Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everyone. I call the May 20th, 2026 Planning Commission meeting to order. The main purpose of tonight's meeting is to hold a public hearing and consider the findings, conclusions, and recommendations of the zoning map refinements, as well as hold the study sessions for the PROS plan update and the housing action plan update, and a procedure code update. Before we move on to agenda items, I'd like to acknowledge our hybrid meeting format. The City of Bothell 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 for use 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 Bothell does not tolerate verbal harassment. Please remember this during your comments. Please note if you wish to make comments during the zoning map refinements scheduled for public hearing, please make those comments during that specific hearing so that they will be part of the hearing record. 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 written 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. The Imagine Bothell notice, 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. A call-in number was provided on the meeting's agenda for members of the public who wish to call in by phone to listen live to the meeting. For our phone-in callers during staff presentations, staff will make every effort to specify which materials they are referencing so everyone can follow along. At this point, we will take a moment to acknowledge the attendance of the commissioners. Commissioner Kiernan is absent and excused. Commissioner Morales?

Here.

Thank you. Commissioner Westerbach?

Here.

Commissioner Lever? Here. Commissioner Sills?

Here.

Commissioner Gustafson?

Here.

And I am Chair Robson, and I am also here. In addition, community development staff in attendance include... Hi. Deputy Director Goetz, and Planners Eric Jasiewski, Ray Sosa, Jacqueline Sampson, and Katie Postler, as well as Parks and Staff Erin Milner. Park Staff Erin Milner. Lastly, before we begin, I'd like to reiterate some meeting guidelines. For all meeting attendees, please speak clearly and pause frequently. State your name each time before speaking. Mute your microphone when not speaking. If you are also streaming this video live feed, please turn off the sound as there is a delay. At specific breaks in the presentation, I will be calling on members who wish to speak or ask a question. If you want to speak, please indicate this by raising your hand and I will call on you as I see them. This will help avoid the problem of two people speaking at the same time. Identify yourself before you ask a question, make a motion, or second a motion, or participate in debate. Please mute your microphone when not speaking. The first item is public comment for any item not on tonight's agenda. The City has accepted visitor comment in writing as well as accepted sign-up sheets for those who wish to speak at tonight's meeting. Those speaking will have three minutes. Written comments submitted to the staff no later than 3 p.m. today were forwarded to all Commissioners and are part of the record. Oh, I'm not sure. Are there comments received?

Staff received one comment from Shannon Labarge, which was forwarded to the commission earlier this afternoon.

Thank you. If there's anyone, if there are any Zoom commenters, we will call on them one at a time for comments up to three minutes.

And there are two individuals in the Zoom waiting room. Give them a second here to indicate with the raise hand function if they would like to make comment on this at this time. And I don't see anything. Okay.

Okay. The next item on the agenda is the approval of the May 6th minutes. Is there a motion to approve? Commissioner Sills?

Commissioner Sills, I move to approve the minutes. Thanks.

Commissioner Westerbeck, I second the motion.

It has been moved and seconded. Any discussion? Okay. In that case, let's take a vote. I'm sorry. In that case, let's vote upon the minutes. All the ayes, thank you.

Aye.

Thank you. Are there any nays? Okay, looks like we are unanimous. Motion has been approved for the minutes to be approved. And we will now move on to the public hearing portion of our meeting. Is there anyone who in the audience today who would like to speak during the public hearing? Okay. In that case, are there any attendees over Zoom this evening who would like to speak during public hearing?

There are no individuals indicating a desire to speak.

Okay. Thank you. I will now close the public hearing. And staff may continue with findings, conclusions, and recommendation discussion portion of this item.

Thank you, Chair and Commissioners. Good evening. My name is Eric Ciesiewski, Long Range Planner with the Community Development Department. I'm here to present on the zoning map refinements proposal that was held for public hearing and it's for your final consideration today. Two actions for the Planning Commission, one of which the chair held earlier, a public hearing, as well as the second action is to hold a vote on recommending the proposal to city council. Some background on this proposal for you first. In 2024, the city's comprehensive plan was updated through a multi-year process involving extensive public engagement. It included changes to the future land use map for the city and the zoning map which implemented those changes at the property level. These changes included revisions to land use and zoning designations that applied new mixed use overlay zones and new residential zones across thousands of acres in the city. At that time, the effort involved a lot of changes and updates and things. And so as would be expected, some minor areas were missed and overlooked at that time. Those inconsistencies were discovered in the intervening years, which is why we are here today to fix some of those. Staff developed. the changes before you in response to those inconsistencies discovered. They help to increase regulatory clarity, better align the adopted land use map in the comp plan with the city's zoning that it applies on a day-to-day basis. There are seven general locations where the zoning maps are being corrected in the proposal. These proposed corrections involve either applying new zones to allow mixed uses consistent with previously adopted mixed use overlays, or applying zones that were unintentionally omitted in the 2024 update, or striking out old zone names that were missed at that time. recommendations result from a comprehensive review of the city's current zoning maps for inconsistencies and omissions and you can see that these all in more detail in your packet attachment one to this item We, as is typical for any type of changes to development regulations or adopted plans, we followed a basic consultation and review process, primarily relying on the extensive public engagement done for the comprehensive plan and trying to keep it minimal and consistent with that effort. The basic approach, we came to Planning Commission on February 4th for a study session to review the proposed changes, if you recall. There was also a staff briefing made to City Council on those same changes on April 14th. During, it was either City Council or Planning Commission meetings, we received a question about one of the areas, and I wanted to clarify that today, Area 5 in your Attachment 1. There was a question as to why the RM1 was being applied on that that purple half on the top part of the image where it says NBMUN Question as to why this why staff didn't apply RM2 because it was such as the surrounding zone or RM3 the other surrounding zone and It's a pretty simple answer the We wanted to keep it consistent with that southern part of the purple area, which is currently designated RM1. And it's a little hard to see, but there's an overlap there just right sort of where they intersect. So we didn't want to have this property on the southern part of 220. I can't quite read the street. name, but 220, thank you. Didn't want to have a split zoning on that property, so just trying to be consistent with these two purple zones, essentially.

Sorry for the long answer.

Okay. After these consultation and review activities, there were no subsequent changes made to the draft proposal before today. The chair held the public hearing, and so we'll move on to the findings. This is all pretty boilerplate. The following slides just reproduce what's in your packet. The sections or the chapters to be amended, that staff followed procedural requirements, statutes and laws, and making conclusions that were correcting issues and errors, all that I've discussed. So this is the proposed recommendation for Planning Commission to consider. Again, that's in your packet. And I'm happy to go through all these. I know there's a lot of text there. So I'm just trying to keep it short and sweet. Given that this is a routine cleanup item with no substantive changes, no major substantive changes, staff recommends Planning Commission approves the findings, conclusions, and recommendations before you today. After that vote, depending on whether it's approved, approved with revisions or deny, your recommendation will be sent to city council and they will be holding another public hearing on June 2nd and final consideration June 16th. That concludes my presentation. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. We need to come to a decision on the recommendation. Is there any discussion? Yes, Commissioner Gustafson.

Sarah Gustafson here. I believe that some of the stories behind these parcels have already been discussed, but I would love to get a refresher on areas one, two, and three around the Brickyard and Norway Hill area. I'm curious about the inconsistencies. Is it because that this area was more recently Annexed as part of the city proper that we have these inconsistencies or what might be the other ideas behind that Absolutely we can look into them in detail here.

Let me just get my slides ready for you Okay, so area one, here shown at the corner of 145th and Juanita Woodlands Way. Let's see, what was the... So this was a case where the city adopted a mixed-use MUN overlay, which was a mixed-use neighborhood overlay. And the intention of that is to allow both commercial and residential uses. However, there's not really any legal use allowances with MUNs. So the intention was to put some sort of R zone here with the NB, which is a commercial zone, I should mention. So that was the RM4. Again, I think in this case, consistency with that adjacent RM4 was the decision. Does that make sense?

Any questions on that?

I think I have the, yeah, here's the original zoning. So just matching that R zone above. This is the old code. Area two. Same situation here as well. So the MUN is the overlay with no legal teeth. So in this case, the residential zone was there, but the commercial zone was omitted. So adding that NB is the commercial zone. Again, consistency between the two. And I think I have the old zone here having that residential. It's the R5400A, that long one. And then area three, per the commissioner's request, this is somewhat similar. We had the mixed use overlay. But in this case, it was actually to carry forward some of the original zoning that was left out. And this would be the little corner, Juanita Woodlands, the northeast corner, and 160th, so that's RAC, OP, and B, and you can see in the current zoning, RAC is there, but OP and B is not, so it was to carry those original zones forward, not really the intention, again, not to make anything more restrictive or more permissive, just sort of status quo, so.

Commissioner Gustafson here. Would you remind me again, OP?

Office Professional, I believe. Yes.

Perfect. Thank you. That really is interesting. Appreciate the background.

You're welcome. Commissioner Laver.

Commissioner Lever, thank you very much. So I want to first thank you for the images. I know this is something that I would typically ask. It's just kind of really getting a visual, so I was very, very happy to see those. The other comment that I have preluding my question is the agenda was released on Friday, if I'm not mistaken, and then this is a pretty large packet. And even though it's just clarifying and then really making sure that we are in alignment with their regulatory requirements and everything that we're trying to do here. I just keep on thinking how complex these materials are and how misunderstood this subject can be and I just really wonder how are we communicating this to the community to make sure there's an understanding of what this truly means in terms that can be digested because a package of this size it's just not digestible for less than a week. The other sort of like comment around that is on this zone, so the different uses. So I couldn't quickly like find that, okay, this is a neighborhood business. Like I just, it was kind of hard for me, like assuming that we're gonna know, and then I just keep on thinking of people who may not even be in this space. If I feel overwhelmed, I can even begin to imagine. So, with all of that said, my question is very simple, and it has a lot to do with what I've been hearing on the news that may not necessarily apply to us, but I have to bring it up as we're looking at zoning maps, which is data centers and AI. I wonder if with all these changes and the clarifications that we're doing, if and when if that would even be a possibility for us, would we ever be appealing to a developer? And if so, just for the record, like are we, is this something that, are the zoning clarifications that we're making give room for Potentially having some sort of type of like data center here because it is so Contagious is and I just kind of really wonder like if that really really heavy topic will ever make it here, which is not necessarily Related to the clarifications because when it comes to the clarifications has been a really steady process But do we have anything a data center what Sony use? Would it qualify for and then do we have that in here? Is that even something that we'll ever have to think about?

I would have to call an audible to my deputy director on that one.

Yeah, happy to chime in. I mean, these updates are really all code cleanup from the comp plan work. So the maps that Eric showed of what the zoning was before, how the intent was to take the, whether in this case, the residential, the RAC, which had the office professional and the neighborhood business within it, And when we created all of the new zoning, we just forgot to include those in the dark purple section of this map. So we're just making it right by what the original policy conversations were for each of these maps. And Eric's done a great job of making sure that information is available and out there following the required public noticing requirements through the Department of Commerce. As far as the data centers go, it's a specific use that we haven't seen come forward. It would have to go through the allowed use process. We could look into more specifically your question on where in the city one might be possible to be built, but we don't have a data center use listing within our code. So I understand the concern. having seen the stories out there. But from this project, making sure that these are maintaining the consistency of what was there before, making sure that they are neighborhood business, the policies within the comp plan, You know, neighborhood business scale is smaller, so it's small stores, offices, not industrial-size facilities, which is what we tend to see in the headlines. We can circle back with you and provide the Commission any additional information on that. But as far as how this project goes, it's not a focus of it. just making sure we're maintaining that consistent approach from before.

Thank you. So with with that understanding I did see the public comment which is not Which is anecdotally what I keep on hearing time and time again that these changes are really potentially going against the bottle that we want to see as it relates to losing tree canopy and then not really thinking of the neighborhood that we want to retain in terms of like the What bottle means to people who have been living here for quite some time? so I Don't have any comments as it relates to the clarifications, but I do have a comment as it relates to the process itself and also the way that we communicate it. The idea to bring the data center piece knowing that it is not inclusive of this one, but it's again something that does touch on it, and then I definitely appreciate the opportunity to better understand what use that will be, where could that potentially happen, and I know there are different I guess, requirements. We can have a corner. Like, I mean, I'm not that IT person, but my goodness is really like out there. So thank you. And I really look forward to seeing how these clarifications will turn into development projects. And then hopefully then people will support them too.

Commissioner sales.

Yeah. Commissioner sales. Um, do you expect additional code cleanup or do you feel like you have scrubbed the entire zoning map and found it all? Because I, from what I understand, these were identified from people reaching out and being confused, right? But has there been a look at all the zones or or do you think we'll find more?

I, as a bureaucrat, I never say never, but my deputy director handled this through sort of the review process.

We had multiple staff scour the map with sticky notes, making sure everything made sense, because really looking for kind of this example again, It's a residential activity center with a mixed-use overlay, but the overlay has, as Eric says, no teeth. It needs the multiple zones in there. And we have continued to say that we'll be coming back with a code cleanup for the alphabet soup to something a little bit more streamlined. That is still on the back burner. But as far as we can find, we have scrubbed the map and found every Clarification that was necessary from the 24 comp plan and associated development regulation updates Seeing no other comments I Guess we are ready to move on.

Is there a motion on staffs recommendation?

Commissioner Lever, I motion to approve as written.

Okay, we have motion.

Commissioner Morales, I'll second.

As motion and seconded. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye. Probably too late, but Commissioner Westerberg, clarification, we're voting on the findings and conclusions and recommendations and to adopt them as written. Okay.

Yes, thank you. Yes, on the staff recommendations.

Great, thanks.

As written. Yes, thank you. Okay. Let's do it one more time just for good measure. All those who approve, say aye. Aye. Okay. I have to say it anyway. All those against, say nay. Okay, the ayes have it. Thank you so much. Thank you for your presentation today and your patience. Okay. Our first study session this evening is going to be from Nick Stoop, the Director of Parks and Recreation, and Erin Milner, Parks Planning and Development Manager. They're here to tell us about the PROS plan. Thank you, Director Stoop and Manager Milner.

Well, thank you, commissioners, and we're very excited to be here tonight to talk about our Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Plan, which is an effort that we've been working on for quite a while now. Tonight with me, I have Aaron Milner. He is our planning and development manager, and he's been the project manager for our PROS plan, and he has a presentation for you, and then we're available to answer any questions that you may have.

Good evening commissioners tonight. We're talking about the 2026 pros plan update is last updated in 2020 There's no action required for today, so this is just purely informational We'd be curious to hear any feedback or input you have on the plan after the presentation and happy to clarify anything within the presentation So just really briefly what we're going to cover today, we'll look at the project purpose and background, look at some of the community engagement efforts that we did for the PROS plan to understand what our community wants for our parks and rec open spaces in our system. And then we looked at system needs and analysis work that we've done. And out of all that, we'll summarize that into plan vision and goals and then gather feedback from you all. So what is a PROS plan? So the PROS plan is the long-range planning document for parks and recreation. It identifies opportunities for improvement within our system. It's a visionary document that establishes goals and it directs resources for the city's parks and recreation department. And it's a chance for us to align our values with our community values every six years. And it transparently communicates future strategies, projects, policies, and priorities. It's a blueprint for the parks and recreation department. So why is there a PROS plan update? So the PROS plan is required to be updated every six years to maintain eligibility for state grants, primarily through our Recreation Conservation Office. The PROS plan, the update every six years, reflects our current and changing community demographics and recreation trends. And the plan is defined and informed by our community values, desires, and needs. And it's also an opportunity to assess our current system and the conditions that it's in and what our future needs are for our properties and facilities. And then lastly, it anticipates capital investments and infrastructure needs. So to give you a really high level overview of our project timeline, we began the PROS plan update with our consultant team design workshop. They're based out of Colorado. We began that work back in June, July of last year. We really started off with a really robust engagement period to hear from our community, and simultaneously, as we're listening to our community, we're also developing a system-wide analysis, or a technical analysis of our system. Right now, you see with the circle, the orange circle there, we're kind of in the second engagement window. We've had an open house recently. We've been engaging with our parks board. In fact, we last week engaged with them for the eighth time now. We've been to our council twice already, and we have a number of touch points with them yet, and we're here with you tonight. And then we'll be looking June, July, sometime in July to finally adopt the plan. So I'm going to kind of walk through this. You were all provided the draft plan. This is a 90% plan. There's some work to be done yet. There's some massaging that needs to happen to the plan. So it'll look a little slightly different from what you're seeing today. But to give you a really quick overview, I'm just going to kind of follow each chapter of the plan and just kind of give you the high-level highlights. Chapter one really just focuses on the park system overview. It looks at our community demographics, which you all are very familiar with. SAM is our 2020 PROS accomplishments, what we've accomplished since our last PROS plan adoption. And it gives an overview of our recent planning efforts. It also looks at relevant plans, so like some of these plans that you all have done a lot of work on, our comp plan, our climate action plan, our UFMP, We look at the council vision or surface water plans, capital facilities plans, et cetera. And then also wraps all that together and looks at what are future considerations. So what do we need to consider here moving forward? So to just give you a really rough idea what our parks and open space is, the map on the left identifies the dark green are city-owned properties, parks and open spaces. The light green are other government agencies or state agencies. The dots represent our public school systems and our colleges and private schools, which offer numerous recreation opportunities for our community as well. What we have control over, what we own, is that table that you see in the center of your screen there. We have 21 park properties, six open space properties for a total of 27 properties, and 383.8 acres of land. And kind of wrapping all that up, all that work we did through the introduction and the relevant plan analysis, these are kind of the themes that we kind of had to grapple with as we moved through the PROS plan development. It's obviously growth and development Our community is growing quite a bit. How does our parks and open space system adapt to that growth? Along with the growth, we have limited opportunities to acquire new land as we experience greater pressures from our growing populations. Not only do we have a growing population, but that population is changing demographically. And then kind of looking at the plans, you know, like our park system is really crucial in meeting the goals of some of like our canopy goals, for example, our climate action plan goals. So looking at our park system as green infrastructure was something that's kind of a new lens for us. And then recreation programming. So back in 2020, with the COVID and the pandemic, a decision was made to actually to not fund recreation services moving forward. So that's something that we've heard from our community. There's a desire to bring that back. So that's something that we're looking at through the plan. And then also with growth and all these other things that we have, we have a pretty lean staff and limited resources. And how do we grow our staffing and resources to keep pace with the growth of our community? So chapter two of the plan really focuses on what we heard from our community, like our community engagement process. So a quick timeline of our engagement. We actually had several different strategies on reaching our community. So we hosted four focus groups. So there are focus groups under the themes of nature, restoration, public lands. We had an informal community leaders group. We had our athletic programming and recreation programming group. And then we had an education group, so like our schools, for example. So in total, we had over 33 participants, 20 total represented stakeholder groups. So we spent time with them, heard what their needs are, and consider that throughout the plan. Also around the same time, we launched a community survey where we had 756 respondents. That of course was incorporated into the plan as well. And we also hosted eight pop-up events at several locations throughout our city. And then later on in the second engagement window, we hosted an open house and the park board meetings, city council meetings and planning commission meeting that we are here tonight. So here is some of the key findings from our community survey. So this was an online survey. We heard from our community that it's a highly used and valued park system. So most of the respondents actually visit our parks at least on a weekly basis. We also heard a strong preference for passive nature-based recreation. So there's a strong desire for preserving our parks Preserving and conserving our ecological Function within our park system and within our city There's a desire for investment in the trail system. So that was a theme we heard throughout the pros plan And there's a desire to improve spaces such as of Wayne Golf Course and there's a need for a dog park We also heard enthusiasm behind the park at Bothell landing and acquisition of properties such as the Shelton View Forest And then we're also looking at acquisition today to address equity gaps, and we'll get into this a little bit later in the presentation, but most of that involves acquisition in areas of Snohomish County. And then lastly, related to recreation, there's a desire for an indoor facility for art classes, gatherings, and other recreation programming opportunities. So speaking a little bit more on recreation and programming, We heard a high demand for expanding adult programming, and also short, not far behind that, programming for children and teens. We heard an interest in dog parks, public art, sports courts, pickleball, and water access to the Sammamish River. Most of our users enjoy our parks and open spaces for walking, running, biking, and exploring nature. An even larger percentage of respondents share the visit to the parks on weekends, which emphasizes the fact that we're a seven day a week operation in Parks and Recreation. And then from our focus groups, these are the real common themes we heard from them. So partnership and collaboration, we heard lots on opportunities for enhancing recreation opportunities with several partners throughout our communities, primarily like our schools, for example. There's a strong emphasis on bolstering volunteerism and community stewardship throughout our community. Equity and accessibility is a need that was commonly expressed to us. And then once again, an indoor facility with year-round access. So moving on to like the more technical analysis piece of the plan. Yeah, this is the system analysis needs assessment portion of the plan. And to start this off, we took a look at our map. We're looking at it from like a walk shed. So what you're looking at, how we define a walk shed is a 10 minute walk to a park or open space. So that's a common metric that's used in the parks and recreation industry. And as you can see, the takeaway here is 50% of Bothell residents live within a 10-minute walk to a park and open space, which means the other 50% do not. And as you can see from this, we have a disparity between our city. The circles there kind of show where our walk shed gaps are. And further, this walk shed map shows a huge disparity between walkability in the King County portion of the city versus the Snohomish County portions of the city. And kind of taking this walk shed map a step further and looking at it from more of like an environmental equity lens, this is the same map overlaid with the Washington state health disparity data, which takes into consideration 25 environmental health measures categorized under four different themes, those being environmental exposures, environmental effects, socioeconomic factors, and sensitive populations. So the deep purple areas that you see on the map are the most impacted communities within Bothell. And since parks and open spaces, well, since access to parks and open spaces This map magnifies the need. Since parks have a direct correlation to human health and well-being, this map just emphasizes the fact that we have some equity gaps within our system, particularly in that northeastern portion of the city where you see the darker purple and our walk shed analysis gaps. So this map is kind of the same map. You still see the walk sheds on there. But this is looking at what the opportunities are for acquisition. So we examined potential for acquisition based on selected data points that define parks and open spaces. So parks have different characteristics than open spaces. For example, parks are Highly valued for like recreation value, you know, typically you're looking for like a flatter piece of land and open space might be more like for a conservation value May contain critical areas for example So there's there's different sets of criteria how we looked at it the looks like the green I Guess the it's the brown is more of that parkland acquisition areas and then the bluer ones are the open space acquisition areas so this is really like a very general kind of fuzzy blob map, for lack of a better term. So it doesn't really get down to the parcel data. We're just kind of showing generally where these areas are. And this is just really a starting point for us to understand where those opportunities might be. Of course, there's some ground truthing that would need to be done to kind of look into those further. And then just kind of speaking on equity a little bit further throughout the pros, these are kind of the The takeaways that we need to kind of examine as we move forward with our parks and recreation system. So it's investing in the neighborhoods with greater needs for parks and recreation directly relates to that walk shed analysis. Explore opportunities in Snohomish County, Portsmouth and Bothell. Provide parks and recreation facilities within a safe walk and access to transit. So not only is this walk shed consideration as far as residential address points, but it's also proximity to transit. Improve ADA access in parks and open space just in general. And reduce economic barriers and provide inclusive facilities for all abilities and related directly to that is providing signage and information in multiple languages. We also did a benchmarking exercise. So we compared metrics across peer cities of similar size and population. So the other cities that we examined, we looked at the city of Lacey, Washington, the city of Linwood, the city of Burien. So as you can see, their population size are, you know, somewhat in the same ballpark. Density as well, somewhat similar. Burien and Linwood are a little bit smaller geographically, slightly denser, so those kind of skew some numbers a little bit, but those are the cities we compared to. There's a lot on this screen right here, but kind of looking at the table on the left is a comparison between our peer cities of Lacey, Linwood, and Burien. So kind of going down the list, like our total number of parks and open space, they're a little bit lower than our peer cities. Total number of parks is lower. Total city parks and open space, you know, the 38.8 is a typo that will be corrected, but we're more at like 380 acres, 838 acres, which is actually pretty good. And then total park acreage is low, but we make up for that within our city open space. Acreage is slightly higher than a couple of other cities. So a total percentage of land used for parks and recreation is significantly lower than some of these other cities. And then our walk shed number at 50.7% is lower as well. Looking at the table on the right, we're looking at kind of our operating budgets. So as you can see, Bothell's operating budget at 8.7 million is considerably lower than our peer cities, as well as our full-time equivalent staff in the bottom table. And then this is kind of an interesting graph. This looks at level of service. Level of service in this sense is defined as park acreage per 1,000 residents. So as of today, Bothell has 3.5 acres of park land per 1,000 residents. So as you all know, the bar graph on the left, today's population is around 51,000. 2029, that's going to jump to 54,000, and then 2044, we have a goal of 80,000. What that means for parks and recreation and our level of service, if you look at the total, kind of the bottom row there, so this is our current park acreage, so we have 180 acres of parks. To maintain our current level of service, which is 3.5 acres per 1,000 residents in 2029, we'd have to add 10.5 acres of parkland to meet our 2044 targets, we needed an additional 100 acres of parkland. And then chapter four, this is really just kind of wrapping everything up. There's a number of goals within the plan. I'm just gonna kind of really give you a really high level vision. This kind of is the driving force behind it all, is our plan vision and priorities that I'll go through in the next slide as well. So the plan vision, the PRO's plan vision is to elevate quality of life for all through stewarding the lands, facilities, and programs that comprise of our parks and recreation system of Bothell, celebrating our diversity, culture, and natural landscape. Together with our community, we will secure resources to sustain and grow to meet future needs and set an example within the region. Breaking this down a little bit further, we broke it down into four goals with several strategies underneath each goal. So goal A is to maximize the current system potential through design and implementation. So there is this recognition that by 2044 is unlikely, if not impossible, to acquire an additional 100 acres of parkland. We have to look at this, how we're developing our current park system differently than we are today. So this means redevelop community parks through intentional design for community and ecological benefits, expand the variety of recreation facilities and amenities, enhance passive recreation and open space through amenities. So we have a lot of open space properties. How do we enhance our recreation experiences within those properties without jeopardizing the open space intent? And then support programs and events in parks through multi-purpose facilities. Goal B is to take care of the existing park assets and resources, so take care of what we have. Increase park and open space maintenance resources, increase resources for staffing and operations, develop long-term asset replacement plans, and build and strengthen volunteer opportunities. Goal C is to enhance our recreation and enrichment. So this is the kind of recreation programming piece of it. Through fostering community cohesion through diverse events and cultural activities, promoting equity and recreation programming with local partnerships, establishing formal partnerships with potential recreation programming providers to expand recreation service delivery, and enhance outdoor education opportunities. And then our goal D is kind of looking projecting towards the future in acquiring park space to fill park walk shed gaps, acquire open space for preservation, collaborate with other departments and agencies to develop projects with multiple benefits, create more local trail connections, develop a capital campaign for currently unfunded projects and seek voter supported bond funding, diversify and expand funding sources for operations and capital improvement projects. So next steps as far as plan adoption. Tonight we're at the Planning Commission. We'll have a final review June 9th with our city council. And June 11th, we'll bring this back to our Parks and Recreation Board for final review and recommendation. July 7th, we'll have a public hearing on the final draft. Our final council adoption of the Provost Plan will happen on July 14th, after which point we'll go, we'll take this, We actually filed this with the Washington State Recreation Conservation Office. They review it. There's a small process there, and then later in the year, this will be back to you as part of a comp plan update of the parks element. So with that, that concludes the presentation. We're happy to entertain any questions, hear any feedback from the commission.

Commissioner Sells.

Yeah, thank you so much for that. I thought the report was excellent. I think a lot of times I look at reports and they're really good and I'm sort of like, you missed a spot. But with this one, I think the data was really communicative of the ideas and really captured where we're at. And as we've talked about our housing action plan and the zoning changes, we've had these conversations here about preserving public spaces and parks because as we have lots getting smaller, usually it's, that's what they're going to lose, right? The big backyards or, or access to the outdoors. Um, so, so I think this is really smart to focus on and, um, agree with everything you outlined. Um, What else was I going to say? Yeah. And so also the residential overlay was really helpful, I think, to just to show that, you know, I was glad to see that in some of our denser areas there is the walk shed and there's more walkability. Because I think that's so important. Obviously, that's an area where we can improve. And so it's great that you're thinking about that. I think it's also how we need to think about investing in sidewalks and bike trails so that it's leading towards those open spaces, which I know is not your purview, but I'm just throwing it out there. And I think, too, like pointing out that schools have great areas, too. So we want to keep that in mind and I would even say, like, definitely prioritizing the northeast part of the city. Also, because I think the lower part that we identified, you know, there's probably access to a lot of other parks in the adjacent cities. And, again, it's lower residential area. But I think really thorough. And I just really enjoyed reading it and seeing that we have a plan to address it. So, well done.

Yes, Commissioner Gustafson.

Sarah Gustafson here. One of my favorite parts of this plan is the really extensive community outreach that was done and how well it was explained through graphics. And I think the point of the community outreach goes beyond making the plan and it feeds into building advocates for the plan because that is something that is really needed when I look at the financial analysis piece and I have a couple more questions about that if that's all right. When I look at page 82 I see for the capital improvements we are at $13 million funding out of $72 million needed. It's great to see things like the inclusive playground get so close to completion which gives us that momentum. And I see that there's discussion of a parks levy going on. And I have some questions about that. What can be done without the levy? And if there were a levy, would it be more directed at capital improvements or... Would it be directed at the design aspect that you talked about? Would it be directed at capacity to get grants or more of the ongoing expenses like maintenance and programming? So yes, general questions about the financial analysis piece, which I know that you're still working on and any insights you could provide there.

Yeah, great question. I think that the, you know, when I look at the levy discussion, it's been listed and identified in the city council's 2040 vision. So really it's those next steps that we take. Once we get through the PROS plan, we've sort of identified all of these areas, we're going to sit down and we're going to start really, you know, putting together what a strategy might look like. Again, with those processes, there's a lot of things that happen and there's a lot of decisions to be made. So prioritizing you know what is going to be in that levy we haven't quite gone through that process yet we have some good ideas from the community feedback that we've received but that will all be part of that that process as we develop that priority that councils listed in their 2040 vision and just for the rest of the Commission here like on your screen on the screen up on the

Up there, you see this is the capital projects that we have in play right now. So it gives you an idea of what's funded and what's not funded. A large part of what's not funded, they're more like long-term visionary projects at this point. So there are opportunities to kind of shore up some funding as we get a little closer to those goals. But this gives you an idea of where we're at right now.

Yeah. Yeah. I would also just add that we are constantly looking at grants and those opportunities. One big one to note is the Shelton View forest acquisition. We're currently in a grant process called the Trust Land Transfer Process and we put in a grant last July. We're actually presenting that grant to the board on June 10th. So on June 10th, we have about 15 minutes with the board. We're one of 30 projects that they've selected to move forward. And we're the only project in Snohomish County. So that's a 25-acre parcel. It's very important to our community. It's a high priority for our council. It's in our capital facilities plan. It's in all of the plans that we have out there. We are making, to answer your question about are there opportunities outside of levees, that's a good example of an opportunity that potentially could be funded through a state process.

Great. Sarah Gustafson here. I believe that these are all the right steps. I believe the community will be excited to hear about the different resources that you're drawing upon, as well as informing and including people. Thank you.

Commissioner Lever.

Thank you, Commissioner Lever here. So I echo what my fellow commissioners shared, and I really appreciated how thorough this plan was. And I particularly enjoyed the timeline. So as someone who is new to the region, I was like, ooh, look at all the things I'm learning. And the other thing that I really appreciated, we have heard about the open space and the equity component and then really kind of seeing it. And then seeing all the work that went behind it to identify what the issues were, that was fantastic. Typically, I provide quite a bit of comments around outreach. So yes, it's fantastic that the outreach did happen. And I know it's incredibly difficult to engage and then really get the input, but I wonder for the people who provided the feedback, who was not really at the table. Because typically, we kind of know who potentially may have the time or the energy to bring their voices forward. And it will be wonderful just to hear who you wish had participated in so that for the implementation phases, we can be really intentional about reaching that population and mitigating any risk around non-inclusion and or prioritization. But overall, this was really wonderful. And I have disclosed this before, so I'm a board member for the Friends of North Creek Forest, which is really exciting to see how everything really comes together. And thank you, thank you so much. Everything that you do with a small team, and that is terrific, and I hope that team does grow. So hopefully we can find the money for that. That's the CD, thank you.

Thank you for the comments. I'll just address the community engagement piece of the communities that we didn't hear from, that we wish we heard from. So through the survey, it's really apparent we weren't hearing much from our senior community and the younger youth communities. So one of our strategies was to, through our pop-up outreach events, we made an effort to actually attend the senior center and be present for one of their events. We were at the UW campus for a day. We went to Cedar Grove Park during, I guess it was soccer season, so during a number of soccer games to get feedback there. And we also were here for a youth event with North Creek High School. So we were able to engage with specifically North Creek High School students. So that's a way we were trying to fill that gap. But demographically, through the survey, we're pretty close on par. We felt pretty good about that. But those were the communities that we weren't hearing from that we tried outreach to.

I would just add one of our favorite things is when we get invited to go out to our elementary schools and we actually do that on a number of projects. So we go out and we get to present at classes and the amount of questions that we get and just the insight that second graders have and third graders and fourth graders fantastic and we know that they take that home because they're really excited and we actually recently had a group develop a video for us and a presentation on one of our projects and it was just really really cool to see.

Are there any further questions or comments? I just have one question. And it's probably just a point of clarification. I noticed that when you were circling the underrepresented portions on the map, you did the northeast corner up there. It was very, very high as opposed to going just a little bit lower on 240th. That's sort of, I guess, kind of like an L shape over there. And instead, you were a little bit more towards North Creek where there's already a park. So if you were a little bit to go a little further north, southeast, I suppose, to include the part that isn't quite so close to this park north dead center. There's probably just some population I'm overlooking or another factor. Can you describe why you chose that section instead of a little lower?

Referring to like the northeastern portion?

Yeah.

I can't really speak to it, actually. I mean, generally, it's the canyon park areas. Like, I think an area that's going to experience some change moving forward. So that's like an area that we kind of are focused on, especially with that equity layer. I mean, we are kind of looking at the Muga areas as well. You know, that is kind of a gap outside there. So, I mean, that's something we could look at. That's something we could adjust. We do have 405 that kind of bisects that, too. So that could be. potentially the reason why as well.

Could you pull up the map that has the acquisition? Yeah.

And I did notice that you were planning to acquire some land in that area, and I definitely appreciated that. I just wasn't quite so sure. Just one point of clarification to see why you would have chosen one that was up towards the park as opposed to a little lower. And again, yeah, but I'm glad to see that you guys are conscientious about covering.

Okay. I think I'm following you a little bit more clearly now, but yeah, this map, what you're seeing right now is literally just data points. So I was looking at like for like open space acquisition is looking at like How many of these parcels within our city, like you'll get, it'll be weighted towards if it's in the walk shed, for example. If it has a certain percentage of critical areas, you know, it'll be weighted a little bit heavier. If it doesn't have current development on it, you know. So these are things that, it's weighted in a very specific way. And this is just strictly data points. There's no other influences to it. So this is how it comes out. And then from here, this is just really a first step to try to identify like where are these areas that potentially could be acquisition targets. But there's some work to do after this point.

I would say too that we've talked about partnerships and one of the things that we heard clearly from the school district and we heard from UW where what are those opportunities. If you actually go up into that northeast corner, the primary sort of recreation provider is the school district. You have the Skyview school, there's actually an elementary school and Skyview is up there and they have a huge track and different sports fields and things like that. So that partnership is something that we would also like to really develop and see that as recreational space, maybe not so much owned by the city, but perhaps a partnership where we could program together on that.

you also when we get to a final draft we have a number of memos that are going to be attached as addendums to the actual pros plan and so there's really in-depth information on the methodologies how we go about this and and the findings that we have that go in much more detail than what we have in the plan thank you that makes a lot of sense I want to make sure just covering all the angles there so thank you for that

Any other comments, questions? Okay, is there anything else you need from us this evening? Thank you so much, Director Stoop and Manager Milner. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Our next study session will be the housing action plan update from Planner Ray Sosa and Planner Jacqueline Sampson. So thank you for being here this evening.

Good evening, Commission. We'll go ahead and get the presentation going. It feels weird to say evening when the sun is fully out. I'm still getting used to it. Yeah, it's almost like afternoon, not evening. But anyways, very excited to be here. This is a combination of more than a year's worth of work. And so to say I'm excited to be here and to say we're excited to be here is just an understatement. And so we'll get started. So me and my colleague, Jacqueline Sampson, are here to present on the Housing Action Plan. Next slide. Tonight, we have no action that's required. The study session is to just provide the planning commission with an update on the TRAPP Housing Action Plan. As I go through the slides, I'll get background on what prompted us to be here, why we're doing this, and where we're going with our Housing Action Plan. The Housing Action Plan is an update to the 2018 Housing Strategy, that document we worked with ARCH back then in 2018 to identify housing strategies that will address the affordability issues and ensure that individuals of all incomes are able to live in Buffalo. So this housing action plan is an update to that strategy. It also builds upon the policies that we established in the 2024 comp plan. That two-year effort really helped us identify plenty of housing gaps that we have in our community, and so this housing action plan builds upon those policies that the comp plan identified Asset items that we could act on and then most importantly well my opinion most importantly said also aligns with Washington State's recent housing bills such as HB 1220 and SB 5248 those bills require that both those housing growth targets in the next 20 years accommodate for at least for That the force of our housing growth targets should accommodate for populations making 80% or under for area median income and As you can see on the pie chart to the right. And then SB 5248 allows the Department of Commerce to audit jurisdictions for their housing action plans to ensure that we're complying with the HB 1220 targets. So this housing action plan that we've been working on very much is in alignment with those recent bills as well. Next slide. And so I talked about what the Housing Action Plan is, and I want to talk about why we're doing this Housing Action Plan. Step away from just the policies and just the bills. As I mentioned, the 2018 Housing Strategy identified a lot of opportunities for us to, as a community, to work on addressing housing issues. And we know that so much has changed in the last almost 10 years ago, and so this Housing Action Plan document is identifying those potential solutions to the rising housing costs, and does so while reflecting the current and future housing needs of Boswell residents. We know that as people age and as people move in different life transitions, everyone needs a home, and that home's going to look different depending on the stage of the life that you're in. But nonetheless, you deserve to have housing no matter what. And ensure that Boswell remains an attractive place to live, as I said, for all ages and all wages in our community.

Next slide.

So we began this Housing Action Plan work in September of 2024. That's when staff began to look at the previous housing strategy and other housing-related documents that we've had in our disposal. I started to compile a list of draft goals and objectives that we wanted to have incorporated in the Housing Action Plan. We then met With planning Commission and City Council back in January of 2025 early to show this to show our proposed list and goals we got received feedback and then in the Spring of 2020 of last year. We hired in consultant Burke and Burke makers and point Norris a consortium a consortium of consultants to help us with community engagement one of the most important feedback we heard is that Our draft goals and objectives should be run through by the community. The community should have a chance to provide input on what we are proposing for the Housing Action Plan. The consultant worked with us through the summer to have to come up with a list of events and engagement strategies that we then implemented in the fall of last year that included focus groups, online activities, and I won't talk more because there's another slide for that, but that's what we got to today where now we have this draft housing action plan live and ready for feedback by you all and by the public. And so with that, I'll pass it over to my colleague, Jacqueline.

Yeah, so for community engagement, we had a lot of different modes for community engagement. We tabled at different community events that included the Chai Holi event that was happening over here in Bothell Landing. We have tabled at the Husky 5K, Sustainamania, just to name a few. So really going to where the community is was really important. thing we wanna do for engagement. We also, when North Creek High School came to City Hall, we also held a little workshop with them to get some student input, some young student input. So we had some boards available and students were able to place little post-it notes with their responses to different questions. We had facilitated some focus groups as well with targeted audiences. that included homeowners, senior citizens, young professionals, including students, and renters as well. And we hosted different online engagement opportunities that included activities on our engage Bothell platform one of them being the our storyboard project where People could just post their own story whether that is about housing, but there's like different Needs that they want what they like about living in the city what they want more from the city and Residents were also able to comment on each other's posts and have some discussion with each other as well. I Here are some examples of some of the responses that we received. Those two posts in the white boxes were some screenshots that we took from the storyboards. And then that little blue box with the post-it note looking graphic is actually responses that we received from the focus groups. We had makers write down some notes and they basically wrote down the stream of consciousness from the discussion and put that up over there. But some main themes that we received from community engagement itself was that residents understood the importance of having a mix of different types of housing, whether that's ADUs, condos, apartment buildings, single family homes, middle housing. It was important, one, to have a diversity of housing, to help with the cost of housing in the city, as well as as you go through different stages of life, there's different needs for housing. Whether you are a student who just graduated that just needs an apartment in the city, or you're a senior citizen who's trying to downsize from your home, they wanted more flexibility when it came to those different stages in life. Another main theme was neighborhood connectivity. So that's, for example, have more walkability, bikeability throughout the city, as well as public transportation was a really big need that was communicated. For those who are renting, some concerns were rising renting costs in the city, accountability from landlords as well as availability with tenant resources. There's also communicated was an importance of transparency coming from the city, having continued engagement throughout the whole housing action process as well as implementation in the future. All right, so next steps. The housing action plan is now live on Engage Bothell for public feedback. So we will have that up for residents and people in Bothell to comment. We are presenting the draft housing action plan as well to city council on June 9th. Um, some summer engagement activities that we have coming up is on May 30th, UW Bothell's having their alumni block parties. There'll be about 1,200 people attending. We will have a table there doing some engagement activities. We also have the City of Bothell, um, planned Pride of Bothell landing, where we will have some engagement activities for the, um, for those festivities, as well as on July 22nd, the downtown sub area plan will have their open house where housing is also a topic. So we will also be there and there'll be more events as they are announced and feedback received through all these different next steps will help shape the housing action plan even further as we finalized our draft for the final document.

And so in conclusion, no action is required. We're just here to seek feedback. As my colleague Jacqueline mentioned, we'll be doing a summer engagement with a hopeful adoption date of December of 2026 of this housing action plan. We're really excited to move forward to the next phase of this plan, and we'll welcome any feedback that you may have for us tonight. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Are there any questions or comments from the commissioners? Wow, looks like you guys have covered all the bases.

Thank you.

We are so excited for you guys as you're getting close to the wrap-up here within the next year. Yeah, so thank you so much, Planner Sosa, Planner Sampson. We are so excited to see this moving forward.

Appreciate it. Thank you all so much. Have a great night. Thank you.

Thank you. And so our last study session of the evening is from Deputy Director Goetz with some procedure updates from Title 11 and 12.

Okay. Sorry, I had to find it here. I had too many windows open as common at the end of the day. All right, as I get this to the main screen. First, I want to welcome Katie Posler to the team. Katie's going to take over the project from after tonight instead of just throwing her into the mix. I figured I've been dabbling in this and kind of working through it, but she joined the team about a month and a half ago and will be carrying this forward. She'll also be back to talk through and work through the comprehensive plan updates this year. So as Erin and Nick mentioned, the PROS plan as an example, she'll be working through the PROS plan element updates to make sure that they track. But tonight, I'm going to run through the procedural code updates. We were here previously to kind of go over the high-level buckets as, you know, to comment on Commissioner Liver's bringing up the lengthy packet. A lot of what we put in there is to make sure everyone can see very clearly, first and foremost. Here's the track changes, the red text that's in there. You can scroll through pretty quick to at least find, okay, here's what I see they're at least initially proposing to change. Tonight we're going to go through those items, make sure that we're clarifying any questions that you may have, and we'll come back through the end of the summer and then into the fall for potential adoption to update these. The majority are clarifications, cleanups, looking to make sure we're streamlining things, we're not overdoing something, but we'll be happy to take input as we work through this today. So this is the laundry list of sections. It follows the 24 comp plan update as everything does. We didn't really touch the procedural code when we did those updates. We're just trying to make sure that everything within our process and procedures is clear, consistent, and usable for both staff, yourselves, and the development community. And the development community could be anybody, large developer on down to homeowners. I'm gonna walk through these slides, kind of giving you an understanding of what the topic is, what the current code has in it, what we're proposing to do, and then kind of some brief results or outcomes. So first item is public hearings. Right now, as you know, we do a public hearing with Planning Commission, We gather your feedback through the process leading up to that at the public hearing, and then we do the same exact thing with City Council. Only one public hearing is required in Washington State. We looked around. There are other jurisdictions that follow the same process where there are two, one with the Planning Commission, one with City Council. There are a few that only have the one. Our recommendation is to decrease it down to one following the same process where Planning Commission goes through The details go through the weeds with us as we look to amend development regulations or comprehensive plan updates and take that recommendation to council. We do recognize that sometimes there are larger projects, the tree code as an example, or maybe even a comprehensive update that warrant, you know, Additional opportunities for the public to be involved. Um, those are generally long year or multi year long projects. So there's a lot of opportunity, but. I think through the, our, our, our thought process is that through the engagement plan development for those larger projects, uh, it would be a question that we would ask both. Council and planning commission. Would you like us to follow the standard code of one public hearing, or would you like us to do two? I think right-sizing it for each project makes sense from a good governance perspective, and that's our approach. This really would streamline the process for things such as what Eric brought to you today, really looking to just fine-tune things, make sure it's really, really clear, they're discreet updates, and the time to go through the work to do another public hearing where we may not get anything out of it, it's something that staff see can be handled through Planning Commission for the vast majority of the work that we do. So that's our first recommendation, really just align with state law, provide a streamlined process, and it does still give an out for rightsizing those larger projects that might need additional I'll go through all of these then we can circle back to any if there are any questions the next one is around project permit applications so there's some general updates in here there isn't any reference to any virtual hearings we do almost all of our hearings with the hearing examiner virtually so we just added in some language there to make sure that's really clear I think we've been doing them virtually since COVID. And our hearing examiner really likes that. There is a process type 4B that is vacant. We don't have a project that follows that. Looking to get that out of the table. And then there was an unclear path for the public agency and utility exception. It's inconsistent with how we process reasonable use applications. So a reasonable use, this is in critical area code where a project currently goes through just a staff administrative level decision if the city were proposing something very similar it has to go to a public hearing it seems onerous the criteria are not changing they are remaining the same it would just be who is the decision maker staff are recommending it to that to be downgraded to a type 2 process. Um, and then there's a few, uh, appeal administrative interpretations, uh, clarifications to, to eliminate, um, counsel from that process. Um, having it instead be heard by the hearing examiner who's much more equipped, well equipped to hear appeals on specific criteria and, and decide on those. Um, The next one has to do with improving timeliness with projects. Our code has a really generous 180 days to respond to corrections from the city. It also doesn't have an ability to extend that. When we looked around, almost every jurisdiction establishes a 90-day turnaround timeframe for responses. This helps keep projects going forward, moving along. We also are looking to add an extension opportunity. So if there are projects that have critical areas or geotechnical issues or something really complex that's going to take some time and it needs those specialists on the applicant side to produce the reports and produce the responsive materials, that request can be requested. And that ends up being just very specific to the project. Hey, my geotech says he's going to need another 100 days to get this done, to fit it into their schedule. That's the plan that we think will work best. Great. We'll work through that individually. So this creates some predictability and keeps things moving along while it still allows some flexibility that we currently don't have at all. So we felt that that was a good way to kind of meet in the middle. Open record public hearings. We referenced Type IV Bs. Again, that's being removed. So we want to just make sure that we're consistent. And it clarifies final subdivisions and final short plots. They follow a very different timeline. And that's just a few little tweaks in that section. comp plan development regulation updates the way in which we've got that table where it says if it's a certain comprehensive plan element or a certain development standard it is presented to the Planning Commission Planning Commission makes a recommendation of City Council there are a few shoreline and landmark preservation for example they have kind of slightly different language and we wanted to make sure those are consistent so If they do involve the shoreline or if they do involve landmark preservation, we wanted to make sure that was a consistently applied process where that specialized board makes the recommendation to Planning Commission. It just creates the step one, you're with landmarks. Step two, you're with Planning Commission. Step three, that goes to City Council. So just making that consistent. And that allows for much more predictability in how that how that moves along. Public noticing, we do have some outdated information in there, and we have these really strange optional standards. Optional standards in a code are very confusing. They're there whether they're in the code or not. We're looking to eliminate the optional standard section. If somebody wants to go about doing that and take those additional steps, great. But it did create some confusion on both staff side and applicant side. So it improves readability and makes the code a lot more streamlined. Moving on to site plan review, there was a couple sections that were needing some consistency additions. There's two slides on this topic. One, it added in the unit lot subdivision reference, which wasn't there before, basically saying if you're doing a unit lot subdivision, Same as a standard subdivision, you don't have to do a site plan review, just making sure we're consistent. Within the critical area reference here was just about the distance from the feature, making sure that was really clear. If you're within 300 feet, that's the distance of If you're within 300 feet of a stream or a wetland or some sort of feature, we want to at least take a look at it and make sure it is truly there or not. And then we move forward. So this was just a general consistency update slide on site plan review. More major change was around increased density and what we're seeing or we're starting to see with some of the minimum density standards are blended projects where they have maybe townhomes in one portion and then a stacked project at another. What we're looking to do is make sure it's very clear that we recognize that there are two different product types and we want to make sure that not all of the lower density is built out and completed prior to the higher density. So starting off with a recommendation to say, okay, if you have 20 townhomes and a 10-unit apartment building, you can receive your permit for 10 of those townhomes and start construction. And then you'd have to receive your permit for the 10-unit townhome. and you could only receive your final occupancy for the first 10 townhomes before you get your occupancy for the apartment building. The last 10 units are still able to be permitted, but not until you've permitted the apartment building, and so we don't just see a townhome project come in and be completed, and then what happens to the higher density piece that was achieving the minimum density? So looking to try to create some guardrails and very open to any conversations around how to make sure a threshold is fair and reasonable. We started with 50% just as a simple starting point. And I've seen this used elsewhere where it identifies sort of a phased approach and make sure that we're, I've seen it with affordable housing projects where You can receive your permits for so many before you permit the ones that include the affordable housing units. And then likewise, you have to finalize those before the affordable housing units are completed. So trying to mimic something like that. site-specific rezones, there are two types. And right now, we just kind of lump it all together. So looking to separate them out into the quasi-judicial and legislative types. So clarifying the criteria for each one and making sure it's very clear that they are separate processes. And we expanded some of the criteria for both make sure that they were consistent with case law and we can get into those details if you if you want to but they this should help clarify one who does the review right now everything goes to City Council the legislative makes sense to to remain with City Council as they're the ones making the decision on legislative updates such as a zoning map or a development standard change. The quasi-judicial would be a site-specific rezone where someone's requesting to either upzone or downzone, as we're starting to see, and the hearing examiner is much more equipped, similar to the appeal that I mentioned earlier, the appeal process that I mentioned earlier, to evaluate those criteria based on the information and supportive documents that an applicant provides. So our recommendation is that if it's a quasi-judicial, site-specific rezone, it would fall under the Type IV-A category, which goes before the hearing examiner. The hearing examiner makes the final recommendation to counsel, as this would be an ordinance and only counsel can approve an ordinance. It's kind of a two-step process. Staff recommended to the hearing examiner. The final recommendation from the hearing examiner is what's heard by city council. And those are the slides. I'm happy to go back through. I'm happy to pull up the packet if need be to go through any sections where there's any red text. Again, this is no action, just information. Our next steps are to come back with any final draft amendments and then look to either have another conversation if we feel that that's necessary or move towards a public hearing. And we'll be presenting the same information to city council later this, I guess, in the summer. We aren't even in the summer yet. It feels like summer already. So...

Commissioner Lever.

Commissioner Lever, I have a question on the removal of the second public hearing. Is that the one that will be removed will be the city council one? So there's a public hearing at the planning commission level and then the council just approves or denies the recommendation?

Right. That's our recommendation is to have the planning commission do the heavy lift with all of the work around a development update or a comprehensive plan update. and hold the hearing provide recommendations to counsel but again if if our thought is that for the larger items we do truly mean you know an engagement plan is an engagement plan we're gonna look to say well here are all the steps we're gonna take we're gonna do this outreach we're gonna do this noticing we're gonna go through these you know you know planned meetings and you know potentially adding a public hearing thinking back to the to the comprehensive plan we did a public hearing for both the the eis the draft eis with planning commission the draft eis with council and then we came back for the final recommendation for the comp plan with planning commission and with council. So we built and suspended it twice for the comprehensive plan, but that was what we set out to do. That's the engagement plan and strategy that we identified from the beginning of that process.

I just have a comment. So I am in... I don't have... I'm in agreement in terms of the streamlining, but what I find all often interesting when it comes to government processes is we aim to streamline, yet when we are sort of doing it, it seems like we're rushing it. And then when we have this, it's not going to happen because if we have a large project, we'll add more engagement. However, it just feels that the window for feedback might be really narrow. And again, anecdotally, what I do hear from community is we don't have enough time or I didn't go or I couldn't go or my voice wasn't really invited. So I know we're not going to resolve that. But I kind of really wonder when it comes to the capacity constraints that staff does have, something does come up not having that other outlet to revisit it and or get another perspective does make me nervous but i also understand the redundancy so it is a balancing act and you the staff know better the capacity constraints that you have but i just always find it interesting how we push to move forward like to accelerate things yet We always need that extra step.

So it's Complicated and and maybe I can provide a little more background and then maybe maybe offer something So I think on background, you know for for this project as an example where we've had a study session with We talked about it generally with City Council with just the work plan update back in February we came before you with an overview of We're here again tonight. We'll do an overview with City Council in the summer. And then we'll be back here to talk about it, whether it's at a public hearing or a future study session. All that this would do is eliminate one step in the potential seven to eight touches with the combined Planning Commission-City Council steps. And I think... And our perspective is what we obtain out of a second public hearing, there's been little value. And this is where sort of my offer is coming. We can go back and we can look at the past two, five, ten years of 10 years is a little much but maybe five years of projects and here's all the public hearings we held here's how many comments we received at the public hearing I know from just the last two years it's been very very minimal we got a lot of comments in the comp plan towards the very very end but there's been there's very very little interaction and input at the very last minute I'll attribute that hopefully to staff doing a good job of making sure the information is available and out there. And I will promise, though, that one of the final thing is that planners don't rush things. We're pretty glacial when it comes to how we operate. So I do think we could come back with some information just to to provide a little more background on what we do see when it comes to public hearing participation, we'll just call it that, with both Planning Commission and City Council, and see where that goes. We don't know what councils thought of this would be. They may say, no, we want to hold a public hearing, or no, we want to keep doing both. Not quite sure. We're looking at the that value doesn't seem to be there, given all the engagement that we've been attempting to do through all of our activities, every project, whether it's urban forest management plan, climate action plan, comp plan, housing, everything that we're doing, we're trying to make sure we're out there and being available to answer questions about that, as well as other projects that we're doing. So... I think what we'll do is we'll bring back some information on what we've seen happen to see if that helps kind of tell a little more of the background on what these public hearings are. And just wanting to point out that we only have to do one, so.

Commissioner Sells.

Yeah, Commissioner Sills, your reasoning is totally valid, and I hear what you're saying. I just think the optics are going to be bad. So I think some ideas would be do a survey, do something so that we get some sort of community buy-in that we're going down to one so that it doesn't become like they're trying to limit what the public knows. And I think the numbers, I totally get what you're saying. It's just the optics. And then the other thing I had was just on the 180 days shrinking down to 90. And then you could extend it at the staff's discretion. I think your examples were great. I think it's kind of vague, um, and kind of leaves a lot of latitude towards staff, um, in order to decide whether to grant that. So maybe just a little bit more of like. In what cases that would be extended just to give people a little bit more clarity and then they would kind of be able to gauge, like, what is an acceptable reason? Um, and not just go in there and it's completely up to the staff's discretion on whether or not that's granted because that could be a big difference to people. So that would be my suggestion for that 1, but agree that 90 days is fine.

Commissioner.

Hi, Sarah Gustafson here. I think what we're all trying to figure out is the most muscular and inclusive public engagement process. And with that said, I think my opinion might be slightly different. I actually want to thank you for trying to rethink some of the old structures that sometimes lead to inequitable results because the people who show up at public hearings sometimes are different than the people who might go to and on the street type of outreach opportunity. And I do think the question of optics is really important, but I think we can handle that given the great work that you've been doing. And just thank you for trying to make things get done. And I'm not sure if this is the right way, but I think it's a really, really good risk you're taking. Thank you.

Commissioner Westerbeck.

Commissioner Westerbeck. Yeah, I actually wanted to add on to Commissioner Gustafson's comments. My angle will be a little different. As typical, I go through some of these processes as an applicant, and so I really appreciate that it's being streamlined and tidied up. having just gone through a few of these. And actually it went just fine. No complaints really, but anything that sort of streamlines and tidies things up. And I noticed some of the signage things and some of the streamlining around whether we touch it or council touches it, hearing examiner, that's all really good stuff. Like you said, it can be a bit glacial. I guess I'm sort of used to that, but if it becomes a little less glacial, that's fantastic. And yeah, you're right. We've had some public hearings that were hotly, you know, highly attended and hotly contested, whatever you want to call it. But we haven't in a couple years. And it does often feel, in my five or so years on commission, that the second meeting often is... or sometimes it's the first and people get wind of it and they go to the second, but we often don't need the two. I've also found that, and I think some of us have noticed this, it doesn't really matter when there's a planning, whether there's a public hearing or not. If someone is fired up about something, they will find a way to make a comment, whether it's writing to you folks in planning or us as the planning commission or council, whatever, they'll make their their thoughts known. So sometimes it doesn't even really matter. It's like, hey, we just got 18 letters about X, Y, Z. So anyway, just throwing that out there. So I think it's probably fine to streamline the number of meetings behind it. And the edits are great so far. Thanks.

Can you turn? Commissioner Morales.

Thank you for the presentation. I don't know if you're accepting recommendations, but I think for the public notice line, it would be good to add a QR code that takes you to the website. That's just a recommendation. Secondly, on the site plan review for the balanced build out, just curious on the example of the townhouse developments and the higher density portion of a project. Is that something that we're seeing and trying to correct for?

We have one project in that does have a blended approach just here in Beckstrom Hill. That's nine town homes and then a 12-unit apartment building. And we've seen projects that have come in for pre-application meeting where they realize, oh, I'm not hitting the minimum density. What do I do? Well, it would be either compacting things down or doing a blended project. So we're just sort of trying to get out ahead of it if that's necessary and create the opportunity for just real good clarity where we can make sure that, you know, from the site plan review through the construction process, everybody knows what phase, essentially just creating that phased project approach, that it's really, really clear. And on the QR code, I've done those elsewhere, and yeah, they do really work well to take somebody right to the webpage.

Commissioner Lever?

Thank you. Just another comment on the removing the public hearing, the second public hearing. I really now start thinking more and more about the voices that we're trying to amplify or perhaps not. And I just think about how difficult it is to put something at requirement. So if a requirement is there, there was just very likely a very difficult process to make it happen. So when you go back and look at the data that could probably help us inform how the second public hearing has been utilized, because one thing is the intent and the other one is the actual impact that it has in our processes, it will be super helpful to understand what are the mitigation steps that we take to really make sure that we don't bust projects or that we don't elevate a project just based on what I or collectively believe it was best for X, Y, and Z, knowing that engagement is in fact such a challenging area. Because even with the park plan that we saw, great numbers, but I keep on thinking, like the number is not representative, statistically speaking, to the voices in the community. And again, this is not for the city of Bothell. This is an issue everywhere. So all of that to say, as we're looking at quote unquote data or analysis, I really would like to think about not just the number, but more so the use of the second public hearing. And what we're trying to achieve is to make sure that there's equity in the process, and really try to think of what data point can you bring to the table to help the city council and the public really buy in into whether or not we remove or keep the second public hearing so that we can understand and communicate that to the community when this becomes, in fact, an issue. Because we do know that it likely will be an issue, because the moment that you take something away, then all of a sudden, is they have not, so I kind of said a lot, but I really, you know, it's such a, equity is in the process, and even though the, and we know that sometimes the process is what's broken, or the system is what's broken, and I trust that we will do the best that we can to continue to include the voices that need to be included in processes, and then in fact, like, open those avenues for dialogue, even if it is uncomfortable, so. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any other comments, questions? Okay.

Is there anything else you need from us this evening?

Well, thank you so much for your presentation and this illuminating discussion. The next item on the agenda is reports from members. Is there any? Yes. Commissioner Lever.

Commissioner Lever. Well, thank you so much for every of us meeting, even though it was a long packet. Let me tell you, I came in, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so tired. And now I'm so energized. So I don't know what I'm going to do after this because it's energizing. With that said, it was very, I just love seeing the parks plan. And as I mentioned earlier, I'm a part of the board of the Prince of North Creek Forest. So we're going to have a meet and greet on June 6th by the restoration stairs, and everyone is welcome, and I know the city does a great job in advertising that, and it's just really wonderful to see what a wonderful community we have, where we get our hands dirty and clean Blackberry together, so thank you. That's it.

Thank you, and Commissioner Sills.

Yeah, Commissioner Stills. So I get a governing newsletter, governing magazine, or it's a news outlet that maybe staff is more familiar with. But they had two articles I found about Sidewalks, and it was about Denver in particular. Denver has a new sidewalk program that shifts the responsibility from property owners to the city. And so it was really interesting to hear they created a whole department of sidewalks and really have. taken this on to build out the system and it has a big accessibility component because what they were talking about is that sidewalks are not properly maintained when they're having to be privately developed. Um, and so now it's on the city and so there's a lot more ADA compliance and, um, I just thought it was a really interesting, um, look at what obviously a much bigger city and metropolitan, but like the main city of a metropolitan area, but I'd be interested to follow how that plays out, what kind of difference that makes. Um, and there's also, um, an editorial piece from a professor who wrote a new book called Sidewalk Nation that's coming out next month. And he talks about how important it is to kind of rethink how we develop these networks. So I think if you just like, you know, whatever your chosen search engine put in governing Denver sidewalks, you might find that. But just throwing out there that it's worth kind of looking at that because I know we've heard from some Bothell folks about like those sidewalk islands when they're required to develop the sidewalk. And then there's, you know, so it's all about kind of maybe taking the onus off that, finding a different funding model like Denver has, which I think is like a flat fee per person, and just exploring what else we can do to maybe make some more progress in addition to what we already do there. Thank you.

Are there any further comments from members? All right, then we will move on to reports from staff.

Only report is that we do not have any items scheduled for the June 3rd meeting. Next meeting will be June 17th. We had to shift a few things around. The 17th, we will be talking about the downtown sub area updates, some EV code, EV parking code updates potentially, and ideally the Botham Municipal Code Title 22 update, which has been one of those things that shifted down. So we'll look to see you then.

Well, thank you. There being no further business, is there a motion to adjourn? Commissioner Gustafson.

Sarah Gustafson, motion to adjourn, please.

Is there a second?

Commissioner Morales, I'll second.

Great. All in favor of adjourning?

Aye.

The meeting is adjourned at 7.55. Our next meeting will be June 17th at 6.30.