15,000. The standard solution for projects is the installation of a speed hump, but alternative solutions — signage, roundabouts, chicanes, and other options — are available depending on the nature of the location, Kennedy said.
Kennedy noted to the council that any project that cannot be completed during this upcoming construction season due to budget constraints will be reprioritized in the following years. Construction on approved speed reduction projects will begin during summer 2026.
Racial covenants
Following the NTS approval, the council pivoted to discussing racial covenants. Community Development Director Keith Niven presented a list of 288 properties in Federal Way identified in a University of Washington study that may have restrictive covenants on their properties.
According to King County, racial covenants are discriminatory housing practices that restrict who could own properties, often targeting specific races or religions, largely created during the 1930s and 1940s. These covenants are legally void and unenforceable under state law, but still connected to many properties in Federal Way, Niven said. As of 2022, state law authorizes homeowners to remove the discriminatory practices from their property documents.
“A lot of this is about transparency,” Niven said. “We are taking something that has been in the back alcove of people’s properties and bringing it to light. If people choose to ignore it, then they have the choice to do that.”
Councilmember Paul McDaniel pushed to include this discussion before he is no longer on the council, as his term expires at the end of the year.
“If you really want to have a cohesive society where we all come together underneath one banner, you need to clean stuff up,” McDaniel said. “It doesn’t mean eradicate the history, but it does mean you clean up the messes that we’ve made in the past.”
The LUTC committee holds regular meetings at 5 p.m. every first Monday of the month at Federal Way City Hall.
