Lynnwood court to vacate 3,000-plus Blake drug cases; Northline Village hits cost hurdles

With a shrinking window to clear thousands of overturned drug convictions and major development plans facing financial strain, Lynnwood officials are up against a pivotal year marked by legal urgency and economic uncertainty. City staff reviewed some of these upcoming matters with the Lynnwood City Council at its March 18 work session meeting. 

State of the Court 

Lynnwood Municipal Court Judge Valerie Bouffiou and other court staff gave the Lynnwood City Council a “State of the Court” presentation Wednesday, reviewing operations from 2025 and priming the Council on what’s next for 2026. 

Lynnwood had 58,128 court filings in 2025, making up 24% of all municipal court filings in Snohomish County, and over $6.3 million in monetary intake, Bouffiou said. The judge spoke to the efficiency of Lynnwood’s court. 

“Our court deals with 143% more cases, we process 85% more revenue with 25% less staff than the average Snohomish County District Court,” Bouffiou said. “We are efficient, we arelean and we are very fiscally responsible.” 

Overall, total filings in 2025 were down 13% from the year prior, according to City documents, with photo and parking enforcement seeing the largest decline at nearly 16%. However, criminal traffic filings (aside from DUIs) were up over 34% and non-criminal traffic infractions were up 48%.

Bouffiou said Lynnwood’s court has been under some additional pressure as a result of changing caseload standards for the County court. Typically, Lynnwood doesn’t handle felony cases, passing them on to the County. However, due to budget and staffing challenges, the County changed its charging standards and no longer handles certain felony cases, including shoplifting cases under $3,000. 

“All of these cases are now getting kicked down to our court,” the judge said, along with some stolen vehicle and harassment cases. 

Despite operating on a lean budget, the court is up against some major projects in 2025 and 2027. The state previously allocated $51 million for Blake case refunds to repay individuals for legal costs and other resources after the state overturned certain drug convictions in 2021. However, that funding shrunk to $8 million in the 2025-27 budget and is set to end entirely after that, which will putthe burden onto local courts. This means Lynnwood’s court has until 2027 to vacate about 3,100 Blake drug cases dating back to 1989 before they become responsible for refunding any remaining cases. 

“As a matter of increasing access to justice, we are on our own going to be moving forward with vacating these convictions,” Bouffiou said. “We’re not going to wait for people to go to legal aid organizations… we’re going to tackle this on our own.” 

The court will contact these individuals and point them to where they can request a refund from the state before the money expires. 

“We’re hoping that spending time vacating these convictions is going to restore access to opportunity for these individuals,” she said. 

Bouffiou also shared information about youth engagement projects the court is undertaking. In 2026, Lynnwood High School was one of two Washington schools selected to receive funding for a national Street Law program, which brings judges and legal professionals into high school classrooms to reach law and civics. Bouffiou said she’s been working with educators at the high school and Seattle University to develop the program, expected to launch for the 2027-2028 school year. 

View the full report here. 

Housing and development project report 

Lynnwood Development and Business Services Director Ben Wolters and City Planning Manager Karl Almgren updated Councilmembers on housing and development projects occurring in Lynnwood, covering both private and public developments. 

An average of 595 multi-family units (apartments or townhome complexes) were completed in Lynnwood in 2025, per City documents. With current projects, there are more than 1,900 units in Lynnwood scheduled to be occupied within the next five years. City documents say that more than 1,400 of those are for mixed-use housing.

Further, there are about 122 “middle housing” units – such as duplexes and accessory units – in the works throughout Lynnwood, bolstered by recent zoning code updates that are prompting the market to build smaller, more affordable 1,500- to 1,900-square-foot homes, Almgren said. 

Other notable projects include: 

• Scriber Place, 5801 194th St.S.W.: A 52-unit Housing Hope project under construction, in collaboration with Edmonds School District, for McKinney-Vento students experiencing homelessness. The project is heavily supported by state and local grants, Almgren said. 

• Apollo Scriber Lake, 5707 1998th St. S.W.: 173 affordable housing units for those earning below 60% of the Area Median Income (AMI). 
• 200th Street HASCO apartments: 124 units, split between 60% AMI housing and senior housing, being built by the Snohomish County Housing Authority. 
• Alliance Place, 200th Street Southwest and 46th Avenue West: Sound Transit’s transit-oriented development (TOD) site, which will feature 167 affordable units and require the daylighting of a stream.
• Edmonds Commons, 20305 68th Ave. W.: A 68-unit, student-focused housing development near Edmonds College that’s currently under planning review.

However, Almgren said the highly anticipated Northline Village project set for the core of the future City Center is facing hurdles. Almgren said high construction costs are causing delays in preliminary site work, causing the developers to reconsider parts of early development. 

“There’s a great deal of uncertainty and some of this post-COVID market that has left not enough room in the rental capacity of our Lynwood market to be able to overcome that,” Almgren said. 

Developers are still moving forward with other project phases, but they identified the new sewage connection charges approved by the Council last year as a barrier. Despite the hurdles, the City is actively working with them to solidify the development agreement and help move the project ahead. 

Council Vice President Derica Escamilla expressed frustration over the delay, saying, “The people care more about Northline Village than a lot of these other projects… we’re being held hostage here. How can we help this project move along?”

To assist developers citywide, DBS is exploring the possibility of delaying impact fee collections until a project receives its certificate of occupancy, lowering carrying costs during construction. However, Wolters defended the City’s recent permit fee increases, attributing them to the high-quality customer service developers receive from the city’s permitting department. DBS is also developing a pre-approved plan program for detached single-family homes to help residents avoid contractor scams and accurately estimate costs. 

The full meeting agenda and recording are available at the City’s website. 

— Contact Ashley at ashley@myedmondsnews.com.