Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. I call the September 2nd, 2026 planning.

Oh. Recording in progress.

There we go. Okay. Let me do this again. Good evening, everyone. I call the September 2nd, 2026 planning commission meeting to order. The main purpose of tonight's meeting is to hold three study sessions on the city's work involving transfer of development rights, the housing action plan, and procedures code update. Before we move to the agenda, I'd like to acknowledge our hybrid meeting format. The City of Bothell provides the option to attend this meeting either in person or remotely via Zoom. For those participating via Zoom, please note that the chat and question functions are disabled to comply with the Open Public Meetings Act. Public comment is allowed both in person and via Zoom. Those commenting will be limited to three minutes. Please note the City does not tolerate verbal harassment. Please remember this during your comments. Zoom commenters and written submissions were required by 3 p.m. today. Written comments received by 3 p.m. have been distributed to all commissioners and included in the record. This meeting is being streamed live and recorded for later viewing on the city's YouTube channel. A call-in number is provided for anyone listening by phone. Staff will make every effort to specify materials during presentations for those joining by audio. At this time, I'll take roll call for commissioners. Okay, so Kevin Kernan, absent and excused. Jonathan Morales.

Commissioner Morales, here.

Kerry Westerbach, here. Claire Robinson, absent and excused. Katie Seals, absent. And Sarah Gustafson. Commissioner Gustafson, I see her name on the screen. We'll give it another. Yes. I think we're trying to get a hold of her.

Okay.

Mm hmm.

Okay, we see that we have Katie Seals. Commissioner Seals, are you here?

Here, yes.

Wonderful. So we have quorum. We'll move on and we'll wait to hear from Commissioner Sarah Gustanson. In addition, community development staff attending tonight include Deputy Director Christian Gates, Planners Katie Posler, Jacqueline Sampson, and Ray Sosa. For all attendees, please remember to speak clearly and pause frequently. State your name before speaking. Mute your microphone when not speaking. If you are watching the live stream, please mute due to the audio delay. For commissioners, I will count on members wishing to speak and designate your points in the presentation. Please raise your hand to indicate you wish to speak. Identify yourself before asking a question, making a motion, seconding, or speaking in debate. Keep microphones muted when not speaking. Public comment now. We will begin with public comment. Written comments submitted by 3 p.m. have been forwarded to commissioners and included in the record. Staff, were there any comments received?

No comments were received via email. Thank you.

We will call on those in the audience to provide public comment first. And I don't see anything here, but what about online?

There are no members of the public online.

Okay. So hearing no further public comment, we will move on. Next is the approval of the July 15 meeting minutes. Are there any corrections to the minutes? I don't hear anything. Hearing none, the Chair will entertain the motion to approve the July 15 minutes as written. Is there a motion?

Motion to approve the July 15 meeting minutes as written.

Thank you Commissioner Morales. Is there a second?

Second the motion.

Okay, hearing, so then we're going to, it has been moved and seconded to approve the July 15 minutes. Is there any discussion? Do we need to discuss the minutes? Oh, hello, Commissioner Gustafson.

Hi, thanks for your patience. It looks like I'm locked in now.

Okay, wonderful. Thank you. Any comments or discussions for the meetings? Anyone? Okay, hearing none, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed say no. Okay, the motion carries and the minutes are approved. All right, we're going to move on to study sessions. The first study session this evening is a transfer of development rights project presented by Planner Jacqueline Sampson and consultant team. I'll turn it over to Jacqueline to proceed.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for having us today. Today we'll be talking about the TDR and LCLIP program. This was back in 2025, September 2025. Washington Department of Commerce selected Bothell as a pilot study to evaluate the potential adoption of a TDR and participation in the LCLIP With commerce funding, Eco Northwest and Swenson LLC have been helping us looking at valuing market conditions, policy considerations, and potential implementation options. So today we are joined with Morgan Shook from Eco Northwest, as well as Skip Swenson from Swenson LLC. So Planning Commission action today. No action required. The Planning Commission will be provided a final update by SETI staff and EcoNorthwest tonight on the TDR and LCLIP feasibility analysis and ask to consider future development and implementation. So I will turn it over to Morgan and Skip.

Great. Can you guys hear me okay? Okay. Yes. Excellent. Excellent. Well, Skip will be moving some slides here and actually you'll be hearing from him for the majority of the meeting here. The purpose is to just quickly revisit where we've been in terms of the feasibility study. And then we want to actually spend some time actually talking about, well, if this is within the city's desire to move forward, what would it need to do both from a policy programmatic point of view to both implement a TDR program as well as LCLIP? And so Skip will be kind of walking us through those pieces and do interrupt if you have questions. Let's go to the next slide, Skip. So I wanna remind everybody kind of the heart of this study here, right? Our big studies area were downtown, Canyon Park, as well as the North Creek area. And what we are trying to do, right, is figure out the project economics of how to implement the incentive for developers to buy development rights to be placed in exchange for some additional sort of project element. In Canyon Park, as well as downtown, there are some limited opportunities within the incentive system, but for the most part, the largest opportunity remains in the North Creek area, and particularly trying to implement it through a limited multi-family property tax exemption through the eight year where the city has a little broad, more broad latitude to do so. And our analysis of both one, the project economics, and then two, the ability to scale that in the area led to the conclusion that there would be a very viable project or sorry, very viable enterprise for placing development rights in the area. And I would say, If I was being somewhat pessimistic, right, the development headwinds we're going to face, you know, are there today. They're likely to be there going forward. But if I'm being optimistic, North Creek represents one of the, I would say, better large-scale redevelopment opportunities in the central Puget Sound. The access along I-405. the existing sort of infrastructure and amenities in the area, as well as some of the very large development parcels are just very enticing from a sort of future development perspective. And then when we actually think about sort of the ability to place those credits, we think that over time we can get to some scale. So if you go to the next slide, thinking about those on an individual project basis, we can actually think about reaching the city's LCLIP credit allocation at 365 in a sort of more medium growth scenario. Here with kind of our baseline understanding of how to sort of target the MFTE, we'd be right about there at 327. However, if one wanted to be a little more aggressive in the pricing of the TDR and or ability to sort of price some more MFTE, competitive development rights in the region, we could easily be over 409. And so you can kind of see some of that sensitivity within the program. So that was kind of, think of it as, I'll just pause as a recap, kind of the main kind of analytical piece here, right? Is there some there there? And I think the answer to that is yes. The economics are favorable by using the exemption tool and the opportunity is there in terms of scale over the timeframe. So that's kind of the TDR element of the study question. And then if we go to the next slide is sort of what is sort of the revenue analysis? And so what we're looking at here is the total contribution that could be captured within the North Creek area. And I'll highlight kind of two pieces, right? One, we're just looking at the medium growth scenario here that gets us to 327, but we could easily get over And what we see here is a total set of county contributions in the range of $7 million with some city contributions in the area of about three times that is required per the legislation. We don't have the slides up here, but what you'll remember is there's a lot of of variance or leverage with a couple things one how many credits you can play so if you get the full credit you get the full value of every dollar that's being developed here the second issue is that the amount of growth really compounds. So as you're getting more and more dollars developed in the area at a scale, you see revenues potentially rise to 30, 50, and even doubling of that in some of our sensitivity analysis that we showed beforehand. So I think this is kind of, I would say, probably a fair floor to be thinking about Elk Club revenues if implemented in the North Creek area and other elements and opportunities in the city. So I'll pause here a little bit just in terms of just the recap. So none of this should be new. I know it's been a while since we chatted, but I want to make sure there are any questions before we move into kind of the heart of the conversation around designing and implementing a TDR program as well as LCLIP.

No questions. We have Commissioner Gustafson. Commissioner Gustafson, just raise your hand.

Go ahead. Hi, Sarah Gustafson here. As last time, I'm really excited about this possibility, basically to get paid for what we're doing well, which is grow thoughtfully. My first question is the multifamily tax exemption credits that are needed to nudge along growth. Is there an unlimited pool? Because we're also thinking of using those in other parts of our housing action plan. Yeah.

Yeah, there's no cap to it. Programmatically, the city has to design targeted residential areas that would be qualified. So within the program terms, you'd have to say kind of where and what kind of projects would be eligible to participate in it. And obviously, but then follow your rules for applying and receiving the exemption process. But there's no cap to the number of projects unless the city were to sort of set it themselves.

Thank you. And then my second question is, this seems like a really high complexity load to unlock the LCLIC, if I've got it correct, revenue. Is there any way that we could aim for similar goals without so many moving pieces from so many jurisdictions?

I would say in terms of the way I think about it is the incentive system is complex and complicated. I think that is true, but I don't think that is a TDR framework. a loan phenomena, right? Whenever we offer, you know, exemptions or do density bonuses, we are in the world of complexity. But I do think the one thing, and I think maybe you can behold the sort of answer to this, I mean, the the availability of incremental dollars for infrastructure within the area, right, is a partnership with the counties that would be sponsoring or affected by the development. And so principally, mostly I think in King County, but potentially in Snohomish County as well. And so there's some added layers of sort of administration and partnership that are just requisite, but I think those are manageable pieces. And I think with that, maybe if there aren't any more questions, probably a really great segue into Skip's part of the conversation where he gets into this in a little more detail.

Okay, thanks.

Okay, so again, Skip Swenson, it's good to be with you again. And as Morgan mentioned at the top, The rest of the conversation is going to be, if you would like to move forward with the TDR program and to participate in the LCLIP program, what are the steps you need to take? What are the elements that you would need to develop that would allow you to do that? And so we can think about this in the sort of larger LCLIP in the two elements that we've been talking about. There's a TDR program, and then there's the more sort of TIFF ELCLIP's specific aspects of it. We'll start with the TDR program first and just walk through what it would take from a city perspective to develop a TDR program. It's involved putting these together, but ultimately you can, from a city perspective at least, I think winnow it down to four categories of activity. I'll walk through these. The first of which is what Morgan was just talking about. It's identifying ultimately the receiving sites or the areas in which you will place or receive development rights that come in from the counties. and then also identifying what those incentives are. So we've, through this study, identified what we think are viable approaches to using TDR. But of course, there's a variety of others. We've looked at some of those in the course of this work. Because we're talking about development rights coming in from the counties, and this sort of just speaks to what you were getting at, we are inherently going to have some kind of relationship with the county because we're bringing real estate assets in and placing them within City of Bothell. As a result, we need to have some type of way to formalize how this happens, when it happens, what are the processes around it. And so these county partnerships become important when talking about conservation-based TDR programs. And there's really two main ways that we... that we have to formalize these partnerships. One is through a negotiated interlocal agreement with the county. And these are specific to your TDR program. They're specific to like what you're trying to get out of it. what the counties like to get out of it. And so there's a lot of benefits to having an agreement of this nature. The trade-off is it's a little bit more involved. And so there's more time and effort involved in putting together interlocal agreement that's specific to your TDR program. But that's one way. And if you were to participate in the program, most likely it would involve King County. And I'll just say King County's program requires negotiated interlocal TDR program or interlocal agreements. And so working with King County, this is something that you'd be entering into. The other opportunity is through this administrative code reference here, but it is something that in TDR circles is called commerce rule. And the state has set up common TDR transfer rules by which if you adopt this rule by reference through either a resolution or through an ordinance, then you sort of are adopting in these common set of rules. And anybody else that has adopted, any other jurisdiction that has adopted these same rules, you now have a partnership with. And so from our perspective, from an ELCLIP perspective, Snohomish County and Pierce County have adopted this commerce rule. So we're baffled to participate in ELCLIP. and adopt the rule, then just by way of adopting that you would have partnership agreements with both of those counties. I will say, you know, these are, we're just looking at TDR from, both of these are viable. From an LCLIP perspective, you probably would do both. So it would be a commerce rule to participate with Pearson-Snowbridge counties, and then a negotiated interlocal agreement with King County. And the reason we would need both is just as a reminder from, I think, a couple of meetings ago, the sending areas, the areas that will be across these three counties. And so that's why we need to have those agreements in place. The third set of elements is just once you've identified your receiving areas and your incentives, just formalizing that into whatever planning documents you need to have. Staff can determine whether that would require a comp plan update, Or at a minimum, it may go into a strategic plan or work plan. It would need to have the necessary code amendments for the incentives and then adopting, as I mentioned, the interlocal agreements. And then the fourth element of adopting a TDR program is just how is it going to be operated? And so three parts to this really. First is this, like any program, it's going to involve some ongoing work. And so who within the city is going to do that? It would be assigning it to a department or departments or a team within a department and ensuring that there's some responsibility for enacting it and and coordinating it moving forward. In terms of institutionalizing this within your processes, it would be for building types that will use eight-year MFDE, if that were to be the incentive that you move forward with, just ensuring that you're integrating this TDR requirement or condition into your permitting or your project approval processes, and then ongoing coordinating with the counties. And that would involve a couple of things, but the main thing would be as development rights are coming in and are being placed, reporting back to the county and saying, okay, these development rights came in, they should be extinguished off of your market. And then the third aspect of sort of administration would be what I'm calling kind of market support or outreach here. Largely, this is going to involve working with the development community. There's going to be questions. There's going to be, you know, needs to help navigate processes. So just working with people that want to participate with the program. And then, you know, to the extent that it's of interest, we're working And in Burien, they were really interested in, you know, we're doing a good thing here and we'd like to tell our story out to our community so that they know what we're up to. And so to the extent that there's community engagement and involvement in sharing the story, that'd be another aspect of this market support and outreach. And that's, you know, in a nutshell, the TDR aspect of it, what would be involved to go from here to implementing a program. One thing I would say, and then I'll stop for questions, is adopting a program is the most important sort of first high hurdle, but I would strongly encourage that were Bothell to move forward, that they incorporate some type of recurring review. Now, It could be, you know, every, you know, X number of years, we're going to review our program and make sure that it's operating in the way that we want. We're going to make adjustments as needed. Or maybe it's at the behest of the director, the planning director or something to that effect. The idea here is this is a market-based program. And just like all incentives, we want to make sure that they're attractive to the market over time. So as things change, if there's a big shift in the building industry, rates go down, labor becomes of a different factor pricing-wise, whatever it is, we just want to make sure that this is an incentive. and it continues to be an incentive such that people use it. And then on the flip side, just making sure that The city's getting everything out of the program that it wants. And so it's not only providing some private value, but you're maximizing all the public benefits that come out of this too. And so just ongoing care is something I would encourage. It is a shortcoming of programs that when you sort of look across the country and you see where programs haven't done well over time. oftentimes it's because it was adopted and then sort of set aside and not actively managed. And so I would just encourage that. So I will stop here and just see if there's any questions on transfer development rights and getting a program up and running.

Do we have any questions? Commissioner Gustafson, go ahead.

Hi, Sarah Gustafson here. If no one else... has a question. I want to make sure I'm understanding the human side of this program. When we talk about the sending areas, we're talking about a farmer in, say, Snohomish County who has pressure on their land to develop, but they want to keep farming. They sell us a credit We use it to build housing in North Creek and their farm stays a farm. Is this kind of the human interaction? And then when do we start having that conversation with that landowner or that County official who knows the landowner in order to like trigger the, um, the quick pathway that you talked about?

So, uh, the overall, transaction, I think you've got it right. It's a development right coming from a farm or a forest out in a rural area in King, Pierce, or Snohomish counties. And then that would come in through a transaction. Somebody would buy that through a voluntary sort of like negotiated purchase and sale now come in. The one thing that may be a little bit different than how you described it is, at least in most cases, it's either going to be a developer that's working with the farmer directly, a county that's working with the farmer, and then they act as an intermediary. It's not as common for the city to take an active purchase role, but you certainly could. There's nothing that would prohibit you from doing so, but there's no obligation for the city to outlay the cash with the hope that it's going to turn around and sell it to somebody else. So that would be the one difference. But beyond that, yeah, that's how it works. It's just people working together on voluntary purchases and sales to the extent that the city would want to get involved in in sharing that message there's certainly examples that we've seen around the region where it's like hey you know look we're we're doing our role or we're not only um doing all this good work for comprehensive planning but we're stepping up uh above and beyond for a high quality region and we're letting our community know about it so Yeah, that would be more once transactions start occurring and you can start to show this building helped conserve this farm and you can start to tell that story.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Okay, I have a question. So I totally get the benefit and the reason why we would do something like this, but I'm having a hard time understanding the risk or the worst case scenario per se. So if you can tell us more about any stress test that's been done, if any, on the assessments that were made for these recommendations, if we actually continue, or if we see a slower housing market. And when I say slower housing market, I just keep on saying more houses for sale or townhomes just sitting here. So what happens if development does not happen at the rate that we're projecting it? What happens to the commitments, the revenues and the infrastructure plans? And then the other piece is around the investment in capacity. So when it comes to the implementation, I wonder how much this is going to take from staff and then I'm even thinking about systems, like how does this fit into the current infrastructure that allows the city to the business with developers and process permitting and everything that goes with it. Because I don't really see, I guess I don't understand the cost of the investment other than the time and the capacity and the paperwork that goes with it. And then what happens if the scenario does not get better? What are the risks or the downsides? That's the one thing that I'm not quite seeing. Thank you.

So there's several questions in there. Maybe I'll start with the sort of general picture where some of the risk lies. Then, Morgan, perhaps you can get down to the specifics within.

Yeah, yeah. Skip, maybe you take a little bit of the staff commitment, and then I can talk a little bit about what I think is a question about the LCLIP revenues. Yeah.

So LCLIP. One step even back further. So in terms of some of the general risk, and I'll show a slide a little bit from now, but some of the risk is, well, we're committing to transferred VILM rights and there's a performance requirement for participating in LCLIP. And the performance is around TDR credits being placed within the city over time. And the reason there's a performance requirement is because the counties are choosing to share a portion of their incremental revenues associated with growth with the city to pay for infrastructure to support that growth. And what they're getting in return is the opportunity for the market to help conserve lands that are important for the county to conserve. Because they're foregoing some revenue and sharing that with the city, they're going to want to make sure that TDR performance, TDR credits are actually coming into the city over time and being placed. So there are some... performance thresholds, and I'll show you sort of what this looks like on a slide in a little bit. But, you know, if those aren't met, let's just say by 10 years, it's half the development, 10 years once we've started, you've started collecting revenues 10 years thereafter. half the development rights need to be placed within the city or purchased. And that just allows the clock to keep moving. So I'll show what that looks like. That's one risk of elk clip. And the real risk is that just that the money would stop flowing, but there's ways to mitigate for what that actually means for the city. So I'll stop there. The next part of your question was what's involved from a staff perspective. And it really depends. I would say, like I demonstrated, there's some upfront obligations and then there's some ongoing obligations. Upfront staff, I mean, I can't speak to specifically staff hours, but there's definitely work to say, okay, how does this get implemented within our code? And the... The process to get it into code. What's the work plan to make sure this is being integrated into somebody's job? So we're working with the counties back and forth. We are integrating within our systems or updating our processes. So there's a TDR checkbox requirement and has been satisfied. We're coordinating with the county over time when development rights are coming in, we're letting them know. So there's a certain ongoing investment. Absolutely the case. I would say it's a little bit more upfront and then it's a portion of someone's job, but not necessarily a large portion in this building environment. If there's a lot of things coming in, a lot of projects coming in, then obviously there's a little bit more work because it's, it's rocking. It's, It's going to flow with how much activity there is in the marketplace. Those are some general investment statements, but it's not like it's more a full-time FTE. This is a portion of a person's time as you're going along, and that would just be something that you'd have to work with staff to integrate into the work plan.

Yeah, and I think there was a question about the sensitivity. I think Skip outlined sort of the program thresholds, right? So, and I think the question, I think maybe more about risk. And so I think that's a good way to think about it because here the city doesn't have to put up its own money It doesn't have to make a big investment. It's investments really in setting up the program. So asking staff to design it, doing the administrative work to implement it, and then to do the check-in work, I think as Skip said. With the LCLIP dollars, the way we had set it up here is like when the market materializes, the incentive of the MFTE will be a value that developers will want to take who are doing residential development. And a lot of that has just to do with the nature of the exemption. The simple way to think about it is like, here is a grant. And for taking this grant money, we want you to go buy these developmental rights. And that is good from a land conservation perspective, I think, as Commissioner Gustafson sort of noted out, right, just in terms of the story. But then the buying of those development rights allows you to start placing credits and participate in this revenue share program with the county through the LCLIP. And there, the question is really just like how many credits can you get to and how much money can the program generate given the thresholds? Because I think, ostensibly, there are these performance thresholds that you have to hit to start the program and to continue it, and that's your real risk. And so the risk then becomes, well, how do we spend this money? Should we simply bank the money and use it as a pay as you go? Should we try to issue bonds and use the money to pay against it? And I think the practical implication of that is that you'll pretty much bank the dollars and pay as you go. just because it becomes a very difficult revenue source to sort of bond against in any sort of practical way. And so in that case, from a financial sort of like liability perspective, the money is really kind of, as long as you can keep the program going through the full 25 years, there's really kind of no sort of, it doesn't put the city in any sort of financial risky, precarious places. As long as you're kind of managing and realizing you're not spending dollars that you don't have yet.

Thank you any other questions or comments Okay Okay, so we've talked about what it would take to implement the TDR portion of this Then there's the the other half the setting up the the L clip program piece itself and There's a number of elements to this and they spread between setting it up as sort of the most work and then this ongoing execution. And I'll walk through these, but just to note in terms of the establishment side on the left here, some of these need to be approached in order. Some things can happen kind of in tandem. So the notice is a starting point And the LIPA, it's the Local Infrastructure Project Area. That's the TIF area. That's sort of the endpoint, but things in the middle can happen in tandem. They don't necessarily have to happen as steps, but we're just going to walk through them one by one. When you hit the point where, yes, we as a city we'd like to move forward with with pursuing our clip, the first thing that we really need to do at this point is provide notice of a light of formation hearing and. This requires that we send notice out to the, if you're just operating in King County, out to the county, but a little bit of North Creek falls into Snohomish County, so depending on where you are planning on drawing LIPOs, it may involve putting out notice to King and Snohomish counties, the assessors, the Snohomish County treasurer, and the equivalent in King County at treasury operations. So just getting out notice and it's 180 day requirement and that's within the state law. As Morgan was speaking to earlier, this is the point where the city would want to say, Based on how we feel about the market, how we feel about how LCLIP fits into our suite of incentives and what we're wanting to push and incentivize, we're going to choose some level of our through this program. And again, the city was allocated 365 TDR credits, but you don't have to operate at that level. You can choose anywhere from 100% of that down to 20% of that figure. And the implication, depending on where you choose, is your revenue potential is pegged to that percentage. So if you choose half of your 365 credit allocation, your revenue potential is 50% of what it would be had you chosen to commit to the full 365. So this is the point where these decisions become important. In terms of the local infrastructure project areas, again, these are the TIF areas when you participate in the program. There's a lot of flexibility within these, but at the same time, there's some requirements when you're defining where these will be and what they're comprised of. First off, you don't have to draw just one area that is participating in North Creek. It could actually be a number of different areas or it could be a number of areas across the city. multiple districts are one of the opportunities through the program. It's not just one. But if you create more than one, something that's common to each sort of LIPA that you create is that it needs to be a location where investments that are financed through the ELP program are made. So we can't have a LIPA that doesn't actually involve some kind of investment in infrastructure. structure that's going to support the growth there. It needs to have some nexus between the LIPA and the investments that are going in there. They also need to be the areas that contain receiving sites, so where development rights will come into, the buildings that will come into, which in aggregate need to be sufficient for the commitment that you made for TDR credit use. They also require within the state law that regardless of how many LIPAs you have, each LIPA needs to be a contiguous set of tracks. So they're not looking for LIPAs that have missing puzzle pieces. It's a complete district with a single boundary and no internal exclusions from that LIPA. And this is an important one in aggregate. So whether you have one or more in aggregate, you can't have LIPAs that comprise more than 25% of the assessed value of the real estate in the city. Also important, if you were going to be participating in other TIF programs like the 2021 TIF law, You can't have overlapping boundaries with any other kinds of TIF districts. Each LIPA needs to be sort of a standalone amongst itself. I will stop at this one, because that's kind of a meaty topic. So are there any questions up until this point?

Any questions? I don't see any hands. I don't have any questions. Commissioner Agostinson?

Sorry, guys, TIF's in here. So I'm not clear. Can you choose a lower percentage at the beginning and then adjust it upward if market conditions improve? Or are you stuck with one number? And with that in mind, it seems like staff would be able to recommend a good number based on their understanding of what the growth might look like there.

That's a very astute question. So, yes, there is an allowance within Euclid to say, we uh want to take a more conservative approach up front because uh you know it's a tough market condition and and so we'd like to uh ensure that we're choosing a number that we right now feel comfortable we can hit in terms of tdr performance over time there is an allowance within oakland that allows you to work with county or in your case counties potentially to increase that commitment over time, which will then increase the amount of revenues you can generate through the program. It will require they also are increasing the amount of infrastructure investment that's going into those LIPAs. So it's sort of revisiting the original assumptions around investments you're going to make, the commitments you're going to make, and then also how much of the accounting portion they're going to share. But that's an opportunity if you want to go up What it doesn't allow for is the opposite, to start high and then decide halfway through, we don't want to hit that commitment, feeling a little high at this point, so we want to go down. That's a scenario that the law doesn't allow for, and the reason being is that the county has been sharing in good faith a revenue assuming a certain amount of TDR participation and performance, and to come back later and lower that really wouldn't be in the spirit of the agreement that the county is entering with you at the beginning. So that's why you can start low and go up, but you can't start at the top and go down.

One other thing to keep in mind too in this issue is once you start the clock on revenues, you have a max 25-year window. So if you sort of choose to sort of take more later, you don't get more years of revenue on that condition. So just also keep in mind.

Just a few more slides here. So a next step would be to adopt or at least tee up for adoption some of the programs that we've just been talking about. So there needs to be a public infrastructure plan that is tied to the LIPA areas, one or more that you have. So what's the infrastructure that's going to go in? This is our current plan. This is what we think it's going to take to pay for that. Here's how LCLIP's going to support that. That can be adjusted over time, but there is a requirement that there's an upfront infrastructure plan for LCLIP LIPA areas. TDR program, as we sort of described that, how that comes along, you actually don't have to have a program in place on day one. There is an opportunity to just have findings that you will create policies that will be sufficient to meet your TDR requirements. But I think practically, it makes sense to have the program in place as you're entering the LCLIP program, because that's how you're going to ensure that you're maximizing the benefits of participating in LCLIP. And then as we already spoke on, the TDR agreements with the counties. So these would be the time to sort of set these up when you're thinking about adopting ELCLA. Assuming 180 days at minimum is passed, then there's the public hearing. And this is on the formation of the local infrastructure project areas, the LIPAS. There is no required agenda. There's no required set of findings. So it's just a matter of this is a requirement of the program. But presumably, this is where the opportunity for the public to weigh in on their feelings on the program parameters and the LIPO parameters, particularly that you're going to be drawing for this program. And that would lead then to, once the hearing is complete, adopting an ordinance that would finalize the boundaries, identify the public improvements, and then that ordinance needs to be sent out to the same folks that were notified up front 180 days prior. So that's the setup. And this is now moving into the sort of the operations of a program, the ELCLIP portion of a program. And this is the slide I probably should have come to earlier since we talked about it a fair amount, but this speaks to the things that Morgan, I think, spoke well to in terms of TDR performance over time. So this demonstrates effectively how TDR performance and LPLIP revenues interrelate. On the far left here, for whatever your TDR commitment ends up being, 25% of the credits either need to be placed in projects in the city or otherwise purchased. And then that starts the clock and starts the revenue flowing for Outlook. And then you've got 10 years before there's the next performance check-in. And by the 10-year mark, 50% of your commitment to TDR has to be either placed in buildings or otherwise purchased. If that threshold is met, that gives you an automatic five more years of revenue flowing into the city. And by year 15, it's 75% of your TDR commitment. And if you meet that, then you've got another five years till 20. And so by year 20, you need to have all of your credits that you've committed to either placed in buildings or otherwise purchased. And then that gives you access to revenue flowing from the county for another five years for a total of a 25-year window. So this illustrates what we were saying before. So getting back to that question on, well, what's the risk? There's no real risk. It's sort of like the risk of foregone revenues. If you don't, for example, let's say we get to year 15 and you're only at 60% of your credits. you don't then work with the county or come up with a way to secure the remaining 15%, then revenue would stop. You're not necessarily out anything. What you're out is the opportunity for revenues to continue flowing. So that's, that's the risk, but it's not a, unless you have financed it, there's real, there's no real risk to the city of like revenue or like a revenue gap or anything like that. Does that all make sense or should I continue?

Any questions or comments? I don't have any, so it looks like you may continue.

Okay. The last piece is sort of thinking about overtime revenues and reporting. So revenues can start flowing from the program as soon as the second calendar year after you've created the LIPAS. The caveat to that is the 25% of your TDR commitment being placed as well. So it's 25%, two years or 25%, whichever is longer, is when revenues will start flowing. Once they start flowing, it's 25 years. And then there is a reporting requirement. It's pretty light. And in fact, it's organized by the county. It happens every other year. There's a required report with the same inputs each time. And the county will come to you and ask for things like how many units have gone into your North Creek LIPAs and how much commercial square footage. And they'll take those inputs, organize it with the rest of the materials that they put together and send that off to the state. But so reporting is fairly light, but just a note that is a commitment over time. And that is what's involved in sort of establishing and operating the Oak Club side of things. So any questions on any of that material?

Any questions in the room? Online? Okay, I see Commissioner Seals, go ahead.

Hi, Commissioner Seals here. I am just curious how many other jurisdictions in King County are part of the pilot program

Right now, in terms of this pilot program, there are three others. Bering has already wrapped up their pilot. They've voted to move forward, so it's going to go on to their strategic plan for next year. The Bellevue, Morgan's working with Bellevue. They're kind of a pilot light. So they're not the exact same thing that the rest of you all are doing. And we've started Auburn and they're a few months behind where you're at. So Auburn's just getting into it. And I don't know, Morgan, if you're planning on...

We are in conversations with one other city currently, and then in terms of funding, there's probably room for one more other city in terms of this current batch of pilot studies.

Anyone else? Any other questions? I have one around the sort of implementation and what it means to communicate this to the audience that needs to hear it for the support that may be needed. When it comes to the public hearings, can you talk more about who would be the ideal audience for those public hearings and what kind of input would be most helpful for staff to hear at that stage because one of the many that one of the items that keeps on coming forward in our in our sessions is really like the outreach component and just to make sure that the residents of the city of both will understand the the strategy behind the actions that they may see so can you talk more about like the who would that be and then

um how so that when the plan does get implemented or the strategy starts building like uh and you come back we have an idea of like who was part of the outreach plan thank you so this may be a better question for staff i'll just my my response to that uh is in terms of uh who's required uh there's that that's not obviously part of the the state program they just want to make sure there's an opportunity for it where i think it would make sense is uh community members that are going to be affected in the areas that are redeveloping. So it's, you know, these are the types of plans that are in our comprehensive plan. Here's what our regulations are trying to support. And now we're incentivizing redevelopment in your part of North Creek in this case. And then also, I think an important part of that is, and here's the types of investments that we're hoping to make through this program in your community to sort of support amenities and just other needs that this part of North Creek may have. So that would be my feeling, but I feel like that's a good question for staff.

Yeah, I actually, before that, I have one other thought, just in terms of setting it up. Outside of just the hearing, I do think there is a, I think Commissioner Gustafson kind of honed in on the story to tell. And I think at the heart of it, right, there is two things happening. There is this sort of the city taking a more active position in regional land conservation, whether that's working farms, forests, water quality, other environmental quality that is enabled through the conservation. I think that is a story on its own, right? And then I think there is the LCEP side of it, right? So the incentive in terms of the GMA and partnering it with a TDR program is it allows you to make investments in a defined area um with more capacity because you have more dollars and so so this is the part i think maybe where skip was alluding to is like well what projects are we funding right what is needed and what does l clip enable us to do and then right what's the sort of city process in terms of community engagement equitable development that defines those programs right you know some cities thought about like gearing like well we could potentially be really using these dollars to help enhance our sidewalk program or there's some other big projects that would just be more likely to get done because we have additional dollars to get done. And so I think that becomes part of sort of the process of why you're doing it, but you're also then taking feedback around more like it's like a capital facilities plan. Like what are we making these and how does the L cup allow us to make these additional investments in our communities?

Thank you. That is very helpful. I have another question. Unless this city is going to provide more on the outreach component or target audiences?

Yeah, I want to agree with both what Skip and Morgan said. I think also in addition, like different developers and property owners within the receiving areas would be a good group of people to reach out to, as well as affordable housing developers, commercial mixed-use developers as well that could use the different programs set up during this. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Okay. Any questions, comments? Anyone? Okay. Commissioner Morales.

Commissioner Morales. Probably a question for staff, but while we're thinking of implementing this program, is the city also thinking about alternative ways to encourage

further development or affordable housing in this specific area of North Creek right now we also have our housing action plan which will talk more later but that I think that also in just in general throughout the whole city we are looking at different affordable housing goals and talking with people like arch in order to just implement across this to be affordable housing

Okay, I don't see a hand in the virtual space. How about here in the room? Okay, well, thank you very much, Leonard Sampson and team. Thank you. All right, so next is a study session on the final draft of the Housing Action Plan from Senior Planner Ray Sosa. All right, so Planner Sosa, the floor is yours. Perhaps there's some like dick issues maybe?

Ray is in the building, and he's here right now. Thank you.

Okay. Good evening.

Good evening, members of the Planning Commission. My name is Ray Sosa. Tonight I'm here with my colleague Jacqueline to talk about final chapter of the Housing Action Plan. Next slide. No action is required tonight. As I mentioned, tonight I'll just be presenting on the final chapter of the Housing Action Plan, really going over some of the, really going over the community engagement that we did over the summer and talking about next steps and just kind of, and so the next slide. And so, I kind of want to give a quick recap of how we got here to this day today. So, as you are aware, we started this project back in 2024, and actually two years to this date, we started this program, this project. I mean, we started scoping out the goals and the strategies that we wanted to accomplish with this update to the 2018 Housing Strategy. So, that work took us about three months. Once we had our initial draft and goals, we then went out to—we sought out a community engagement consultant to help us out to take this draft goals and strategies to the community. And so, we onboarded that consultant in mid-2025 and then did a first round of engagement that year, that second part of the year. We got that feedback, incorporated it to our drafts and goals and strategies, and then came back to you in May of earlier this year to present a first initial draft of the housing action plan. And then we took that draft and went all out of the community and presented it to them. Then we were here today, and then following tonight, we'll hopefully be adopting that draft by the end of this year. And now we're talking about some of the summer engagement that we did.

All right, so we wanted to provide the public a diverse range of opportunities to give feedback on the Housing Action Plan. So we wanted to meet the public where they were, both in person and virtually. This included a variety of different approaches, which, for example, tabling community events, presenting at school events, facilitating different focus groups, and hosting different online engagement opportunities. Throughout our engagement process, have seen these key themes throughout the whole process. That includes one diverse and attainable housing. So expanding housing choices for all different life stages, like a starter home or buying a condo or during retirement. Housing affordability, so addressing rising housing costs and barriers for both renters and first-time homeowners. Connecting neighborhoods, supporting walkable, bikeable, transit-connected neighborhoods, and focusing growth near different transit and downtown areas. Growth in tree canopy, so balancing both new development as well as protecting our trees and having tree preservation. and creating green infrastructure and protecting our environmental goals. And lastly, tenant protections and rental support. So improving tenants protections and access to both rental resources while addressing barriers like deposits, application requirements and credit history. So as a reminder, before we met with the commission back in May, we held five focus groups back in the winter of 2025. These included college students, homeowners, seniors, as well as young adults and renters. We had a total of 25 people across those five focus groups, the biggest being the homeowners with 13 participants. They gave us different insight on the different values they wanted our housing action plan to be centered on during the scoping phase of the project. So now I'll talk more about summer engagement. We wanted to focus engagement on three different themes that included project awareness, just in general draft housing action plan, feedback on the draft housing plan, as well as prioritizing the different housing strategies that staff identified. have identified. So within Project Awareness, we had different social media campaigns that included having different graphic posts on both Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, as well as Reddit and Twitter. We also had different Instagram stories where Participants can fill out different polls and quizzes, so kind of just creating fun project awareness through different social media campaigns. We also tabled at different events, nine to be exact, that included community celebrations like the pride in the park and the chai holy fest, um, world cup watch party, UW Bothell events like a Husky run, as well as UW Bothell's block party, um, study events like the summer outdoor movie nights and concerts. Um, during these events, we provided different flyers about the housing action plan, as well as invited participants to, um, basically write their answers to open-ended prompts. For example, what's your housing situation right now? Or what do you see your housing situation in the future to look like? So participants were able to fill out a little post-it note, stick it on there. and kind of create a discourse throughout those different topics. And we also saw audiences that included both young adults, students, young families as well at these different events. The city also partnered with coffee shops around downtown. But basically we created these little sleeves and the coffee shops gave them to everyone who was buying coffee and they included a QR code that went straight to the draft housing action plan. So if they got curious, they can scan that with their phone and then read the draft housing plan while they're enjoying that coffee and provide any comments that they might have. And lastly, with project awareness, we had our online storyboard. Um, so basically people could provide any sort of story they had around their housing situation and bottle. Um, and then they can also comment on each other's. So again, creating more of like a forum, um, for. Bothell residents to have to talk about housing. We also created different ways for people to promote Draft Housing Action Plan feedback. So we had on Engage Bothell, people can just log onto there and post their comments right on the website. As well as we had two online open house forums this August. So we gathered different feedback on the draft plan as well as provided an opportunity to help prioritize the housing strategies. We had a total of 13 participants across those two online open houses. And then lastly, within prioritizing housing strategies, both online and at the tabling at the different events that I previously mentioned, we created kind of a way for participants to kind of talk about what they really want to prioritize within our housing goals. So participants received three tokens or votes and they got to choose which out of the top 10 staff identified housing strategies that they wanted to prioritize. So a participant could take their three tokens and put it into three different strategies or maybe they really like one of them, they can put all three of them in there. trying to see what the public really wanted to prioritize in this way. In-person events use more tactile visual voting, so they had a little bead and they put it in those jars you can kind of see in that picture. Or online, people were able to just click and vote on the different strategies with a small description of what those strategies were. So on this next slide, Give me a second. There we go. So this graph kind of shows what we saw during those voting activities. And so the dark blue is the online. We had a total of, I believe, 57 participants online. in the on the online and so this is how the they're voting with their three votes kind of went through and then the light blue is the in person so um the largest votes for in person included diversify physical housing types reduce auto dependency and encourage home ownership and then for those um the online or virtual people their top topics were reduce auto dependency diversify physical housing types and climate resiliency

Thank you, Jacqueline. And a real summary, a short summary is that we've done a lot of engagement, more engagement than this department has done in its history. So now we're in the pencils down, let's actually talk about this draft stage of this housing action plan. And so we took the feedback that we received over the summer, we were incorporating it in real time as we were receiving that feedback, and we created some targeted updates to the draft housing action plan that incorporates that feedback. including the feedback that we received from Planning Commission and City Council back in May and in June we presented it to City Council respectively. And these updates really center around clarifying the wording and the proposed strategies to make it much more clearer to understand. We got that feedback consistently at every event that we were at and in our virtual and online open house as well. So we clarified the wording for those strategies. We also cleaned up the document to present a final draft version of the document. And then really most important, and also really importantly, we tied it to the climate action plan and the urban forestry plans that we had adopted last year. One of the biggest pieces of feedback we received was how the housing action plan was going to interact with those plans that were just adopted, especially as it relates to trees and the environment as mentioned earlier. So the next steps, so we're here tonight. We'll take this to city council next month, which will include the full engagement summary that the consultants are working on right now. that full engagement summary includes what we just mentioned here plus a lot more details on the numbers and The analysis of the feedback that was received will come back to the Commission in November for a public hearing and then we will Hope we hope to go to City Council in December for a final adoption of this plan Once this plan is adopted will then begin implementation right away starting in 2027 And so no actions required tonight, yeah, I

Thank you. Any questions or comments? Do you want to hear from us, maybe? Commissioner Westenbeck here.

Something I found interesting is I was pleasantly surprised that people were rated highest with the beads and so forth. That was the cups, the little graphs. I'd love to have that graphic, reducing auto dependency, because I know a couple people in the public working group for the downtown subarea plan who said they feel like there's still a lot of emphasis that they're hearing from the public on making sure that cars are accommodated. in the future downtown. So there's sort of this, you know, push and pull, I guess. So it's fascinating to me that you're getting at these tabling events. Maybe that kind of draws out people who want to go walk anyway. You know, they love these events downtown and they walk to them or they park nearby and walk, so. Maybe it's sort of they're self-selecting. But anyway, it's a comment, not a question. Just that's interesting because we have heard about all those pushback to don't remove cars and make more parking. But then we're seeing people saying we'd really like to not have to use our car so much. So maybe those are just two different demographics. I don't know. But just committing that to memory because it's a really interesting finding. Sounds like there's a bit of both sides, not both sides, but... Two minds on that, as far as what we're hearing from residents. So I'm just going to keep it in mind. I couldn't help it. I would not have expected that to be the tallest bar graph for both the online and the in-person. So it's good to see.

Thank you. Any other comment or question? I do have a couple, but I first want to sort of touch on what Commissioner Westerbach just mentioned. So every time I say anything about engagement, I really do want to stress that I know it's incredibly difficult and it's just something that there's not such a thing as like really getting it per se. So I appreciate all the efforts. BUT I THINK THE NUMBER COMPONENT IN TERMS OF WHO GETS TO PARTICIPATE AND UNFORTUNATELY WHEN WE DO HEAR FROM RESIDENTS WITH US MAYBE LIKE STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT PER SE IS WHEN WE HEAR THE NO'S. SO HAVING SAID THAT, I REALLY WONDER WHO IS NOT REPRESENTED HERE THAT BASED ON THE EXPERTISE THAT YOU HAVE AND THE THINGS THAT YOU SEE COMING TO THE CITY IN in terms of like complaints and or other things that you see when you're implementing our policies. I think those voices are important to be represented so that there can be that strategy where we mitigate the barriers for implementation. So this is the comment around the engagement piece to just be sort of like careful and not necessarily look at one set of feedback and just really look at what we don't have at the table as official feedback, because that's telling us quite a bit. Um, and that will be something that I encourage you to incorporate in the next iteration or when you present, just knowing that to your point, there are many people who really don't want to leave their car. Like they just really are. And that's, that's not something that we definitely want to, um, and are moving to become a city that can be more walkable, but it is important to recognize that that is a population, a demographic that we want to just kind of like bring their voice forward as well. So the question that I have, well, this is a comment. And the question, I have two questions. So one is around the housing spectrum. So I did get to participate in your phone tables, which was great. And I really wonder if we are touching on the needs when we think like housing for all, specifically on the strategies that we will have for touch every population within that spectrum. So what happens when you are like in emergency housing versus you are really looking to rent versus you are really looking to, have home ownership, and what is the distribution of the population or any estimates that you foresee may become an issue? So can you talk more about that? Like when it comes to the full spectrum, how does the strategies truly address each one and it's not just one size fits all? So that's one question.

If I'm understanding your question, trying to wrap my head around it, you're asking are strategies that we have, these are blanket, general citywide housing policy strategies. Are you asking if we are specializing between the needs for step housing versus middle income housing versus emergency housing, all that stuff? We definitely do have a goal in there that's specifically about step housing and making sure that we are accommodating our code to enable that housing and that's complying with state regulations. And then we do have a policy around encouraging home ownership for the middle income population that makes too much to qualify for any subsidies but not enough to afford the market rate. So we do have that in mind as we're drafting these goals about what segment of the population we are wanting to address their housing needs.

And what about supportive housing or people who may actually are experiencing homelessness?

Yeah, that's including the STEP housing, so shelter, transitional, emergency, permanently supportive housing. The STEP acronym encompasses that population.

Okay, all right. Thank you. And then the next question that I had was around the capacity component. So when it comes to implementing, these are wonderful strategies, and I so appreciate them. And I don't know when it is appropriate to think about what it would cost and what it will take to implement them so that when it comes down to allocating budgets and understanding you know, the things that we may not be able to do for a number of reasons, like how does that really look like and then how does that fit into the matrix per se?

Yeah. The best answer I can give, you know, I'm hopeful that the City Council, once we come back to them in December with our final stretch, with our final prioritization matrix. City Council will next year start taking action and looking at which of these goals that we prioritize they can start implementing and putting it on the budget for next year and where that money is coming from. That's really all I can say because I also don't know. I want to know the answer to that question as well. I don't know where the funds and money are going to come, if they're going to come from the state, county, city, local tax, whatever it may be. Your guess is as good as mine for the time being, but this is the first step to having that conversation around priorities and funding is having a prioritization matrix ready to go. So we're laying the foundation and work for that now so that we can have that conversation in an informed, data-driven manner. Requestion.

Thank you. Commissioner Seals, I see your hand up.

Yes, thank you. Commissioner Seals here. I have some feedback that I'll just run through, but overall really great plan and I'm really excited to see it. So thank you for bringing it forward. So on page 16 on the section emphasized starter homes, I want to know what is the definition of a small home? Is that square footage, amount of bedrooms, size of lot, etc? I think that could use some explanation. I'm very intrigued by the pre-designed permit-ready layout plans, the PRODUs. That's new for me. And so I'm going to go research that because I'm interested if that worked well in other places and if we get to see what that looks like and what kind of outreach is like. But that sounded like a really cool idea. I wonder if we could add parks to the description of the 15 minute neighborhoods on page 18. So just 1 thing to consider there and then. Promote aging in place. That was really interesting to me. I think this is definitely something. We really need to drill down into I was unclear and this might just be. Me not knowing the lingo, but what home modification resources are that might. Be good to define or give some examples of. I know that other jurisdictions have done a lot of work around. Fraud protection or some of those like scammy all cash offers that target seniors. And so I think like places where for this for this goal, we could partner advocate or work with county or the state that would be really useful. And I think just like that goal, we should really think about because. I think there's sort of like two avenues, right? There might be seniors that want to downsize and move downtown where they can walk around. And then there's others that don't want to feel forced from their home. And I think we should have policy solutions that address both of those things and really dig into that. So I was very glad to see that goal and the focus on that. And I know that that showed up in the community results as well. I love, love, love the goal six tracking and reporting out on a quarterly basis. I'm really excited to see that. And just, you know, kind of related to the last presentation, you know, with that data, we can then iterate or figure out what should we change? What should we modify? What what else should we do to make sure that we're we're getting to what we need to accomplish here? And then on kind of like the study for social housing, that was interesting to me, I think, you know, because I know there's a social housing developer agency in Seattle, but, you know, they haven't actually built a building. building yet on publicly owned vacant land. So I think, yeah, studying the feasibility of that might be interesting given their experience and what, you know, their original remit was and what kind of they're doing now. So I'm intrigued that that is part of the plan and I'm interested to see how that transpires.

Thank you so much, Commissioner. So that's exactly the feedback we're looking for. So thank you again for the feedback.

Commissioner Westbrook, I've got one more. It's a comment again on a question. There was a page, item number 12 on page 20 of the plan, 45 of the packet. We're still talking about inclusionary zoning. I know that's kind of a bedrock of a lot of programs. There was just another new study out of L.A. or out of California. I'll pull it up here. Inclusionary zoning and housing supply evidence from California is Palmer Fix. Anyway, it's a whole study, NOAA, Kutcher, Kenya. And again, they found, in a nutshell, inclusionary zoning is a tax on housing, and it tends to depress the number of units and not increase the number of units. So I still remain a skeptic of inclusionary zoning. We're just seeing more and more studies all the time that it's not going to yield housing. And as I've mentioned here in the past, the funded inclusionary zoning seems to me a much more viable option for us to pursue a research. And it's basically funding it throughout the city instead of just having, say, if it's 20 units, you know, 15 of those people subsidize five or something like that, whatever the ratio is. So anything that effectively becomes a tax on housing like inclusionary zoning, I'm just really skeptical of. I think it's going in the wrong direction. So I would encourage us as a city to look into whether that's something we want to pursue or not and whether we want to look at the newer ideas around inclusionary zoning instead. if we really want to see these units get built. So thanks.

Commissioner Gustafson, go ahead.

Hi, Sarah Gustafson here. I'd like to build on what Commissioner Westerbeck raised in relation to our goal of diversifying housing types. So my understanding is that HB 1110 requires fourplexes to have one affordable unit unless they're really close to transit for cities of our size. And I know there was some discussion about taking on a different rule that might be for larger cities that would not have that requirement for fourplexes, only for sixplexes. And I would love to know where we are in that process. Where do we fit in those tiers? How are we adopting HB 1110? And whatever that status is, is it reflected in the housing action plan?

Yeah, great question. So, that is not necessarily reflected in the Housing Action Plan, as that was separate work that we did last year. We, and I'm trying to recall this from memory, but we went from Tier 2, as legally required, to a voluntary Tier 1. and I'm looking towards Christian, I see my head, more of the better details, but basically we're, you know, we took some of the Tier 1 standards where then we allow six units with a provision for two affordable if they are, provision for two affordable unless they are near a transit-oriented infrastructure stop. And so that work was finished last year. It wasn't necessarily part of the Housing Action Plan, but it happened in concurrent with the Housing Action Plan.

Yeah, I don't have anything else to add to that. We went from a two by right to a four by right throughout the city with the exception of the RC zoning. So those larger lots.

Yeah, I think that's a great move within the context of the current limitations. And I do want to reflect that I also agree with Commissioner Westerbeck's concerns because it feels like we're making it harder to build housing on one hand with the inclusionary rules and then we're trying to even it out with incentives and it's we're trying to balance it and wouldn't it be smoother to just get out of the way a little bit um but i really appreciate what you're doing and by the way the coffee cups are genius um kudos to you you've done so much work and been so creative

Jumping in here, because I also wanted to compliment you on, I think it's really hard to figure out ways of doing outreach. And I personally don't think of anything very creative, and that was brilliant. So I agree, Commissioner Gustafson, brilliant work. Thank you.

Anyone else? I have one more comment, not necessarily an ask. When we have these conversations, I always struggle with making recommendations for approval or adding on without enough information, and it is, well, To do that kind of work, you need to make sure that we're in the right track to do all the cost-benefit analysis that we need to take under consideration. However, I would find it really helpful to really hear more from your expertise as it relates to prioritization or really looking at what are some of the items that if anything went to go south, that you would really want to make sure that we keep because you know what are the things that are sort of like the low-hanging fruit or the things that will really bring us to compliance, meet those compliance requirements. So there's a lot of work that's been done and I know there's like a process and you're following that process, but I can't stress that enough that, you know, really here, like getting into the matrix of the table, that expertise and the methodology behind that ranking is something that I welcome and encourage for the work that you do. And I thank you so much for everything that you do. And I definitely look forward to continue to see how the plan evolves. But you will continue to hear from me that I would like to see more methodology embedded in the priority decisions and the recommendations so that when you get the approval, it's not necessarily based on the limited expertise that we may have here, but it is really like a collective effort that is backed on both qualitative and quantitative data, knowing how difficult it is to get it. So thank you so much, and thank you for the graphics. I appreciate your plan, your graphics, too.

Sorry, say one more thing. Can I build on what you – I think this is related. I don't know if it's the same thing. It just makes me think about how I'm sure when you're researching all these – incentives and ideas, you're looking at other cities. I'm curious, and I don't know if this has to be built into the plan, if you get the opportunity in the next few months, whatever, if you could let us know what cities have had success with what programs. Like, I know Redmond does a lot of MFTE. And to build on what I said before, I think we talked about this, the funded inclusionary zoning I was talking about. I think we started to talk last year about how that's really just a version of MFTE, but maybe for a little more accessible or more... adapted to medium and small projects. But I'm really curious, you know, because I swim in this stuff on online as well, because I'm curious about it. So I'll see like, you know, Austin's having success with this and New Zealand's having success with this and different cities and countries are having success with different housing programs. So I know we probably get a lot of these ideas from Walt Works and other places. I'd be curious if we have examples from the Northwest or from the West Coast or similar markets that We do think we'll move the needle more easily. To your point, like, what should we prioritize from your expertise as planners? What are you seeing from your peers and your colleagues in other cities and other states that, you know, hey, maybe we didn't think about this, but this is really, you know, turning up the dial in L.A. or Portland or whatever. So I'd be curious because I can't keep track of all of it, but I see these snippets every now and then. Whoa, that's really cool. That really worked. So... You know, and then something maybe, you know, I always get surprised. Oh, I really thought that would work. Like, inclusionary zoning, to me, used to sound really good. And now it seems kind of like the writings on the wall that maybe it's not quite what we thought it was. So it's something working that we don't know about. So I'd be really curious what you guys think as, again, professionals who do this daily.

Thanks. Thank you. Thanks for the feedback. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Well, I don't see any more hands or any more questions in the room. So with that, we thank you very much, planners, and have a wonderful night.

Have a good evening. Thank you. Nice to see you again. Thank you.

Okay, so our final study session involves a procedural code update from Senior Planner Katie Poltler. Hello.

Good evening, my name is Katie Posler and I will be presenting the procedural code updates which affect Bothell Municipal Code Titles 11, 12, and 14. No action is required of you tonight, we're just holding a study session to provide feedback on the proposed amendments. For some background on these procedural codes, these really are the unseen framework of the development review process and they walk applications from the initial submittal to public notice to staff's review and then to the public hearing. And while they're not seen every day, they really are the foundation for how we administer applications. And our goal with this code update is to clarify and simplify procedures, remove outdated or duplicative provisions, and align the code with current practices and state law. And just kind of as a refresher, we did visit this body back in February and May, and we also went to city council in July and got some good feedback from those meetings. Just to go over some changes that have gone through the proposal. One of the big items that we had proposed in the past was reducing the public hearings from two down to one. You might remember we were proposing to have just that one public hearing at Planning Commission and kind of through feedback from Planning Commission, City Council our legal team state law we kind of took another look at it and it seemed the easiest and the consensus to keep the practice as is to keep One public hearing at Planning Commission and one public hearing at City Council and allow for those public comments with state law the zoning amendments Allowed the public hearing to be at either body and the comp plan it had to be at Planning Commission So instead of creating two different processes for these two types of amendments We just thought it would be easier to keep it as is. The next item that we clarified is that multifamily density. There's a new phasing requirement that we'll talk about. We clarified that this is for larger phase development, so it would not affect smaller non-phased projects. The next is that we were proposing a 90-day correction response period from the current 180 days and the feedback was to provide an extension process, so we included that and some criteria. And then the last item is that we clarified that with the proposal for site-specific reasons that the hearing examiner would conduct the hearing, the open record public hearing, and City Council would still retain the final decision-making authority. So we kind of grouped these proposed changes into three categories. The left being the least significant or housekeeping, and these are more minor administrative or editorial changes. Next being refinement, which would improve existing procedures while maintaining the original policy intent. And then the most significant changes are policy, and these are changing the rules or decision-making process. And we have one of those now on the list as opposed to two. So we have about 10 slides to get to just as a heads up, but this is the first one, and this is the project permit framework. This is in 1104, and this falls under refinement. So in the current code, some permit types are outdated or assigned to the wrong review process. In the proposed code, we would remove the unused type 4b permit category. There's currently no land use actions listed underneath that type, so we're just getting rid of it. The next would be moving site-specific rezones from Type 5 to Type 4a. And we'll get into the meat of that a little bit later, but this is actually just moving it between the columns. And then next is adding public agency and utility exceptions in standalone SEPA to Type 2. We actually already processed standalone CPAS as type 2, so this is just putting it in the code. And public agency and utility exceptions are very similar to something else in the code called reasonable use exceptions, which are a type 2. So we wanted to align those. We'll be clarifying decision makers, appeal bodies, and permit procedures through the chapter. And the results is that this improves consistency and transparency and makes the code a bit easier to understand. Next up is permit processing, and this falls under housekeeping and is 1106 and 1110 in the code. So in the current code, applicants have 180 days to respond to a correction request. We're proposing to reduce that down to 90. With some feedback from this group, we did add an extension process and defined approval criteria to provide flexibility if a project is maybe complex or unique. And the criteria consists of the request being in writing, being before the 90 days are up, and the applicant demonstrating that they are still making progress. And that would be a director decision to allow the extension or not. This does align with other cities and it encourages a timely permit review and also keeps flexibility if it's needed. Next up is administrative appeals. And this is a housekeeping change. This is in 1112 and 1114. In the current code, type two appeals are in multiple different code sections. And we also have some outdated references like type 4B that I mentioned earlier, and some inconsistent terminology. So we're proposing to consolidate type two appeals into chapter 1114, just so it's in one place. We're removing duplicative and obsolete provisions and also updating terminology and cross-references, and this creates a single location for the administrative appeal procedures and provides some clarity and consistency. Next up is the amendment process. This is in 1118 and this is a refinement change. So currently in the code, different amendments follow a different process before they get to city council. So for example, some go to their advisory body and then go to city council and some go from the advisory body to planning commission and then to city council. So some of them skip the planning commission step. So what we're trying to do is to standardize the process and so that each amendment would take a pit stop at planning commission before reaching city council. And this specifically affects shoreline management and landmark code amendments. Those were the two that didn't follow that process. So we're just trying to create a consistent and predictable review process. Next up is public notice. This is in 1119 and this falls under refinement. So in the current code, there is some outdated information and also some optional noticing standards. So in the proposed code, we're updating the public notice sign details, getting the right phone number, right email, We're also removing the optional noticing methods. It doesn't really make sense to have an optional process in the code. So we're removing that because we do have required noticing standards. And then we're just updating the layout and some formatting items. And the results would be that this would be a little bit easier to read and more streamlined. Next up is multifamily density phasing and this is in 1214 and this is a refinement change. So in the current code there are not really any requirements to ensure density is achieved if a project is phased. So in the proposed code we would limit occupancy of a lower density phase until the higher density phase is completed. So as an example, if a project had to have 300 units and let's say they split up 100 to be townhomes and 200 to be apartments, this proposed code amendment would limit occupancy of the lower phase to half of that, so 50 units, unless the higher density phase was 100% completed. So the goal is that we're meeting those minimum density requirements that are a part of the comp plan and all those zoning changes. And just a clarifying item from city council is that this is intended for larger developments and it's not intended to affect like a smaller or single phase project. This would just be a project with two different phases. Next up is site plan review and this is a housekeeping change and this is in 1232. In the current code, there are some inconsistencies with the critical area ordinance and also some outdated information. In the proposed code, we would clarify the applicability section. So we have a new process in the code called unit lot subdivision and we would clarify that's exempt from site plan review since it follows a subdivision process. We're also clarifying Some critical area standards. So in the critical area ordinance you're required to show critical areas on your site and also anything within 300 feet of your site. So we're just clarifying that we want that on the site plan in this section of the code. And we're also removing a reference to parking standards since the minimum parking standards were removed from the code. So just making sure everything is consistent with other code sections. Next up is rezones, and this is the remaining policy change. In the current code, site-specific and area-wide rezones both follow the same process. So they're type five and they go from planning commission with a recommendation to city council. And site-specific rezones would be something like initiated by an applicant. That's one parcel or a couple of parcels. And an area-wide rezone would be a legislative action. So something initiated the city. It would either be like the whole city or a large portion of the city. So those are kind of the differences between those two. And what we're proposing to do is shift site-specific rezones to type 4a. which would go to the hearing examiner in an open record public hearing, and then still a final decision by city council, and area-wide would still remain the same process, which is a type 5 from planning commission to city council. We're also creating expanded criteria for the two different processes, And really the reason for this change is the legal nature and the legal difference between the two. So site-specific rezones are more quasi-judicial, meaning they're compared to the existing code criteria. And hearing examiners are specifically trained to look at that criteria and hold an open record public hearing and also apply the appearance of fairness doctrine. And area wide rezones would remain type five because those are doing new policies or creating new policies through a very large scale rezone. So that's why we're proposing this change is to align with state law and kind of create a cleaner, more legally structured and legally supported process. Something we wanted to clarify with feedback from city council is they would still retain the final authority On this decision, like they have today, it would just go to the hearing examiner for an open record public hearing beforehand. And this aligns with the 2024 comprehensive plan. If the site-specific rezone meets the comp plan and the criteria, then the hearing examiner would be able to evaluate that. Next up is in SEPA, and this is in 14-02, and this is a housekeeping change. So currently in the code, I would say it's a little murky or a little bit unclear with SEPA reviews associated with city council actions and what the appeal process would be for those. If it's a non-city council action, it's very clear that it's administratively Appealed if someone wanted to pursue that But what we're trying to do with the proposed amendment is clarify that SEPA appeals related to City Council actions are governed by state law So those would be like legislative actions code amendments comp plan amendments It makes the most sense for those to either go to Superior Court or the growth management hearing board if they're related to a legislative action so we're just trying to kind of clarify the two different processes for appeals and The last item we have on the list is public agency and utility exceptions, and this is a housekeeping item. This is in 14-04. Right now in the code, public agency and utility exceptions require hearing examiner approval or would be considered a Type 3 permit application. And what we're proposing to do is reclassify that to a type two or an administrative decision, which would be approved by the director. And the reason behind that is these public agency and utility exceptions are very similar to reasonable use exceptions. The main difference is public agency and utility exceptions are requested by a public agency or utility and reasonable use are requested by a private property owner, but they're both requesting relief from a critical area. or standard like a wetland buffer or a stream buffer so because reasonable use exceptions follow type 2 that's why we wanted to align these public agency and utility exceptions because they're very similar so we're just trying to remove an unnecessary hearing and streamline that process So the next step is we would get your feedback tonight. We are proposing to have the public hearing on September 16th with Planning Commission and then the public hearing with City Council on October 6th and then propose ordinance adoption on October 20th. That concludes my presentation, but we're happy to hear any thoughts or feedback you have.

Thank you. Any questions or comments? I don't see a hand online. What about here in the room?

Just a comment. I appreciate the streamlining. This is good work. Dealing with this stuff in my day-to-day work, I like to see these. These are good. So yeah, no complaints. I like it. It's good stuff.

I do have a question around the user experience. So when it comes to the technicality, I'm not necessarily going to go so much into that. I leave that up to you, which is great. Thank you for doing all of that. But from the applicant's perspective or someone coming in for a permit, Does this changes that you're making in terms of the housekeeping changes, how does that translate into like a shorter timeline in or helping staff make sure that it's less bureaucratic per se? When someone comes in and I know it may be depending on the type of permit that they're coming for or the type of project that they have, they might vary. But what are some of the almost like the KPIs that we could see by saying, okay, before the changes, this is how long it will take to do X, Y, and Z. And then after that, this is what we're seeing in result just to as we kind of like think about like policy evaluation or process clarifications if this is actually something that helped us be more efficient or if it created perhaps maybe didn't make any changes and then maybe we already did it I don't know so that's one question if you can go over that yeah

Sure, so I think there's a couple of different things to address. Some of the housekeeping items make the code just easier to read, like getting rid of paragraphs we don't need, like the optional noticing methods, so kind of shrinking the code. And then to your point about timeline, like for example, the public agency and utility exception When it's a Type 3, as it is today, and has to go to an open record public hearing, there's a lot more scheduling involved in that and working with the hearing examiner. I would say it could take a couple more months. It would just take more time if the current code didn't change. If it changes to an admin process or a Type 2, it would be quicker. So I don't know that I could give you the exact amount of months that would be quicker. We could probably do analysis on that after the fact, but it would be a shorter timeline for an applicant to get through to approval or to get to the permitting stage. And the other one that would probably make a big difference is the site-specific rezones. as opposed to having to go to two public hearings, one with Planning Commission and one with City Council. It would be more streamlined because it would go to the hearing examiner who would compare it against the existing code and then a closed record decision for City Council. So I think that one would be quicker too.

Thank you so much. So I think just a comment that I have around that. I'm just a big proponent of always, if you can measure it, try to do that. So as you're implementing these new codes, it'll be wonderful to see maybe a year in how the timelines change and then how the user experience improved and obviously for staff as well. Um, as tweaks are made in the future, we can always refer back to a baseline. So that will be wonderful. The other question that I have is around the public notice and then removing the optional means. So I do understand the reason of why we want to, like, remove them just to be more. efficient but rather than removing it is there any value of maybe like modernizing the things that are optional because I know sometimes it's like I know for you know I'm also working in government so it's like go put it on the local newspaper or it has to be printed or whatnot and like okay who's really like doing that nowadays so what's the like how do we make sure that we don't lose potential targeted outreach or additional enhanced community engagement that might be needed by removing the optional or additional rather than modernizing that list of optional

What I can say to that is, so the state requirements like posting on site, doing a legal ad, those would still stay in the code. And we honestly do still do a lot of the optional noticing methods in our daily work with Imagine Bothell, with sending it out via email, posting it on the website. So a lot of the optional methods, while they won't be in the code, I think we would still continue to do them in our daily practice.

Can I add to that real quick? Sorry. And I think the previous item, the housing action plan, the coffee sleeves, thank you, items like that for those larger projects, when we come to you and city council with engagement plans and concepts and ideas of here's how we think we're going to engage, that might be a little bit different than we've done before. that'll continue to be iterative and kind of grow for those larger projects where each engagement plan is going to be a little bit different. And staff will continue to learn and recognize, oh, it was really great to go to music at the park or movies at the park. Those are events that we want to try to do. And, oh, we learned about this other activity that is somewhere else that we want to make sure we're incorporating or a group that we meet kind of touching back on what Gabby had identified in their presentation in July of how we continue to grow our network. And as our network expands and our tools expand, we'll continue to pull those engagement opportunity ideas and tools into various projects, depending on the scope and scale, really small, narrow projects. administrative code updates that don't really impact a whole lot of things, probably just going to follow the minimum state standards. Those bigger ones like housing action, climate action plan, comp plan, they're going to have really big, robust engagement plans that we'll make sure as we go through with this group and with council that we've captured the optional pieces and what other optional pieces might you have experienced in your daily life, in your happenings, and everyone to incorporate into that. And so just to try to make sure that the code is clear. Here's what you've got to do. All the other stuff that we end up doing is optional. And just by good practice, we want to make sure we're continuing that.

Thank you. Any other comment or question on this item? Okay, well, thank you, Planner Huffler. Okay, so we're gonna move now to item number five of our agenda, reports from members. So we are going to hear reports from commission members. If you have a report, please raise your hand. I don't see a hand online or in the room. Anything, Commissioner Morales, Westerbach, Gustavsson, Seals? No? All right, so reports from staff. I will now ask...

Yes.

Oh, did I miss one?

I put the development activity update under reports from staff.

Oh, sorry. No, that's okay. We will now hear reports from commission member. No, I will not ask staff if there are reports from staff. So staff, please first. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I've been trying to support the chair or vice chair with the script and making sure we're getting it up to speed. No, you're good. I know you want to hear this, and I want to run through it with you. So what I have for you tonight is kind of a repeat, but I've narrowed it down a little bit from last night. So council last night gave a development activity update and wanted to focus this in on just a little bit and not get into too much of the background that I went through with city council. I'm gonna run through some of the current construction projects for viewers at home where this is new. We have multiple tools within the city's interactive map portal. This construction project map as well as our GIS interactive map. This one identifies different construction types. You can click on any of these dots as you zoom into the map. It highlights the parcel or the roadway for a public project. and identifies the name, the project case number, a little description. Through that and then through other tools, you can get to us with, I want more information, I'd like to see the plans for this. Some of the bigger projects that I've included that are currently in for permitting are on this list. This is not holistic, it's larger projects generally units or more residential we're seeing a lot more residential if you recall the last time this this list was out it was it was a lot smaller so we have a number of subdivisions you see then the word townhome in the citywide residential list there and we're seeing quite a quite a bit of variety there three projects in downtown Bothell Urban, a signature on Main and the 20 at Bothell Townhomes, which is just outside of downtown, but I still really think it's within the downtown. It's just a block away. And then a project up in Canyon Park, Mill Creek Residential. Mill Creek is not the city of Mill Creek. It is the development company proposing some residential units up there. So these are in the land use or building permit phase review. So a lot of energy time has gone into the development of the engineering architectural site design plans, and these are moving forward. The residential projects, we're seeing a variety of housing types from detached single families as part of a subdivision up to 300 unit multifamily projects. not seeing as much commercial or non-residential activity. And that's to be expected, as we're seeing that everywhere else in the country. Projects that are currently in construction, you'd probably see these around town, 102 Main. I heard the crane is actually coming down in the next couple of days. So they're done with that work and moving on to the interior or whatever does not need the crane. several townhome projects that are under construction and a number of other ones. All of these are, I'd say the majority of these are within the attachment, the attached project description list with somewhat of a thumbnail of an image and a description and status of where it's at in in the face. So we're seeing a lot of activity moving forward. Uh, this next table is just a general snapshot of where we are year to date, how that compares to years past. Uh, and then the last five year average, the last five year average still has some of those larger projects in it. Um, so the Alexa and block D project, um, I think we're past the Avalon, um, residential project impacts as far as how that touches our averages um we're looking just fine as far as we're more than half we're halfway through the year but we're more than halfway on most of these metrics uh it is important to look at the the middle uh the middle row there the valuation of building permits applied that's our what we always think of is well what's coming what what is in the in the process that is to be built The $110 million within the last month and a little bit since this was put together, we've had two large projects come in, which has bumped that over $200 million. So those larger projects really do help that bottom line and that recognition of there's interest in moving forward paired with all of the other medium, medium-large or small projects that we see on a day-to-day basis. So this really just to show that we are We are seeing good activity, using the term cautiously optimistic, that things are gonna continue on this trajectory. The next few slides I'm gonna talk through involve, as we move through the development process, preliminary applications to land use entitlement permits and then on to building and construction permits. Preliminary proposals are our leading indicator. These are concepts just above a drawing on a napkin. to give us a sense of what we might see coming, focusing on residential units. From here on out, I'm just going to talk about residential units. I'm not going to talk about commercial or mixed use. The trend is up, as you can see, a good bump after 2024. Even some of 2024, the speculation of what was our code going to be was in that 24 column. Only halfway through the year, and we're already up to nearly a thousand, you know, idealized project, idealized residential units. So we're seeing a lot of interest in residential development types. Most of these will become projects at some point or another. It's just a matter of time. A couple of things to note here. The not so great news is that they're all underdeveloped. So if there is a maximum density, they're not pushing to that maximum density. They're pulling it back. We typically see that when it comes to townhome proposals that are just at or above the minimum density if we have one. We are seeing these in various housing type forms, which is good. If it was all apartments or all single family, we wouldn't have the diversity of housing that I think the city is intending to see develop. The next slide here is the land use and entitlement application. So these are the subdivisions, plan unit developments, variances, critical area applications that involve residential activity. And again, you can see since 24, very, very low. Now we have a lot more of these coming in and there's a lot of time and energy and money spent to get them to this point. So this is a good thing to see that we're right around just over 500 units and just above 700 units so far this year in this formal step in the development process. All of these would go through, most of these would go through a public process, only the smaller ones might not. It's well above our five-year average. And again, we're seeing a lot of different housing types in these applications. I noted this for council last night, of these projects, around 30%, just about 30% of them are within zones that have a minimum density requirement. So when that was passed in 2024, when we set the maximum densities and half of it was the minimum, we're seeing a third, and that covers about a third of the city, which is good. We've got a third of the city that has a minimum density requirement and a third of the residential units that we're seeing are coming in through that. Still a lot of opportunity for those to go up, but we understand maybe the market's not quite ready for 80 units per acre all the time or 60 units per acre if you're in that zone. But it's good to see that that is there. If it weren't there, we definitely anticipate that we would see less density proposed as we've Seen a handful of projects come in through the preliminary phase proposing a project that didn't meet the minimum density, and we had to send them back to the drawing board and work with them through that conceptual iterative process to get them to a point where they did meet that minimum density. One of the projects that council asked, is there one that stands out as an interesting or unique one? It's just up here on 101st. It's a blended project with nine townhomes and then a 12-unit apartment building, three stories with four units on each floor. So it's a really unique way, unique for us to have seen that blends those two types. And hopefully it's the best of both worlds. It gets the townhome project that seems to be what we're seeing a lot of. Hopefully the market's still there for that. and the density in the apartment building with slightly smaller spaces that will have a variation in rents. Final stage here, building permits. This is our permits issued and permits finaled. The data here is a little bit tough to digest because it follows the Office of Financial Management, the April to April. So that January to June, reference there is really just it's last april to this april 1st so it's not quite capturing all of the activity that's happening and there is you know to be to be totally clear here that there is a lag in what we're seeing completed we're anticipating these numbers to to spike up and i mentioned to council last night that i think we're going to throw this chart out and just say you know what we'll we'll figure out a way to make it january to january apples to apples for everything and just sort of dissect the data that we have. This is really meant to help with population projections for OFM. We'll continue monitoring this, returning both to Council and Planning Commission if you would like to see this information twice a year and provide those updates. This is kind of the, if we continue to monitor this and we continue to track it, it'll make our lives easier as staff at the end of 29 when we begin the evaluation of our five-year look back, what has happened in five years. And if we continue to look at it every six months, a little bit more focused like this, we can start to see, is something happening? Is there a trend going one way or the other? Are we starting to see projects that really just aren't going to pencil out? And what is the problem? Is it our code? Is it friction with a fire code, a building code, a utility requirement, something like that? happy to answer any questions about the numbers here or any of the projects that were in the packet I can do my best as staff is the ones they're the ones that that are entrenched in in that work but here to chat through it any questions sure respect so of course stuff super fascinating to me and I can see what other people are doing this is great seems like the

the work that the city has done to the zoning and streamlining of the code and everything and liberalizing what can be done in middle housing and everything has helped us stay maybe busier than some jurisdictions at a time when I hear a lot of people pulling back on development. Is that the sense you're getting when you talk to your peers in other cities and things like that if you're doing that? Or do you kind of get the feelers out and and measure against how other cities are doing and whether they're seeing an uptick or consistent applications in pre-ops?

It seems like we're seeing maybe a little more development activity than some where we've heard some cities it's just dropped off completely. I'll be talking next week about minimum densities and I'll definitely reach out to the folks at that conference to see kind of what are you all seeing, what's the trend, what's happening. I THINK WE'RE DEFINITELY HOPEFUL THAT WE'VE CREATED A GOOD FRAMEWORK TO BUILD OFF OF WITH AS MUCH FLEXIBILITY AS PLANNING COMMISSION AND COUNCIL WANTED TO GIVE WITH GOOD GUARD RAILS AND WE'LL BE RETURNING AND CONTINUING THE WORK THAT WE DO TO MAKE SURE THAT WE'VE GOT IT RIGHT AND JUST RIGHT AND IF WE NEED TO ADJUST, WE'LL KEEP ADJUSTING.

BECAUSE I TALK TO OCCASIONALLY PEOPLE WORKING IN this industry and related industries, you know, development and brokerage and stuff like that. And they tell me that Bothell's a leader, like we know, we've kind of known that for a while, I guess, because of this work and all the work we've been, you and staff and what you've been doing. But that we have a current reputation as being, you know, development friendly and that we're open to projects versus sort of like know turning a cold shoulder and that it's a good place to work and that you know the zoning work has been good so that's just a little you know the little bird on the way where the cliche is that I'm hearing among the industry industry folks in the area so that's why I asked because it seems like we had to kind of go pretty far into liberalizing the code but it's it appears to be yielding the fruit that we were after and other people are agreeing with that, so that's great. Now if we can get a few of those little building code things in place, the lot splitting bill, address that maybe in 2026 or 2027. Anyway, fantastic work, love the report, super fascinating. I'm gonna be looking at it some more just because it's the only time I really get to see without wandering around town what's going on. So it's awesome, thank you.

I see Commissioner Gustafson, go ahead.

Yes, Sarah Gustafson here. Also, Director Gates, thanks for the great news on the results. It's exceptional. And it shows that the work you're doing means people and homes. I do want to raise one question I've thought about since 2024. When a resident named Gary from West Hill, I believe, brought it up at a plan open house. What work are we doing to make sure our power grid can handle this between housing and biotech utility demands and the current environment of energy getting more expensive and the grids getting harder to repair? I think in 2024 our great staff fellow Emily gave us a really thorough and reassuring answer about the planning that was going on, but now in 2026 I want to revisit. as well, which requires utility hookups. Will we be building out more capacity? Or somehow is Bothell involved in repurposing, remetering, or rethinking our current grid to make it smarter and more flexible?

That's a great question, and I'll do my best to answer as best I can here. You know, our coordination with PSE and snow pud in the grids and their networks and confirming that the capacity that we were looking to develop with the the the comp plan policies and the development standards there was from what i from what i recall there were there were no issues with the the current grid and their projected build out into the future um There was no issues. Similarly, you know, the water and sewer utility work that either the city does or with Alderwood or our other partners. They've developed the capacity within those networks, within their master plans, with the current systems, as well as what their planned expansion would be. It does come up, but we do know that there is that capacity now to accept this and continue to support expanding it. And every project incorporates new means to complement the current I'll just say utility systems to support the development that's happening and tie in or create opportunities for new tie-ins upstream, or I suppose we're downstream, depending on what we're talking about.

Yeah, that sounds great. It's no surprise to me. Thank you for looking ahead.

Thank you, anyone else, other comments or questions? Okay, I do have a comment and a question. So thank you so much, this is super helpful. I was wondering for the number of units that we're seeing built or projects, how does that really translate into meeting our affordability goals? So when it comes to the permits, the type of permit that gets And if so, can that be part of the report?

It does, and we're going to include that in our annual report. So right now, we can say that the 76 units within the SAMA project count towards those various AMI bands that were there. With the Lot P South, as well as the project across from Home Depot, those have, you know, 200 units within P South or the Bothell Urban Project. And then there's 32 proposed within the one across from Home Depot. Those will start to show whether it's in here's the ones that are in review and here's the ones that have been finalized. They don't really count till they're actually built and occupiable. But that'll be within the annual report. And that's the Housing Accountability Act piece where we want to make sure we're showing within those income bands, here's where we're checking off. We're not going to have a problem with the above 80% numbers given kind of what we're seeing. And that we'll be able to close those out and then some. But how do we start to figure out that harder work, which all jurisdictions are looking at that as the big insurmountable task where we need funds from somewhere to support those below 50s.

Thank you so much. That is super helpful. And this comment ties back to the conversation that we had earlier about prioritization of what it means to prioritize the strategies to help balance out the needs that we have. The other one is just a comment. Again, thank you. This is wonderful. The map is terrific. But the last session, communications was talking to us about accessibility. So I wonder if the map has gone through that review, because having that white background and yellow dots, or maybe even thinking about representing the different types of housing with maybe like different shapes rather than colors to make it more accessible. So I don't know if that's gone through our review.

I know they're working through all of our website updates right now. And I think they're systematically going through department by department. I'm going to guess that maps are probably one of the harder items to go through and make sure we're we've checked all the boxes and we've been able to provide what we need to.

Just some small tweaks for contrast that can make a huge difference for accessibility. Thank you. Okay. Any other question or comment? If there are being...

I have two more things on items from staff. Sorry. It was more just I'm trying to make sure that I do let you all know what our upcoming meetings include. So the last couple pages or the last page in the agenda Identifies what's what's happening on September 16th and then October 7th just to give you a sense Procedure code public hearing as Katie mentioned She'll be back for a study session as well on the comp plan annual amendments Cameron's going to be here to talk through study session on downtown and then in October Katie's gonna kick off the Canyon Park sub area plan update and And then we'll do a public hearing on the bike parking. Upcoming engagement opportunities, Sustainamania is on the 26th. Always looking for an opportunity to plug that. And then there is a joint meeting with boards and commissions and city council on September 29th that you've all been invited to please attend. It's nothing formal. Opportunity to hear from them, where they can recognize the work that everybody does, and get to meet and mingle afterwards. So that's it for me. I'm all set.

All right. Thank you. So there being no further business, the chair will entertain a motion to adjourn. Is there a motion?

Commissioner Morales, motion to adjourn.

Thank you. Is there a second?

Commissioner Westerbeck, second the motion to adjourn.

Thank you. It has been moved and seconded to adjourn. All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All of those opposed, say no. All right. The motion carries, and the meeting is adjourned at 8.17 p.m. Thank you. Thank you.