Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, well, call to order the February 24th, 2025 Bremerton Special Planning Commission meeting. First of all, I want to introduce our newest planning commissioner, Mike Miller. Welcome, Commissioner Miller. We're glad to have you here, especially with your expertise. Okay, first item on the agenda is a roll call to confirm that we do, in fact, have a quorum.

Yes, Chair Wofford, we have a quorum, and just noting Commissioner Powell is joining us remotely via Zoom tonight. Thank you.

Thank you. There he is. Okay, next up is approval of the agenda as presented. Do we have any changes or objections or additions, deletions? No. Hearing and seeing no objections, we'll approve the agenda. Next up is approval of the January minutes. Do we have a motion to approve the minutes of January 27, 2025?

This is Vice Chair Tift. I'll make a motion to approve the minutes as presented.

Do we have a second?

This is Commissioner Peterson. I'll second.

We have a motion to approve the meeting minutes from the January 27, 2025 meeting. The motion was made by Vice Chair Tift and seconded by Commissioner Peterson. All in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Any abstentions? Motion carries with five ayes and one abstention. Thank you.

Thank you. Now the call to the public. We will not accept any comments via Zoom tonight unless prior arrangements were made through the project assistant. Do we have anybody? Yes, ma'am. We ask that you state your name for the record. And please limit your comments to three minutes or less. A timer system will be used. It's right there in front of you.

Hello. My name is Michelle Moshe, Bremerton resident. The Smith Cove mural now has its own Google destination. designation and you can google Smith Cove mural and feel free to leave a comment or a review and if you haven't seen it yet and you don't know where Smith Cove is, because I did not know this is where it was, it's at the end of Sheldon Boulevard and McKenzie Avenue next door to Evergreen Pizza and across from Evergreen Park. If you come and take a look, I think it's quite a transformation, but you can compare with Google photos. There's about a decade of them. My mom, H. Emily Moshe, worked with the committees to expand and improve Evergreen Park. I like to think she's proud of the changes and the contribution I've made there. I wanted to add some color with mass appeal, namely just similar landscape items from around the surroundings just to brighten the corner up. Smith Cove was a fuel tank farm back in the late 1940s. In 1988, there was a fuel spill when the tanks were removed. For the last six decades, there has been work to improve the environment and rehabilitate Smith Cove. There is currently an initial grant of $100,000 under review to do a multi-million dollar remediation of Smith Cove shoreline to remove debris, creosote timbers, broken concrete, rock, salt rock, and to bring in sandy beach soils to make the cove both fish and human friendly again. According to the Shoreline Management Act of 1971, height limits along our entire coastline of Washington are 35 feet, within 200 feet of the shore. The Shoreline Management Act of 1971 was specifically created to limit, their words, uncoordinated development on the sensitive waterways of our state. The Evergreen Point development has a proposed height of 61 feet, which is 26 feet above this legal limit. It just seems adding a high rise 26 feet above the legal limit will really hinder the goals of the toxic remediation plan for Smith Cove and severely impact our park and our neighborhood. example, parking alone is a big issue where homeowners in the area near the park are not even allowed to park in front of their own property for more than two hours. Any events in the park explode traffic numbers regularly without the additional burden of a six-story, 123-unit building in a two-lot spot. By their own numbers, the EP development will add the burden of toxic tire dust erosion, an additional 742 car trips per day. Additional 742 car trips per day. No one objects to development with all due respect. Yes, we need to build up, and yes, we need housing. But can't the parcel on the sanctuary of the 911 Memorial and the habitat of Smith Cove comply with the law set by the Shoreline Management Act designed to protect it? asking for my mom. Thank you.

Am I ready? I adopt and incorporate as my own my neighbor Michelle Moshe's comments. It was with her help that we were able to connect dots and finally realize as lay people who are not corrupt, that the Evergreen Point project is rigged. Map E and day-to-day permitting, two parallel courses of misconduct. But I'm really here to provide an additional basis for my prior arguments that Jack Paul's installation into city government here is a violation of the appearance of fairness doctrine. I've come across Gregory Genovese's litigation against Sound West Group including Commissioner Paul, where General Vesey accuses that business venture, whatever it is, of securities fraud. In turn, Larson and the partnership accuse General Vesey also of fraud, each of them pointing the fingers at embezzlement as to the Marina Square. It goes on further, and General Vesey actually has further public comments in which The Evergreen Point is part of, not separate, from the overall opportunity plan to develop the waterfront. So it is clear the city gave up actual implementation, law enforcement of the shoreline management program, basically to let Sound West Group take over city decision making, and that they did. If you look, my supporting documents are on the YouTube channel Friends of Smith Cove. There's a link. The pleadings are there. They are damning. And no matter what the truth ultimately is, depositions were taken. What they indicate is that a private interest run by the profit motive should not be in charge of city decision making, nor should city bureaucrats, especially in DCD, especially in the mayor's office, should not be in the business of eliminating law so that the Evergreen Point and future projects can go from 35 feet to 61 feet. That is the essence of the rigging in the Evergreen Point. If some West group represented to investors that the EP project was legal. It is not, and that is securities fraud. And the criminal statute is still in effect, six years. So Paul might actually be here to help his partnership and help himself evade criminal liability. I would like to know from the city what it knows or does not know. General Vesey says he entered into a public-private partnership, not with me, not with the general public, but with the mayor. and with council members. This is a secret behind closed doors. Thank you.

Your three minutes are up. Thank you so much. Three minutes are up. Thank you.

Excuse me, sir. Can you state your name for the record? Thank you. Jose Camacho. And I'm here for myself and my neighborhood group, Friends of Smith Cove. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Any other comments tonight? Okay, I'll now close the public comment section. And the first workshop tonight is on the comprehensive plan. It's the draft city services technical appendices. Presenting is Garrett Jackson, the planning manager with the city of Bremerton. Mr. Jackson.

All right. Thank you, commissioners. I'm here to present on the city services section tonight, or specifically the appendix. We've gone over the vision goals and policies of the city services appendix previously. Briefly before I start I am joined here tonight by a number of city staff who are here to answer questions from the Planning Commission or the members of the public including City Engineer Ned Lever, Managing Engineer Bill Davis, Managing Engineer Chance Berthune, Transportation Engineer Vicki Grover, Parks Department Director Tim Barker, Chief Magani of the Fire Department and Chief Wolf of the Police Department. Thank you all for coming to participate today. And that being said we're here for the We're here for the Plains Commission to consider comments received at the workshop tonight and to provide feedback on the city services appendix Brief review We start each one of our comprehensive plan meetings with this basic review of comprehensive planning. And that includes that our local comprehensive plan needs to conform to many different layers of jurisdictional authority, including the Growth Management Act of Washington State. We coordinate with the Department of Commerce to make sure that our local comprehensive plan meets the GMA requirements. The Puget Sound Regional Council and their guiding document, Vision 2050. There's a number of standards in that document that we have to meet. We coordinate with PSRC to ensure compliance. The Kitsap Regional Coordinating Council, or KRCC, that's a group of all jurisdictions within Kitsap County, including Kitsap County government itself. They band together and put out a document called the Countywide Planning Policies, and they contain policies that each jurisdiction in Kitsap County needs to conform with. We are here to ensure that the projected growth for the city for the year 2044 can be met with city services. We're due to grow to just under 64,000 people by the year 2044 and about 58,000 jobs. We last looked at the city services section in May of 2023. There is a link to that packet in the current planning commission packet and there's a video on all describing the vision goals and policies of the city services section. Tonight is just the appendices that supports those vision goals and policies. So the city services that are included in the appendix are drinking water, which has adopted its own long-range comprehensive planning document, wastewater, which is in the process of adopting its long-range wastewater comprehensive plan, stormwater which is also adopted a long-range comprehensive plan the police department fire parks transportation which we which we touched on last month with the planning commission schools in the city of bremerton which include the bremerton school district central kitsap school district and south kitsap school district Puget Sound Energy, Cascade Natural Gas, and a number of telecommunication companies, whether that's Comcast, CenturyLink, KPUD, and others. You'll see here just an example of one of the current projects that we have at the city of Bremerton. It's a stormwater project on Francis Street, which is at the northern portion of Kitsap Lake. You can find this and a number of other capital facility projects online on the city's projects page. Service areas may vary dependent upon the service that we're referencing. Drinking water is not considered an urban service in all time. So it can go into rural areas. So it could be outside of incorporated city limits, outside of urban growth areas. Wastewater is constrained to urban areas. So within incorporated city limits and our urban growth areas are typically where you'll see that service area. Stormwater is strictly within city limits. So dependent upon the service and any other interlocal agreements we may have with surrounding jurisdictions, our service areas can vary. You'll see here that our service areas may be altering more with the Kitsap County Comprehensive Plan update that was adopted in December of 2024. The urban growth areas that are associated to the City of Bremerton were changed. So the central Kitsap urban growth area, which you see there in that orangish color, was associated to the city of Bremerton. It has always existed, but it wasn't associated to the city. With this comprehensive plan update, that has happened. And a number of other urban growth area expansions for city-owned properties, properties that already had sewer and other kind of odds and ends. seen there in orange on the map. Purple would be our existing urban growth areas. So each one of these city services has a level of service to help us measure if we are projecting out to the year 2044, if we have enough of these city services to maintain for that population. You can briefly go through those. There are fire and emergency services. Their adopted level of service is a six-minute response time. If you call 911 within six minutes, are you getting a response from fire? I talked to the chief earlier, and we are meeting about that six-minute requirement today. Law enforcement. We have a standing level of service of 1.8 police personnel per 1000 population and additionally 200 square feet of building per officer. The parks department has a level of service of being able to walk to a park within 10 minutes of a property. Transportation has a level of service for its leveled A through F with level of service D adopted for Washington State routes and level of service E adopted for other city streets. The wastewater has a more general level of service that a collection at peak wastewater and discharge plus infiltration and inflow. Stormwater that we maintain compliance with our Western Washington phase two municipal stormwater permit. um and for water 200 gallons per equivalent residential unit for average daily demand and lastly public buildings the amount of buildings necessary would be 60 for every 1600 square feet for every 1000 population this is all fairly wonkish and that's what you might expect from the city services appendix so it may not have been the best day for mr miller to start with the planning commission But I digress. Capital facilities planning. So capital facilities planning is required for each one of these city-offered services, and that includes accounting for existing capital facilities, forecasted capital facilities, the proposed locations and capabilities of those installations, and a six-year capital facilities plan that provides for funding and source of funding. As an example of some capital facilities that we have here in the city of Bremerton that should occur this year, you'll see the 2025 construction projects map that's available on the city web page that shows a variety of capital improvements that are going to be occurring, including some sewer rehabilitation, some capital, excuse me, some stormwater projects, and some transportation improvements. All that is available on the city web page. And then just moving into additional ways that the Planning Commission and the public can participate. The wastewater comprehensive plan has a public comment period from February 27th to March 29th. That'll go live on the city web page on the 27th. The items that you see here up on the screen will have links where you can go to those specific sections of their plan to review and comment. And the Parks and Recreation Department has a public survey that's open currently through April 30th. So as they're starting their long-range planning document, the PROS plan, they're seeking this initial survey feedback from the public. So that is an additional way to participate. And the Planning Commission should have reviewed this City Services Appendix. It's available for the public online. We're looking for any feedback the Commission may have or questions for the number of experts that we have here today to answer questions from the Commission or the public. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Garrett. Does anybody in the public have comments on the workshop as presented? Okay, we ask you to state your name for the record, and please limit your comments to three minutes or less.

I'm Jose Camacho, friend of Smith Cove, one of the city services on the agenda packet list parts. And... My question is related to the Evergreen Point project, is why was the recreation designation for parks, which was enacted in 2013 via Ordinance 5229, it was simply erased? For the Evergreen Park, frequently described as the most popular and beautiful park in the city, that recreation designation When you read it, the few paragraphs, it's about preserving open space, providing recreational activities, and also it has an ecological stewardship aspect to it. So whenever the city messes with these parks, this is the overriding framework for that park and other parks, shoreline parks. In 2021, the Shoreline Master Program was amended it was changed to have a gimmick in place by edict it declared the evergreen park smith's cove area where i live and michelle moshe uh isolated if you go to the youtube channel friend of smith's cove i walked to the smith's cove beach it gurgled to the water after every rain even when it's not raining Stormwater is sluiced into the park and specifically into Smith Cove from Sheldon Boulevard. Sheldon Boulevard was described throughout 2020 and 2021 as an incredible barrier that somehow hermetically sealed Smith Cove and the park from, who knows, ecological effects. It doesn't. It's complete fiction. It's a falsehood. This was perpetrated by DCD. So it's very important. Actually, it's a great shoreline designation. Recreation means ecological stewardship. It was erased. And I've never heard, and I visit the various city bodies and hearings, I've never heard anyone cite to the recreation designation of Evergreen Park or Smith's Cove. And it defies belief. We hear a lot of lip service about ecological stewardship in this city. And people point to various things, including actually what is imposed on them by law. But for this optional thing where DCD could have done the right thing, they erased it. The effect of that erasure is to give the Evergreen Point project like about 30 extra feet more profits. Unfortunately, map E, as disclosed by the testimony.

Thank you. Your three minutes are up. Thank you so much.

Does anybody else have any comments on the workshop? Do any of the commissioners have any comments on the workshop?

Commissioner Tift, yes, I have one or two questions. So one question is for Chief Wolf. I wonder if you could, the 1.8 officers per thousand, how does that match up to other municipalities around us or in the state?

That's constantly in flux, but basically Washington State is the lowest staffed in the 50 states Oregon has gone in front of us and behind us and in the last three years we've lost about a thousand officers Washington State the state average is somewhere about 2.1 officers per thousand and Grimmerton in 2007 was staffed at the 1.8 it was our lowest crime rates in my career and that I'm aware of for the city in the last 30 years since 2007 We fell on hard economic times. We did not stay with the 1.8. We went from staffed at 66 officers for the 35,000 population we had at that time, which was 1.8. And we are now staffed at 64 officers for our population, somewhere around 45 to 47,000 people. So we've fallen behind.

So are you saying then that other municipalities are up like two officers per thousand or?

That across the state in 2023, the last numbers I could find suggested that. I think most municipalities are in the boat we're in currently. Okay.

All right. I just wondered how we compared to the rest of the world, I guess, and the rest of the folks around us.

Well, across the nation, it's about 2.4 per thousand is the average in most states. And then places like New York are 4 per thousand.

Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. And then I also had a question for... Well, on page five under the telecommunication systems, I guess this one's for Mr. Jackson. You list CenturyLeak and Comcast as telecommunications providers. So is KPUD actually a provider in the city of Bremerton? It is. It is. Okay. So there I talked to them about expanding extending service to my house briefly.

Okay.

And then the only other question I had was, and maybe I'm just reading it wrong, so you might be able to give me a vocabulary lesson. It's on page eight of the draft that you sent out. It talks about assumptions. It says the Bremerton revenue analysis is based on the following assumptions. City of Bremerton is considering annexing its associated urban growth area but is uncertain when the annexation will occur. The annexation assumptions are, the first bullet says City of Bremerton maintains the same boundary through 2044 without annexing, but then the next bullet says the City of Bremerton annexes its associated urban growth area in 2024. So to me, it looks like it's either or, or I don't know how it's both. Am I missing a... What am I missing there? It may be difficult to...

point to figure that out here in the meeting i can follow you follow up with you on that um i know that there are a couple of portions uh related to urban growth areas that we may need some tweaking in this document um but i can follow up the planning commission about that i think that there's enough in the record for me to um okay look into it because it looked to me the map you showed showed a you know a pretty significant area north of riddell road that's now part of uh

permanence over in growth areas. So if that's annexed soon, then there's a lot of additional city services and I guess there's revenue there too, but there's a lot of city services that need to be provided. Go ahead.

And as I was saying that the service areas can vary, that area is currently serviced primarily for sewer through the county. And that's it's a lot of that would be open to discussion with the county. if we did annex on who would be the service provider. So it's not as easy to predict at this time because there could be very detailed negotiations with the county when we go to annex individual areas and public information campaigns that might occur at that time also. We have an annexation calculator available on the DCD webpage where you can see how much it would cost you stayed in the county versus annex to the city for a number of things down to how many garbage cans you have that hasn't been updated in a number of years so it would be a concerted campaign if we did start to annex we've only annexed one area in the time that i've been here there's a small portion near corbett drive so historically the annexations haven't occurred very quickly okay all right thanks any other questions comments

Anybody online. No. Yes, sir.

Yeah. Hi, this is commissioner Peterson in that level of service chart. You had that. Yeah, it might be page four. I was looking at the transportation level of service section. It seems like we're in a circular conversation about certain transportation issues in our city where our transportation planning staff are doing their jobs according to our policies and then you know because they're our policies tell them to design our roads to a certain level of service and then they these things get released and the bike community notably and recently you know they they get very angry sometimes there's it seems like there's uh... often zero some situations where uh... There's a certain amount of road space, and we can't please everybody. And it seems like it might be a good idea to think about how we could build in some flexibility in our code to give our staff a little bit more leeway in how they design things instead of having our policies say traffic considerations have to win every time. I'm not a transportation expert, so I don't know if there's a multimodal level of service that we could choose to add into our code or perhaps level of stress language, we could say. level of service and or level of stress or something like that. It would be nice to give these folks some flexibility. And there's a lot of decisions that are made down the road that are way above our pay grade, their city council level or mayoral level decisions about what things are going to win in certain road spaces. And it would be nice to consider some more flexible language in there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I should point out that the city council recently heard from the public works department on the non motor, excuse me, active transportation plan. The planning commission had made a recommendation to the public works department that they decouple the timeline for the active transportation plan, which deals with level of service for bicycles and pedestrians from the overall comprehensive plan effort. Uh, the city council was receptive to that and we imagine that, uh, excuse me, the public works department is going to be coming up with options to present to the city council related to that effort. So, just giving the planning commission a brief update in that regard as far as those level of service for pedestrians and bicyclists. that will be in the active transportation plan. Looking over to my colleagues here to see if I've characterized that well. I'm getting a thumb, so I don't think that there'd be anything more unless the Planning Commission needs to hear more. Thank you. And that being said, we'll consider your comments. The final draft of the comprehensive plan will be presented to the Planning Commission in April. We'll be doing an overview of the comments that have made thus far and present any kind of tweaks that we make during that time to the Planning Commission.

Anybody else? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, I'll now... The second workshop tonight is on off street parking BMC chapter 20.48. For zoning code presenting again is Mr. Jackson. And I want to before Mr. Jackson starts, I want to thank all the staff members from the various departments coming in tonight to support any questions we may have. Thank you again.

all right once again very appreciative of all of our staff members for showing up for the planning commission in the public tonight uh... moving on to our second item for potential zoning code amendments related to off street parking requirements so for members at home uh... off street parking could be anything from landscaping that's required in a parking lot to the aisle width of a drive file or the dimensions of a parking stall uh... but Tonight's conversation will be centered around the minimum number of parking spaces required for new development. So if you build a new building, how many spaces to the city require you to have at a minimum? So the Planning Commission orders of the day should consider the proposed amendments, receive public testimony, and provide direction on the proposed code portions here. We have a public workshop ahead of us tonight. We have likely another workshop in the future before sending that on to the Department of Commerce, SEPA review, and finally to the City Council after a Planning Commission public hearing. This portion of the code is within BMC 20.48, off street parking. And we had a A workshop for off street parking nearly exactly a year ago today, which is another reason to bring it forward to the planning commission to check back in with the planning commission. There's some state legislation that's pending that may preempt our decision making process. So we'll present that to you tonight. But a review of that. Workshop from a year ago. that is available that there's a link in the packet and also that video is available at BCAT if anyone's interested in looking over the particulars from that meeting. But that essentially vehicle-based development patterns create communities where transit, biking, and walking are more difficult. You see this picture here that was presented at the last workshop where there's this cyclical development of new parking being built, forcing new development to be more spread out, making transit and walkability and bikeability harder to achieve. The area that's dedicated to parking could be used to create housing. We have on the bottom portion of the screen here some parking spaces and a drive aisle pictured and they could be roughly the same dimensions as an economy apartment unit shown there on the right. And that industry often overparks developments in order to create the perception of available free parking. Parking was the number two amenity just behind good internet service, I believe, good cell service, in a national study quoted in the last workshop. And so development feels the need to... convey to the public as they're driving by that there is plenty of free parking and that often leads to scenarios where there's more parking provided on site than is actually needed for that use. And that for Naval Base Kitsap, that there's an inadequate amount of on-site parking at Naval Base Kitsap, and that this is potentially going to be exacerbated through, and that's the existing condition, but through the SIOP process, Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program, And as remote work has currently been canceled at the federal level and more workers are returning to Naval Base Kitsap to work in person, that could exacerbate the parking problems of our largest employer. We got some feedback from the commission at that time. Commissioners directed staff that we should look into eliminating parking requirements for downtown and high capacity transit areas. When that's available, the city currently doesn't have any high capacity transit areas, but we will in the future. And at that time, the planning commission believes those areas should be exempt from parking requirements. that we should draft goal-based parking reductions. So if we want to incentivize certain developments in the city, Our parking standards should reflect that and that we should have an analysis for Kitsap jurisdictions, Poulsbo, the county, Port Orchard, Bainbridge, and ensure that our parking standards are below at or below any of our neighboring jurisdictions. We have a demand utilization study that is currently used for parking reductions and that should become non discretionary. We should also have non discretionary reductions for bicycle enhanced bicycle facilities and transit facilities, car sharing and also for affordable housing centers. We were also directed that there was a lack of support for entirely removing minimum parking standards and there were some concerns voiced about on-site parking would move to the street and questioning the dependability of the ferry service. So we'll move into now pending state legislation. There's actually some existing state legislation we want to make sure the Planning Commission is aware of. Right now in Washington state, There are limits to the amount of parking that you can require for very low income and extremely low income households, senior citizens, persons with disabilities, and developments within a quarter mile of frequent transit. I believe that's .75 spaces. That's the current requirement. There was a question in the past, excuse me, workshop about where we got our income requirements. And that's from this RCW. How did the city find that area media income? And that was suited to very low income and extremely low income households based off of RCW. No parking is required in the state for ADUs within a half mile of high capacity transit. No parking is required for middle housing within half a mile of high capacity transit and only one space is required for lots that are 600, excuse me, 6,000 square feet or less. And no parking is allowed for a development, no minimum parking requirement is allowed for a remodel of an existing commercial or mixed use building to create dwellings. So the city is currently prohibited by the state to require any parking for the conversion to residential. Washington state legislation. So this is the next big step from the state. We have a number of state statutes on the books now, and this one really more aggressively tweaks that. So as proposed, SB 5184, which recently passed, last week passed the state Senate with a 40 to 8 vote, and is now being considered by the House. Would make it would prohibit cities from requiring more than 0.5 parking spaces per residential unit across the board. 1 parking space would be allowed per 1000 square feet of non residential use. And it would prohibit a city from requiring any minimum parking standards for existing buildings undergoing a change of use. Now that's somewhat interesting considering that previous RCW we just referenced that prohibited parking for projects converting to residential. The city of Bremerton currently on the books has in our parking code, if you have a change of use, no additional parking will be required. So that portion of this proposed legislation is already part of our code. Residences would be under 1,200 square feet, would have no minimum parking requirement. Commercial spaces under 5,000 square feet. Any affordable housing project, and that is defined in this legislation as affordable housing is 60% of area median income for renters and 80% for area median income owners. Senior housing to be prohibited from having any associated minimum parking. Housing for people with disabilities. Facilities that serve alcohol. Child care facilities, which could be difficult considering generally you need, often you'll have a car to drop off your child. And commercial spaces in mixed use projects. And much of this is based off of this sightline report. Sightlines report the state of parking mandates in Washington, which is provided as an attachment in your packet. And there are a number of key findings in that report, namely that one in four homeowner households in Washington have one or no cars. But 91% of car codes require two or more off-street parking spaces for every detached home. 58% of all Washington renter households own one or no cars. Across the state, 59% of localities require additional parking for larger apartments, increasing barriers for family-sized units. So our current city code does include if you have additional bedrooms, that includes additional parking. They point out that that prohibits family-sized apartments from being constructed. So how this code would work out with some, I think the residential portion is fairly straightforward, how this would work out with some current examples. This is the Winco Grocery out on Kitsap Way. North is this way. But they have around 350, 400 parking spaces. And the green area with the black dash would be what the parking would be reduced to at one per thousand requirement. This is the, not the arena. McCloud's off of Kitsap Way restaurant and they have about a 7,000 square foot building and they would be required to have seven parking spaces once again as indicated in the green area black dash and this is a coffee stand off of Wheaton Way And they would be required to have those two parking spaces as that's approximately a 2,000 square foot building. Some additional considerations on why you may be interested in having a larger amount of parking required. If there aren't enough parking spaces, typically you'll see sidewalks and bike lanes obstructed by cars. If there isn't a parking space for them, they will find some place to park. There's pictures here from online, but I'm sure that members of the Commission and the public can drive around in our community today and see these parked there. There are areas in the city without sidewalks or bike lanes, and if there are no parking options or transit options, then it doesn't leave them with many choices. Transit options aren't as developed as they are in other PSRC cities. We went through that in the last public workshop, comparing our local jurisdiction to the other PSRC jurisdictions. You'll often see parking in landscape areas as you see in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. That can have storm water implications as far as fluids from vehicles getting into the soils and then also those soils and gravels Uh, being tracked onto city streets over time that grinds down into the city streets, shortening the lifetime for that infrastructure and also potentially causing some stormwater issues if dirty water is getting onto our street. Increased emissions when looking for parking. It seems well documented that if there aren't enough parking spaces that you could be circling in your car creating additional traffic and emissions while looking for those spaces. And then once again the impacts on Naval Base Kitsap. They are in a parking pinch already. It's likely that this would exacerbate those problems. So we have some options for the Planning Commission to consider. With this state legislation, it's a lot of new information for the Planning Commission to take in and provide staff so that we can provide you with a draft code and legislative markup. like typically going to present you with several different legislative markup codes that vary wildly. So if you can provide some general direction on which one of these paths to go down at the next public workshop, we could provide a draft code in legislative markup. Before entering into that, we did receive a letter from KBA this afternoon. There's a copy of that for the commissioners at your seats, relaying that the Kitsap Building Association recommends removing all minimum parking standards throughout the city. And as far as the options are considered there are a couple of different tracks we can keep with what the Planning Commission Dictated for staff at the last public workshop, which is item a we'd continue To have that goal based parking development based off of neighboring jurisdictions No parking downtown or in areas of high capacity transit Etc Option B would be to take portions of the pending legislation. For instance, if the Planning Commission wanted to keep two parking spaces per single family dwelling, we're trying to incentivize certain types of development, middle housing, affordable housing. A way to incentivize that housing is to have reduced parking. Single family homeowners typically have more vehicle trips as well, maybe necessitating that additional parking space. But ultimately, it would be coming down to what development are you trying to incentivize? one parking space per middle housing unit or multifamily housing unit. Today, that's what we have in our centers. In most of our downtown district center cores, Manette, Harrison Heights, is one parking space per residential unit. You could consider instead of the legislation, which is 0.5 parking spaces, having that be one parking space per middle housing or multifamily housing throughout the city. And then reducing that residential parking in centers from the existing one to point five, which is called out in the legislation. And once again, this is a way for the planning commission in the city to potentially incentivize where development should go. Many of our centers are areas of town that are sometimes downtrodden and need an economic boost. Is providing enhanced development standards like reduced parking a worthwhile venture to encourage development increases in these areas of centers? one parking space per 1,000 square foot of commercial. If the Planning Commission is interested in carrying on that number, that's something to deliberate on. Otherwise, we could do that Kitsap, make sure that our numbers are in concert or lower with other Kitsap County jurisdictions. Now, Tract B would not include other reductions named in the legislation, residences under 1,200 square feet, commercial parking space, no commercial spaces, spaces for commercial areas under 5,000 square feet and others, including the options also for the February 26 workshop for that goal-based parking reductions that we can include that in Track B also. Track C, just The SB 5184 verbatim, what the state proposes the planning commission could consider to adopt. Separately, other jurisdictions have had temporary parking moratoriums. The Planning Commission could consider a recommendation to the City Council to have a temporary parking moratorium so that in that span of time, we can collect more data on how that impacts the City before moving forward with any potential permanent moratorium. And lastly, there's an option to hold off on providing feedback to staff, that perhaps we should wait until this legislative session has ended in approximately April, see what the state is going to do. Maybe we're going to be mandated to carry out our parking standards in a certain way, and potentially we should wait until the end of the legislative session in order to do that. So at each one of your diocese here, you'll see this chart that hopefully breaks this down in a little simpler way of digesting to help with communication and deliberation from the planning commission. That tract A, from previous workshops, two parking spaces per single family home, middle housing being one parking space. We chatted about that, I believe, with the middle housing workshop. We didn't touch on multi-family or centers residential and what those would specifically look at. So that's marked as not applicable. Commercial, that Kitsap jurisdictions evaluation that we referenced, and additional reductions through goal-based parking reductions, which we talked about. that tract B that alters state legislation to being two per single family home if you want to incentivize other types of housing, one per middle housing regardless of lot size, one per multifamily housing throughout the city also, 0.5 in centers, one per thousand square feet commercial, and once again having those other goal-based reductions. and C being that straight SB 5184 as written currently that's being considered by the House. So there's a lot for the Planning Commission to discuss, a lot for the public to weigh in on. You should get public feedback and provide staff with direction on how to proceed.

Thank you, Mr. Jackson. Does anybody in public have any comments? Yes, sir. Step up. Please state your name, and you have a maximum of three minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Jackson. That was another excellent presentation, although now I'm more confused than I was before. But that's probably just me. I'm James Klein. I'm the president of the Charleston Business Association. It seems to me that rather than being specific on a certain number of parking spots, I just want to give you a quick overview on what happens out in the community, and Charleston's a great example of that. I don't know what the specifics are, but I can tell you that particularly for older business districts having to add any additional parking when you're in a smaller building of, let's say, 5,000 or less square feet is a real challenge. And the idea of limiting parking or eliminating parking has two really good sides to it, one being that we certainly all are looking at trying to get people out of their cars, use mass transit, But at the same time, and as a part of it, when you look at what happens at a WinCo or at the Kitsap Mall, there's probably nothing worse than paving over and creating a parking lot that's empty the majority of the time. That being said, like in downtown Bremerton, there's 5,000 parking spots, yet the average person, if you ask them, can you find a spot to park in downtown Bremerton, would say no. And when you think about living in a condo or an apartment in downtown, one of the challenges is, whether you live downtown or not, is how many cars does the family have? So it's like I live in a development outside of town, And I can guarantee you that 90% of the people in the 185 house development I live in has two car garage and then two spots in front of their house in the driveway and everybody parks in the driveway. So I think this is a really complex issue. I would encourage you to get a lot more information. And one of the great points that Mr. Jackson brought up is the possibility of waiting until we hear what the legislation does. And I would encourage us to be very liberal or very cautious, I guess, in requiring additional parking spots. so thank you for planning commission's time and uh all of you helping to make bremerton the best city to live in in america thanks thank you for your comments anybody else in public have a comment

Hello, my name is Dean Kelly. I am an architect at Rice Fergus Miller and I am principal at RFM as well and lead our housing team. So I wanted to come here tonight to speak in favor of options to reduce parking minimums throughout the city of Bremerton and to do so with a level of flexibility. Some of the discussions that I've heard at previous planning commission meetings, such as reducing those parking targets within centers, I think makes a lot of sense. as well as especially including provisions regardless of location within a center or not for affordable housing. We've come up against a really big housing crisis right now, and I can tell you that providing parking is very often the initial limiter that we look at when evaluating the potential of a site, and it doesn't come down to how high the building is or the amount of impervious coverage on the site. It comes down to how many parking stalls are required And I think working to reduce that will really be some good steps forward to address our housing crisis here in our city. Additionally, I'd encourage whatever those reductions are, be very prescriptive. There are some parking reduction provisions within the current city codes, but as far as I'm aware, they're all largely discretionary at the discretion of the director which makes it hard initially when working on a project to move forward with any of that with any confidence so provisions for reducing parking that you can look at easily understand and determine whether or not you qualify early on will really help that development process and bring in more and more parking or more and more housing here to the city of Bremerton So with that, thank you all, and thank you for your time working on this.

Thank you for your comments.

Hi, good evening. My name is Joseph Crane. I'm the executive director at St. Vincent de Paul here in Bremerton. Actually, their first executive director. We've been serving the community since 1937 with a volunteer board. I was actually brought on to lead the organization through a period of strategic planning on how best to utilize our two acres of land in the Charleston Business District on Callow to better serve our community. And in hearing from our community and how it was presented, we found out that housing is a huge need that we need to... uh, we'll find new housin for our community. And in and collaboration, it act the catalyst for what is Kitsap County affordable h which I now co chair beca was so evident when we re I just offer a pragmatic approach to looking at this. In the consortium, we often look at what's called the housing continuum, everywhere from unhoused all the way to the American dream, which is market rate ownership and all of those different housing types in between. We also found out that Washington state is the worst state in the union in terms of housing unit inventory compared to population density and growth. And Kitsap County is the second worst county in Washington state of those same metrics. We need affordable housing more than I could explain in the minute and 20 seconds I have left. And so I would highly encourage that we adopt guidelines and regulations that would allow for more affordable housing growth in our community. We've operated the Stella Maris House, which is a continuous day emergency shelter for women and children since February of 2010. And of the five parking spots that were required for our shelter at the time that it was built, only one of them gets reg by our case manager. The rarely drive because of t for them is more importan more established, they w would find, you know, mea or acquiring an automobile just consideration of the capabilities. For example, we have three bus stations right out in front of Calo, two on the north end, one on the south end in front of Safeway. And so that's what I'd like to offer tonight. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

I'm Jose Camacho, friend of Smith Cove. This is about parking. And I can give you a concrete example of how developers suck up parking with bloated development that is actually illegal. But because they have influence, they get their way. And that is the Evergreen Point project. It is proposed at 61 feet. They actually crammed in an extra floor against local zoning, they just did it. But that area, because of the recreational shoreline designation, has an associated height limit of 35 feet. So the parking for that project is inherently limited to what can fit. Wesley Larson is on record as saying we need to dig under the building to have under-building parking. So they had to stack it up, and they did so illegally. The whole point of the Shoreline Management Act is to protect the shoreline by de-intensifying as development approaches the waterfront so ideally if the city just followed the law the ep would be at 35 feet and tragedy of tragedies wesley arson and sound west group would have to settle with fewer units fewer parking and that actually would be better for the common good for the shoreline for the neighborhood It would be great PR for SunWest Group. So if we're really interested in reduction of parking, of vehicular traffic, which I support, reduction, then stop giving special favors to fat cat developers that specialize in waterfront development. They will survive. with smaller scale and legal development on the waterfront with less parking, less vehicular congestion. If you go down Sheldon near the Evergreen Point, project, cars actually have to back up when they approach each other. You literally see them stopping. I've done it. The cars are so close on this residential street, which would be in front of the six-story Evergreen Point project, that people have to be especially careful not to crash. You'll literally see cars stop back up to let someone else go on this two-lane residential street. The street, which is supposed to be a barrier to Smith's Cove. So we need to get real. We need to get legal. We don't need traffic congestion. Parking reduction is good. Vehicular reduction is good. And it should apply to fat cat waterfront developers. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment. Anybody else have any comments? Okay, I'll close the public comment, and any commissioner have a comment? Yes, sir.

This is Chris Browning, Commissioner. I was wondering, you said earlier that we didn't have any high capacity transit in Bramerton. Is that the ferries don't count as high capacity transit? uh typically no i um it depends on the piece of legislation but typically no it does not okay um and i mean if if this new law this uh sb 5184 if that passes the state legislature could we adopt that in the bmc as is that's what we would be compelled to do yes

hi this is commissioner peterson um i strongly agree with the kitsap builders association's comment today most of these doomsday scenarios about parking they rarely happen this is not uh a prohibition of parking. It's just a prohibition of parking minimum requirements. There's been plenty of analyses done. The Seattle Times ran one last year for local jurisdictions. Developers almost always build most of the parking that would have been required. It's over 70% of the parking that would have been required. They'll build on their own accord. They're experts. They're world experts in how much parking that they think their tenants might use. So. Eliminating our parking requirements, I think, would be a really good thing. I think it'd be really good for the environment. It would outweigh the stormwater and emissions. Thoughts that were raised earlier in Mr. Jackson's presentation denser walkable communities are are would far outweigh those those drawbacks. We have an affordable housing crisis and. This is a zero-sum situation almost always. For every half a parking space that we require or for every one parking space we require, there will absolutely be housing that's not built sometimes that raises the cost of housing. It decreases the overall amount of housing. There's people sleeping in the streets for every single 1 unit that 1 parking space we require per per square footage of commercial space or for residential development. So a year ago, I was in favor of complete elimination. And I'm in favor of that now. I really liked the balance that we struck last year for the downtown reductions, where there was still, if you're adding new parking, you had to do a good job with handicapped spaces. I thought that that was a really nice I thought that was a really nice balance that we struck there. I propose that we apply that to the rest of the city. But I would agree with any kind of reduction that we can agree on.

Thank you.

Commissioner Mike Miller. And I agree with what has just been said relative to reductions or getting rid of the minimum requirements. It was just mentioned that the requirement for parking often is a determinant on how many units you can get in a building project or on a site, how much square footage you can put on a site. And that is very, very true. And each one of those parking stalls can cost more than the car they're parking on that stall. And that's an interesting dilemma. I also believe that developers understand very clearly how to define parking to meet the needs that they have for the developments that they are proposing. As you said, they're experts at that. They've been doing it, and they're certainly not in the business of constructing projects that are under parked because they won't be successful. They want to be successful. So I'm in favor also of looking at the reductions that are shown in C Senate Bill 5140 or 84. And I'm also not afraid of doing that before the legislature makes their determination as to whether that bill passes or not. Thank you.

Any more comments?

Yes, sir. Sorry, I had a couple more comments. In our packet, it's noted that Spokane, Shoreline, Port Townsend have just eliminated their requirements. So that is one of our options. We can suggest that. I think Bellingham just did, too. There's a steady drumbeat of cities that are deciding that these are not in there. And one other thing I wanted to say, I think those maps that we showed of the absolute bare minimum number of parking spaces that would be required, I think those are a little bit misleading. I think the maps showing the 70% of parking that's typically provided would be more, I think that's what we should be thinking of. Almost always the private builders are deciding to build most of the parking that they previously would have been required to build. They're still building parking. They're still building quite a bit of parking. So in eliminating these minimum requirements isn't prohibiting parking. We'll still have most of that parking built. It just provides flexibility. Thank you.

OK, Mr Garrett, what kind of guidance do you need tonight?

All more than that. So I I heard an Andre is great at just distilling down with the Planning Commission has said I've heard some speak in in favor of a complete moratorium. Maybe we should and some in favor of. State legislation is written. I mean, do you want to run through and have like a small raising of hands on on which track different commissioners support or? Sure. OK, so we've got this sheet in front of us. Hopefully it would make it easier for the that one screen just here. Each one of the commissioners has one of these sheets. So for tract a the this is what we had been directed on previous Workshops, is there any commissioners support for tract a?

Seen one two shaking heads What I support isn't on this sheet And we'll get to that over sure

Track A is, Commissioner Tift, no requirement for multifamily or residential and centers.

No, I'm sorry. That just hadn't been determined yet from previous workshops. So that would be proposed. And I'm sorry if that's confusing. We didn't have guidance previously. So that multifamily in this scenario could be one per unit as it is in track B and .5 in centers. That could be carried over into track A. So there's this... I suppose the only difference then between track A and B would be the commercial standards. It should track A for commercial be that Kitsap jurisdictions analysis where we ensure that Bremerton is most competitive. or the SB 5184, that very blanket one per thousand square feet.

Mr. Jackson, could you put up your slide that had various options, A through F? Yeah. There we go.

So I guess the first option could be, does the Planning Commission want to place a hold on this until the legislative session is ended? As if so, that could be a pretty pretty swift. Decision that we could put a hold on this while legislation is pending so. We have two to put it on hold.

Alright, I I want to recommend that we ax our minimum requirements just to be clear understood OK.

Okay, so we don't have enough support to put it on hold. Moving on to what we're, what direction, oh, Jack Powell, sorry, I haven't counted.

Sorry, yes, Commissioner Jack Powell, I just had a question. If the state passes the Senate bill, no matter what we do, does it trump what we do and what we do becomes moot?

Yes. Wait, wait, excuse me. No, these other cities that have removed their requirements, those removals of minimum requirements would still stay in. So if we go below what the state's requiring, what we do is worthwhile. If we don't plan on doing that, then waiting around would make sense. Thank you for that distinction.

The clarification is if we are at or below the Senate bill, we're good. Correct. Okay, thanks.

And Mr Commissioner Powell was there. Did you have support for putting this on hold? Or would you like to move forward with potential draft standards?

I'm kind of leaning toward putting it on hold and see what happens, but I also lean toward the no minimums and the market will determine what each little micro development with the demographics and the neighborhood and all that, it varies widely on what the parking requirements may be to satisfy the market.

Thank you. So I've heard from three commissioners, Miller, Peterson and Powell, that they prefer removing minimum parking standards entirely. Is that correct? And yes. Okay, so that is for commissioners. proposing to remove minimum parking standards entirely. That being said, the next question could be, would that be a recommendation for the City Council to do that temporarily or permanently? For a temporary moratorium, that would be so the city could take in additional information data during that six months to a year to see how that affects the city, how that affects our largest employer at Naval Base Kitsap. So please, a new round of comments from commissioners on whether that should be a temporary or permanent recommendation.

Yeah, I would accept that temporary. uh... one to see how the what the final wording from the state legislature is they have a habit of throwing minor details that are really a problem for everybody i would say temporary uh... until the legislature is over or some definite time out in the future, six months or whatever?

hi this is Commissioner Peterson I recommend we propose not a temporary removal I think Port Townsend did a temporary moratorium and if I'm not mistaken they they went ahead and said this is just clearly good for us and we're permanently removing removing our requirements and whatever we recommend to City Council they can Say that that's too fast if they want to there's been plenty of analysis on this this subject There's there's studies and studies and studies So there's plenty of ways that it's good. I recommend we Just do it clean but also there was that nice balance we struck with the downtown reduction where if they're requiring parking, they have to do a good job with handicapped spots. I thought that that was a good balance. That's what I think we should do and do it permanent.

Commissioner Tift. When I came in tonight, I was in favor of the minimum hearing from KBA, Rice, Fergus Miller, and my fellow commissioners. However, I am still not convinced that we fully understand the impact that it might have on our largest employer, which is the US Navy. I guess I would like to have maybe Rice-Fergus could give me an example of a project that was tanked because of the parking requirements, something that didn't go. Mr. Kelly, maybe you have an example of that that would help convince me that that's something in the way of multifamily or low-income development within the city that was what I just said, prohibited by that, or you abandoned the project because of that. That would be helpful to me.

Okay.

Go ahead, Mr. Kelly.

All right, Dean Kelly here. So going off of memory, the one that Mr. Crane spoke about, the St. Vincent de Paul project, is one that we've been working on with St. Vincent de Paul for a few years now. It's It's meant to be a project that addresses a lot of elements within the continuum of housing from, as Mr. Crane mentioned, starting at the emergency shelter level with the projects that we're looking to provide in phase one of our project. We're looking to provide additional expansion of the shelter housing as well as permanent supportive housing and transitional housing. So you're taking someone from the street into a shelter, into a supportive housing environment, and then ultimately leading towards what we hope will be a second phase of affordable housing, kind of what you would see typically like a subsidized type of affordable housing with no kind of timeframe associated with it. So in working with that project, we started with the current parking standards, which in the district center core, we're right up the road from the Callow district, or the Charleston district there off of Callow, is one parking stall per apartment. For the shelter, it's a little bit different. It's based on the number of bedrooms provided, kind of with some minimums taken out of it, and then parking for staff. So really looking at the transitional, both the transitional and permanent supportive housing as well as the affordable housing, our study was really limited based on those factors. They have about two acres of land, which sounds like a lot, but when you start trying to provide the footprints for the housing and also open space that makes those developments attractive places for people to actually live and not just a building next to an asphalt parking lot that really starts to bring things down. So, for example, the affordable housing that we proposed as part of phase two was was envisioned to be 110 units, and that was strictly based on the amount that we could fit in subgrade parking structures and a bit of surface parking that was available on the site. In getting consultation from development consultants who start to make this thing more real and how are we actually going to pay for it, what are the funding sources out there, the first thing they said is we've got to scrap the structured parking. It's never going to work with the structured parking as part of this project. So then we're really limited to what's available on the site. So that's kind of just one example of a project that we're working on now where we're kind of hedging our bets as we plan this, that we may be able to provide the parking based on a 0.5 per stall. But even then, that requires some satellite parking provisions. At the end of the day, that's one that's affordable. Would be affected if nothing changes. I don't think that we're able to park the project at at 0.25. It works at 0.5. We can make it work with some of the satellite parking arrangements. That's kind of where we are with that project. Other ones. I could get more examples if I came prepared with that, but often we do a lot of feasibility analysis where it's kind of a quick, somebody is considering purchasing a piece of property, they're looking at developing it, and that's usually where I start was, how many units do you want? And then we try to figure out where the parking is going to go. And more and more, you know, under building structured parking, especially if you're not at a certain scale. When you start to get to big hundreds of unit developments, you can usually find a way to fit the structured parking in. When we're talking 20, 30 units, structured parking is often kind of a non-starter. So if you have kind of a medium to small site, It's really limited to what what you can fit on the surface and if it doesn't work That's as far as we usually take it you know we can we can get you eight parking stalls on the site and Eight apartments doesn't really make it worth the trouble of developing that so then that would kind of go away Thank you, okay, thank you

So, okay, before you leave the podium, so the Wyckoff Building, downtown Bremerton, which I call the Bremmer Building, but I think it's the Wyckoff Building. We heard from a real estate agent here about a year ago that in addition to the seismic issues, parking was a limiter to redevelopment of that building for whatever reason, whether it's commercial or multifamily or however it penciled out. But... So I guess that's not an issue anymore because we eliminated parking in the downtown core. So I can see that in areas of development, I'm just concerned that Bremerton's a big city. I mean, there's a lot to Bremerton. There's a lot in areas where parking does make sense. I don't know whether someone would, I guess if you're investing your own money or a developer's money, you're not going to put something out that you can't sell or rent. um so nevertheless i i was pretty committed to 0.5 coming in here outside of the downtown core but um i guess i could be convinced otherwise but i do like the idea of a of a more of temporarily doing it and then seeing what what the ramifications are again my biggest thing in the back of my mind is the impact on our biggest employer and i don't know what that is frankly

there this does not prohibit someone putting up a parking garage is that correct that's correct this is more about the minimum number of parking spaces required all right okay thanks right so um to your point it's not a prohibitive if the state comes in with their uh 51 84 You can still build parking. They're not prohibiting you from building parking. I don't know the issue around the shipyard and its parking other than I know that there are a lot of parking lots downtown that are used by shipyard employees as well. And frankly, if we're gonna do development downtown and parking's a part of that development, there's an opportunity to create more parking for the shipyard population as you're doing a housing or mixed use project. So I believe that you could actually build additional parking to help carry some of the burden, not burden, but the load the shipyard brings to the city. You know, I can use an example. When my business partners and I bought the building that Bryce Fergus Miller Architects is in right now, if we would have needed to provide parking for our staff there at a one-to-one or some ratio like that, we would have had to move out of downtown. There is no way we could have fit parking on that site, even though there's 23 stalls or something like that under the building. um we were moving into that building with about 35 staff and i believe staff now is somewhere in the closest 58 or 60 people so having a parking requirement would have precluded a professional office use for that project and we wouldn't have that beautiful building here in town anymore so you know i i look at the getting rid of the minimums as an advantage for the city and allowing the development world to understand what the parking requirement needs are going to be for the projects they want to develop, adding into that a potential for adding parking for other uses, like the shipyard or other commercial uses downtown, and letting that happen. The city of Lake Oswego is a great example of a combination of parking and residential and commercial, where there's a parking garage and commercial apartment houses and commercial on the street. And that parking garage, those parking garages are open for public parking as well as for the residential parking. So it's a really great example of mixed use parking that solves multiple problems. And I'm sure they built it without adherence strictly to what the parking requirements were. They probably built more parking than they actually needed to build. So I'm in favor of eliminating the minimum. And I could go for a moratorium But part of me wants to just say, I think we can figure this out, and the city can go forward. And if the state comes in with a new law, then we can adjust to that later. I'm not afraid of doing this now. Thank you.

One more comment. Commissioner Tift again. We're making only a recommendation to the city council. I'm not sure how the council feels about this. I'm not sure whether it would be more palatable to make it as a temporary recommendation or not, or whether it will be dead on arrival when it arrives before the council. We've had a lot of discussion of it tonight, had specific examples. If we send to the council as a, you ought to do this, basically, to me, someone should explain it. somebody like Mr. Miller as to why we adopted this. I know you did. I'm not saying or I'm just concerned that it's more palatable because it's a big thing to go from a small area downtown to our entire city. And if some of our folks may not understand that it's a minimum, it's not a maximum. And I believe that it warrants explanation if it's sent forward as a solid recommendation. If it's sent forward as a recommendation and a trial period associated with it, it might be more palatable. But that's just one, my comment. And again, I got to go on the record about impact to the Navy. Okay, thanks.

Thank you.

Commissioner Jack, if I can make one more kind of an anecdotal example. So one is like Marina Square. And we did actually did before the development, we did a market study on parking needs. And we ended up with 385 stalls for a 270 unit. So that's, I don't know what that ratio is, but way more than one per unit, way more than half per unit. And the parking garage is 100% full today. And our market study proved up. And so I think you have to, there's a lot to be said for the market will determine the highest and best use for parking. Another example is we have an apartment in Seattle and a bus rapid transit line, 66 units, four parking stalls. Three are occupied. One stall has been vacant for 100 days. So the people there don't have cars. They don't need a parking stall. So it's completely, you know, yin and yang on, you know, where the development is, who the tenants are, who the users are that determine parking. Thanks.

Thank you. Mr. Jackson.

Well, I think I have enough information from the Planning Commission to put something more specific together for you to consider at a future workshop. What removal of parking standards would look like, and then maybe at that time, the planning commission would select someone, or we would have a volunteer available to speak with the city council to convey the thought process. Of of the commission, so if you could, if that sounds acceptable to the planning commission, that staff will work on what it might look like. To remove parking requirements. From the municipal code, there would be. Carve outs for a parking, maybe some sort of. Other considerations on what that would look like after we further research codes of municipalities that have no minimum parking and present that to the planning commission, and whether that's going to be temporary or permanent, I suppose, could be decided at that time. Or it could be led toward the city council as. Either a temporary or permanent moratorium and then language that planning commission ultimately selects. So. Does that seem reasonable?

As I saw in your presentation, there is at least one more workshop on this subject before we vote on whatever. So tonight is just more guidance for staff.

Absolutely. I think we have guidance from the Planning Commission to provide additional information at a future workshop before going to a public hearing.

Okay.

it did excuse me this is commissioner peterson it did seem as though there was a majority of us that want want to recommend that we um eliminate our parking requirements um if that's the case can we vote for that can we vote to recommend that there is an additional meeting oh okay uh workshop and then we'll vote on it so

I agree that, and correct me if I'm wrong, but staff has received that the Planning Commission is interested in removing minimum parking requirements. So our next step would be providing you with a specific code section and legislative markup on what that would look like. Okay?

Okay. Okay, that was fun. All right, we'll conclude... where we're at now. So the public portion of the meeting is closed, and we'll now go to the business meeting. Chair report is welcome, Mr. Miller. Appreciate you volunteering. I notice the director's not here tonight. Do you have words from our director?

I do. Andrea is a sorry. She couldn't be here. But that being said, we do have a vacancy on the planning commission that is in the process of being filled. So, Anna during will be going to the city council study session on the 26 this Wednesday, and then being confirmed. By the City Council on March 5th. So our next Planning Commission meeting we should have a full Planning Commission and we'll be able to welcome miss Doring like we were able to welcome.

Mr Miller today, so It's positive positive outcomes in the old business for the Commission in a new business Okay, the next regular meeting of the Planning Commission will be held on March 17th, 2025. Thank you. Everybody's gone. Meeting adjourned.