Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome everyone. I call the April 15, 2026 planning commission meeting to order. The main purpose of tonight's meeting is to hold a study session on the affordable housing codes update project. Before we move on to agenda items, I'd like to acknowledge our hybrid meeting format. City of both is providing the option to attend this meeting either in person or remotely via Zoom. For those participating via Zoom, the chat and question functions are not available to ensure compliance with the open public meetings act. We have a public comment agenda item at the beginning of the meeting. Please limit all comments to three minutes. Please note that the city of both does not tolerate verbal harassment. Please remember this during your comments. Public comment will be allowed both in person and via Zoom. Those wishing to comment via Zoom were asked to submit an online form by 3 p.m. today. People wishing to submit comments were also asked to submit those comments by 3 p.m. Email was encouraged as well and will be acknowledged. Those in attendance may also make comments and have been asked to indicate their desire to comment on the sign-in sheets at the at the door. The Imagine Both Notice, the city website, and tonight's agenda all provided information to the public for providing comments. The video of this meeting will be streamed live as well as recorded and available for later viewing on the city's YouTube channel. Call-in number was provided on the meeting agenda for members of the public who wish to call in by phone to listen live to the meeting. For our phone callers during staff presentation, staff will make every effort to specify which materials they are referencing so that everyone can follow along. This point I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the attendance of the commissioners. Uh, Commissioner Jones is absent and excused. Commissioner Westerbeck

here. Commissioner Lever here. Commissioner Robson here. Commissioner Sills is absent and excused. Commissioner Gustiffson here.

All right. In addition, community development staff in attendance include Deputy Director Gates and senior planner Ray Sosa. Lastly, before we begin, I'd like to reiterate some meeting guidelines. For all meeting attendees, please speak clearly and pause frequently. Please state your name each time before speaking and mute your microphone when not speaking. If there is if you are also streaming the live video feed, please turn the sound off as there is a delay. For commissioners at specific breaks in the presentation, I'll be calling on members who wish to speak or ask a question. If you want to speak, please indicate this by raising your hand. I will call on you as I see you. This will avoid the problem of having two people speaking at the same time. Identify yourself before you ask a question, make a motion, second a motion, or participate in debate. Please mute your microphone when not speaking. First item on the agenda is public comment. The city has ex accepted visitor comment in writing as well as accepted signup sheets for those who wish to speak at tonight's meeting. Those wishing to speak will have three minutes. Written comments submitted to staff no later than 3 p.m. today were forwarded to all commissioners and are part of the record. We do not have any attendees in the audience and

and there are no in the virtual audience. None in the virtual audience and there were no comments forwarded to us. So, no public comments to begin this meeting. With that, we move on to our next item, which is the approval of the April 1, 2026 minutes. Is there a motion to approve those minutes? Commissioner Westbeck, I move to approve the minutes as written. All right. It's been moved to approve the minutes as written. Is there a second? It's an easy one. Um,

Commissioner Lever, uh, second. It's been moved and seconded that we accept the minutes as submitted. Any discussion around those minutes? Seeing none, all in favor of the minutes, please indicate by saying I. I. Minutes are approved as submitted. Our next item on the agenda is a study section on the affordable housing code update project. And senior planner Sosa, you want to lead us through this?

Thank you. Yes. So, let me go ahead and get this ready. Um, and I have a script um to make sure I don't go off track here and make sure I can say what I need to say. So, I'll be reading from that. Uh, thank you, Planning Commission, for being here this evening. Um, tonight I'm here to talk about the proposed changes to our BMC 127 affordable housing code. Tonight's conversation is picking up where we left off last month in March when I gave an update to the broader when I gave an update about the broader housing action plan and from our promises to the commission to revisit this topic after a public hearing back in November of last year. We presented our first update to the affordable housing code. So for planning commission, no action is required tonight. This evening we are presenting to you all a list of potential development standards and process focus incentives um process focus incentives to be included in the BMC 127 affordable housing code. Staff is seeking planning commission's feedback and direction that will support future steps as we move forward with the proposed incentives including a potential shift from voluntary to mandatory. These are questions I'll be asking the planning commission to consider tonight for our discussion. Please keep this in mind as I go through the presentation. I won't read them out loud, but you can find these questions in your packet as well as I go through the slides. So, I want to give a little background on how why we're doing this work on the 2018 housing strategy in the 2024 comprehensive plan as well as very prominent headlines in the news these days identify that housing affordability is an issue for many residents in Basel and Americans as a whole. Housing is considered affordable when an individual or household spends no more than 30% of the gross income on rent or mortgage payments. Through the comp plan, we found that nearly half of renters in Basil are spending more than 30% than rent. In some cases, up to 60% of their income on rent. We also know that with rising interest rates and house values, home ownership feels out of reach for many young families and longtime renters. While Balt is seeing a high volume of housing being created, the majority of these homes are market rate and out of budget for individuals and

families making less than 80% of the AMI. In plain English, most individuals not in extremely highpaying and lucrative jobs are unable to afford a home in our community without some form of financial assistance from family or just very good fortune. Our current mandatory incentives that came from 2018 housing strategy and were implemented shortly after in 2018 with an update in 2021. These mandatory incentives are in geographically small overlays of several downtown zoning categories. They had not produced any affordable units since being implemented. To rectify that, staff took the first path in introducing a more broader and comprehensive incentive program that allows for height and bonus incentives in zoning categories beyond downtown. As of now, there is one market rate project that is looking to take advantage of the new incentives. Staff are proposing the following incentives to be introduced to the BMC 127 affordable housing code. From conversations we have with several developers and from neighboring jurisdictions, these items rose to the top of the list as incentives that staff feel confident in exploring further and refining them to make them ready for adoption later this year. Staff also feels that introducing these incentives as mandatory if the planning commission and city council encourage it will provide a great enough benefit to developers to offset the cost of providing muchneeded affordable units in our community. In conclusion, no action is required tonight. I presented on our current and proposed incentives and now I turn to the commission to discuss the following questions

commissioners and if you need me to go back on any slides I'm happy to do that as well. You indicate there's one project currently underway under the incentives. One project that's proposed to take advantage of the incentives. Yes. It's in the 120th North Creek area just across the Home Depot in that wedge shaped parcel where Dandelions is. So that's a lot of units. Yeah. Yes. It's about 230 proposed units with 10% set aside meaning that about 23 units will be created.

Yeah. Because Mr. Westerback seems like the projects with volume can do you know affordable housing more easily and where I see that the challenges are with the the medium and small projects and to to that end I made a note just from my experience um right now uh it's it's hard to even deliver like middle housing that's market rate um and that is um having just gone through this that's even um keeps the developer builder um in in the black as it were and not in the red even at um non uh 80% AMI rates and it's just very discouraging. So I'm really excited to see you know some more ideas here. I had a lot of notes. Um, one principle I just wrote down is something I experienced a lot just um just trying to reduce the regulatory friction. Um, and then and you've got ideas in here that'll do that. So, just that as a principle like what is what are all these little things that are causing housing in general, but in particular affordable housing too, to not pencil out because all these the out they all add up. Um, and uh, so I loved going through this because, for example, I've got a bunch of notes for when we eventually talked about the the downtown sub area um, and design guidelines and and things like that. And some of these start to touch on that. I had notes I've made for several years now about the open space requirements. Who doesn't love open space? It's wonderful. Um, and balconies and things like that there. But I've noticed um that it it can make projects really difficult to design to fit on a smaller or medium-sized lot. Uh and so reducing or eliminating those will result in

making that housing a little easier to build. In particular downtown like where I live um you know you're you're never that far from a park. Um, and I think about like when I walk around Capitol Hill, um, places like that, there's all these wonderful little 10, 12, 20 unit buildings. They don't have balconies. They don't have roof decks. They might have a little courtyard, which is really cool. They don't have parking because they were pre-parking and people love them. um because the neighborhood is the amenity and having it right on the street, you know, next to other buildings like that and maybe some place to walk to and you know they rely on parks and and public spaces and stuff like that. So if we can be thinking about that um like do do people really have to have expensive balcony, the open space, whatever. So, I think I'm I'm glad to see that here because as as as wonderful as they are, they're um the way we're asking for them in the city of Bathl is often very, as I've said kind of before, sort of suburban coded like like we have tons of space and money for everything we want under the sun. And we just we can't always do do that. And I think a lot of people would much more appreciate like an affordable rent in a good location that doesn't have a balcony or doesn't have a patio or something like that, but they have a nice little apartment to to come home to. Um and so waving or consolidating private into public open spaces is something I'd be very interested in looking at um as planning commission. Um so that's great. Um just going through some of these things you guys wrote down. Um and then um the uh reduce setbacks. Uh I like that a lot. Um I mean that I think about places many of us go vacation whether it's Europe or New York or a cute town on the water somewhere. Um, we also we often love them because they don't have setbacks and they have buildings side by side. It's like a Brooklyn kind of place or something, Mexico City, whatever. Um,

and so, um, much like the downtown core, uh, zoning for the downtown, uh, core zoning here in downtown sub area, it just says use the, um, use the building code if I recall correctly, which I think that's what we should be doing where where we where we really want to encourage housing to be built. you use the fire separation distance instead of setbacks and leave it at that for windows, doors, uh, and and things like that. Let people use and then also the like we talked about here and changes we made here as planning commission. We said we we got rid of the, um, the structural coverage along with impervious and we went with just impervious if I can recall correctly. that'll dictate uh that okay, we've got to have some set back in the back and we can be like a lot of the the big cities of the world and say all right why don't you put the building up to the front if you want you can put it all the way to the sides you're going to have to have some impervious and so you can put it at the back if you want with your parking or on the alley or you can make a really nice little garden whatever um and then let let them determine how to do that. Um, that's what a lot of the the best big urban cities of the world do. Um, allow to be no setbacks front and sides. So, I'm just saying yes to all these. Sorry, clear my throat today. Um, so yeah, increasing maximum impervious surface coverage. Understanding of course that storm water is a major issue. We and we can't just, you know, toss that aside. We have to deal with that. And I know we've dealt with that in planning commission before like you got to figure out that engineering somehow. reducing minimum lot size in the in the larger um zoning uh lot areas like RL2 and RL1 seems like a good idea. Uh same with floor area ratio, increasing that. Um and then one thing I had to say about the the height, I always love that, you know, people can go up a a story. I always want to to be aware that it adds a fair amount of

cost. Sorry, excuse me. Um and then once you go basically it varies a little bit but you get beyond four stories you're looking at elevators which massively increase cost. Now we are we're going to get a little relief with with the new legislation allowing smaller elevators but they're still going to be very expensive. So it's not always the the the bonus that we hope it will be. Um so a lot of buildings without elevators going to be kept to three stories because of that. Um, and then in places that have, and we can get to this when we get to sub area, downtown sub area eventually, so I won't go into this at great length, but we have a lot of design guidelines that that make um, affordable housing more difficult. Some of them I've already discussed here. Um, so those are just some thoughts. We can always dig into it more, but those are some of the notes I had from the uh, the materials you guys provided today. Thanks. Other commissioner comments commissioner lever. Um

commissioner lever here. So my my comments are not so much on the technical components which I definitely see that's been kind of covered in terms of you know how to incentivize the developer to come in but I really struggle with sort of thinking of the implementation and the application of that because even when you do modify your soning codes then there's the reality of the financing issues that we're seeing around housing and also the nimbism that does exist. So, how do we um account for that knowing that that is a barrier and then what does that really look like within the incentives? Um so, and I really don't have a I guess a recommendation for that. But I definitely see this as another is like we we I keep seeing the same issue problem and the same solutions. So I I really struggle with how technical things are without really taking under consideration the entire um I guess network of issues that we have. So my I guess maybe I do have a question. So when it comes to making these changes and deciding uh which incentives to put forward like how do you take under consideration implementation and then the you know what would gain more support when and if a project does come forward because as we see they just don't come forward as much and then when they do like nimism does take over.

Yeah. No, I love the question and my mind's going to so many different places here. So to kind of give a brief answer is that long term we'd love to have some mechanism, some funds, something which we could help developers, you know, close the last gap to get these affordable units created. Um we're also optimistic and hoping that um the that for financing for developers will just get easier in the coming years. Um we we just want to be optimistic about that, but we know it's it's a hope, right? Um and so there are there are some across the country there are some ways in which city um jurisdictions, states, cities have worked to kind of close that gap as you mentioned um because that is that gap while small is kind of the make or break for a lot of these projects. Um so it is something we'll look into for the long term. For short term, I think, you know, we'll ask the community in the summer when the housing action plan draft gets fully released, we'll ask the community to help us priorit help us go through the housing action plan draft goals and objectives and help us prioritize which ones should we start with implementation first. Um because we really want to hear from the community of which um programs that we're focusing on should we start with first implementation. Um, given that I just said that longterm, we'd love to have some kind of fund either from us or from the state or from some other source, whether that be a grant or some low interest or no interest loans from a future government administration, who knows? Um, there's a lot of opportunity out there and we just need to spend more time and we need to look more into it. So, we will look more into it on the road. Um, I worked on a little bit of a program in Pittsburgh kind of doing something of that sort where I would um where developers would pay a fee to build a project in this u village equivalent area with universities and that fee would help um fund other programs in the neighborhood including affordable housing. So, it's definitely doable. It's a model that exists in other cities and it's something we could

look into and yeah, I'll leave it at that.

And I just want to add real quick. So the the question is great and it it sort of straddles the line between the housing action plan and the strategies that we're going to simultaneously be working on uh with these affordable housing codes. So how can we seek out opportunities or at least a strategy is seek out opportunities for funding of projects and that could that could mean a number of things. We still you know don't know what that might look like. um you know the the way in which if we switch from a voluntary to a mandatory affordable housing code we we have to show that a project is equal to or more than feas or better than uh feasible right now you just look at a standard market rate project it's not feasible just the way that the market conditions are nothing's nothing's coming back as feasible for uh uh for returns um so with this list of of potential incentives, we can we can go back and we can say, okay, what's the scale at which we want to talk about hype bonuses or setback reductions and we can list out pros and cons for each one and we'll come back with a more detailed, you know, discussion and probably talk about each topic at at a time and then move on to the next one when when we're talking about scale. And we'll bring in ARCH, we'll bring in planners that are dealing with these on a on a regular basis in our current division to help kind of talk through what that might look like. If you reduce this this much, what will that look like in a in a will it conflict with another another standard? Um, and we'll have to balance, right, the the urban forest management plan and tree retention and and find that find that good good equilibrium there. Um, so there's going to be a lot of work

that'll that this will will create and how we implement it. But we fortunately have the the housing action plan work going on so we can continue with that engagement so we can pull in the information from you know the the guidance from you, the guidance from council um on this list. see if it can pencil out, bring actually bring in the numbers because the state law requires that it it has to be equal to or better than a market rate project if it becomes a mandatory um approach, a mandatory code. Um so I hope that helps kind of give the broad broad picture, but there are strategies that we we hope to to be able to land on. Um, who knows what the future state budgets will look like as all cities are hoping that there's some funding sources that might be out there in the future to help support especially the small and medium projects. Larger ones are more likely to pursue additional incentives like MFTTE. Um, so we can we can definitely work that weave that into the housing action plan strategies that'll will benefit this work and support it and shore it up. Um, but may not be directly, you know, a part of setback reductions or hype bonuses.

Commissioner Robson,

thank you. Um what you said just actually fed really nicely into my question was um can you tell me a little bit about what a mandatory program would look like as opposed to this voluntary um incentives that we're working with now? What would the mandatory mandatory and incentive to me almost seem like conflicting ideas. It's not an incentive if it's mandatory. Um so what does that mean? What do they have to do and what do they get? Yeah, it a mandatory program instead of a incentive, you just you get a a benefit. So you're you're switching the the terminology. So if we if we if we flip the switch and we said it's a voluntary program and it switched to a mandatory with the current height bonus or a modified adjusted height bonus plus some other things that we can tag along to that that make the project work and align with the state requirements. That's what it would look like. the p the percentages would depend, right? If if it's still one per 10, is it is it 12%, is it 15%. What are the AMIs? Um those are some of the the the details. Um and we'll bring back the here's what the the our cohort of cities similar size in the in the area they they have as mandatory affordable housing codes. Our goal is to make something create something that's simple to use, simple to administer, easy to understand, and it's got um not incentives, benefits that make projects work. And then there's also other other tools through balancing action plan that we can hopefully see become part of uh project supporters.

Can I ask just a follow-up question? Um, so do most cities in this area have mandatory benefits uh for their in their um development plan? Most of the arch cities do. Okay. Um, some have had them since the mid9s, some have had them since the early 2000s and kind of bit by bit. Um, and in a varying scale scale depending on areas that they're applicable to. some you know just the higher density areas some high medium down to low density. Yeah.

And one thing I want to add is also that these incentives are constantly being revised given market rate conditions. So for jurisdictions that had it for a long time those codes have gone through many changes um to be um cognizant of devel of the real estate industry and trends and whatnot. So what we propose is not well obviously it's going to go in code but it's not set in stone. Um it can be revised and we can then create a schedule to look at it every x amount of years depending on what we land on. Commissioner wester just a followup question about the mandatory uh is it mandatory only in the zones we already have it or is this like blanket across the city mandatory? I didn't understand that like where we apply it.

It it would depend. So I mean that's that's still a question you know we have it currently the voluntary program RM3 and above right you know which I think Ray had told us had not been yielding much fruit well yes sir

no the voluntary is is that project that I mentioned the one street but the mandatory is only in our downtown well it's in our it's in the downtown zoning category small geographic overlay y very small geographic overlays and in Canyon Park um small geographic overlay in Canyon part the mandatory was not um yielded anything yet and we believe it's mostly because it's a complex code but also because it's so geographically small there just are not enough parcels to take truly advantage of it. Well, that's what I was curious about. So, I think you answered my question, but yeah, whether we'd expand it or not because the mandatory to me is like, well, is that everywhere or is it just mandatory still in just those areas um because we already have that. So, I'm just trying to yeah get a better handle on that over time whether we expand that or not because I I'm always wary of the mandatory. I think the carrot's better than the stick. But I also was like, well, you told us months ago that we've had the in certain incentives in place. Granted, we're making them stronger now uh for months and and it hadn't yielded any projects even in the so it's like oh maybe we're not doing enough. And one thing I didn't mention and and I talked about this last time but um sometimes I think weren't public works isn't aware of how much uh how expensive it is to do all the uh utility upgrades and and furniture improvements. And uh again, I probably said last time I I get it downtown, you're you're going to get the the lights and the nice sidewalk and stuff. You just you're not going to build a downtown without that. But maybe out in the the the less dense areas where we're seeing like metal housing and stuff. Um you know, um for example, sometimes you're you're required to to rebuild a sewer or water line or something. And if it's in reasonably good shape, the code allows our engineers to require you as a condition of permitting to upgrade. Sometimes I think it's upgraded. I've seen this in other cities as well where it was dubious. It was probably not needed, but they knew they could ask you to do that,

so they did. So, I think we might need some better evaluation of that because we're going to have to probably start to have public works meet planning and and council's goals maybe in in a in a middle spot somewhere and do some compromising on that because granted they always want the the most fantastic built environment for us and I love that. Um, but they're also very inflexible when it's like, well, hey, we we want those 10 units or those 20 units, whatever. This is like part of the the affordable housing, you know, people like to attract and we're attracting it and these people want to do a project, but they can't put in the Lamborghini, you know, frontage improvements and they can't realign that sewer or trench that new water line or whatever. And Seattle's had real challenges with this as well because they've been people proposing projects that are maybe worth a couple million dollars and then they've got like a I I kid you not a million dollar a water line that they're being asked to install and it just immediately kills a project. So I just want us to be real cognizant of that. Sometimes it's like, oh, we can build a building, it pencils out, we make a small profit, we can hit a percent, whatever. But public works wants these really, you know, extensive public improvements and they just they just kill projects. So I I just want us to be real aware of that.

Are there commissioners? Yeah, I I look at u the range of incentives and I think it's it's a good list. I pause a little bit about going to zero on the open space requirements. It just feels a little bit like setting up a lesser, you know, and I I recognize you don't need balconies, you don't need bells and whistles and all that, but there are other benefits to some of the open space, making it a little more interesting in the community. uh letting people go out and have a patch of grass for their dog, you know, just I I'd be concerned about going to zero. I don't know that we need to keep things at the highest level in all housing if we're looking for affordability, but I I'm concerned about having one class of housing that has all kinds of amenities and one that has zero. So, um it just struck me a little bit of concern there. Commissioner Robson.

Thank you. I wanted to just toss out um an idea. I don't have no idea how this would work, but um Commissioner Westerbeck at one point mentioned um having fee in lie for some of the um particularly sidewalk projects. I don't know if you cuz we've seen where the sidewalk projects like just go don't go anywhere in front of um buildings and I wonder if there's a way we could tie that in creating a fee in L for um sidewalks so that we can actually complete projects um and working that into um making it more affordable for the builders either like have it be half uh you know half of what it would have cost to put in the actual sidewalk. they pay fee in L or something like that because truthfully just having one little spot of sidewalk isn't doing anybody any favors. So, we might as well just have them do half that and complete a project somewhere else. I'm just I don't know how all the details of tying that all together, but I I'd throw it out there as an idea. Yeah, the sidewalk U issue is I mean we've all seen these segments that'll be a long time before they're commit completed and segments that just dead end that are unusable. So, um, and and I have I've heard the public works discussion of why they like them built with the project because in the long run, you'll have a continuous sidewalk, but in the long run, a lot of us won't be here. So, uh, there's that.

I think, yeah, I absolutely the long run could be a very long run. Um and I think we should also consider that because now that we're implementing you know inclusive um transportation the the bike lane too having a tiny section of bike lane is again like that's useless. So if we can again convert that to a fee in loo um that would be could end up ultimately being a benefit for both the city and um developers. Commissioner Westpec, you go first. No, no, no. I

I actually wanted to say I agree with you, Chair Kieran, on the on the open space. In my notes that I've been working on for a while for when we get to downtown, I actually didn't want to eliminate it entirely. I not to get in the weeds too much. Um, we have a different standard for like um the dimensions of a ground floor patio versus a balcony. And I understand why we have balconies smaller because they're, you know, they're hanging in the air. But um the ground on a small project, small partial is actually almost more precious than airspace. So we have these larger requirements for as if we have so much land to work with. Um and so I I was just when we get to that looking for alignment there like the balcony I mean the ground floor space if they're going to require 5x12 or whatever 60 ft it shouldn't be any bigger at the ground ground plane cuz that's actually really valuable space. So just things like that or like in here the the proposal was to allow them to overlap or or be the same. So for example, I'd love to see like little courtyard apartment buildings with a really cool little courtyard where everyone can come share the space, but that means they don't have a balcony, but they do have a place to go out and kick a kick a ball or something like that because I I live in an urban place. We have a tiny little poster stamp and we actually use it. So I get it in the balcony. So, um I'm very open to those ideas and I think there should be some space, but um it could be shared or it could be individual, whatever. And that we should should make it a little easier to to um to make it equitable no matter which floor you're on in the building. Well, we'll get into that later, I'm sure. And I I think I might be the only one here who was here when we discussed the open house requirements. Were you open space?

That was I actually helped you get on the docket before I was on planning commission because I came in and did public comment on it, but I was not on planning commission then.

Yeah. Anyhow, my my point is that um I don't it it could certainly be improved. There are public open spaces that people don't know are public open spaces. And there's there's one near the pop that's inside that were supposed to have events before co that never happened. I made a point of walking my dog up there once and people look at you like are you allowed to be in here and yes you are and you know other spaces. So, it's a requirement that could certainly be improved, you know, and it's been out for a number of years, and I I think we would benefit by taking a look at what was done and how it could be done better, more effectively, both in terms of use and in terms of cost. So, yeah, change can be good.

I'll mention that staff are working to identify these spaces. Um, and we're also looking at Seattle's model, their POPS program where they map it out for the public to look at, including information about hours and accessibility. Um, because we we would agree as well that we have not um that they're not well advertised and um before we and yeah, we want to try that method before moving anything else. But definitely we have heard that a lot from from residents as well. other comments. Well, well, thank you for bringing this to us. It is a really important topic and I I think I'll speak on behalf of the entire commission, which I do reluctantly, but we all agree that getting affordability is extremely important here and it's become more and more challenging in in this community and in many communities. So taking steps to try to address that I think are one of the best things that we can do as a city. So thank you for bringing it and look forward to seeing more.

Thank you.

Yeah and and thank you. We'll be back with taking this list building it out as I mentioned with some scale options some pros and cons. We'll definitely bring public works we'll bring them into the conversation to to just ask you know are there any opportunities? Um and and then we'll we'll dive into what these what these could look like. And then that helps us set the value amount that the calculation needs to to to consider when we're talking about or if you remove, you know, x% of open space, what does that do for the for the building footprint? And that might add to foot the footprint expansion because the impervious and the setbacks can be adjusted. What could that equal square footage wise? How does that pencil out? Um, and we'll we'll get into the details with um with Arch and with others on proformas and some examples and we'll try to bring examples of existing projects, especially those that people can go walk and walk through and and and touch and and and see, oh, if this didn't have this open space or if this building were a little bit closer to the to the property line, what could that have have been? um and make sure that we're doing something that's that's sensible. Um we're not I think as Ray and I were discussing with others, you know, we don't want to create a a bonus height for height that no one will ever use where you're going to get to the to the max woodframe construction and and bump up to steel. Well, no one's going to do an extra floor in all steel construction. They're going to want to go to a a much higher height. So, we'll make sure that they make some some sense um when we come back.

All right. Thank you. So, I think that brings our study session to a close. Um again, we do appreciate you bringing it to us. Thank you. So, our next item is reports from members. Members, Scotty, Commissioner Lever, uh Commissioner Lever here. Thank you. I appreciate all the uh social media around Earth Day. So I will be clear clearing a blackberry on Saturday if anyone wants to join me at the friends of the North Creek Forest. So but I know that the city is um there many events. So I love that. Thank you. All right. Other reports from members seeing none reports from staff.

Uh just the next upcoming meeting. So May 6th. Uh well two things. Uh, I know she's not attending. Uh, this would have been Commissioner Jones's last planning commission meeting. Uh, her presence will be missed. Staff really did appreciate and just for the record, I want to make sure we get this out there that she understands that we appreciated her her input. I only got to interact with her for a couple years as as did Rey. Um, but always had great great comments and great insight. Um, always very thoughtful and and had a good good calm approach. Um so we will have a new member joining uh next month uh and then we'll go through the the process of selection of chair vice chair. Um next month on the agenda we have uh a study session on refining uh bike parking regulations. So we wanted to come back with that make sure they're they're sized correctly. Um, so we'll have staff bring that and potentially some other items. And that is all we have from staff.

All right. Thank you. We may be going for a record here on a short meeting. So, um, and and I want to echo your comments about Commissioner Jones. Uh, she always made a valuable contribution. So, uh, we enjoyed having her with us and wish her her best in her future endeavors. I will just add on because I wanted to say that um um yeah I she she always had these insightful questions that I would never think of and I was like oh I'm so glad she thought of that. That was such a great question. I never would thought she just thought in a totally different way than me and it was brought such a good you know contrast to the I think every every one of us here hopefully does that but um yeah she'll be missed. I thought that she was a really amazing contributor and um anyway, I wish her well. I know she's got a busy life.

All right, that said, there being no further business, is there a motion to adjurnn? Commissioner Lever, motion to adjurnn. All right, second. Commissioner Robson second. Moved and seconded that we adjourn. All in favor? I. Our meeting is adjourned at 6:41 p.m. As indicated, our ne next meeting will be May 6th. See you there.