Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everyone. I called the 12/17/2025 Planning Commission meeting to order. The main purposes of tonight's meeting are to hold a public hearing on the transportation impact fee update and study sessions on the urban forest management plan and a 2026 comprehensive plan docket request. Before we move on to the agenda items, I'd like to acknowledge our hybrid meeting format. The city of Bothell is providing the option getting a little feedback on the audio. Is that okay? Alright. We're working on it. Alright. Before we get where was I?

I'll just start up. Before we move on to the agenda items, I'd like to acknowledge our meet hybrid meeting format. City of Baffle is providing the option to attend this meeting either in person or remotely via Zoom. Those participating via Zoom, the chat and question function is not available for use to ensure compliance with the Open Public Meetings Act. We have a public comment agenda item at the beginning of the meeting.

Please limit all comments to three minutes, and please note that the city of Bothell does not tolerate verbal harassment. Please note that please remember this during your comments. Please note if you wish to make comments on agenda on the items cut off for public hearing, please make those comments during the hearing so that they will be part of the hearing record. Other comments should be made during the public comment period. Public comment will be allowed both in person and via Zoom. Those wishing to comment via Zoom were asked to submit an online form by three p. M. Today. People wishing to submit written comments were also asked to submit those comments by three p. M.

E mail was encouraged as well and will be acknowledged, and we did receive a written comment that was forwarded to all commissioners, which we've reviewed. So thank you for that. Those in attendance may also make comments and have been asked to indicate their desire to comment on the sign in sheets. The Imagine Bothell notice, city website, and tonight's agenda all provided information to the public for making comments. Video of this meeting will be streamed live as well as recorded and available for later viewing on the Citi's YouTube channel.

The call in number was provided on the meeting agenda for members of the public who wish to call in by phone and listen live to the meeting. For phone in callers, during staff presentations, staff will make every effort to specify which materials they are referencing so that everyone can follow along. At this point, we'll take a moment to acknowledge the presence of commissioners. Commissioner Jones?

Present.

Commissioner Westerbeck?

Present.

Commissioner Lever?

Present.

Commissioner Robson is absent and excused. Commissioner Sills, are you online?

Yes. I'm here.

Oh, commissioner Sills, I assume. And commissioner Gustafson.

Here. Thanks.

Alright. In addition, community development staff in attendance include deputy director Gates, Boyd Benson, utilities and development services manager, Cameron Colvin, planner, Deborah Powers, planner, And Steve Maracalla, didn't have you on my notes. Lastly, before we begin, I'd like to reiterate some meeting guidelines. For all attendees, please speak clearly and pause frequently. State your name each time before speaking.

Mute your microphone when not speaking. If you are also streaming the live video feed, please turn the sound off as there is a delay. At specific breaks in the presentation, we will be calling on members who wish to speak or ask a question. If you wanna speak, please indicate this by raising your hand, and I will call on you as we see you. This will help avoid the problem of having two people speaking at once. Identify yourself before you ask a question, make a motion, second a motion, or participate in debate, and please mute your microphone when not speaking. First item on the agenda is public comment. The city has accepted visitor comment in writing as well as accepted sign up sheets for those who wish to speak at tonight's meeting. Those speaking will have three minutes. Written comments submitted to staff no later than three p.

M. Were forwarded to all commissioners and are part of record. And as I indicated, we did receive one. And any other comments? Nope.

No other comments were received.

Okay. Just the one that we all were forwarded. If there are any Zoom commenters, we'll call on you one at a time for comments up to three minutes. So with that, we do have an individual who would like to speak. Please step to the podium, turn on the mic, and you have three minutes.

Thank you. For the record, my name is Peter Condilius with Toyra Strategic Advisors. We represent the applicant for the docket application that's on your agenda tonight. The property owner is also here with us. I submitted a letter to you guys earlier today which you've received and I won't go over any of that because there's quite a bit in there.

But what I'd like to underscore tonight is that all all that's on the agenda tonight for this is, an item to study this further. So what you're voting on tonight is just saying, yes, we'd like to study this item further as the docket cycle gets started for 2026. This doesn't marry the commission to any certain outcome and it doesn't guarantee that you're gonna approve what we'd like. It just says, we'll study it and look into it further and have a robust dialogue. Based on the staff report and the letter that we had sent, I think there's a lot of questions and concerns still about what is proposed, and what was in the application, which I think means that we should have that robust process and we should have dialogue and involve the public, involve the property owners, the neighbors in that neighborhood.

I think it'd be a real shame just to cut it off tonight and not continue the conversation into next year. So that's our ask tonight that you'll approve this to be added to the docket for next year for further study. And, you know, after you guys study it, there's a chance you could say that you still don't wanna do it and that's fine with us. But at least you will have the information and the process will have been completed. So that's all we have. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. We will look forward to discussing this further amongst ourselves and with staff during the study session. So thank you. Any other comments? Seeing none, next item on the agenda is the approval of the November 19 minutes. Is there a motion to approve those minutes?

Commissioner Jones, I'm moving them that we approve the minutes from the last meeting.

All right. It has been moved that we approve the minutes. Is there a second?

Commissioner Lever, a second.

It's been moved and seconded that we approve the minutes of the November 19 meeting. Any discussion around those minutes? Seeing none, all in favor of approving the minutes, please get by saying aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. The minutes of the November 19 meeting are approved. That will move us to our public hearing. And before we go there, will we adjust the video so commissioner Gustafson isn't the prime thing? We can actually see the presentation? Alright. We're happy to see you, but

I appreciate that. I had no idea. It looks normal to me.

Now, you're on the big screen here. Alright. Here we go.

Good evening, Planning Commission. Boyd Benson, Public Works Utilities and Development Services Manager. Tonight, we'll be discussing the proposed title 17 updates to the Bothell Municipal Code. Joining us tonight, we have Kenda Breland from Farrand Piers, and we have Steve Morakawa, our deputy director, city engineer. What we have for you tonight is a short presentation just to summarize where we're at, hopefully, to be followed by a discussion.

And then we'd request that you'd open the public hearing for comment. After that time, we'd request that you review the findings, facts, and conclusions that were provided in the packet. So as mentioned tonight, we'll hold a public hearing for the proposed Botham Municipal Code title 17 updates and review the findings, facts, and conclusions for the updates. Some key information to kind of frame this discussion. Multimodal level of service was adopted by the city council in 2024 as part of the comprehensive plan update.

The actions we're discussing to update title 17 are to fully implement the multimodal level service and the the goals and policies of the comprehensive plan. To do that, we're updating the transportation impact fee approach to comply with multimodal level of service and to utilize the transportation improvement plan within the comprehensive plan. And to formally document that, we are required to update Title 17 for those purposes. So a bit of background. We last did our major most recent major transportation impact fee update in 2019 and then did a minor update in 2023 to address some middle housing and ADU provisions.

As I mentioned, the comp plan adopted in 2024 did indicate that we'd be moving from vehicle trip based concurrency to person trip multimodal concurrency. And what this really means in the past, the level of service was really looking at vehicle traffic. With the adoption of the comp plan, we're looking at vehicles, pedestrians, and bicycles, multimodal, and a multimodal approach. And that allows us to include those type of projects within our long range plan to accommodate growth and also let those projects be eligible for transport and impact fee expenditures. We came to city council and planning commission in May and July 2025 to discuss the overall overall approach for the Transportation Impact Fee.

We came back in October to Planning Commission City Council to present the results of the Impact Fee evaluation on that study sessions at that time with a general overview of the required title 17 updates. So tonight, we'll be presenting additional information and holding the public hearing to receive any additional comment from the public. And the future touches include public hearing at city council on February 3, and then as planned, once we complete commerce and CEPA review adoption at the February. So this is a very brief overview. And I think this is my slide, Kendra, so I'll just keep going.

I think yours

And I'm happy to chime in at any time, Boyd.

That sounds great. Just let me

I'll hit this one, then you take the next. So we've been focusing on impact fees at this time because the change from vehicle trip based projects to multimodal level of service projects directly impacts the project list and impact fees that are collected to mitigate impacts from development on the city transportation system. So you see the number three. We spent a lot of time on that. And I think we are to a point where we had concurrence from both Planning Commission and City Council on some affordability, affordable housing reductions, a change of use exemption, and some reductions associated with being adjacent to a rapid transit corridor or within a growth area.

So that's the impact part. The level of service part, as I mentioned, is going how we measure trips and how we measure what capacity we have for growth. So we really try to make this really distinct. There's impact fees on a project list, and that's how we fund these projects to address growth. The currency part and the level of service part is do we have the capacity for growth to even occur?

And that's what we're looking at today. So level of service policy is how the transportation current system currently performs. Is there capacity for growth so growth can be allowed? That leads to concurrency. Is that capacity available at this time? Is it concurrent? Is it current with development? And the last part is, are we collecting funds so we can complete the projects to mitigate impacts from that development, from that growth? Kendra or Steve, anything you'd like to add to that?

No. I think, you know, all I would say is that the city of Bothell has put a lot of work into this. This slide right here represents actually several years' worth of work, particularly at the staff level, but also significant coordination with both planning commission and city council and the community. As part of Imagine Bothell, we updated the city's level of service policies to be multimodal. We are looking to provide an impact fee program that helps deliver those multimodal projects. And this step and what we're talking about tonight in the next couple of slides is really kinda how we update the city's concurrency process to be in line with all of these changes.

Thank you. Alright.

So I'll jump into this. What is transportation concurrency? So this is a requirement in Washington state. It's been in place since the Growth Management Act, which was passed back in 1990. And, essentially, what concurrency is is essentially a requirement that cities are to adopt level of service policies, and concurrency requirement is really just that that a requirement that cities are maintaining that level of service, that that performance standard that's stated in its comprehensive plan as it grows.

So as BOTHL has adopted very multimodal level of service policies, we're looking to update your concurrency programs to be equally multimodal. And we're looking at kind of the guidance that's provided in state law that we should be thinking about all the transportation systems that we're man that we're monitoring. And, certainly, we're looking at pedestrian systems like sidewalks, level of service for pedestrians, level of service for bikes, level of service peep for people accessing transit, level of service for cars. And we're making sure that as Bothell grows, we're ensuring that you're keeping that transportation system up and providing adequate capacity. And we're looking at a change in how we do that.

So historically, the city has done that by monitoring essentially intersection level of service along a series of concurrency corridors with concurrency measured by how long vehicles wait. But we recognize that with all of the new multimodal policies that have been updated and with the encouragement at the state level to be more multimodal, we're looking at doing this a different way that will be recognizing your full system, not just your system for vehicles, but how we're accommodating for all modes of transportation. So that will be rolling into your concurrency program, how you're delivering projects like sidewalks, bike facilities, safer intersections, and roadway treatments. Boiter Steve, before I go on to the next slide, is there anything you'd like to add to that?

No. That was outstanding. Thank you.

Okay. Then I think we can go to the next slide. This slide really visualizes kinda how this system will work. So we will be monitoring that essentially, it's a ledger based system. So it's really looking at as the city and let's start on the right hand side of the slide, so the demand side.

As the city permits development, whether that's new homes, whether that's new office space, whether that's industrial. We know that all of that development generates new person trips. And so this new system will be ensuring that we're bringing forward enough transportation projects to provide capacity for those person trips. And, again, you know, those transportation projects can include sidewalks, improved crossings, bike facilities, intersection improvements to better accommodate transit, can also include new lane miles of of roadway facilities, but it's monitoring the pace with which we're delivering the transportation projects that were called out in your imagined Bothell transportation element and ensuring that we're building those sufficiently to keep pace with the growth that's coming in the door. And so, essentially, in this system, we're gonna be distilling everyone down to a person trip.

So every type of development, we know how to estimate the person trips that are coming out of that. In this system, we will also be tracking the capacity you're bringing online and making sure that those are staying at least in check over time, and city staff will be able to monitor that. Know, hey. Are we staying adequately ahead of things? Do we need to recalibrate our transportation investments to provide more capacity?

This sort of system is gonna be looking at that rather than focusing on intersection level of service along capacity corridor. Those capacity projects all filter into this supply side of the equation, but it just is a more multimodal approach to concurrency that's more in line with the policy guidance that's come out of your comprehensive plan. Steve or Boyd, anything you'd like to add to that?

Once again, thank you. Okay. So next slide. So once again, the multiple level service was within the 2024 comprehensive plan. It was adopted, and the actions we're looking at tonight to update title 17 are to implement those, those actions as part of the, comprehensive plan.

Part of this is an opportunity to simplify our process. When you review the code changes, you'll notice there are several sections that have been deleted. The city of Bothell had a relatively complex concurrency evaluation process, And we've taken this as an opportunity to simplify that process, which is good for clarity with respect to development. It's good for accountability, and it just is more efficient. With that said, we did take the opportunity to work with community development.

In the past, the concurrency approval process had timelines that did not coincide with permit approvals. And it's something that we've discussed for years, and this doesn't really make a lot of sense. When we look at development and whether it has concurrency, whether the impacts are mitigated concurrently or there's capacity under our passcode, it had timelines that could be a hundred and twenty days and expires and one hundred and eighty days and expires. And and it didn't work well with with preliminary subdivisions or building permits and the rest. So we've taken the opportunity to update our code so those timelines can coincide.

And as long as you keep your underlying entitlement permit active and you follow those timelines and processes, concurrency will stay active. This is something other cities have done within the past past few years, and it just makes really good sense. We're very keen on that simplification. The title 17 updates also include, as we've discussed, the transportation impact fee schedule. The schedule looks very similar to what you've seen in the past, just has the updated costs, along with a section that describes the affordable housing reductions, the early learning reductions, multifamily tax exemption reductions.

We discussed the rapid transit and growth center reductions, and a change in use exemption. So the code is presented before you. It's been submitted to the Department of Commerce for their sixty day review. These reviews can go concurrently with city of Bothell processes. And we've timed those processes. So by the time we've requested council to look at the adoption of this code, that the commerce review period and a CEVA review period will be completed. Next steps. We'll have a city council public hearing on February 3. It'll be very similar to this. I mentioned that the commerce review and CEVA review will be completed in February.

And as scheduled, we'll bring forward the title 17 updates to counsel for consideration adoption in February 2026. Once again, the Planning Commission actions were requesting that you hold a public hearing to gather additional public comment about the proposed changes. And then also, we'd request a discussion of the findings, facts, and conclusions. That discussion of the findings, facts, and conclusions, those don't have to be adopted today. If there's consensus from the Planning Commission that they accurately reflect the Planning Commission's findings, facts, conclusions, you can bring that forward.

If not, we can make revisions and bring that back at a later date or amend with your approval. And that's what we have to share with you today.

So commissioners, any questions around the presentation we just heard? Commissioner Lever.

Thank you. Commissioner Lever here. I have a question around process. So when it comes to the presentations, the decks, I always find them very helpful. When we don't get these in our packet, but do they get posted on the website anywhere?

So the process for the updates or the process for

The the presentation you just went through because I'm thinking of, like, engagement and really gathering public comment. These are very technical agenda items. And then when it comes to really gathering input, if I don't understand what's been presented, it's really difficult to provide input. So I find that the presentation is very helpful or the presentation is very helpful every time we come to the commission, but I don't necessarily remember whether or not these are available to the public because they're not part of the agenda packet. So now that you went to the presentation, are these posted somewhere for the public to review them other than the meeting that I know is posted?

The recording is posted, so it's up to folks to, like, review it. But I kind of wonder how much education happens between now and February for the public to be sort of informed on what the process is and receive, like, meaningful input from the different stakeholders that will be impacted by these changes.

As far as the presentations go, staff have not been including them as part of the packet, because sometimes they can change as we're working through up into the meeting to make sure that we can provide the material. They're always available through by request. They're always part of the record. Depending on how rich the material is, we can consider how to incorporate them after the fact as we move forward, as part of a the static packet. We can always amend what's online, with the materials that are sent to the planning commission, posted part of the noticing, you know, requirements that we follow.

And, you know, as far as outreach and engagement, it you know, scoping that depends on the project itself, the timelines, meeting the state minimums for providing public notice for any meetings that we have, identifying when a public hearing is taking place, going through the the commerce notice and notice process. So so the word is out there as far as it it's there. Strategic engagement on a on a code chapter update or a section update like this doesn't doesn't always happen. It kinda depends on on the scale of that. And that'd be for for public works to weigh in on on who they may may think would want to they'd wanna engage with and make sure that whether it's developers, you know, property owners may not the the the the the everyday property owner may not be, aware and may not come across transportation impact fees ever, But that's up to the scoping for engagement.

But as far as did we meet the requirements of state law? Yes, we did. And yes, this project will.

Thank you. So again, that was my question. Thank you so much. That's helpful. So now I have a comment.

So I did participate in the latest focus group that we had around housing. And these these topics, even though we're not really, like, hearing them with the same terminology, come up for, like, often, right, when it comes to what it means to be growing as a city and then a lot of concerns around transportation and our ability to really sustain the growth that we're experiencing. So I just sort of have a an ask for the city. I know we wanna continue to be on the forefront when it comes to sustainable development and and meaningful engagement, and I really see the opportunity to work a little bit less in silos. So it would have been super helpful for that particular focus group to really have a, a connection point to the work that's happening in this space to ease some of the concerns that I continue to hear around the growth and how we're gonna sustain that.

And then between now and February, I really find this deck super helpful because it's really bringing it to the sort of, like, the basic level. So we're thinking about how we share this information so that it doesn't become something that's completely, complex to grasp so people can really be, more, hopefully, likely to engage with the city so that it doesn't really become an issue of a no when it becomes of a project. So that's sort of, like, my comment, and thank you very much for all the work that you do. And as we continue to have public hearings and and different meetings with the public and engagement, I really welcome, again, the opportunity to really connect all the dots because there's a lot happening. And even though we might not hear it with these term terms, the public is definitely or the community is really interested in this particular subject.

So thank you.

Thank you. And just to add a few things to Christian's good response. We did use the normal outlets to get this information out. We also brought this forward to our development services advisory group early on, saying, please, please pay attention to this. But once again, just a brief reminder on this, most all of these topics, except for the specific impact fee values, were really looked at exhaustively as part of the comprehensive plan process.

So I definitely hear what you're saying, and I hope that helps explain. Because it was a big change, and it took a lot of explanation at the time as part of the comprehensive plan. And then one thing we have done, just to I don't mean to talk too much. But when we talk about affordability, bringing forth affordability was Planning Commissioning Council. And we did work with the community development department to help make sure that we had the tools in the toolbox to help realize the goals for the housing targets and affordability targets. So hopefully that helps.

Other questions or comments regarding the presentation we saw? Commissioner Jones?

This is Commissioner Jones. Just thank you so much for all of this work. It's fun to see permitting simplified while still mitigating impacts, which is what you're trying to do. And so this is very welcome, and I'm sure it took a lot of time. And so thank you very much. I'm not sure if this is the right time to ask about a possible addition to the findings, or would you prefer that we wait until after the public comment?

Let's do that after the public comment when we're discussing the findings, because

that would

come up towards

the end.

Good. Thank you. Commissioner Gustafson.

Hi. Sarah Gustafson here. Definitely exciting that we are moving to a multimodal way of determining what's going on in our city. This has been in the works for at least five years and a lot of work to reshape the laws and policies, so thank you. My question is about how the transportation impact fees are calculated on each kind of business.

For example, a convenience store versus a specialty retail shop, and I would like to dig into that a little. Is that the right time to do it or should we wait until after public comment?

So if it's okay, I can give you a brief overview because we touched on this briefly during the impact fee discussion. So when you look in your packet at the proposed Title 17 changes, on the very last sheet, you'll see a big table. And the way City of Bothell looks at impact fees and how they're assessed is, I think, a very good way to go. We've been doing it for quite a while here. And the first building block is having a study, which Kendra Breland and Ferran Pierce is looking at to understand the magnitude of the impact fees.

And that information is what we use to help bring forward the costs. So you look at the cost of the projects and the number of trips and all these good things. Actually, how it gets implemented is very simple. Those results in that table are applied per for residential, it's per dwelling unit. So if you're a certain type of dwelling unit, it could be detached single family, attached single family, multifamily of a certain type, multifamily of a higher density type, like apartments or ADUs.

It's by dwelling units. So when someone comes in, they basically provide the city with the number of dwelling units. And it's a very simple calculation for the impact fee. For commercial, retail, industrial, it's based on 1,000 square feet typically. And that's based on the calculations that back up.

So if you have a 3,000 square foot retail, I hope I'm answering your question. If not, you'll ask it slightly different in a second. Apply that factor in that fee based on the actual square footage. There are some uses, like schools, that may be based on number of seats in a classroom. So if you're asking how we actually implement it with respect to development, that's the process. I'm not sure I answered what you asked.

Any follow-up on that? I see Kendra has her hand raised. Maybe we'll let her speak and see if that addresses

Maybe. Yes. I think Boyd did a great job of answering that. But I think you know, what I heard from your question, commissioner Gustafson, is kinda curiosity about, well, why is the rate higher for a thousand square feet of maybe one type of retail versus another? And that oh, and is that is that a correct read of your question?

Actually, my if if it's the right time to go into the question, I understand why a convenience store, for example, would have a 109 I think it's a $109 per square foot, whereas a specialty retail where people stop and browse would have closer to a $25 a square foot fee. My question though is, I know in Canyon Park where we're putting a lot of investment into our transportation impact projects, the city has been really good about promoting and helping smaller businesses, immigrant run businesses. And I'm wondering how do they fall on this impact fee structure? Because you could have a community grocery store, and is that a convenience store? And is it charged the higher rate, or is it considered a specialty store and charged the lower rate?

I know we're taking a look at trips and figuring out how that goes into our new way of doing things. Is there any new developments or things I should know about how certain important community hubs are classified for impact?

Boyd and Steve, I'm happy to start there, but I I wanna make sure that I'm not missing any major kind of policy guidance that's at the staff level. I think, commissioner Gustafson, I think, you know, should a should a project application come up in Canyon Park or any part of

the

city, staff would be looking at it to understand, really, impact fees. A a core premise of impact fees in state law is fairness. So when we talk about how many you know, how much we're charging per residential unit or per square foot, that's all tied back into data and information we have about its likely trip generation impacts. And through the study, we've established the nexus between a trip being generated in a part of the city and its benefit from the projects that are on the impact fee project list. So for you know, you've mentioned some different development types in Canyon Park.

I think from a a technical perspective of implementing the program, we'd wanna have a really good sense of, well, how many trips is it likely to generate, and the impact fee would be based on that. And so it's really that that would determine if it falls in one of those categories. If if you've got a development type that credibly doesn't fit in any of the categories on, you know, kind of the city's kind of fee schedule there, there's always the allowance to do an independent assessment So that development could work with city staff to substantiate, hey. My trip generation is different for these reasons. Here's the trip generation I anticipate.

And then based on that, the fee can be calculated by multiplying the number of trip purse PM peak hour person trips by the, you know, prevailing per trip rate. Now to the the extent that you're asking about other special community uses and other policy considerations, I'm gonna defer to staff if there's there's more to it in fee assessment than what I've stated.

No. I I think your summary is is is very accurate. The one thing I'd like to just add because I understand the question a bit more, for I'm just going to back up a bit. Like, certain type of commercial, let's say, retail or office, certain type of office, the categories, when you see them, they actually have definitions within a transfer trip generation manual. So we're good there.

So if anyone has know, why is this retail and this you know, why is this office medical, and this is office something else? So that's that part. And I did do a good job explaining that. I'm sorry. But, with respect to what we can provide flexibility and where we can make policy based reductions, that really is it's it's not on who owns it.

It is on the type of use. And and once again, when we had the previous discussions on the reductions, we can definitely do that with affordable housing. And we're really keen that Planning Commission and Council supports that. We've demonstrated that certain uses within a quarter mile of rapid transit and within the growth centers have a slight reduction. So we can reduce those. And then we've got the change use exemption. That's pretty those are all policy based decisions that we can defend, but that's pretty much the limit of what we can do with respect to reductions.

Interesting. Thank you for the overview. I do I am curious about the trip generation manual and whether it's been updated for kind of the new city we're trying to create just as we had to update old standards from looking at car concern con concurrency to our new set of standards. I don't know where the trip generation manual is in this schema. And I think that to be accurate, a trip generation manual would look at chain trips, like pass by trips.

If you pass by a grocery store really quickly on the way to somewhere else or if a person stays there for a long period of time or how much of the space is given over to community flyers and other uses. And it definitely might be in there, but you could apply some standards that would benefit the kind of vibrant small businesses that we want to see without necessarily looking at who is owning them. So ideas out there. Thank you.

Boyd and Steve, did you want me to start that, or did you wanna start that question?

I I think it'd be great if you'd start because I just wanna say that all these things are involved within this, and it's just really

refreshing

to hear you ask these questions because you're you're getting some really technical stuff. But Kendra's gonna explain that we're using the latest data. It includes pass by trips, and she'll go to town. Well,

there we go. I mean, Boyd essentially answered. But to answer your question directly, the ITE manual is updated fairly regularly. The most recent update in the version that we're looking at just actually came out this fall. So from that perspective, we are using the most recent edition, and the code, title 17, I think, points to the most recent version.

So we're always updating along with the IT code. Your more meaningful and substantive question in my mind is, like, how accurate is the IT manual to the city of Bothell and the city that we're trying to create? And I absolutely love that question. I would say the IT manual provides us with vehicle trips. We're trying to plan for so much more than vehicle trips.

So that is why as a part of our code work, we've actually created, you know, essentially a way to translate between those vehicle trips and multimodal person trips. And that's really to substantiate that nexus to funding a very multimodal project list. And those kind of calibrations, those relationships that we've developed are related to PSRC household travel survey data and things that are much more local to Bothell. So I think from the perspective of, like, the policy question that you're answering, you know, are we trying to be multimodal? Are we trying to be streamlined with the community that Bothell's trying to create?

I would say yes. Is it perfect? Is that is that fee schedule there gonna absolutely accurately match every development proposal that comes in? Unfortunately, we can't anticipate that. There's a lot of different variables about a project. So to the extent that a project has some really unique characteristics that make it different than that fee schedule, that's where the code really encourages that development to work directly with city staff to potentially create a, you know, a more unique calculation such that we can tailor it and really be thoughtful about, you know, its specific impacts on the system. I hope that helps answer your question.

That definitely does. Thank you. Think it all fits together pretty nicely.

Other questions from commissioners around this topic? Otherwise, we'll open the public hearing, which I think might be pretty brief. Seeing none, I'll open the public hearing on this matter. Is there anyone in the audience who'd like to speak to this? Seeing none, anyone in the Zoom space that wishes to speak to this on the record?

There are no attendees in the Zoom room.

Okay. Seeing that, we will close the public hearing on this matter and move on to discussion of our findings, conclusions, and recommendations, and any other items that come to mind on this. So do you have you wanna bring up the findings? To say what I say every time, this is our way of communicating directly with the council, so if there are things we want to say to them about this, this is a good place to put them. Alright.

So the findings are pretty well played and factual around what happened. Then there are some specific deliberations and findings from the commission. Take a look at that and see whether there's anything we'd like to add or modify. See people reviewing them, so I'm gonna wait a moment. Anything? Commissioner Jones.

Mister commissioner Jones, so I have a question about whether we wanna include something or not, and that's actually in the first part. So it it's really I'm deferring to staff here. So my understanding of what we're part of what we're doing here in terms of the transportation impact fees is a little bit of a trade off. Right? We're going to reduce the amount of funding that we have available from the impact fees for concurrency to allow for some really special priorities like affordable housing.

And we're not actually now that you've updated the numbers, it's not as much as maybe we saw before. Right? It's actually a it's a pretty small trade off, I think, given the benefits of what we're seeing. And I think you mentioned in some of the materials, and I know you've mentioned before at one of the planning sessions, that your team reviews this on a regular basis. And if you find that you don't have enough funding available for the concurrency projects, you might then come back with a proposal to change the impact fees or something like that.

I mean, that seems realistic. So I'm wondering if there should be a statement in there about the frequency at which you review this roughly. So something like the transportation impact fee project list and revenue needs will be reviewed every three to five years to ensure that they are consistent with the comprehensive plan and the associated concurrency goals. It's just a suggestion. I know you're going to do it anyway, but it's just for transparency purposes as folks review this. This is this is our record of what we're sending on to the council.

That can definitely be added. I will say I think it was you, Commissioner Jones, also made the comment, we need to make sure we can fund these improvements in the future. So we tried to keep as much of that as we could in the agenda bills to help convey the message. And if you'd like that added, we can definitely add that. And what I can do is I can try to type that right now. Okay. And, I'm a two finger typer, so, I apologize for that. So let's see. Okay. I'm just going to throw this in.

This is sorry, guys. And it's not even pressure. I'm just really bad at typing. So and that's very embarrassing to say. But what I tried to summarize here and I see this as a specific finding, and I'm not saying you like this text, but the planning commission understands, wow, that, yes, the proposed transportation impact fees and transportation concurrency analysis will be evaluated and updated on a periodic basis.

And it is I mean, we typically say five years, but we've said three to five years. So I could put that in parentheses.

This is Commissioner Jones. I think periodic basis sounds Okay.

To ensure that planned mitigation projects can be actually within the 2024. Steve, do you have edits you'd like to make besides my really bad spelling? Commission I'm sorry.

Commissioner's discussion around the proposed modifications? Commissioner Lever?

Commissioner Lever, I am okay with the modification here. I support that.

Okay. Keeping in mind, we'll vote on the entire Finance Commission and recommendations when we're through. Okay.

Yes. Yes. Thank you. So

I see consensus supporting your addition. Other comments from commissioners around the findings, conclusions, recommendations? Commissioner Clever.

Hello. Commissioner Clever here. I have comment around the public meetings and the public notice. So engagement being such a complicated piece of this puzzle, I don't know if it will be possible to provide a little bit more detail on the level of engagement that you did have. So if I'm not mistaken, we we didn't get any comments for this particular item today.

And if I recall correctly, we didn't have any comments on the last time that you came forward. So if and then you did mention the comprehensive planning process as the robust process where people were also able to provide comments. I wonder if there's any additional data that may not be quantifiable but informative in terms of the level of engagement that you did receive around feedback from the public or specialty groups like the developers that you mentioned to really get a better sense of how people are engaged in this process?

For sure. And it may be that if it's okay, we can just add a couple statements throughout this, and I see a few places to to do that. And one thing I will say, having updated transportation impact fees in the past, we typically don't see a lot of of comment from the public. And where we typically see comment is from developers. And what I will say, it's the way the calculations worked out this time.

There wasn't an abrupt increase, and we're still able to complete our projects. So I'm not overly surprised that we're not seeing too much comment from the development community. So I'm just kind of setting the stage on that. But I see a few places where I can add some language. Is that Okay? May I do that now?

Yes. And I think and the the reason for my sort of request or suggestion is basically if and when someone new engages into this process as an opportunity to see where that opportunity for feedback happens and then who happens to be those key stakeholders within the process. So just another way of enforcing or not inform informing on how decisions are made. So thank you. Yeah. Standby.

Yeah. Sorry. Stand by. And there is a summary within the comprehensive plan

that Yeah. And if I recall correctly, too, on the website, there's a lot of information. So maybe even just linking to the website will be a great way so that as we're reading this information, we can just go back to your source. Yes. Because you do There's a lot, so thank you.

And I will add that link as as into number one shortly. Are there other comments while I find that link and add it?

I actually have more comments around first finding and a question for Deputy Director Gates. If we are making some changes in here, it might be prudent to confirm some of these things. Would we want to just bring the findings back in January? I mean, there are a lot of changes. Want to be sure they're accurate. Do they need to move tonight, or can we just bring back that element and vote on it?

There's no requirement that they be moved the night of the hearing. There is, yes, the opportunity to come back and confirm the inclusion of the statements. And, yes, sometimes staff listening back to the to the audio, we catch exactly what Commissioner Jones said at first or her first comment. So it it it can fit into the schedule. No issues with that and no procedural issues either.

Well, let's revisit that before we vote on it. If there's a feeling you need a little more time to review it and get it right, I don't want to put you under pressure to remember all the details we're discussing here. But as I said, I do have a comment on that first finding. It's fairly brief, although it's gotten longer. It talks about code elements being consistent with promoting housing affordability in accordance with the housing element.

I think we should even go a little further than that. We have discussed and adopted reductions in required parking for affordable housing, housing near major transit, and some other elements. And these changes in the concurrency requirements are consistent with those changes in parking. And I think it's useful to make those link, I 'd that link. I'd look to other commissioners whether you think we should put something like that in.

This is Commissioner Jones. I think that's a really good observation, and we should try to do that. It helps again, it's transparency, but it's also just the synergy. Like what are we trying to create here?

Context.

Yep.

And kind of closing the loop, as it were. So what I had and feel free to edit this because I did it on the fly, too but the city has adopted reductions in required parking, including for affordable housing and housing near major transit routes. This reduction in fees is consistent with those previously adopted policy positions.

Commissioner Westbyker, I've been quiet, but I endorse that ad. I think it's an important little bit to add.

Sorry. Oops. Sorry. I didn't get it exactly, but just stand by. We can definitely come back.

I really don't want to put you under pressure to, you know, and then wordsmith it as you go. But that's kind of the concept. We have looked at other this is bringing policy elements together. It's implementing on the fee side some discussions and decisions we've made in other elements. And I think it's useful to link that.

So with that, I think we probably are moving towards bringing this back and looking at it one more time since it's not going to negatively impact the schedule for this item. And we've talked about a lot of changes on the fly that I think the commissioners think are important. With that understanding, anything else we want to suggest to be added? Seeing none, then I think the appropriate response, and I'm looking over to staff there, is to ask for a motion to bring this back for action at our next meeting. Does that work procedurally?

I don't even I don't think you need to make a motion. I think it can carry forward

Okay. So on the record is closed. The hearing is closed.

The item will wrap up discussion with a future study session, albeit likely short.

Yeah. So there would be a future study session reviewing these revised findings, conclusions, and recommendations. And with that, are there any other comments folks would like to make around this item with the understanding we would have that to come back to next year. Going once, going twice. All right. Seeing no other comment then, I'm going to bring this item to a close. Thank you for bearing with us while we threw a lot of stuff at you, and suspect you like the opportunity to think about that a little more.

Will do. Thanks so much. And thank you to Kendra for attending from Fair and Pierce.

And thank you for the presentation. We do appreciate the work that's being done on this. It is advancing in dollars and cents, some things we've talked about in broader policy way. So it's good to see things moving forward and being implemented. Thank you.

All right. Moving from the public hearing, our next item is study session. We have two items on study session, but we have some individuals in the audience on one of those items. And unless there are any concerns on the part of the commission, I'd suggest we move the docket request up first so that those folks can hear our discussion and then go on their way, unless you want to stay for the urban forest management plan. All right.

So with that, we'll begin a study session on the 2026 private comprehensive plan docket request. And staff, I'll turn it over. We're having some interesting video choices made here tonight.

So good evening Planning Commission. I'm Deb Powers. I'm a planner here to introduce

the

Everest proposed 2026 docket request. Just for tonight, we'll just do a quick overview of the process itself of docket requests since we've just been doing annual, periodic, and then in the context of which what is this? And then look at the applicant's proposal and the property itself, and some policy and zoning considerations, allowing times for questions and discussion, and then ask the Planning Commission to take action. So next slide. To be clear, the action tonight is to make a motion to accept or deny a recommendation for City Council to approve study of the Everest comprehensive plan amendments as a 2026 docket request.

Next slide. So just because so we've done the periodic comprehensive plan review and update that was approved in 2024 that took many years and robust engagement involved with that. And then we just adopted the annual comprehensive plan amendments. This in in this is as a docket request is an individual or privately submitted amendment request to the comprehensive plan. And the process for that is outlined in the Bethel municipal code in chapter 11.

And then there's specific criteria for that approval. And the project must meet that criteria to justify the planning efforts for accommodating that growth. We staff takes your recommendation to counsel for them to approve or deny whether it's studied on the docket in 2026. And then it's, of course, subject to a public hearing and noticing and SEPA review as a comprehensive plan amendment, and counsel takes final action on it. So we'll look at the proposal itself.

All of that application material that you see here, that information is in your packet. Really, the main focus is a proposal to change the site's current land use designation from employment medium, that's EM, land use designation, to RM, residential medium, which is essentially multifamily land use. And then just in the context of land use designations and as a comprehensive plan amendment, The current EM or employment land use designation on the FLUM on this on the land use map is that mid tone blue and then not the really darker blue, but it's the it's that medium blue that you'll see. And probably the largest area of that medium blue is North Creek. Right.

So and then I don't does our cursor show up on that to circle where this particular land use area is in the Shelton View Meridian. It's a teeny tiny little area, yeah, that was just was just circled there. Whereas so that's the residential or that's the employment medium. And then the residential is that orange designation. So if you could toggle back to just see citywide, the orange residential application.

So and that these determinations are or these designations, they're determined they were determined with the adoption of the comprehensive plan. And so this proposal means that the amendments are to the comprehensive plan in the land use element and that sub in the sub area and to the map. Okay. So then if we look at that the parcel within the context of that land of its land use, it the parcel is outlined in yellow, the subject parcel. It's the only employment medium designation in the Shelton View Meridian, 3rd Avenue Southeast sub area, and it consists of the the, you know, the subject parcel and two other private property parcels.

To the right where it's grayed out, there is a public stormwater detention facility just below that where you see the building. The building is currently used or currently, there's a daycare facility there. And then to the far right, there's a little parcel to the right of the gray stormwater detention, a very small parcel that's actually providing access to the daycare facility. So again, this is an independent docket request. It will involve also a site specific rezone, but we're right now, we're just talking about the comprehensive plan amendment.

So on a parcel level, looking without all of the colors, the the land use designation map colors on there, it's a vacant lot where there was prior the prior development on it was to demo demolish a barn and a house, an existing single family home. That was a prior development activity. And that as we outlined in the packet that there are expired permits involved with this property. And to date, there's no construction activity has been authorized since the demolitions have occurred. There's also a type n.

It's a pipe stream critical area. The applicant has, though, installed a stream bypass based on state permits that where that dashed blue line is is it's it's not piped or located there. And then part of the question of considering the comprehensive plan amendment or a change to the land use is what are the impacts to the adjacent parcels But the property the subject property is on a corner, you know, that's to the north is 228th And then 7th Avenue to the to the west. So we'll just go to the next the next slide. And so as we've we went into a little more detail in the packet, but the policy and zoning considerations here involve you know, how we came to developing what the current that current land use, that blue, the mid blue land use designation is.

And that was as as it's mapped in the in the Flum in the future land use map. That was all based at the time when the comprehensive plan was updated on current use and the and permit history. That was an analysis where those colors and then the boundaries of those land use designations weren't arbitrary. It was looking at what was going on there and what was being proposed at the time. The other considerations are have to do with employment and job targets.

That's what would that's why the Shelton View, the sub area plan specifically states it's about maintaining employment zoning to preserve economic growth and that the comprehensive plan also reaffirms that employment focused zones are for meeting those job growth targets. And again, that subsequent what would occur in addition for the site specific rezone would be what's being proposed from office professional with an employment medium city overlay to residential medium density, basically multifamily change. So that being said, because we felt that the applicant didn't make a compelling case in the request to change the land use designation, our recommendation was to deny the proposed amendment due to inconsistency with long term city planning goals. The proposal, you know, we felt may have some unintended consequences and set a bad precedent for land use amendment since we just updated the comprehensive plan and developed and established these land use designations. We haven't completed our year one analysis of job to housing targets.

That was part of what we you know, once we established these land use designations, what we were to be doing. But we haven't gotten to our one year we haven't gotten to that yet. And that the we didn't feel that it was feasible given what is on the community development five year work plan. And that basically that it's not what is most feasible it's not exactly what's feasible or most profitable or advantageous for the development. It's land use designations have all to do with the long range goals and policies that were established in the comprehensive plan.

So that being said, we'll open it up to questions and discussion.

Commissioners, questions? Commissioner Jones?

Thank you for the presentation. My question is really really has to do with the docket. So I know that the twenty twenty six docket seemed pretty full to me. And there's with some very important priorities that we need to address. If this gets added to the docket to study, what gets bumped, or or do you have capacity to handle the docket? And I say that recognizing that the docket has to be there has to be a mechanism where the docket can be influenced by requests such as this.

Right. Yeah. The ongoing docket so we met last February. It was February 18 or nineteenth with a joint study session with city council to go through the next five year plan. Since then, there have been other projects identified as priorities, some small things, procedural code updates that are kind of ideal to complete.

Some of the more major code projects that we reference in the in the packet are, you know, completing the downtown sub area update, starting off with the Canyon Park sub area update next, I guess, 2026. As far as larger policy projects. The housing action plan, which is ongoing, and that is to wrap up next year. We also have the climate action plan implementation, implementation the ongoing implementation of the comprehensive plan as far as those higher level policy projects. Code projects that we've got, the tree regulation updates that are gonna come out of the urban forestry management plan, and some other codes that we've identified.

We'll we'll bring those before council so that they can see, here's what was on the plan from before. Here's the few items that we've added as far as just general housekeeping. It'd be great to do the those that have budget allocations for them, like landmark historic inventory update. The landmark code needs to be updated as well. So something would have to be bumped.

We don't have additional staff to to assign. And it would all have to be compartmentalized and combined into our once a year annual comp plan amendment. So there are other there are pieces within the comp plan that we want to make sure we capture, recognizing completion of some of those projects like the UFMP and the CAP. The PROs plan is set to be completed this summer, so we wanna make sure that that you know, any language that might need to be included from that work is is part of the the annual updates. And then anything that happens throughout the, you know, throughout the year that might need need to be adjusted.

So long way to say we're stretched pretty thin to to include and to include an independent docket request with the work plan, which is why our recommendation based on that and materials provided did not seem to have the justification to recommend moving forward.

Commissioner Westerbeck?

Commissioner Westerbeck here. Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Okay. I I spent a fair amount of time looking at this, and I I did go by the site as well. I was curious. So first of all, we go on record saying, well, I don't wanna think this should get a lot of time and touches. I do think it's worth at least looking at briefly even if it bumps something else.

Because looking at this, it's an odd little spot to just have a spot of the that particular zoning and to force it into something that is on decline right now, saying you you have to build office there and you can't build any residential or mixed use or whatever. Is kinda square peg round hole. It's just like, we want this, so we're gonna force it here. I don't necessarily agree with that kind of thing. I think that zoning should be a little more broadly applied and maybe a little less, you know, fixed.

So I've got a lot of points. I'm not gonna go through them all, but I do think it'd be worthy of touching this again. I'm gonna kinda go cut the chase and say, I would think this after looking at our different zoning designations, I don't I don't know if if R M 3 is the one I would ask for. I would probably try to just add it on to the the alphabet soup we have next door, R A C 0 P C B M U C. But I'd probably just say if it was M U C or M U N, that would be a better fit.

And I say that because I see I think this is more of a mixed use site, and we would encourage more like we'd see in Downtown Bothell. Maybe even, like, Main Street say, we encourage you or we require you to have some commercial job based, you know, nonresidential stuff development at the Ground Floor or 1st Floor or two, whatever, on 228 and the Ground Floor, parking in the back or something like that, and you can have a residential above. So I'm not thrilled about I think, you know, I know the development world a bit myself, and I I feel like this is they wanna come in and build townhouses. That's great. We need townhouses, peddle myself, but this seems more like a site for true mixed use.

So to me, I see this as it shouldn't be the the blue office only, employment only, but, you know, a more mixed use. And it is very well located. I actually thought their argument was reasonably strong. I think they made a lot of good points and then the follow-up letter as well. And I won't go into all of them because it would take a while, but I think there are lot of good points in there.

I don't necessarily agree with staff on this. I also don't necessarily completely disagree with staff's approach here that we did put a lot of work into this, and I understand the idea of kinda keeping existing zoning and not rocking the boat too much, and we want that employment. But it's an interesting time. It's hard to develop anything right now, whether it's housing, commercial, whatever. We're seeing a decline in the need for commercial.

So I really I I think this needs analysis, and I I'm not willing to just say no. We we should put the kibosh on it. At the very worst, I would like would like to see it come back, you know, if you if it was next year or something like that in worst case scenario. And then that's a that's a big delay for the developer, but I do think it's an odd little niche of zoning that that isn't necessarily a good fit. It is surrounded by residential.

Residential would fit there. But, again, I I think it should be more like Canyon Park or downtown than, like, the sleepy little houses that are built the forties, fifties, sixties around it. So keep it at that for now. I may have some more comments. But so I don't know the M R 3 is the it's R M 3. Oops. The solution, but more like more like a mixed use approach. So food

for thought.

But I do think we should analyze it this year even if it bumps something else.

Are there commissioners? Commissioner Oliver.

Thank you. So I am I'm also sort of, like, leaning towards recommending that we continue to explore this one, especially around the capacity component. So one of the things that typically happens is we have these visions, and then we don't have the infrastructure to execute them. So I believe this is the second project that has come forward this year around zoning changes. And, knowing, everything that's being said, I think exploring it and really thinking about how the capacity internally gets analyzed so that we can continue to be flexible and agile will be very helpful for us.

So I definitely would recommend that we explore this project further. Thank you.

Can I ask a clarifying bit here? Given Commissioner Westermeck's comment around mixed use, would something along the lines of sort of seizing on that something along the lines of, well, it is immediately adjacent to Canyon Park, the Canyon Park sub area. Canyon Park sub area is on the docket to start '6. We don't necessarily want to look at Canyon Park in a silo and say, No, it's outside the boundary. We don't want to, you know, incorporate that.

There are, you know, the sphere of influence when it comes to what is around there. And we would be very remiss if we didn't look at what's around the boundary of a sub area as we're analyzing it. We are going to do that with downtown. We will do that with any sub area as we move forward, whether it's because a boundary should change or it just makes sense to consider whether it's land use designations or zoning designation changes that can support and align with that adjacent work. So maybe as a question, would that be something kind of maybe a direction that Commissioner Westerbork was sort of going with maybe a way to discuss that as an option to give to counsel if it were to were to move forward.

It may be it may be stronger. It may not for them sort of for discussion to kind of give staff something to to build from.

And let me concur. That was supposed to be part of my thought that I didn't get to, which was, do we piggyback it onto Canyon Park? So thank you.

Commissioners? Commissioner Jones?

This is Commissioner Jones. Yeah. I think that's a terrific idea. If I this is what I think I'm hearing you say is you would study whether or not that particular parcel is zoned correctly, not not which is different than what the applicant is asking. Right?

Because I would definitely be in favor of that. Because even the rationale that was provided for why it's zoned the way it is relied on previous permits. And there could be a reason why those previous permits when they were approved didn't actually move forward into build stage is because maybe there wasn't a market for it. Right? And so to base the decision moving forward on history that perhaps is indicating to us that this is not the right zoning for it would probably be a poor way to go forward.

However, I do think that having maybe a little bit bigger the review should not be focused on just what the developer wants it to be, but on what makes sense for Canyon Park and adjacent areas. So if if that's what you're suggesting, then I'm I'm in favor of that as well.

Yeah. Seizing on on on on what you mentioned there and what commissioner Westenbeck was getting at is, you know, that balance of the jobs to housing targets. We have to look at both. We we can't say, well, the jobs targets, we'll just we'll deal with those when we deal with them or or how vice versa. Really looking to to have a a plan that sets us up that we can defend to PSRC, the state, and say, yes.

Even if we make these adjustments, maybe it's maybe it's there's a way to do that through a a more broad analysis of the Canyon Park sub area and its immediate surroundings to balance the however many thousands of jobs in that in that area need to be accommodated with housing. For the Commission's knowledge, just we haven't we're starting to see development activity come in. There were a lot we've talked about, a lot of pre application meetings that we've seen presented materials to city council. Within the last month, we've actually had several development permits, whether they're entitlement permits or construction permits, for for projects coming in, residential projects. So a 320 unit residential projects in North Creek, a 22 unit apartment in downtown, 34 townhomes in the five two two zone, 24 townhomes in the GDC zoning, 79 townhomes in the R M 1 zone.

So the work that went into the comp plan designations and the subsequent zoning are starting to to come around with with projects. And there are many more that are moving moving towards entitlement or construction permits. So we're we are starting to see that happen. So we're we're cautiously optimistic given the macroeconomic conditions of residential development to be moving in the direction we wanna see it. And we don't want to eliminate the opportunity for future employment gains without analyzing that thoroughly.

Commissioner Sills.

Hi. Yeah. Thank you. Commissioner Sills, you mentioned the and kind of alluded to it there, the one year analysis of the jobs and housing targets. When are we expected to have that? And and, I mean, do you have a sense of where we stand on both of those?

We'll be reporting back out February at the earliest. We're looking to provide counsel with a development update as early in February as we can to take in to to identify what's been completed. And, you know, completed projects, they were in the works for years before the comp plan was done. What is coming up? What are we seeing for both residential units and for, employment.

So that's our goal. Try to try to get it back out in in February so that the data is as fresh as possible.

K. Other commissioner comments or questions? So you are looking for us to either approve your recommendation to not go forward or for us to recommend that it go to counsel for further consideration with our recommendation that it be considered. Correct?

Correct. Yeah. This is the this is the initial step to to give counsel some some guidance, whether it's a you know, from from absolutely no to absolutely yes, somewhere in between, so that when we present it to them, we can identify this discussion tonight where you're leaning to move it forward one way or the other.

Okay. Before we do that, I have one nit to pick. I always have one. On page one fifty five, I think you've got the wrong address for this proposal. You have 7012 28th Street. And it's across the street.

72720710. Yeah.

Yeah. It's the wrong address in there. So Got it. Catch that for our coastal council. With that, would someone like to make a motion which direction to go? Perhaps, commissioner Westerbeck?

Sure. I'm I move that we do move this towards or recommend this for further analysis on the docket either in upcoming year or soon after in Kenya Park. I don't know if that's a too long winded, but I do recommend this for analysis for their analysis.

Is there a second to that motion?

Commissioner Jones, second.

Alright. Any discussion around that motion? Seeing none, all in favor of the motion as proposed?

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Opposed? So commission recommends further consideration of this. Develop a little more information and bring it back.

Great. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. So that'll end this item. So our next item is the urban forest management plan. And we'll dive right in.

Alright. Good evening, commissioners. Cameron Colvin, planner with the community development department. Also joined by Deb Powers. And we also have Matt Pecone from Greenworks representing the consultant team on the call.

So our purpose tonight is to kind of follow-up on our discussion during our previous study session and then, provide an overview of the updates to the plan itself, and then we'll work through the draft findings, conclusions, and recommendation for counsel. So, just as a refresher, projected schedule as we come back next year, city council scheduled for a study session on this item on January 13. That'll be a bit more in-depth of a study session with them to catch up the two new council members on all of the work on this project from earlier this year, and to provide a more thorough overview of the draft itself. And then it'll come back to them if it's ready, for consideration of adoption on February 10. So I'm gonna run through a overview of kind of the changes.

I'm sure as you looked at the plan in your packet, this month versus the previous version, it looks very different. So I'll kinda walk through some of the changes. A lot of that was mostly visual and with the graphic design elements added in. But there were some, more, substantive, changes that were made or reorganization that we did to simplify a few pieces and streamline a couple of sections. So based on the discussion at our last meeting, a couple of the points that we heard from the commissioners was try to simplify the plan where possible, to improve proofreadability, clarifying terms, like goals, strategies, actions, and so forth.

There is mention of, really wanting to draw out or clarify roles and responsibilities, particularly when it came to the role and partnership with private property owners. And then also, looking at the implementation section and seeing if we could simplify that information and provide a range of cost for actions, for consideration. So in terms of the updates to the plan, the main ones where we updated some of the title sections to be a bit more clear in terms of the content that they presented. We streamlined a couple of, strategies and took out the sustainable funding and resource support strategy, because I think it had previously come up that that might, give the impression that, other strategies within the plan don't require funding, which they all do. And so we, moved that more into the implementation section under the, resources and considerations piece to talk about funding opportunities and, more of the details of implementation, rather than it being a a separate strategy itself.

We added an implementation matrix pretty similar to what we have in the climate action plan to list, each recommendation and provide we added icons to show the the roles of both the public and private sector, anticipated lead departments, free traction, range of costs, and a couple other considerations on that end. And then as you've seen, some pretty substantive updates in terms of the graphic design and layout of the overall plan. So I've got just a a screenshot of what the new implementation matrix looks like. And you can see we kinda still retained those, implementation steps which are the action targets listed in the individual columns. And hopefully this makes each of the strategies and steps a bit more especially with the color coding, being a little bit more general about timelines as we, move forward and have shifting priorities come up, and also providing costs for consideration as we move forward as well.

And then as I mentioned, so one of the other, kinda new sections, is the resources and considerations piece toward the end of the implementation section. These were previously embedded, under each of the strategies, after the implementation steps. So those have all been kinda drawn out, consolidated into a single section. And so this includes things, like funding considerations, staff, capacity and needs, partnerships and coordination, and some of the more code and design standard specific recommendations that'll set us up moving into next year with the code of limits. And then we talked about the graphic design changes.

So there are a couple of anticipated updates that we anticipate between now and when it comes back to planning commission once that staff have kind of identified. So any feedback that we received from planning commission tonight, we'll try to incorporate. We've identified a couple of minor edits, to improve clarity and layout formatting that still need to be resolved. We would like, so you may have noticed as well in the updated plan that the, citywide tree canopy goal is kinda called out more in the vision shortly after the vision statement. So we'll want to kinda drill down on that more tonight and include, the, projections graph from that, for people to look at.

We talked some last at the last meeting about the Tree City USA data and how that presents challenges for really comparing apples to apples between jurisdictions in terms of cost and expenditures related to urban forestry. So we are taking a look back at that data, and you'll notice the the chart sections on pages twenty eight and twenty nine have been left blank. We have plans to to update those with either using an average of multiple years, or including multiple years from 2022 through '24, so it kinda shows that range of expenditures. Or, one of our other proposals is to focus more on the program audit that is discussed within that that section, which focuses more on what existing services is the city of Bothell currently provided and how does that stack up against other neighboring similarly sized jurisdictions. So any questions there about the changes between the last iteration of the plan and the one that has been included in your packet

tonight? Commissioners, questions? I've lost commissioner Sills, so I can't see if she has any questions.

I'm here.

Okay. I can't just can't oh, there you are on top when you didn't. And then all right. Well, just shout out if you have a question because things are popping on the screen here. Seeing none, just proceed.

Okay. So, yeah, the one thing I wanted to highlight on this slide is that, you know, we don't anticipate any substantive changes just dependent on planning commission, city council feedback. Most of the anticipated remaining updates are are fairly minor in, in nature. Yes. So we also discussed quite a bit at the last meeting, the citywide tree canopy goal.

And so one of the things that I wanted to run through tonight is staff went back and looked at some of the data that came out of the tree canopy assessment that might help planning commission, make more of an informed decision on, this policy goal. So as we discussed at the last meeting, staff is recommending, a citywide tree canopy goal of 46%, which would mean a 2% canopy increase between now and 2045. The data that we went back and looked at that was included in your packet was the, prioritization model that was done the equity analysis that was done as part of the tree canopy assessment. And so, some of the questions that came up at our last meeting were, how does the citywide canopy goal relate to our equity goals, existing tree canopy within, census blocks, as well as potential planting areas. So how feasible is this really?

So the prioritization model that Planet Geo, conducted did include all of those considerations as part of this weighted model. So it includes existing tree canopy data, the possible planting area within each census block, and then a broad range of socioeconomic data that's highlighted in the blue squares, all combined to result in, the map before you. So the higher priority census blocks are showing up in that dark blue color, and ones that scored lower are represented by the yellow on your screen. And just to provide a little bit more, granularity or detail on that, I did break out three, separate maps on your screen here. The first of which is an existing tree canopy cover by Census Block.

And, primarily, this really correlates with impervious surface cover. So you'll notice a lot of the census blocks with lower existing tree canopy are along our three growth centers, downtown, North Creek, and Canyon Park. And when we look at potential planting area, we see the same thing. Right? So our, less tree covered areas are also the ones that have less potential planting area just because of the nature of them being developed.

So it does present some, unique challenges there, in terms of implementation and being creative about incentives for, developers, incentivizing, removing impervious surface and maybe converting that to plantable area, and a couple of other strategies that we can kinda talk through in more detail when we, get into the weeds of of some of the code updates and other implementation steps next year. And then, finally, this map is just showing the tree equity score, which is that national resource, that uses a similar but slightly different, model to show which areas lack tree cover and are in need of new additional tree plantings. And so you'll notice across all three of these maps, really, it is the census blocks along those that development corridor, that really tend to pop out. So in terms of the citywide tree canopy goal, couple of things that we have confirmed is, you know, we have 15% land area citywide that right now could accommodate new trees. We're never gonna fully reach a 100 of that on the ground.

And so, that's part of the reason that we are recommending a goal of of a 2% increase. Couple other factors that went into that are what we heard from public feedback. So large part of people that engaged in the project and survey respondents indicated that they would like to see an increase, not just holding steady in terms of tree cover within Bothell. The planning commission feedback from the last meeting was really how do we balance our housing targets with our environmental goals. So trying to strike a bit of balance there in terms of, being somewhat ambitious, with with our goals.

And then, other considerations were assessment data that I shared and our our projected population growth and housing targets. And one of the other things that we just wanted to reiterate is that this is really just a metric for us to evaluate progress, kind of like the other topics that we've touched on tonight, as well as what you saw with the climate action plan in terms of GHG, projections and our goals there in terms of reduction. So it's just something as we move forward with tracking progress that we can adjust to say, okay, we are ahead of schedule and exceeding our expectations, or we need to, adapt our approach and be more aggressive to make sure that we're, able to mitigate tree losses throughout the city. And so is there any other discussion around tree canopy cover? It can certainly be more ambitious if that is the planning commission's recommendation.

And so I'll kinda turn it back to the commissioners for for any thoughts on that.

So commissioners, questions, comments? And Commissioner Gustafson, I don't see you on the screen. So if you have a comment, you have to let me know.

Oh, yes.

Oh, there you are. You just popped commissioner Sills. But not not seeing any. All right. So sorry.

Sarah Gustafson here.

Oh, you do want to Okay. Yeah. Commissioner Gustafson, you want to speak?

Yes. Sarah Gustafson here.

Please do.

I'd like to first of all, very exciting that we've got our tree canopy plan about to go live. And I wanted to bring up some of the discussion we had before about setting targets in specifically the tree equity areas, the areas in which the tree equity score is actually below the area average. I think it's 88. And I think the discussion ended up being that it might be too much to, plan for both goals equally, the 46% canopy cover and raising the floor on some of these orange zones that we see right here. However, I'm wondering how the audit, the biennial audit might be used to showcase this indicator to see if additional resources are needed there and to ensure that the prioritization plan, which seems extremely promising, is going through in the ways that we think it is.

Yeah. So similar to many of our other programs or or long range plans, this will be you know, progress will be continually monitored and reported back on to the planning commission and council. We plan on updating the tree canopy assessment data, I believe, on a five year cycle.

Mhmm.

So that's really where we'll have the data in front of us to really make some more informed decisions. But in terms of work on the ground, you know, that's something that we can report out on a annual basis.

Yeah. Great. That makes sense. Five years seems about the right cadence.

Other commissioner, commissioner Jones.

I just wanna thank you so much for, one, the presentation of the overall report. Of course, the overall report itself, the plan itself, which is a huge accomplishment. And then the time you took today to explain where how there was some alignment between some of these issues that we were talking about before. And you made a point of saying that, well, you know, when you look at the areas that have low tree coverage, well, there are also the areas that are have more impervious area are that are more impervious, and that's gonna be a challenge. But I would say that it's probably an opportunity.

Right? Because without considering the infill of the impervious areas, we're setting a goal of 2% increase. Anything we can do with the impervious areas are gonna help us exceed our goal, right, and address some of the equity issues that we're seeing. So I would just one is I think this is a huge opportunity as long as we pay attention to it and it's spotlighted as we think about code changes and regulation changes and permitting changes. So I would just ask staff to keep that in mind, and I really appreciate the analysis that you've done to highlight those issues.

So I would just ask for continued attention on that because we could do some really good stuff here.

Commissioner Lever.

Thank you. Commissioner Lever here. So I wanna echo, thank you so much for the presentation. I particularly appreciated the feedback component, making sure that everything that was provided was incorporated in a way that is very clear. And, again, this presentation is wonderful, and it'll be great if it could be publicly available so that it can really support any future engagement and and outreach efforts. So thank you very much.

Other comments? Seeing none.

So with that, we can start to work through the draft findings, conclusions, and recommendations that were included in your packet. If y'all don't mind well, I might have to leave full screen. But, if if there are any suggestions or edits made, I'm gonna make those within this PowerPoint, and then we'll translate those to the findings, document that gets included in the council packet next month. So any discussion around the planning commission deliberation and findings section? I've got them broken up in pairs of two here on the slide.

So if we need to jump to any of them, we can.

And if you have comments, commissioners, chime in. Raise your hand online on Zoom. Oh, again, I lost commissioner Sills. So

Camera, am I allowed to comment on this or no?

Sure. If you'd like to chime in.

As just as can you go back to the the first number two? I'm just wondering, for consideration, just the last sentence in number two. We've we've started this conversation with equating trees and and parks and green space to infrastructure. And I'm wondering if this is an opportunity to add that language into it and saying, you know, benefit from bottles, green amenities, and infrastructure to start to incorporate and associate those two things. If that rocks the boat too much,

then Commissioner Jones?

Yeah. Ignore my comment. I think that is a great suggestion. I think the more that we can think about trees as infrastructure within the city, it's a good thing. And so I think that's what you're signaling there by putting those two words in there. So I'm supportive of it.

So we added those two words to that finding. Okay. Not seeing any.

Okay. There's no other comments on that section. Just a review of the SEPA noticing. So we did issue that, a determination of not significance on November 4, which, that comment and appeal period ran through November 18, and we did not receive any comments or appeals. And then moving on to the conclusion section, there are six conclusions there, if y'all wanna take a minute to review. And, let me know if there are any edits or suggestions for additions there.

Commissioners, chime in if you have a comment. And commissioner Sills and Gustafson, you're not on the sidebar here. So if you have something, please chime in. Otherwise, I'll assume you're okay.

Okay.

Oh, there you pop up. Alright. I'm not seeing any comments.

Okay. And the last piece of that is just the recommendation.

Okay.

Alright. So having reviewed these findings, conclusions, and recommendations, is there a motion to adopt? Commissioner Lever.

Commissioner Lever, I have motion to adopt. Thank you.

It's been moved that we adopt these findings, conclusions, recommendations. Is there a second?

Commissioner Jones, second.

Been moved and seconded. Any discussion around the findings, conclusions, recommendations as presented with that one edit that was made? Seeing none, all in favor of adopting the findings and conditions

Aye. Aye.

All right. They are adopted. Thank you very much for your work on this. I think it's very important and exciting plan. It's been very interesting to see it developed and read through it. So look forward to seeing it proceed. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Great work.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right. That ends our study session. Any comments, reports from members? Looking around, seeing none. Reports from staff.

Just a quick recognition of the work that Cameron and Deb completed. So it was a big lift. Really glad to see it work its way through planning commission. We definitely will be bringing back and referencing the strategies through the tree code work next year. So you may get tired of them, but we're gonna be pointing at those and all the other policies to make sure that we're we're capturing all of this work that that will help support the great code work to come.

I did just wanna give a quick update. Our next meeting will likely not take place. We will likely won't have a meeting on January 7. So our next meeting will most likely be on the twenty first of of January in the new year. As it's the end of the year, I just wanted to reflect a moment and thank you all for your commitment to, this past twelve months, 11 if you count our August recess.

We held you held 19 meetings out of 22 total, so a very busy year. 31 study sessions, six public hearings. You got, items passed, like the miscellaneous code amendments, eliminating parking minimums, neighbor's scale commercial, critical area ordinance, miscellaneous codes, climate action plan, now getting urban forestry management plan through a number of a number of items that are still ongoing with downtown and housing. So definitely appreciate the work that the seven of you put in and looking forward to 2026. So

Where's the confed? Yeah.

Commissioner Lever.

Have done

it without staff.

I just Thank you. 25 wrapped.

Oh, hang on. Commissioner Westerbuck, we didn't hear you. Please proceed. And then I think other commissioners may have your end statements. So dive in.

I'm I'm just blurting out. I was making a joke. I said, deputy director Guy Getz gave us 2025 planning commission wrapped. Thank you.

And

we couldn't have done it without staff. They they do the the lion's share of the work, and we appreciate you.

K. Commissioner Lover?

Thank you. Just wanna echo that, and I am so impressed by all the numbers that you have. I'm like, oh my goodness. Everything that you just shared in terms of the number of projects that are coming forward, I was like, woah. You have them by you know, right there. So thank you for that summary. If you can share that with me, that would be an awesome LinkedIn update that I'd like to put out there. Thank you.

Any other commissioner year end comments? Well, I'll just echo a lot of what's been said. It's been fun, interesting, exciting to see some of the topics you've brought to us. And it's been a privilege to be a part of it as it's moved forward. Consistently impressed by the level of work staff has done and topics you brought to us. So thank you for that. And to my fellow commissioners for your thoughtful comments, the input you've provided. You're all doing good work for the city and helping us to make a better place to live. So thank you all for that. And with that, I hope you all have a happy New Year and a great holiday.

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

Commissioner Westerbeck, I move to adjourn Planning Commission.

All right. It's been moved to adjourn. Is there a second? Come on.

Commissioner Sills, I second.

Come on.

It's been moved and seconded that we adjourn. All in favor? Aye. All right. Have a great New Year, folks. Have a happy holiday, and see you next year. Thank you all.

Thanks, everyone.