Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everyone. I call the July 1st, 2026 Planning Commission meeting to order. The main purpose of tonight's meeting is to hold a study session on the transfer of development rights for landscape conservation and local improvement, as well as the Bothell Municipal Code 2022. Before we move on to the 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. 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 provide 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?

Present.

Commissioner Morales? Present. Commissioner Westerbeck is absent and excused. Commissioner Lever?

Here.

Commissioner Robson is present. Commissioner Sills?

Here.

Thank you. And Commissioner Grafstusen?

Here, thanks.

In addition, community development staff in attendance include Deputy Director Chairman Christian Goetz, Planner Jacqueline Sampson, along with Skip Swenson and Mackenzie Visser from Eco Northwest, as well as Morgan Shook, also from Eco Northwest. 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 the live video feed, please turn the sound off as there is a delay. At the 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. I will call on you as I see you. 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 the motion or participate in debate. Please mute your microphone when not speaking. The first item is public comment for any item that is not on tonight's agenda. The city has accepted visitor comments and writing as well as accepted sign-up sheets for those who wish to speak at tonight's meeting. Those speaking have three minutes. Written comments submitted to staff no later than 3 p.m. today were forwarded to all the commissioners and are part of the record. There was one comment received and was sent to commissioners via email. I see one person in our audience today. Oh, two people, hi. Would either of you like to speak on something that's not in our agenda today? Fantastic, there will be time and a later agenda item for that. Thank you. Are there any Zoom commenters today? Anybody?

There is one member in the audience, in the Zoom audience. Okay. does not look like they raised their hand to speak.

Okay, thank you. Okay, next item on agenda is the approval of the June 17th minutes. Are there any corrections to the minutes? Oh, yes. Is there a motion to approve the minutes? Okay, Commissioner Kiernan moved to approve. Is there any... Corrections to the minutes?

Anyone?

Okay. Hearing none, then minutes are... Second. How do you need to do this?

Commissioner Morales, I'll second.

Thank you. With that second, minutes are approved as written. Okay. Thank you, Commissioners. The first study session this evening will be from Planner Jacqueline Sampson, as well as Skip Swenson, And Morgan Shook and Mackenzie Visser from Eco Northwest. Thank you, Planner Samson.

Hi, everyone. I believe either Morgan or Mackenzie, are you guys, one of you going to share the presentation? Do you want me to share presentation?

No, I'll share it. Perfect. I'll go ahead and get it pulled up.

All right. So, hi, everyone. My name is Jacqueline Sampson. We are introducing Morgan Shook and Mackenzie Visser with EcoNorthwest, as well as Skip Swenson. We are going to present on the BubbleTDR and LCLIP Feasibility Study. This was a project that is in connection with the county. They chose a couple different cities to create some study cities in order to look at DDR and LCLIP, and Bothell was one of the cities chosen. So we have been working with Eco Northwest to look at essentially different study areas within Bothell, incentives as well, to incentivize DDR and LCLIP. But I guess we can just go ahead and get started.

All right, is that the right window? Yes, it looks good. Okay, great. All right, I think Morgan is going to go ahead and get us kicked off.

Yeah, I'm going to move to the next slide here real quick. So. Just to recap our last time we were there, which was, I think about a little over a month ago or a month ago now, and we were trying to do with the 1st meeting was really just level step. And I think as Jacqueline was saying this. Project is coming to the city through a grant by the Department of commerce through their ecosystem services division. And I think just the relevant pieces that I want to just remind folks and hopefully set the stage for today. Is that transfer dollar on rights was in really an implementing measure of our growth management act. really meant to sort of help preserve our working landscapes and then obviously help support the intensification of our urban places. It does that through the ability to transfer development rights. So, you know, think of it as basically a housing unit that could get built in working lands in our rural areas. And move those development rights into our urban places, the typical mechanisms have always been things like incentive zoning or other kind of density bonuses. So, basically allowing developers to sort of build more than they would otherwise as part of the base zoning on the condition that they buy these development rights and that the conservation easements in those rural places are used. But we've also seen more novel applications of things that might be just outside the development code, like our tax structure and through tax incentives. And I think we talked a little bit about those in our pieces. In 2011, the state legislature wanted to help reinforce its commitment to both the GMA and through the Transfer Development Rights Tool and created the Landscape Conservation Local Infrastructure Program, LCLIP for short. And all does is simply provide an incentive for local governments to make meaningful commitments to the workings of their programs, which are about 17 within the local region. And it does that by offering a special form of tax increment financing, mainly through, I would call it a revenue share program with the county of which that development is taking place. In this case, Bothell kind of is split between two counties, both King and Snohomish, and it would depend on kind of where you draw your local infrastructure programs around where that revenue share would come from, either King or Pierce. And the idea here is that is a pretty flexible tool. It provides primarily funding to do infrastructure funding as you would expect for roads, parks, utilities. It has some provisions to support infrastructure that could support affordable housing or historic preservation, but it also provides a little more flexibility to support the operations, maintenance, and public safety of those tools, which is the deviation from other more capital-restricted forms of funding like REIT or our 2021 tax increment finance program. The latter, which I think the key distinction is that our 2021 tax increment finance piece is really meant to support projects, right? It wants some pretty strong nexus and certainty between that project. It's very limited in its ability, right? You can only have 2 programs up to 200M dollars of your current assessed evaluation that are within the piece. And I say that is because there's the big contrast with that. And the outcome funding is really meant to sort of work as a program. You can have up to 25% of the city's total assessed evaluation within your tax increment areas. And as you can imagine. Revenues are going to build over time as more and more new construction happens in those areas. So, so part of it is think of as you're unlocking a cash flow that can really help fund a variety of different kind of programs that the city would need. So I do think. I just want to spend a little time because I recognize some faces that maybe weren't at our previous meeting. And so hopefully that sets the stage for today because we really want to talk about some of the results. And so what we really wanted to do in this piece is basically understand what kinds of incentives Could we really direct in your code that would mean lead to meaningful sort of use of those incentives in order to get credits placed? Because I think you recall from our 1st meeting, the. The city has to has allocated a certain number of rights and those rights are important because they set the sort of thing is the boundaries of your commitment to implement it in a program. And that directly sort of modulates how much revenue you get from the county of which your local infrastructure project areas are in. so we really want to be able to understand that and so what you see here the bulk of things that mckenzie will be leading us to is basically how can we incentivize it what does that really mean in terms of credit absorption uh through time and then the last piece we're going to talk about is well what does that really mean with respect to the area the incentive the use of the credits and how much dollars may be available to the city um depending on how that implementation looks forward and then we'll close a little bit with kind of what our next steps are

Let's go to the next slide.

Great. I'm glad we kept that medium because I basically talked through all those pieces and we can move to this slide. We can move to this slide. Sorry, this is the problem when I'm looking at my own screen, the meeting screen as opposed to the deck screen. I kind of forget to advance these pieces. Let's go and move on forward. I think we can just go right to your presentation, Mackenzie. I think I covered most all these pieces.

Okay, great. Yeah, so like Morgan said, I'll go back one slide here. I'll be talking through a few of these different pieces. We're going to start with where the infrastructure funding and credits might be directed. Also talk about how the city can incentivize the use of credits and how many credits the city should accept. And then Morgan and Skip will talk a little bit more about the infrastructure funding as well. So the study areas that we started looking at in conversation with staff and previous meetings with you all and city council, we started with three main areas, the downtown Canyon Park sub area and North Creek slash 195th sub area. So of these, we decided that of these three, North Creek is probably the most ripe opportunity, if you will, for TDR, just because downtown, a lot of development has happened. A lot of development continues to be happening there, which is great, but a lot of the land has been built out. And then up in Canyon Park, We know that that's an area that is set for growth, but it's really focused a lot on employment. And then also there is a TDR program already in specifically that sub area through Sound Transit, which we'll touch on a little bit more. But so because of that, it's not necessarily so much of a blank slate to set up a new program to try to maximize residential development, credit placement as some of the other areas, which is why we really focused on North Creek. Yeah, and here again, you can see we sorted through the vacant and the underutilized acres by the different parcel sizes, recognizing that the larger projects, like big multifamily projects that are likely to be able to place more credits, those are probably exclusively or almost exclusively happening on these larger sites in the purple. And so looking at which sites or which of these three areas have sites that are roughly an acre or over, North Creek and Kenyon Park have a similar number of those sites. Downtown is a lot more limited. But again, we see like with the development of the large Avalon complex and other development that's starting to happen around North Creek, I think that that area is just a little bit more ready for residential developments. Yeah. And again, here, this is the residential development by parcel size. It is almost exclusively happening in downtown except for the really large Avalon apartment complex that went into North Creek recently. And today there has not, there's been very little development for residential in Canyon Park and what has been on kind of smaller sites, single family. So building on the types of development that Bothell has seen recently, we wanted to model things that would blend in and might be likely to be built within Bothell's current market. And so these are all comps from Bothell currently. So we have a three-story wood frame, five-story podium that actually is the Avalon building there. And then we also modeled a six-story podium and a seven-story podium. And the three, six, and seven-story buildings, those all went in downtown and within the last 10 years. So the reason that we are modeling different types of development is because we're trying to figure out how the city can incentivize the use of TDR credits on the types of development that it is potentially likely to see or would like to incentivize within those areas. We know like multifamily development, affordable housing, things like that. And so we set up a pro forma basically where we could analyze the feasibility of those different prototypes under different development scenarios. And so I'll be talking through kind of our methodology and that analysis and the results in this next section. Morgan touched on this briefly, but there are a couple different types of TDR program incentives that are more common. One being incentive zoning, which would function the same as almost any other incentive zoning program, where the city would allow a development capacity above the base such as increased height in exchange for TDR credits. So developers would purchase a certain number of TDR credits set by the city, and in exchange, they would get some amount of additional capacity. The other type of program incentive is an incentive that's attached to a tax or fee program. In this case, we looked at whether or not the city could require TDR credits to participate in either an existing MFTE program or potentially expand the MFT program into a different area or a different type of program. We'll start by talking about the incentive zoning and how we modeled that. So we looked at height primarily because that is the kind of the driving force behind how large or how dense buildings are in these areas. So what we're looking for is, one, is development already feasible under base entitlements? Like if, for example, we allow up to 10 stories and we know that someone is not, would not be interested in building above like six stories because it just like the feasibility is decreasing above that level or there isn't really anything like it, then there's not necessarily an incentive to build above the base entitlements. And so what we're looking for is looking at development slightly under, at, and above the base entitlements in these areas to see if increasing the height increases development feasibility. And the way we do this, and just to cover this briefly to give some context for the charts that are on the next few slides, but we use a residual land model in which we add up all the different development costs and all the potential development value that a project might generate. And then with that, what we're solving for is a developer's land budget. So like what might be left over after all of the other costs are accounted for. And when you think about the value that that project might generate over time. And so, for example, like if these are not real numbers, obviously, but if my development costs me $100 to build and my development value is $300. um potentially then i would have 200 left over for the cost of land and then what we do is we look at actual land prices on the types of parcels that are available in these areas and are likely or possible candidates for redevelopment and we see if like those parcels would be within that land budget so if my land budget is 200 and all of the land costs a hundred dollars great I'm going to go, I can buy any parcel I want. I'm in business. If all of the land costs $300, I'm probably going to need an additional subsidy in order to make my project pencil. And recognizing that we have built prototypical developments and we're looking at kind of averages across the cost of land. Obviously, actual development is, you know, there are a lot of specifics, a lot of different variables. What we're looking for is more like the directionality of okay, like when we increase the height, you know, the land budget that you would have available, it's a little bit higher. It's, you know, more comfortably above kind of the average cost of land that we're seeing. Or, oh, when we go higher, it actually decreases the feasibility quite a bit to the point where it's really unlikely that you would be able to afford anything other than like very low cost land or would need to receive an additional subsidy. So to start this, we wanted to establish how much land costed on average. So we have something to benchmark to. So we looked across our three sub areas. And what we're looking for is vacant land, which is there is the least amount of it, right? Because a lot of the vacant sites that are really developable have been developed on. And after we filter out like parks and utilities and things like that, we're looking for what's left. But the vacant land in all three of these areas is the lowest cost, which you would expect as there's not a structure on it that would be adding value. or anything they would need to demolish. We're also looking at underutilized land. And so this is maybe older structures or basically land that's not being used to its highest and best use, where we're looking to see if the building is less, like the building value that's assessed is less than the assessed land. So the land is more valuable than the building. And this is, in some cases, like quite a bit more expensive on a per square foot basis, like a canyon park, or like in the case of North Creek, it's just a little bit more expensive on a per square foot basis. But what is also worth noticing is that the not underutilized non-vacant land is quite a bit more expensive. And so when I'm a developer and I'm looking to purchase a piece of land, I'm not looking at the $180 per square foot parcel in downtown. I'm looking to see, like, okay, is there a lower-cost parcel that, you know, maybe it needs some upgrades, but that's something that I would be able to afford within my project or that I could still make pencil, or is there a piece of land that is maybe underutilized that I could buy and redevelop into my project? So all that being said... Here are feasibility results. And so our first question is, could development be feasible under the base entitlements? When we're looking to see, does this increase feasibility as we go up in height? When we're looking at our three-story wood frame apartment, this is something that with our land budget here of $34 per square foot, it could potentially be able to, or this project potentially could afford land in either North Creek or Canyon Park. Again, we're kind of looking at the blended average of the underutilized and vacant land there. We're not looking at the like priciest land that's available, but looking at what's available, what's likely to redevelop. It is possible under current market conditions that this project could be built. As we go up though, seeing that the five-story podium is, like under the average in Canyon Park, but like if there was a piece of land that was a little bit lower cost, it might be able to happen. But importantly, we're seeing also that the five-story podium is less feasible on a per square foot basis than the three-story. And so if I'm a developer thinking about what scale of development I want to build, and the height limit is six stories i i don't even want to build five stories necessarily in the current market because three stories is kind of like that might be my sweet spot and so when we're thinking about like okay would a developer pay to be able to access like a sixth or seventh story or however high like that's pretty unlikely under the current market conditions, which is just same chart, different type of ways. But then just really emphasizing that under current market conditions, we found that incentive zoning is probably not the most effective opportunity for a Bothell TDR program. Also noting that the base density in Bothell is pretty generous already, which is great. You're getting a lot of denser housing. the comps that we looked at, you know, five, six, seven stories. So like, and that's a policy choice. It just means that within this current zoning regulatory environment that you have, that this might not be the right tool for TDR. And so that being said, I will talk a little bit about potentially associating TDR credits with an MFTE program. So what we're looking for here Basically, a similar conceptual structure for the analysis of does accessing this program meaningfully increase feasibility such that if I'm a developer, I want to participate in the program because I'm getting more value relative to whatever cost it is to participating in the program. So is there enough value created by whatever incentive we're offering to be able to potentially add additional requirements to it and still have it be worth everyone's while? So, yeah, depending on the relative value, there might still be an incentive to participate, but obviously it's something that would need to be calibrated really carefully so that the cost of potentially buying any credits that are required doesn't outweigh the additional value of the program. Also noting Bothell's current MFTE program, which in downtown and Canyon Park, there is currently an eight-year and a 12-year program, as I'm sure you all know, and It has affordability requirements attached. In North Creek subarea, it's just a 12-year program with affordability requirements as well. And so not wanting to compete or have competing policy priorities with affordable housing, the idea that we were looking at is potentially expanding an eight-year program with different like other than affordability requirements, but expanding an eight-year program into North Creek and potentially attaching some sort of PDR requirement to that. so here is kind of our our land budget chart here for that analysis there's a lot happening but uh in the orange here that is the market rate uh it's the same values as the previous charts we were looking at where three story would frame kind of on the edge of being able to pencil in north rieger canyon park um a little bit lower four or five story podium like maybe, maybe not, and then decreasing feasibility for the six, not the six, yeah, the six-story podium and the seven-story podium. And so in the blue here is Bothell's, or sorry, in the light blue is an eight-year MFTE with no additional affordability requirement. And then the other three bars here, those are Bothell's current MFTE requirements with the affordability calculated in with the current AMI and the current rents and all of that. And so because Bothell has pretty high market rents, those rents at the levels that are currently associated with the program, what we found are like the, the amount, the gap between the affordable rents and the market rents is large enough that we found that with these prototypes that we modeled in these market conditions found that it actually decreases the feasibility of the project just because the cost of the tax benefit doesn't necessarily outweigh the cost of providing those affordable units over the time period. And so with that, an eight year program without affordability requirements attached could have potential for creating enough value such that there could possibly be an additional requirement attached to that. And so we modeled a few different ways of attaching that requirement looking at, okay, for the value created by this eight-year MFT program, what if 50% of the value towards TDR, or 50% of the program's value went to buying TDR credits, or what if 70% went towards buying TDR credits? And so you can see here basically just illustrating kind of the range and also the trade-off here between the more, the heavier requirement you put on it, the greater credits that you're able to place, but the least, the less likely it is also that someone might participate because it might not be worth their while. Or, you know, there might be other reasons, but that's kind of just to emphasize the importance of really calibrating such a program so that everybody gets a policy benefit basically. All right. So that is kind of a wrap on our analysis about how the city can incentivize use of TDR credits, but we also looked at how many credits the city should accept. And just a quick refresher on why that's important is because with the output funds, the way that the state has tied them to the TDR credits is that So Bothell has allocated a certain number of credits. It's 365. To implement this program, Bothell would need to choose what share of those credits it, quote unquote, accepts. And so Bothell can choose between 20% and 100% of the credits. That is also going to be equal to the share of potential revenue that Bothell is eligible for. So if we want to choose to accept all 365 credits, you'd be eligible for all of the potential taxes that could be eligible for the program, those tax revenues. If you say we want 20%, much lower credit threshold, but also you would only be eligible for 20% of the additional tax revenues that might be generated as part of this program. And it's really balanced because to make sure that TDRs are actually really good faith effort participating in the program and that it actually is getting credits placed. So you do have to demonstrate that the program is working. And so of those total accepted TDR credits, you actually don't start accruing LCLIP revenue until 25% of the accepted credits are used. And so like, if you accept 20% of the 365 credits, once, you know, that would be like 72 credits, once 18 of those have been placed, I think, like you would be able to start accruing revenue. And so great, that's a much lower threshold than if you, you know, accepted all 365 credits, but you would only be eligible for up to 20% of the revenue. And throughout the program, there's basically these check marks of continuing to extend the revenue based on the credits being placed. And so there's check marks at years 10, 15, and 20 to ensure that credits are being placed. So there's really a balance. to try to inform as well as project out kind of a realistic number of credits that the city might be able to place. We looked at a lot of different factors. We ran a lot of different scenarios, looking at things like what current development trends have been, how much vacant land there is, what current land values are relative to kind of development value, looking at the city's comp plan, looking at all of these different growth factors, projections, PSRC, Snohomish County, King County, all of that, to try to come up with reasonable, we think, assumptions of credits. And so under this low growth scenario, which is kind of assuming like, okay, development continues really at the pace that it has been currently, you know, a lot of it's concentrated in downtown. And but like land is being used up, and there's probably fewer, like, downtown, like high value development opportunities, especially as you look over the next 25 years. And so low growth scenario that's like, okay, if nothing happens, like you might be able to place two thirds of the credits or so. This medium growth scenario is, I think, what we would probably call like our most likely scenario, where we're looking at, again, like kind of the comp plan, also like the sub-area plans that have happened or are going to be happening, the way that the city is positioning different sub-areas for growth over the next 25 years, kind of looking optimistically at you know, the multifamily development market over the next 25 years, because again, that's really where like most of your credits will be placed, most likely just because of the value of those types of development relative to something more like townhomes. And so under this medium growth scenario, Looking at pretty close to 365, so almost all the credits could potentially be placed. The high growth scenario. This is our very optimistic scenario. This would be also kind of contingent on like the city really taking some like strong policy positions towards TDR to really try to ensure that the credits are placed. And also that growth really starts to concentrate in these areas that are a little bit less built out such that the vacant land that is there has development happening on it and that development is engaging with the program. And the last thing I will touch on here is There are also other factors that might influence how many credits get placed. So again, looking at, okay, what if 70% of the MFTE value went towards the credits? You know, you're placing more credits. Again, there might be a trade-off with program uptake, depending. If you offer 50% of MFTE value towards the credits, then you're looking at a little bit lower. uptake over the time period. So like at the medium scenario, then you're looking at more like two thirds. So all of these policy choices can really influence like what program uptake looks like over the next 25 years. And the other thing that we wanted to highlight here is that the price of credits that we modeled, we looked at historical transactions, acknowledging that there have not been you know, a ton of recent credit transactions to kind of peg the price act. And knowing also that the county has a vested interest in making this program happen, like all of these different factors that might influence the credit market. So if credit price dropped by 25%, the number of credits that could potentially be placed would increase quite a bit just because, yeah, you have a set value and you If the credit price drops, you'll be able to buy more credits with that. So I just talked for a while. I'm going to hand it back to Morgan, and then he'll, he's going to talk about that.

Actually, let's go back to the last slide. Yeah, let's go back to the last slide. We covered a lot of ground there with respect to the outputs. this is a great punchline of kind of what we think it means in terms of using the MFTE incentive and particularly focused in on the North Creek area. But you may have questions. And so before we get to the revenue piece, probably worth stop pausing and see what questions folks have.

Yeah, thanks, Morgan.

Yes, Commissioner Kuhn.

Could you go back to slide 28, please? I think it's two back.

Yes. This one?

Yes. So, what happens if, say, we get to year 10, we've used the credits, and things change? I mean, there was the recession in 2008, development stopped, and we don't make the rest of the goals. Is any of that previous use of credits locked in? Do you have to use it all to get all the value, or can you incrementally get the value?

Skip, do you want to take a crack at this first?

Sure. Maybe I'll take a quick step back. The reason that these were established up front is the counties wanted some kind of assurance that if they were going to be sharing the revenues from criminal growth, that they'd be getting some kind of guarantee at a minimum that performance for TDR would happen. And so that's really where these thresholds came to pass. And so the first 10 years, there's a lot of belief on the county's standpoint that, okay, Do a lot rights are starting to move once 25% have landed. Okay. We're going to be starting to share revenues for a period of 10 years. And so that, that 10 year mark where they're hoping to see at least 50% of credits, one of two things can happen. If you hit that, then you continue for another five years. If you don't hit that technically that could be the end of the program. at least an ending of the flow of revenues. Now, you're potentially working with both King and Snohomish counties, but there may be a reason that the counties would want to work with you to find ways to de-risk this or to ensure that the program continues working for you and for them. And so I think at that time, there is the opportunity for working with the county to say we're going to secure acquired development rights that will meet these thresholds and continue the program forward. But that would be a discussion with the counties. So technically, the program would end if you don't meet any of these thresholds. But I do think there's an opportunity to work with your partners and keep that going.

So to clarify, we're at year 10. We made the First one, we're not making the second one. So we did get the revenue for making that first milestone and the revenue stream ends subject to anything else changing?

Correct, at the year 10.

Okay, thank you.

Commissioners, any further questions or comments? Yes, Commissioner Goffs is in.

Hi, Sarah Gustafson here. So as we move forward, would it be possible to see some illustrative examples of what the development might look like in North Creek? The feasibility analysis is valuable and thank you to our consultants. I also think it would help the community to have a rough sense of physically what it could look like on the ground. For example, if a builder wanted to create a three-story wood building, How many credits would it take to do that? I know that's up in the air. And second of all, where would it show up in North Creek? Can we get granular about what kinds of streets or areas it would show up in North Creek? Because North Creek also is full of conservation areas, so we would want to make sure that we are preserving the spirit of the program by preserving our areas in North Creek as well. So those are the two questions. How many credits for a building and where would the building show up?

Yeah, I don't know if I'm, and maybe Mackenzie help me out here, but the way we kind of think about this is we obviously are working off of kind of the current parcel information, just so we, I would say, at the aggregate understand capacity and then deduct some understanding as kind of like, well, what kinds of scale are we anticipating? That way we can understand the use of the incentive and how much credit placement. So from a sort of project basis, but also it helps us cap. We don't we are trying to place, you know, three million square feet of development in the area where only a million really reasonably be accommodated. So we're kind of controlling for that. What we don't know is anything. We're not sort of projecting our forecast against very specific developments on specific parcels. So we're trying to understand it at aggregate. So, we can get kind of that rough piece in place, but not really kind of saying, okay, well, this parcel is going to develop this way with this intensity and this kind of use or, you know, at this certain time. And so we can't really sort of draw that, but we do understand it from a kind of study area perspective. If that's helpful, Mackenzie, my kind of describing our analysis correctly here.

Yeah, I will add also that to try to get at kind of what development specifically there might look like, we did look at parcels. As you know, a lot of the parcels that are vacant are set for to be or set for conservation. And we did subtract those out of our analysis. Anything that had like a significant amount of critical area on it or something hills, things like that, where, you know, it's unlikely that development would happen. But we did look at parcels that had, you know, kind of a lower building value on them or just a lower overall total value that maybe have a structure on it currently, but it's not maybe the most like quote-unquote valuable structure at the moment like there are a lot of kind of older buildings older office buildings especially as office market shifts continue to happen it's possible that over this time horizon those buildings might be good candidates for redevelopment i'm also looking over this like 25 years so it's prototypical and we did try to account for that as much as possible when we're modeling to try to say like okay roughly this large these are the average parcel sizes here these are the average yeah footprint that you could have um and as for number of credits so our three-story wood frame here take an average between these two maybe like 30 credits so okay Like if, you know, theoretically over the next 25 years, there are 10 developments on this scale, you could potentially get pretty close to your credit target.

And I think that's a useful way to think about it, right? It's like, you know, development's pretty lumpy. And so as you get kind of relatively bigger or smaller scales, right, you're getting big chunks of potential development rights. And this is just, you know, in every program that we look at it, this is kind of how it works, right? You'll have like, oh, might not be a, maybe a couple of small projects, but then all of a sudden one year you'll have two big projects, right? And all of a sudden you'll get kind of these big jumps in both development, but also in credit utilization.

Okay, this is very helpful. So there's a lot going on, but to summarize, if a building is three credits, if we use 20% acceptance, we're looking about maybe 25 buildings at that scale. If we go to 100% acceptance, we're looking at 120 buildings of that scale going into North Creek, which sounds like a lot, but as you said, it would be lumpy. And now I definitely see Commissioner Lever has a question as well.

Chair, if I may, I just wanted to touch on one other topic from Chair Gustafson.

Just one quick thing on your math, it's 10. Sorry. Not 100, yeah.

Wait, wait, but if we have 365 credits and each building is at that three-story scale.

Oh, at the three-story scale, that's still about, what are we talking about, 30 credits roughly? So we're still talking about like 10 buildings.

Yeah, but if you have, we're talking about 365 credits being like the maximum, or am I getting that 365 number wrong?

Yeah, no, just say it's 36, it's 365 divided by 36 is 10. Not 100.

Okay, so the maximum credits under this program would be 36, not 365.

Maybe I'm not understanding the question, sorry. You seem to maybe know what, maybe you're tracking a little better.

No, I just, okay. Yeah, I clarify. The maximum is 365. Yes. And the scale that we're looking at on a per building basis would be 30. So just like a slightly larger magnitude.

Yeah.

Okay.

I got it. It's okay.

30 credits to make a three-story building. Yes, yeah.

Okay, I just misheard that.

I misheard that as three.

Okay, now it's making sense. Roughly how many units are we talking about in that prototype, roughly?

I don't have it in front of me.

Okay, but you know. I can definitely, like a podium, like a five story podium, I think we're kind of at 100, 180 to 200, roughly, probably just to give you a sense of the scale we're talking, you know, fairly sizable structures here, right. That are happening. And that's kind of why you're like, oh, we're really talking about 10 over a 25 year period that gets you to that 365 number.

Okay. So really reasonable, not huge spikes in growth. Okay. Thanks.

Commissioner Lever.

I believe Chris wanted to say something.

I just had one clarifying comment on Commissioner Gustafson's questions around the North Creek protection area. So when we're talking about North Creek, we're talking about North Creek subarea. The North Creek protection area begins up in the Fitzgerald subarea, so north of where we're talking about. There are still, yes, critical areas within the North Creek subarea, which would be observed through shoreline standards, critical area standards. But just to make sure that we're very clear, they're two separate things, but just wanted to touch on that real quick for you.

That's great. Thanks.

Commissioner Lever.

Thank you, Commissioner Lever. Thank you so much. I think this conversation is going to be helpful for my comment because every time we have very technical study sessions, I so appreciate the presentations and I know that they cannot really be included with the packet because of timing issues. But if we can make sure that it is included when we have the minutes, it's probably super helpful for people who may need that visual aid to understand very technical concepts. So with that said, the conversation has been very technical and all about the market visibility, which I so appreciate. And I am so glad that you're doing this. This is complex work. But my question is around, as the city starts really developing the program, I often wonder how do we incorporate the community values, the resident feedback into the technical analysis just to make sure that we are able to convey what is needed at a micro level, at a block to block level when community members may not understand How the program works and how that really impacts the infrastructure, because when it comes to some of the things that we hear about the growth in the region is the concern that we're not really able to keep up with the needs that we have around infrastructure investment. So. how do we make sure that there's kind of like that time to incorporate feedback that's being shared across the different spaces to then make those decisions that are not only based on technical data, but also on the values and the needs of the community. So that's kind of question number one. And then the second one is what is sort of like best practice that you can share with us around making sure that the program actually really has some sort of like the design in which we can have the infrastructure improvements that are needed kind of happening alongside the program or before the regional growth so that people are not only seeing or being concerned with like seeing buildings kind of like going up, yet they may not know that source are being addressed and or the sidewalks or you name it. So hopefully any comment and questions. So thank you. And thank you very much. This is very helpful.

No, I agree on your comments. This can be a bit in the weeds analysis. And so I really appreciate that. And your two questions are great. And so I think the first one, what I would say with TDR and LCLIP, I said, by and large, right, This is a tool to implement the city's existing community vision for those areas. And so as but I think, you know, this is also new information and a new tool. And so I think there is a sort of like iterative sort of like, do you need to circle back on those community plans and talk about what you're going to be able to do? Because I think it's really related to your last question. How are we spending the money that is inclusive of sort of what the community's desires are? Because like in a lot of ways, right, we have these comprehensive plans, we have these several goals and pieces. But in the end, what people really experience is like, hey, we built this park or you improve this road and, you know, whatever it may be. And the challenge with a lot of our tax increment finance tools is a lot of times you want to do the needs right up front, but the money sometimes isn't there. And you'll see this a little bit when we go talk about it forward. It's because it's really based on how much growth is happening. Those dollars kind of come in at that time, and there's a lot more money in the back end because there's a cumulative sort of effect of compounding in inflation. And so the technical part is basically understanding kind of, well, what do you want in front? And then how do you pay for it? Because we know from Elk Club, it's a stream of dollars, right? Money you can count on. And the question to the city is then, should we finance that through like bonds and say, build that thing now and repay it back over time? Or do we want to sort of pay as we go, right? Like, oh, we're going to bank 10 years of dollars great now we're going to build that park right or you know and so that that is really kind of this more i would call it very technical sort of strategy logistic logistical strategy question is like once you kind of design the program know kind of what your cash flow looks like from a city financial stewardship and sort of community expectations how do you balance the spending of those dollars when those projects are kind of needed So I wouldn't say there's like a best practice, but I think that's the right way to think about this sort of this issue around sort of how do we implement it? How do we be consistent? How do actually projects show up that support the community? I mean, and this is, I think, and Skip, maybe you want to chime in here. This is kind of want to kind of come back and say, well, this is why you need to think about your TDR and LFIP as a program, right? This is not kind of like a old set it, forget it, great, we're done. You're really kind of making this commitment to both the code, the incentives, and then the flow of dollars. And the city is really managing this over time to sort of implement these projects through whatever incentives you're trying to do. Hopefully that kind of answers it, but I don't know, Skip, anything else you want to add on to those kind of two really good questions?

No, I think you hit it really well. And I might even go further than beyond saying it's an LCLIP and TDR program, but these are just tools that work in concert with all the other tools you've already put in place to support the policies and the vision that you've established. And so to the extent that these harmonize over time and work well with one another, that's really the goal. The goal isn't to create competition between TDR or any other kind of investment in the community. It's just how can these all as a whole work together, which is why, as Morgan was saying, I agree. Probably the best management practice that I could offer is continually or periodically evaluating these programs. Are they doing what we envisioned for them? Is the market... is the market developing in the way that we were anticipating? If it isn't, there's levers that you can pull and shifts that you can make within the program to optimize it and to make it work better. And that's just a much better outcome than if, like Morgan had said, if you just sort of set it and then hope that it's going to work. I think treating it as a sort of a dynamic program in that way is a really valuable way of looking at it.

And I'll just circle back for staff, Commissioner Liver. Yeah, these are the behind-the-scenes steps that get at what the comprehensive plan and the zoning that was established in 2024 already spent all that time to go through the outreach and engagement activities. This will... Ideally, see that vision through. An additional note, we have the North Creek subarea on the schedule to be evaluated through outreach similar to what we're doing. Maybe not as large a scale as the downtown subarea update, but we have that on our work plan to start towards the end of next year. At the end of this year, we're going to start looking at Canyon Park again, and then we're going to look at North Creek. So that would be the opportunity to evaluate what we might be seeing as far as projects and how those go. Seed Morikawa is in Council Chambers tonight, too. But we're not planning on adding any new projects. We have those project lists from the comp plan that establish projects. Here's what they all are, whether they're road, sidewalk, bike improvement, park improvement projects to work off of. If work within those sub areas in the future create opportunity to reevaluate what we're seeing, that's a that's a future conversation. But yeah, that. I'd say that the short answer is the work has been done on what the visioning for the built environment looks like. This is a tool to actually see it come about.

Thank you. Commissioner?

I'm going to get a little further into the weeds. Can we go back to slide 28? So my last question was, what if we don't make it? Okay, what if we do make our goals? How does the revenue flow in? What kind of order of magnitude is there, and what's the timing of it? Is it a lump sum? Is it annual? How long is that cash flow? And where I'm going is, can you bond against it? If it's five years, probably not. If it's 20 years, probably yes.

Yeah, we'll get into the actual estimates a little bit, but I will kind of tackle a couple of those questions. Yeah, so think of it as basically if you're successful in this, you're opening up 25 years of cash flow. And the question with respect to sort of bonding is really a financial strategy, one related to the question of like, when do you need the money and how do you want to pay for it? The challenge with all of Washington's tax increment Well, actually, let me back up before I answer that. It also kind of matters what other dollars you're using. And so most cities who use tax increment finance don't use all the tax increment finances like a revenue bond or anything like that. This is the only source of dollars. A lot of times they're mixing it with other dollars or they're using it sort of gap funding, you know, to kind of fill gaps like, oh, we have this grant. Um, or now we can go to grant because now we have a little more dollars to do our local match. Right? Or perhaps we're working on the development agreement, and we're using these dollars to kind of pay for our portion of the of a project. Right? That helps us kind of execute our vision. And so it's not always sort of clear just kind of like, hey, here's 5 projects. Here's our except dollars. Let's go issue a bond and pay for it. But even if that were the case, one of the big challenges is, you know, you have choices around structuring your, you know, think of it, even if there's enough money overall, you're really then thinking about sort of financing. How do you finance that? And you can structure bonds lots of different ways. But in some essence, right, you're always going to have some kind of level-ish payment, right, that you're trying to pay for over that period of time matched to those dollars. Debt payment is here. And then in your year, um, in, in the first year, your older else up dollars are below that, right? So you have this gap, like, well, how do I fill my sort of debt obligation, right? Am I borrowing from my capital fund? Am I using other dollars? Because what happens is even if it's level through time, the money's going to ramp up. And so there may be money overall, um, But you kind of have to find some intermediate sort of funding to kind of close gaps until the revenue is gone. And that'll be a little clearer here in some of the charts that we're going to show in just a bit. But hopefully that kind of gets you just a little bit of that answer as we kind of jump into the next part of the presentation.

Before you do jump into that next part of the presentation, I think I need to go one step back to get a little more clarification on the basics here. With EM- FTE, my understanding is that's multifamily tax exemption. And on slide 25, if we could go back to that. Yeah, okay. So if it says that we're putting 70% of a tax exemption value towards TDR, it's tripping me up a little bit because a tax exemption is... no money. If I'm not, it's no taxes. And 70% of nothing is nothing. So can you clarify that? Cause the math isn't happening for me there.

Yeah, no, it's a great question. So, um, One of the things we do, the way to think about it is we are offering a developer not to pay property taxes. And just think about that as like the full value of that, let's just say for simplification, let's say the full value of that is like $100. And so if you're a developer, you're kind of saying like, wait, the city's offering me basically $100 for free. Great. Well, I'll take that. But in this case, what we're saying is, no, there's some conditions attached to that. And two things are important, right? One is the condition here is we want you to go take that $100 and go spend it on MFTE. But we also understand that there are two things we have to acknowledge. One, it's a voluntary program. So we have to find ways to induce people into participating. And that costs us, right? We have to make their situation better off. And also, right, going to go buy TDR and doing all that piece, that's not like a costless transaction, right? You have to go find it, hire lawyers and do all that kind of stuff to kind of go take care of it. And so the numbers that we have there around 50% towards TDR, 70%. So think of this basically of that $100 in the case of 70%, we want you to go spend $70 of that $100 on the actual purchase of the development rights. And then we're saying the other $30, right, that's to help you induce you in and to compensate you for those costs of doing the transactions that are necessary. So hopefully that clarifies what we mean when we say 70% or 50%.

Yeah. Yes, thank you.

No, great question. Sorry. We probably spent a little more time talking about that shorthand there.

Okay.

Any more questions in the room? Otherwise, I can move us to the next little piece here, which I'm assuming will generate other questions too.

Commissioner Guff says then.

Hi, Sarah Gustafson here, and this may be a question for our consultant team or for our staff team. Thanks for clarifying this picture. I'm still trying to understand what might be the administrative cost to BOFL ongoing. Who on staff would coordinate this, and what would that commitment look like in five or ten years if we don't have our expert consultants here to guide us through the technicalities? especially given that these revenue benefits may be lumpy and, as Director Shook noted, might only serve as gap financing.

Yeah, great. Skip, do you want to talk a little bit about what the demands on the city would be here, in practical terms? Sure.

Up front, there are certain costs that would be tied to establishing the program. What we're doing here as a consultant team is really looking at, is this feasible? The commitment that the state of Washington has asked of the city in participating in this pilot is not only offering staff time, but just taking a serious look. But there's really no commitment to move forward. If you did move forward, it would likely have to go on a work plan, and I'll, you know, not speaking for staff, but just sort of as a general sense, going on a work plan and then breaking it out in the two component parts is a certain number of implementation steps that you would need to take. So for a TDR program, it would be, you know, actually establishing the receiving sites that we've been talking about, but really, you know, honing in on which areas in North Creek those may be, and really honing in on the incentive and how that applies. There's a series of county partnerships that would need to be entered into. We're talking about cross-jurisdictional transfers of real estate assets that are the development rights. And so we need to have some kind of agreement. And so that can be, if you're in King County, they're going to want to have a negotiated agreement. interlocal agreement. And then there's also another opportunity called the Commerce Rule that has a more generic set of terms and conditions for exchanges with Snohomish County and Pierce County. But those take a little while to set up. There's the processes for adopting TDR policy and code. And then in terms of ongoing, you were mentioning 10 years out. There are administrative requirements for a program. It's a little bit easier for a city than it would be, say, on the county side, which is a lot more intensive. But on the city side, there's still, there'll need to be incorporation into project or permit approvals. And if there's a TDR requirement, is that, you know, has that been met? And then a little bit of coordination with King County and Snohomish County on if development rights come in, tracking those and reporting back that they should be extinguished because they've been used in a project in the city of Bothell. That's the TDR side of things. There's also then, for setting up the ELCA program, there's a number of things that have to happen upfront, and those would be things like you have to give notice, there needs to be plans together around the infrastructure that will go in, you'll have to design the TIF areas, and Morgan's going to talk more about those. They're called LIPAs or Local Infrastructure Project Areas. There's, again, sort of the adopting of the plans and policies, at least one public hearing, and then the ordinance process. So a lot of the work is up front, but there are still these ongoing things. And then tracking, are we meeting the, we looked at slide 28, are we meeting our performance metrics? We're working on reporting with King County back to the state every other year. So there's a little bit of Commitment there, so that gives a sense for for what's involved. I think a lot of it's really upfront and that's why I think it I heard Christian say it, but it. Having a work plan item so that staff can support the city getting this teed up. And then ongoing, it's a much less. intensive requirement, but somebody does need to be involved and does need to be sort of administering the program just like any other tool that the city's already using.

Okay, thank you. Are there any other comments or questions from commissioners? Yes, Commissioner Gustafson.

Hi, Sarah Gustafson. Thank you, Mr. Swenson, for that. I'm guessing that if we asked our staff, they would say that this is something that we can take on. When I was trying to write down all the things, it seemed extremely long and a lot of work. And I'm wondering, is it really worth it for benefits that might not materialize? So I think I would like to hear our staff weigh in on how hard is this actually?

Yeah, that's a great, great question. So we've got a built into our work plan. So as mentioned, you know, there's no commitment to buy what comes out of the work that EcoNorthwest is doing. If the decision from is to move forward, then we'll start the process of going through the actual code update. And that would run probably through the beginning to middle of next year. During that time, we'd be learning. I'll look at Jacqueline. Jacqueline will be learning more. She'll be coordinating with those in King and Snohomish County to begin setting up or looking at what those interlocal agreements would look like. And then through that process, we would then you know, complete it, move into implementation. And as Skip mentioned, implementation decreases the amount of time you're spending on it, but it does have an ongoing. So we would look at that as a portion of staff time that would continue on for years to come.

Great. Thank you. Thanks for being willing to take it.

Okay, seeing no other further comments or questions from commissioners, I believe there is a second part to the presentation.

Yeah, let's keep moving. Move us to the next slide here. So I think as you were wondering, like, well, if we can implement all this stuff, what do we get out of it? And a few things to sort of just ground us a little bit on how all this works. And so um let's just start with the tax base like uh what counts like in terms of um the you know increments that come out of the property tax both for the city and some of the county and so the elk legislation is clear basically you get to count 75 of the new construction that happens within the life of and just just definitionally two things So what's a local infrastructure project area? And so I think I mentioned earlier, that is basically your tax increment area. And it defines two things, or actually three things. One, it defines how much value is being captured, which determines how much revenue we get. It also has to be those places of which you are using incentives to place development rights. And then three, it's also the places where you're spending the money, right? So the infrastructure projects that you are spending have to be within those boundaries. So those three things are really important with the LIPA. And as I mentioned, you can have multiple LIPAs, but at the end, they cannot exceed 25%, at least when you create them, excuse me, that cannot exceed 25% of the city's total real property base. And so this is kind of another thing why it's a program, right? You can do multiple places and you're kind of managing it across those areas. So what's new construction? So new construction is defined within our as well as the wax. But the way to think about it is basically, as it sounds anything you're building new, what's the sort of market value of of the of that new construction? As well, as anything you're doing, that's like a substantive rehab. So, with the assessor is coming around is looking at the permits and it's kind of saying, like, okay, well, what's the improvement value? You are sort of placing on this property and that's new construction. Um, and what the law said here is, it only looks at 75% of that new construction. So, like, imagine you're building. A new home, right? It's worth a million dollars. And the assessor goes like, okay, well, it was a vacant property before, and now they've improved it by a million dollars. The new construction value is a million dollars. And what the LCLIP law is saying is you only get to count 75% as part of your tax base. So 750,000 of that. The nice thing about that is once it's in the base, the assessor then rolls over. So the next year, right, let's say values grew by 10% and it says, okay, well now it's worth, you know, 101.1 million, right? And it's getting 75% of that 1.1 million. So once it's in the base, it continues to compound. You don't lose it. Okay. The other thing we have to keep track of in that tax base is the fact, and so actually two things worth noting. When you draw that LIPA, you get to count all that new construction, not just new construction that's been enabled by TDR. So imagine like, oh, on this property, we had a project that developed by a million dollars and it used, you know, three, 10 credits, development rights. And then next door, another project got developed for a million dollars and it didn't use any credits because it just didn't. And, but from a, LELCA perspective, you get to count both of those because that's just how the laws are drawn. So important sort of distinction of when we're talking about drawing these areas, it's from a valuation perspective, you get to count everything that's happening in that spot. The other thing we have to keep track of here is that 1 of our, particularly in the North area are implementing tool is the project. Right? And so I think as 1 of the noted here is like, hey, are we reducing the, the valuation of these of these properties? Because we're using that and that's correct. And so when we model this, we have to understand that over that period of time is 25 years. That 1st, 8 years for those projects that are going to use it, right? We have to reduce the valuation as part of the base, because it's going to be exempted from the property tax calculation. All right, so that's the tax base. The next thing is, well, what tax rates are we using? And it's important to understand here that there is a city portion. So I think I misspelled something there, as well as a county portion. And so the state law says that you have to use your incremental sort of property taxes within it, right? And this is kind of a fungible thing IT ALLOWS YOU TO DO INFRASTRUCTURE AS WELL AS OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE OF FACILITIES WITHIN YOUR LIPAS. BUT TECHNICALLY SOME OF THAT INCREMENT FROM THE CITY, IT HAS TO BE DEPLOYED IN THAT AREA. The thing that most cities are looking at is the new dollars that are flowing through a revenue share with the county of which that LIPA is in place. And so here in this case, particularly in the North Creek area, the vast majority of that is in King County, although I think there might be a little sliver at the Northern portion that touches Snohomish County. All those revenues then become, you get basically it per rata, depending on how many development rights you choose the form where you create your program. And so of that 365, if you take a hundred percent, you get a hundred percent of those dollars that flow, that will flow to you based on that. If you take something less, right, it's some per rata number less. Let's go to the next slide. Great and so what we did here is actually run some growth scenarios. I think Mackenzie did some did some explaining of how we kind of did low, moderate and high. Just so folks can understand that things kind of move together a little bit, depending on sort of how you want to think about the outlook. And the way the simple way I think about this is. depending on sort of your perspective on this, things move together. So if you're thinking that we're not gonna develop, the market isn't gonna develop robustly, it means we just have less development. because we have less development, we have less credit utilization, right? And because we have less credit utilization, we also have a lower city ratio. So if you get whatever dollars do get generated, you just get a smaller and smaller share of that. And because these things all move together, it leads to kind of big variance depending on sort of on the revenue perspective, because these things all kind of are multiplied by each other, right? The growth, the credit utilization, and then the haircut. And so what you see here is are just kind of a scenario based on what happened. So like, let's say the earliest the city could move forward with LCLIP would be in 2027, you start the program, you get some development happening, you trigger the 25% start year, and let's just say 2032, at that point you hit that 55 credits placed, and then hit the threshold, you know, just thinking linearly here, right? When the 50%, 75%, 100% thresholds are, and then what the last revenue year is. And what you see here is basically what the split between counting contributions and city contributions. And the reason you have this in balance is because we have. The city regular levy rate is just fundamentally larger than the county levy rate. And so it just gives you a sense of the scale of what's happening between those 2 places. But overall, in a kind of a sort of, we'll call it kind of like, well, things just kind of kick around a little bit. We have some modest uptake. What's the revenue profile look like? You're talking about roughly 2.8M dollars in new county money flowing to the city to help support infrastructure investment. Let's go to the next slide. So, in a medium growth scenario, right where you're getting a little more robust development, but still in line with kind of like past trends. And what we see here is we get pretty close to the 365, but just less than that. So we're about 327, but. Because the evaluation, the credit utilization and the sponsor, and the ratio all move together, you're talking about almost a 3 fold increase in the amount of new county dollars that are coming. So, roughly 6.3M dollars here. Um, totally with the city's own contribution around 19, roughly 25M dollars of dollars. You would be thinking about trying to program within the area and let's go to our highest scenario. And so the high scenario starts more robustly getting there, because we're hitting the 100% threshold. We're getting a lot more development happening, and we're getting the full value of that. And so in this case, what you're seeing here is roughly $10 million of new county dollars contribution flowing in with some portion of the city's contributions, roughly totaling about $47 million. And so what I hope these scenarios do is help kind of for you to benchmark kind of how LCLIP, if you were to implement TDR and be able to use LCLIP, how robust the revenues would be depending on that scale. And so here in part of the challenge here, and also a bit of an X factor, Um, and I don't want to get into some of the inner workings of our property tax system, but part of this, the challenge here is basically from a county perspective, their regular current expense levy rate is relatively low relative to the city. So it makes it look like the cities. contributions are are much harder because they are just because of the levy rate and balance. But not that's not a function of the development. That's just really kind of the inner workings of how our property tax system works. And so all to say is if you thought about from a low to moderate to high, right, you're talking about anywhere from a three to four percent, three to four fold increase between our low to high scenario in terms of new dollars that would be flowing to sort of help support infrastructure investment in the area. Let me pause there because I think that is really the comparison here on the revenue pieces of dollars that are available through the LCLIP program.

Are there any questions or comments from commissioners? I'm not seeing any.

All right. Maybe while folks think about a few of them, we'll kind of just talk about where we're headed next. Future presentations, but counsel for feedback, we may talk with, I don't know Mackenzie's talk with Jacqueline, but we may try to add another quick presentation to commissioners here just to talk about the actual sort of implementation. I think we kind of touched on a few of those things, but we do have a lot more information that we can kind of share there. So, if there's room in the calendar, we may try to try to squeeze. Just a little more time, just to give you a sense of some of the things that skip had alluded to around. What does it really take to do to create a program? What do you really need to do with the clip? And what is really the process and kind of creating that versus the ongoing maintenance and monitoring monitoring that you would be able to do. But one of the pieces we're trying to work on in the meantime, right, is then to think about those dollars, right, and then where, from a project priority perspective, how does this help implement the vision for North Creek, given the sort of set of existing needs that are already within the city CFP in that space? Mackenzie, did I miss anything a little bit on the next steps at all that I should highlight?

No, I don't think so. I think Skip is going to talk a little bit more about just like the general implementation materials that we'll be providing.

It's aligned with what Morgan was just saying. So I don't have much more to add to that aside from those things we did touch upon in terms of like how you pull a program together, what are the requirements for LCLIP to get it established and move on. We'll be not only writing all that up, but if we did have an opportunity to speak to those, I think we'd be happy to do so.

All right, well, that is our presentation. We'll pause again if there's questions or discussion, anything that we can answer.

Okay, Commission, it looks like we have a few questions before us here. Are there thoughts, questions, commentary? Literally none. I have a question just about what lands will Bothell help conserve? I know we've discussed this perhaps at the last meeting you guys presented at, but what are our choices regarding how that works when we do the transfer development rights? What lands are we partnering with?

Skip, why don't you take it?

Yeah, I can jump in on that. So, for the elk club program itself, the state has made that decision somewhat easy in saying that the lands that are really favored under growth management for protection, like the most important lands, those of That are designated for long-term commercial significance. So that'd be your farms and your working forests across Pierce King and Stonemish counties. Those all have to be eligible for transfer into the city. That's sort of the baseline for that. There is, however, the opportunity for the city to work with the counties to say, you know, we really do have priorities within that set of eligible lands under the program for conservation. and we can create priorities by providing you know relatively more incentive or making a little sweeter for a developer if you purchase these development rights over those ones and so there's ways to set that and the way the process would be working with counties to you know work that either into your inter-local agreement um with, for example, King County or working with Snohomish County to say, here's how we want to set our policy priorities and just ensuring that everyone's on the same page to support that vision.

So can those lands come from anywhere within King and Snohomish or would they be within Bothell or would Bothell have the choice to prioritize for those lands?

So in this case, like I was saying, the lands that are designated lands of long-term commercial significance under growth management, so those are already pre-identified in King County, Snohomish County, and Pierce County. All of those would be eligible for transfer into the city were Bothell to participate in ALCLIP. However, you would be able to say of those, we really want the farmlands that are you know, adjacent to the UGA in King County. That, you know, those are important to us. That'd be one example. Or like the City of Seattle has done in its ELCLIP program, we're really going to prioritize the lands that are in our food basket. So lands that are growing food that comes into the city. That's how they've looked at it. So I think there's different ways of thinking through what may be priorities for you. But that's... Of the eligible lands under the program, you could create priorities in that way. What would not be eligible, at least for LCLIP, you could certainly do it for just a transfer development program, a development program that's independent of LCLIP. You could then have sending areas, conservation lands within the city of Bothell, but they wouldn't qualify for the Oakland program.

Okay, so what I heard is that the universe of potentially available lands is anywhere within that three-county area, and the city can undertake a process to prioritize, if they so choose, certain lands.

That's correct. With the one slight nuance of it, it's not any land in King Pierce and Snohomish County. It's the farms and forest lands that have been pre-identified.

Yes, yes. Thank you.

Commissioner Gossison?

Hi, Sarah Gustafson here. This is actually sounding very, um, almost heartwarming from a mission standpoint of who we are as a city. And I really hope that if we do do this program, we can like think of some bumper sticker slogans that we could use to describe this, like buckle grows. So the farms and forests we love don't have to grow and we get paid to do it or something silly that really shows all the benefits to this community because it is a very sensitive topic. And I do worry that people say, oh, well, you know, we're just getting paid to absorb somebody else's growth when it actually does seem to hit who we are as a city and our mission in several important ways.

Thank you. Well, with regards to the questions presented to us in our agenda today, I know that from my part, the medium growth suggested seems very reasonable to me. And in North Creek, because I see that that was also one of the questions here. To be honest, I'm not familiar enough with the current infrastructure goals off the top of my head to be able to make kind of maybe answer the questions presented in the agenda regarding infrastructure spending. But I think you guys made a very good argument for North Creek and moderate goals, which from what I, oh, anticipating moderate growth and therefore essentially shooting to take on all of the credits. If I'm, if I was remembering your presentation right, it was around 327 with moderate growth. And so that's just one humble commissioner's viewpoint on that. Any other commissioners want to add their viewpoints to the questions presented to us at the beginning of the agenda? OK, well. Thank you so much for your presentation today. I think it gave us all a lot to think about and to be excited about in the growth of our fair city. We look forward to you updating us soon.

Thank you very much for the time today. Commissioners appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks.

okay um so we are at 7 30 moving on to the second agenda item for excuse me the third agenda item for today um is the code update of the Bothell Municipal Code Title 22 from Planner Sampson. I see that there are people in the audience who perhaps would like to speak on this issue and we certainly want to give them time to do that. Okay, so we'll allow Planner Sampson to give her brief presentation so that we're all starting from the same page and then we'll become open to comments from the audience. Thank you for your patience today.

Okay, thank you so much. One second as I share my screen. All right. Hello, everyone. Again, my name is Jacqueline Sampson. Today we'll be presenting on the Bothell Municipal Code Title 22 or the Lamar Preservation Code Update. So no action required today. We're just getting feedback from the Planning Commission involving the updates to Title 22. That includes the desired scope, level of regulatory flexibility, opportunities for process efficiency, and clarification. So these are our discussion questions for today. They're also in your packets. I'll have at the end of our presentation as well. But you can keep them in mind as we go along with the presentation. Alright, so here's our agenda. We're going to go over Title 22, and then we will talk about the purpose of this update, and then go through kind of the main themes that staff have identified to look at for the code update, and then we'll finish off with some next steps. Okay, so Landmark Preservation Code today. So Bothell's Landmark Preservation Code, that's tile 22, establishes the framework for identifying and protecting the city's historic and cultural resources. So those are places that help tell the story of Bothell, its history, identity, and community character. Key part of this framework is the Landmark Preservation Board, which reviews landmark nominations, proposed changes to designated properties, and ensures preservation decisions are informed with preservation principles, community values, and local expertise. The code also provides access to state historic preservation incentives for qualifying rehabilitation projects and establishes procedures for protecting designated historic resources. So as the city begins reviewing Title 22, staff just want a better understanding on the current preservation program today, what's working well, and where there might be opportunities to improve in clarity, consistency, and effectiveness. while still supporting historic preservation. There is a kind of a brief explanation of Title 22 in your packet as well as Attachment 1. So the purpose of the code today. So we're updating the Landmark Preservation Code. It was identified as part of the city's 2026 work plan to ensure that the code remains current, easy to administer, and it's consistent with the evolving state requirements and best practices. Historic preservation remains an important community value in Bothell. At the same time, the city is periodically reviewing its regulations to ensure that they continue to function effectively alongside other city processes and priorities. So at this stage, staff, we're not proposing any code updates or specific code changes. We're just seeking input from Planning Commission to help identify opportunities of maybe concern, priorities, and looking at where future updates should have occurred. So some main themes of the code updates. For starters, we will be looking at the overall approach. So the purpose of this effort is not to reconsider the importance of historic preservation, but it's rather to ensure that city's preservation framework remains effective, understandable, and aligned with current best practices. So as staff began defining the scope of potential updates, we are interested in understanding whether the focus should be on clarifying and improving existing code language, addressing procedural challenges, or identifying other opportunities to strengthen the overall preservation program. The goal is to maintain a preservation program that protects Bothell's historic resources while remaining clear, predictable, and workable for property owners, staff, and decision makers. So the role of the Landmark Preservation Board. So as part of the code update, staff would like to better understand how the Landmark Preservation Board's expertise can continue to be more effective within the city's preservation program. So the board plays an important role in identifying historic resources, reviewing preservation-related proposals, and helping ensure preservation values are considered as the community grows and changes. So as part of this discussion, staff are interested in hearing the board planning commission's perspective on its current responsibilities, where the board involvement adds the most value, and whether there are opportunities to clarify roles and responsibilities within that overall review process. The intent is to ensure the preservation program continues to benefit from the board's expertise while providing a clear and a predictable process for both the applicants and the community. So process efficiency and streamlining. So staff are also exploring opportunities to improve coordination between preservation review and other city review processes. So in some cases, preservation related review requirements may overlap with other development regulations resulting in multiple review steps for a single project. So as part of this, staff will evaluate whether there are opportunities to better coordinate these processes while continuing to ensure that historic resources are appropriately considered and protected. So the goals of this is to reduce unnecessary procedural complexity where possible while maintaining meaningful preservation review and strong preservation outcomes. Co-organization and clarity. Staff are also considering updates to improve the organization and readability of the landmark preservation code. So potential changes could include clarifying definitions, simplifying language, improving procedural organization, and evaluating whether certain administrative provisions will be better located elsewhere in a municipal code. These type of changes would not alter the intent of the preservation program, but can make the code easier for applicants, staff, board members, and decision makers to understand. An example of this is the relocation of BMC 2212. This is the Landmark Preservation Board governance and administrative provisions. And moving this to Title 2, this is where the other commissions and boards in the city have their governance and administrative provisions. So just putting them in the place where they're all located. So it's kind of an example of some reorganization of the code. So alignment with state law and best practices. So the city will also review Title 22 to ensure that it remains consistent with Washington state law and reflects current best practices in historic preservation. So recent state legislation, including HB 1293 and other updates to project permit review requirements reflects a broader statewide effort to streamline development review processes and reduce duplicative review steps and provide clearer decision-making pathways. So, while the Historic Preservation Program continues to serve an important and distinct purpose, many jurisdictions are evaluating how preservation review is integrated into their overall permitting processes. As part of this review, staff will evaluate whether portions of Bothell's code include overlapping review requirements or multiple decision points that could be better coordinated whilst continuing to support preservation goals. So one example of this is the Downtown Special Review Area, or DSRA, in BMC 1264-505. So certain projects involving older downtown structures may be subject to both the DSRA review and demolition review under 12.28. So that's kind of an example of having two different review processes. So staff will evaluate whether there are opportunities to better align these processes. We'll continue to recognize that the historic character and significance of downtown resources. Okay. And then we have some next steps. So based off of commission's feedback tonight, Staff will begin developing a scope and policy framework for potential updates to the landmark preservation code Staff will continue discussions with Planning Commission City Council and Landmark Board It will return with draft code amendments for additional review and public input in the fall Separately to this the city is also currently updating its historic inventory which helps identify and document historic resources throughout Bothell Okay. So again, no action required tonight. We are just requesting input from the commission on the scoping, regulatory flexibility, opportunities for process efficiency and clarification, and any other feedback that y'all might have around Title 22. And here are those questions. So one, does planning commission have any additional suggestions involving the overall scope of the BMC 22 project? And are there any additional updates planning commission would like to see related to clarifying and improving existing processes such as definitions or overall usability, for example?

Thank you. Thank you, Planner Sampson. We also have some public input available to us at this very moment. So I'm going to give anyone in the audience an opportunity to speak. Please remember to limit your comments to three minutes. Well, we have the lights available to us today. Does anybody know?

I can track the time for you. You're going to get them?

I got the time for you. All right. So that was a, yeah, you're trying to do the lights. Okay. Um, if we get these lights going, uh, the green light will mean, um, we'll start when your, your time begins. The yellow light will go on when you have 30 seconds left and the red light will go on. Um, once your three minutes is up, um, anyone is welcome to come up to the podium.

Is anyone speaking?

Is this live now? Okay, I think we are. Thank you. My name is Ray Thomas. I happen to be on the Landmarks Preservation Board, also a 40-year resident of Bothell. I submitted earlier today written comments, which includes almost all of Title 22 pertaining to the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Board. I would encourage all of you to read Title 22. It goes far beyond the scope presented by staff. Far beyond that. The issues that staff are relating to you primarily deal with property management in the City of Bothell and development. The Land Works Preservation Board has a purpose and mission when it was created much beyond that which has been neglected. underfunded, and ignored. I would like to see the Planning Commission take a serious look at this, consider public input, consider a task group to work on these with staff consisting of at least a Landmark Preservation Board member or members, Planning Commission member or members, staff member, historical museum member or members, and an advocate on historic and landmark preservation.

Is someone speaking or?

No, someone I think has some handouts for the commission here.

Thank you. I just didn't know whether or not I could hear. Thank you.

Okay.

Anne Agard, and I'm a 50-year resident of Bothell. My comments relate primarily to the comprehensive plan that was adopted in 2024 and the policies that are to implement that plan relative to the historic preservation and particularly to this code. The one thing I would mention particularly is that when new site and design standards are considered and adopted next year for the downtown area following the downtown sub-area update, it is important that the Landmark Preservation Board be consulted and these standards reviewed. My other comments, other than what's included in writing here, address policy CR-26, which talks about the historic context and the cultural resources exist, especially to scale, bulk, and neighborhood compatibility. The first comment has to do with establishing regular communications between the Landmarks Preservation Board and the Basel Historical Museum, which is a wonderful resource for background information. And in this packet, you will see a page from our recent centennial newspaper notice that talks about the 4th of July in a historical perspective. The second part has to do to clarify that Town of 2022 update, which is part of this review. The Review and Decision Authority, and I stress decision, for development projects that are required under Title 1264.505, b requirement and outlines for building regulations and rehabilitation and new structure this needs to be clarified as to the role that the board has in decisions not just consulting them for their thoughts but decisions in this important part so thank you for your consideration of this at this time and i encourage you to take additional time in recommending to staff what changes they make because it's not possible for you to do it in such a short time with such little input. And I should also add, I put in your packet the pictures of all the books that are written about Bothell history. You can purchase them at the museum if you come to visit on a Sunday afternoon between 1 and 4. And you'll need to hurry if we're going to update for our 140th anniversary.

Thank you.

Commissioner Lover, there is one more person at the podium. Can we have one more?

Thank you. I just did. I know. Thank you.

No, it's okay.

Excuse me. I'm going to lose my voice. Vicky Sompi. I'm currently the vice chair of the Landmark Board. I've been past president for several terms, and I've been a member of the board since I believe, well, 94, but I think it was 93. And in that time, I was also part of the subcommittee that wrote Title 22. And I believe you need to know this is an amalgam of a number of various cities in our state and in other states for putting together the codes that would best suit our city for preservation of landmarks, historical resources, and cultural resources. I was also a member of the group for the initial downtown development coordinated effort of the planning board and the landmarks board. And we also had a member of the city council as a subcommittee and a working group. It was very disheartening to find later that most of what we developed working with the planners was basically tossed out in favor of development. I'm trying to think of a really good word for priorities would be the best way I can think of to say that politely. And that has shown in some of the development that we've seen. Again, we really need to work together to do this. We need to have our budget restored. We also need to be a part of the program.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Having heard comments from people present in the audience, are there any Zoom comments?

There is one attendee in the Zoom room.

No raised hands.

Okay. Well, as always, we always appreciate hearing from everyone in the community. Thank you so much for coming today. Commissioner Lever, you have a question or comment?

Yes. Yeah, I just want to echo that. Thank you so much for your comment. I really appreciate you being here today and sharing your feedback. So my comment is have actually answers to your questions with another question. So I keep on going back to the presentation we had from the Department of Parks when there was a really clear sort of like overview of how the machine work per se, like the operations piece. So for this particular request, as you talk about streamlining operations and making sure there's any clarifying roles and responsibilities, I am all for that. And I also am really, I really like to learn more about how this process work and the who is involved, given my limited understanding of that process. That will help... identify whether or not I see anything from a procedural standpoint that may or maybe help me better understand the duplication that's going to be removed. And at the same time, I don't I didn't really see a red line document of what's going to be changed. And I understand this is preliminary, so nothing is going to get approved, but it would be super helpful to see what the changes are. And then based on the feedback that we receive, how do we plan to mitigate the concerns? Because I'm always I'm a big supporter of evolving and making sure that there's always that are written documents really support their current practice and the needs that we have. And at the same time, really understanding the why we did it the way we did it before versus how we're moving into a new space and ways in which we can mitigate the risks that have been presented before us. So that's my comment. And hopefully that answered the questions. And thank you.

Commissioner Cunningham.

Yeah, I'd also like to thank you folks who came to speak to us. I did read Mr. Thomas' comment. I found it very, very interesting. I will read Ms. Agard's comment later. be here and read at the same time, but I will read that. From Mr. Thomas' comment, I certainly heard a couple of concerns come out loud and clear. One about the independence of the board and whether that would be infringed upon. Concern about lack of expertise. Provided to them within the board and also concerns about limiting their scope I do think it's you know, I think we all support efficiency and limiting redundancy Those are kind of buzzwords and how can you not? But it is a challenge to reconcile development with preservation and I do hope going forward City does keep in mind those three issues that Mr. Thomas raised, the independence of the board, having them have the expertise to do their job, and letting them have the scope to do what needs to be done. So that's my comment.

Thanks. Any other comments? Yes, Commissioner Sells.

I commissioner stills, I guess, I mean, again, I would like to understand the problem we're looking to solve here. I have, I read the materials and I noticed some things where it does. Seem like the existing code. is outdated, such as like the fact that I think it said 9,300 structures would be preserved because they're over 50 years old, something like that. So I guess like maybe just like concretely stating that it's, it's kind of, As the city has grown and time's gone on, the scope has changed in terms of what we really need to preserve versus what that might have looked like back when that was created. Then I guess just in terms of the role of the board, I think similar to us, we are advisory and, you know, we help the city, but, you know, the decisions need to be made with the people elected by the people. So I think that's also important just in terms of like who owns the space. So those are just kind of my overall thoughts on this, but I agree like we should kind of maybe understand better what's going on.

Commissioner Lever.

Thank you. I think with that said, the only other thing that came to mind is what it means to incorporate feedback and what it means to move in a direction that might be different from the feedback that we're receiving. So when the changes do come forward, it would be super helpful. And I just think I'm such a visual person. I think of almost like a matrix that can help us understand the items that are being brought forward. the code was going to change and then how we're going to mitigate the concerns and or clarify the need to change current process. So and I stress the support for refreshing whenever it's needed. And at the same time, like truly like giving us a clear understanding of the change in the short term and in the long term as the city is growing and is changing and They're always going to be friction between preservation and development or new development and growth. And it's something that I think is always going to be perhaps like it can be healthy conflict. So really understand what are some of those guardrails that we have to allow that to happen within the community, the different bodies of advice, and then the staff that ultimately are the decision makers. Thanks.

Commissioner Gustafson.

Hi, Sarah Gustafson here. Thank you everyone for attending. This is a very complicated and ambiguous question. I think the Planning Commission, we're not quite certain of what our role is here, but we're eager to learn how we can help. My only content-related ask is that We focus on ways to center the Telling the Bothells full story mission within the code update, if that is appropriate. I do think that is what some of Mr. Thomas was asking for resources for. And personally, I'm interested in seeing how that can happen. Tools to identify and teach about things like the McAdoo House, the house I think that was from the first African-American architect in Washington state that was highlighted by the city last year. I was really excited about that and wanted to see more of it as resources allow. Thank you.

Oh, thank you. As for me, I think I need more information as to what's going on with how the Landmark Preservation Board even operates, to be honest with you, much to my embarrassment. Are you guys taking this to Landmark Preserve? Are they having a meeting? Yeah.

Okay. I can sort of summarize comments we've heard when you're completed.

um and along those lines i'm just wondering once you guys do get a little um i know this is more of a broad overview when there is a little more to dig into um you know having a joint meeting so that that's all available and we can get a broader perspective it's hard to do i don't know anything about landmark preservation so to have the input of people from this arena who have different vantage points, that would certainly be valuable to me. I noted that many of our audience member were talking about the structure of committees and the responsibilities given to committees, which as a person on committee, I can totally get behind. I think I'm not seeing much to my chagrin. How can we as the Planning Commission, do we have any way of affecting how other committees are structured or their participation in laws? Are we pretty much siloed to our

committee and that's how we run to answer that question any development regulation that is proposed for amendment must go through the Planning Commission must provide must give a recommendation to Council some development regulations will involve shoreline hearings the shorelines board some will involve landmark preservation board it all funnels through the Planning Commission, and then the City Council. Updating Title 22 has been on our list for a couple of years. We took this to Council back in early spring, late winter. They did want us to make sure that we, they pretty much said, well, what does Landmark Preservation Board want to see? I should just start with what this is not. It is not a change to the comp plan. It is not a change to the policies that, have been established that we worked on for those years. Any work that happens has to be consistent with those, unless we want to make changes. But we're not proposing to change any of those. We're really in sort of a scoping phase. So what does Landmark Preservation Board, what would they like to see? Do you agree with, do you want to see more given your experiences? And take that to council, go back and forth and back and forth. I mean, that is the process. We've had a study session with Landmark Preservation Board on June 22nd. We'll bring this back to them. We are, to touch on one comment from the speaker tonight, the DSRA, the historic regulations within the downtown sub-area, That's part of the downtown sub area plan work. They're being briefed on that next week. So there's that opportunity for them to identify how that could work. And any changes that we do bring forward, which we truly are looking to update and make sure it's clear and concise and use the good buzzwords that we all love, we wanna make sure that it works. But with any of that, we can come back with whether a practitioner within the department that would say from step one to step 100, here's what happens if there is a property that is subject to Title 22, here's how we would see this progress. There are some variabilities depending on the scope of what's on site. So we can bring all of that back as we move through this, but we really are in this scoping phase. Some of the work that we're also, we've committed to, that council has committed funding to, is the historic inventory, which is beginning. They'll be briefed on that. Landmark Preservation Board will be briefed on that next week. That will help clarify what is out there. It's important to remember when these codes were written at the end of the 80s, when the historic preservation codes were beginning to be adopted into the early 90s, We were looking at homes that were 50 years old, buildings that were 50 years old, were in the 30s, the 40s, during the war, immediately post-war. We've gone through a lot of development through the decades, and maybe that's where we want to focus that. We want to have those conversations about what should be preserved and understand how to go about doing that. The couple of things that we do have to fix involve state law requirements. We have codes that identify, oh, you have to have a public meeting prior to submitting a building permit. That can't happen. That has to go away. That is in violation of state law. there are some some areas where we can't change the path that we have to take. But how can we make sure that standards are are established that could get us where we want to be, that are in line with the policies, in line with the community wants. So all that being said, we're really scoping this out, bringing it to Planning Commission because we have to, and it'll come back to you again and again if necessary. We can kind of churn with Landmark Preservation Board and City Council, because we want to make sure we're heading in a direction that Council can consider and approve. So I hope that helps add to and clarify some info here.

I know this is maybe outside usual protocol, but yeah, why don't you go ahead and leave a comment from the audience.

I don't want to, this is Ray Thomas again, I don't want to debate anything, but I think we all know that the state legislature has made errors before, and they have passed laws that turned out to be unconstitutional. And I have not done extensive research in this area, but we do have a state archaeological and preservation office with numerous officers within that office. I think that developers were eager to see this law passed, but I think that the public has a vested interest in a sometimes moment of pause when development is considered, and I don't think that should be thrown away. It may be possible for Landmark Preservation Boards, cities who want to retain these policies to some extent, will push back in the legislature, will push even to the Supreme Court and see that some change is made in the law for an adequate historic review.

Okay. Well, I would just like to say that, you know, communication between city commissions has been going on, you know, that advocacy for increased communication between commissions has been an issue and encouraged. Certainly by City Council, they're always trying to get us together. But as busy people, I know I am guilty at not attempting every meeting. So, but I want to say that, and I hope it's okay to speak for my other commissioners, we welcome having input from other commissions and very much value your perspective on this. That said, we would, and as you said, you spoke to the Landmark Preservation Board before, even just when you give your presentations just a little summary, because you so often do summaries of what we've said, little summaries of what their positions are, highlights, you may even have that in this slideshow and I missed it, would be super valuable for me just to get an overall tenor of, you know, the different voices of city leadership. So I would certainly appreciate that. Yes, Commissioner Lever?

Yeah, thank you. So this is super helpful, and I have sort of an ask. As I hear about regulation versus like the discretion that we may have, when this does come back, if you could please clearly outline what's regulatory versus discretionary, just to get a sense of out of the 15 items, 20 items, you name it, that are going to be changed, which ones we have sort of like the room for discussion. really like a different approach. That's one. The other one that just really got me thinking as we're talking about development and then really increasing affordability, one of the things that ironically I see happening is as we try to preserve which is, I guess, I guess, stress that enough, ironically, is very expensive. And then when we think about what are the resources that we have or the funding that we can provide to really do preserve that character, right? Oftentimes we do hear about, or I hear about quite a bit how the city has changed. And I particularly love the history. And I just love everything that has to do with being able to go into a house that a hundred years old. And I also know that I couldn't afford living in a historical home because everything that entitles to keep it historical. So as we've been talking about planning and growth and all of that, I just kind of started thinking, okay, one of the things that drew me to Bothell was the historical downtown and the conversation around the preservation really hasn't come forward in terms of potential financial gaps that we may have to keep it historical, if that makes any sense. And maybe that means something that it's in there and I just completely overlooked. So as you come back, kind of really getting that refresh that potentially I could get from going to the other commissions, but I just haven't, will be super helpful to help us understand what it will take for us to preserve the character and provide financing that will incentivize developers to invest with us and or even owners to actually want to own a historical home. Thank you.

Commissioner Kiernan. Yeah, Commissioner Kiernan here. try not to go too far into the weeds but the 50-year number struck me and I've worked with enough regulations to know that there's some value to having a hard and fast number I also know I live in a development house in a development that's over 40 years old now I don't believe all of those homes are going to be historic in nine years so You know, it's a good screen, but it shouldn't be the determinant. And on the flip side, I think it's entirely possible that there are newer buildings with historic value that don't hit the 50-year line that should have consideration for preservation. So I don't know that that's directly on point for the issue at hand here, but it's a thought when I go through this. The other thing which Commissioner Lever raised is the cost of preservation. I'm sometimes concerned about the interest in some to push cost for a public benefit onto a private individual, and I think we need to be aware of that too. So just two thoughts in this broader conversation. Thank you.

I see another member of the audience who would like to make a comment. Please come up.

Hi, Vicky Sompi. I'm a member of the board and just to clarify, the 50-year mark is a federal designation. We deal with that because of the regulations that we use to designate landmarks. The inventory is something that has been a part of that preservation regulations from the beginning it's to give us a point where we want to discuss and document properties resources and of any nature including the fire engine that is one of Bothell's landmarks. So what I see very clearly that has been neglected is the education aspect between the boards, which we used to have for a number of years. And I just want to bring that up because the questions that have come up are very clearly already generally shared between and are actually in the ordinances.

Thanks.

Thank you. Commissioner Gustafson.

Hi, Sarah Gustafson. Yes. Thank you to the commenters. This is a really interesting question, especially about the 50 year. I obviously do not have the education And I'm super curious here, is the 50 years like a requirement from federal or is it more like a guideline or a floor? And does the city have the ability to choose a threshold? And I think also Landmarks Preservation Board member Thomas also mentioned that he's looking into the history of the application. So I'd definitely like to learn more about the requirements and the history.

I just want to give a little point of clarity on that. The 50-year is the designation that we have to go back and look at the resources. The inventory is generally kept up by the municipalities who participate as a certified local government. It's to identify those properties that would meet the overall criteria as being worthy of consideration for preservation. It just identifies the broad sweep of it and allows us to go and focus on those that meet the higher criteria, which we do want to take a look at. And by doing the inventory, it's that point in time that has been designated by the federal officials. And that comes under the Department of Interior. So like I said, this is an education process, and it's not been shared. And that is becoming an issue. It's actually been an issue for quite a while, for a number of years. If you look at the three resources that Ann pointed out, the Then and Now book was done by the board. And I'm one of the authors. It's, again, a point in time to that date that we wrote that book and shared it. The budget we had for writing that book was leveraged over eight years to put that book together, and also including the video that is used by the city. So, again, it's an education process. It's the point of the board to share and educate the community on that. So again, I personally would love to see committees working between our boards and being able to share where we have mutual interests. That's the easiest way to put that.

Thanks. Thank you. Yeah. And I think that, um, has been something we've been discussing on our commission for a long time, as well as communicating with, um, more regularly with council. So it is an ever present issue that, um, we need to get to the bottom too. Was there something?

No, staff will come back with, with, uh, additional information on what is in the development codes that we have to apply as they're adopted um and happy to happy to bring additional staff to speak to that if the if the commission would like to to hear it commissioner sales

Yeah. I mean, I guess like, I don't have an update I would like to see, but what I would like to understand is how this all fits with, like you mentioned the comprehensive plan, how this impacts staff workload, because what I'm trying to understand, like how, how does this manifest in practice? Right? Like, so is this something that you have a RM for designation and this is, because it's an older structure. Now it's going to take two years to develop. And we like, I just want to understand how this aligns with our housing needs because we are in a housing crisis. And so absolutely, we want to preserve our history. But I am in favor of doing that in a smart way and thinking about how we can all work better to do that because I think what I understood from the materials is that just some of the stuff like you suggested might not be legal anymore and then also others of it there just might be a better way to go about it and we should embrace finding better ways to go about things. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any other? Whoa. Are there any other questions or comments? Okay. Well, I think this has been an edifying discussion we've had. Is there anything else you guys need from us? You got your basic broad strokes. Okay. Thank you so much for that. I think our next agenda item will be reports from members.

Anybody got reports?

Okay. No? Reports from staff?

Sure. Last page of the packet, upcoming projected agenda. So next meeting we will have four staff briefings. Sorry, three study sessions and one staff briefing. So we're going to talk about electrical vehicles. code updates, the tree code update kickoff. The communications division is going to come with us to present on our DEI process and how they're involved in how we connect with the community and do that as, as we all grow together. Um, and then some bike parking regulations. We'll do a quick study session on that. Um, looking forward to after the August recess, we'll be back with procedural code updates, um, bike parking regulation, public hearing and final recommendation, hopefully as the plan. And then the housing action plan, the final draft will be out and we'll have a study session on that. Um, the other thing on this item, uh, six B, I suppose, marked as 6A again. But upcoming engagement, I went through these last time. We'll take any opportunity we can to identify what's coming up, where we'll be tabling. Music at the park on the 10th. I think it's the last World Cup watch party on the 14th. Downtown subarea open house is on July 22nd. There'll be a few housing action plan virtual open houses throughout August to provide opportunity for folks to ask questions, work through the draft if they've got comments and want to add comments, and then finally wrapping up the summer, movies in the park. Eventually sustain a mania in September will hop on this list as well but plenty of opportunities for those in the community to Connect with us or our consultants at tabling events over the summer And that's it from staff Cool cool cool Okay, well it sounds like we have a lot to look forward to a lot of topics there that are of interest to everybody and

That said, there being no further business, is there a motion to adjourn?

Commissioner Lever, motion to adjourn?

Do it, Commissioner Morales. Commissioner Morales, second.

Fantastic. We have a motion and seconded. Any discussion? Anyone want to talk about it at all? We can hang out for a few. No? Okay. Okay, then all in favor say aye. Aye. Our next meeting will be July 15th. Our meeting comes to a close at 826. Thank you all so much.