Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

for those votes because they are not based on the criteria. And so the goal is really to be more legally defensible. It creates a fair and level playing field. The code is meant to be as fair as possible. Obviously, our code has numerous problems that we're going to try to all fix them in the upcoming code update. But it's meant to be applied across the board to everyone. And so when things come up that are a little out of left field or sound a little more like a wish list item than a code criteria, it makes that decision less strong going forward. And then the adopted criteria, as you know, come from decision-making bodies. So everything that's in our code, everything that's in our comp plan that came from planning commission, it came from the city council. And so those policy level decisions have been made already. And so it's not really the project stage to challenge those decisions. That isn't to say that the Planning Commission doesn't have a role in challenging those, but that's when the legislative hat is on and not in the quasi-judicial hat. The goal should not be to have a project applicant remedy a citywide issue that a commissioner or the commission may have an issue with. And the last thing I wanted to note here is the point of all of this is not to tell planning commissioners how to vote. It's In many cases, I think the way everyone has voted on a lot of projects wouldn't change if the code criteria were identified. So it isn't that there isn't a nugget in there that the code addresses that it's getting at the issue, but it has to be explicitly identified so it can be in the record and in the findings. And so, I just wanted to point that out because I don't want the message of this presentation to be like, you know, the city staff want you to approve every project and don't ask questions, just approve everything. And that is not the message. We love that you guys are analytical and that you... are looking at the details and really holding the applicants to task on a wide variety of things. And staff acknowledge too that there's plenty of applicants that don't make it easy. There's application packages that are missing items and they take months and months of back and forth. There's presentations that leave crucial information out. No applicant is perfect. And there's a lot of projects that have reasons to not be approved. But if that's the case, we just urge the Planning Commission to explicitly identify the criteria that are in our code now. And then as we go into the code update, we 100% welcome everyone's input on changing the code. Like I said, we know it has plenty of problems. We talk about it all the time, just like you all do. But that really has to live in the legislative policy-making world and not necessarily on the fly when a project is run in the Planning Commission. The last thing I wanted to talk about is nexus and proportionality. This is something I've talked about a little bit before, but this is just Planning 101 when you're a planning student. I learned this back when I was a baby planner back in 2002. when I was first an undergrad and these tests haven't changed. And these are both Supreme Court cases that went to the Supreme Court and weren't unanimous even at the Supreme Court. They were controversial, but they've stood the test of time and they're still the big tests for mitigation and conditions of approval. And so the first one is the nexus test or essential nexus test. And the second one is a rough proportionality test. And the first one, nexus really means the connection. So Nolan versus California Coastal Commission, this was basically a couple that was building a vacation house, or there was a cottage there before, they were gonna tear it down and build a much bigger house. And the California Coastal Commission, which I've dealt with, I worked in California, it's a very powerful agency. But basically they required them to dedicate a bunch of land on their parcel to allow public access down to the beach. But a lot of the rationale was about like the overall view and how there was an overall atmosphere of blocking the kind of like the psychological connection with the ocean. And basically the Supreme Court came back and said, there has to be a nexus between the, the what's being required and what the problem is. And so the Supreme court basically said, um, if you required them to build a viewing deck, that would make more sense if the problem was a view, but the stated, um, The stated problem was the view and then they required the public access. So there was a missing nexus between what was required and what the issue was. And so that has become a test for when planners identify conditions of approval or mitigation measures. The second part of that is the rough proportionality test. And this came a few years later and actually happened at Tigard. I've brought several groups of planning nerd friends out to this site to see it, because it's right here in our backyard. So basically, in the city of Tigard in the early 90s, there was a plumbing company that was expanding their business, and that's the building that you see on the screen there. And it was right next to the creek, and I'm blanking now, if anyone remembers the... Fano Creek, yes. Fano Creek. And there was a requirement that they dedicate a bunch of the width of their property for... wetland management and then another whole piece for a bike and pedestrian trail that was supposed to help mitigate traffic impacts. But ultimately all the dedications together I think was almost 15% of their property. And so the plumbing company appealed and it went all the way to the Supreme Court It basically was considered an unlawful taking, not because there wasn't a nexus between the wetland and the circulation piece and the project, but it wasn't proportional. The city was asking for way more than what was proportional for the actual project. And so I was actually refreshing myself on this project. I guess it went into, it was remanded back to the state. And then there were settlements. And so the trail is actually there. So you can bike and walk behind this building. But I believe the city ultimately paid for the improvements. And part of that case was, that the city didn't make the case that, basically the Supreme Court said the city made a clear case that the wetland corridor was needed, but it didn't make the case that the applicant needed to dedicate it. There wasn't really any difference between the city owning it and it's serving that purpose versus it remaining on private property and serving that purpose. So again, there wasn't proportionality between the level of improvements and the issue that was supposed to be mitigated. So that's a lot of background for basically these are two really important tests. They are mostly about formal takings, which usually means land. So that's usually, you know, this project comes through, the city says we need X number of acreage for these purposes. But Planners use these tests as good filters for really any mitigation measures or conditions of approval because as soon as you start straying into things that are beyond like a direct connection with the project that's being proposed and the impacts that it might cause, that should raise red flags. And I don't think this is something that we've come up a lot here, but we do sometimes get late, last minute conditions of approval that are a little tentative on the connection. And so that doesn't mean that a planning commission can't add conditions of approval, that's totally normal. But we just want everyone to keep these in mind as tests that an appropriate condition or a mitigation measure should go through. So hopefully that makes sense. And that's really all I had. So I don't know if Don, you wanna add anything to that?

I was gonna say maybe a starting point, Ryan, for discussion is should we as staff provide more detail on approval criteria, and what other things could we do better on our end to help in navigating the, I think Ryan, you focused well on the approval criteria, but what could we do better on as staff to help articulate these items? I think the idea here behind this whole discussion is having a solid record You probably remember Josh Soper from Barry Elsner Hammond. He's done a couple educational presentations for work sessions as well and actually had case law supporting those commentary. And Ryan kind of alluded to like things that we actually specifically said where somebody in a jurisdiction said, we don't believe you can do this from their own personal perspective. And then that became a case law situation where it was not supportable by the fact that decision makers were biased. So I think maybe a starting point is, are there things we could do better on our end to facilitate the discussion and make this clearer for you all?

And before we get into the ideas, one of the things that we've talked about at staff level is we could just literally have the criteria up on the screen. They're usually kind of buried in the presentation, but maybe when we get to voting, we can either have them up or we could even have easels somewhere in the room that could be pointed to like, you know, this is the criteria that I'm having a problem with, and therefore I'm voting based on X, Y, and Z, and the project's inability to meet ABC.

Let's start with Craig.

I feel like that would be very helpful on these major decisions that go on. Because a lot of times, some of these decisions, we get the information maybe a week in advance. It's hard to get through some of this stuff. you know, because this stuff, sometimes you have to read it once, twice, five times, and my schedule is such that it's pretty hard to do. So yeah, I think that would be very helpful.

I think I have more questions than suggestions, is that okay? Okay, just for education for me. So we've had some recently, and I won't name any specifics, but where we've questioned traffic study, and that seems to be a recurring theme. And to me, it's partly because it's kind of a black box. We don't know how those are done. And so I think the, I don't know, it's like we have to trust it. And in some cases, maybe we do. In some cases, we don't. And when we see some traffic things going on in town, I think, how did that get approved like that? Just as a driver. So if we're uncomfortable with the traffic study, or we just think it's gonna create more traffic than the traffic study says, is that okay? Or do we just have to go along with it? Because the traffic study says there's no problem. I don't know the answer to that. I would like to see a lot more specifics in traffic studies where we have a development that creates a lot of traffic and we just don't get that from them. From TKS specifically.

And maybe the last hearing we had was a good example of like,

Show me the numbers.

Well, I think part of it is it gets granular into like what we maybe need to do is like on our end is like that was a lot about turning movements and intersection spacing. And that was something that probably it did come out because there was a refresh back to DKS like, oh, I actually didn't really go into that level of detail. And I think we can clearly provide more. I mean, I think the consultants kind of like doing their thing and like, this is not, and sometimes it isn't, and in the end, it isn't that big of a deal, but it's not necessarily always explained. And I think maybe that's maybe that last one, because I think Like, OK, this is how many trips we're dealing with. Hardly any of them are during peak hour. And there's just a handful of these are like 12 or 10 or whatever they were. And there is an intersection spacing issue. But explaining maybe more the why, why is that not an issue? They came back and did a continuation and then that was articulated. Brianna did a really good job of doing that, but there was definitely conversation. That was point number one is we need to get this information back because it clearly was not information that was presented the first round.

But I feel like that's an ongoing issue with the DKS studies specifically. Whenever I've seen traffic studies from other companies, they're considerably more detailed and without us having to specifically ask, they look into things like that and provide information like that. I feel like the degree of information that they provide as their standard assessment is too high level for us to trust that it's being done in a way that reflects real world conditions or our specific concerns. Because when we're saying, hey, this really doesn't mesh with what our experience is being the people who live here and drive through these areas. and then we've got the most high-level review that we could possibly have, then we're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Because if we say, this doesn't match up with my lived experience, and we're all on the same page with that, but we should be able to say, this is the professionally compiled documentation. We should be able to trust it and rely on it. With the information we get from them, I frequently feel like I can't trust it because it doesn't have enough information. And so I don't know. why we're so set on always having everything go through them instead of letting our applicants choose their own company or at least have it be an option for them to do that. Because where I've seen just the black and white difference is those applicants who had their own company that they prefer to work with and we got to see them both and that really highlighted what's lacking in the standard EKS assessments.

Well, I guess my first comment is they do have a choice. They can always use Affirm besides DKS. Not for scoping. We use DKS for scoping the traffic studies. But once the applicant team receives the scope, they can use any traffic consultant they'd like.

I thought I'd heard that they get told that they need to use that through the city of Canby or that they're paying something regardless so they end up using it.

There is a nominal fee that we retain DKS and all cities do this as our consultants. So even if another traffic consultant prepares a study, DKS is still reviewing it on our behalf. The city is not big enough to have a traffic engineer on staff, so they still review it. But the study itself can be developed by a different agency. Sorry, one last thing. A nuance to that, though, is our model is a custom model that's been developed by DKS. So... And a traffic model is thousands of trips being sent, thousands of different directions across the city. And so generally, a different consultant, even if they're preparing the study, they're gonna ask for the data from DKS because they've created our model. And if it was done by a different entity, I think staff's concern is always that it's actually gonna, it's more likely that it's gonna undercount any potential impacts because DKS has the master list of every single project that's ever been approved in town and they are getting directly our growth scenario, so all that is built into the model. But again, to iterate though, they can use any other consultant.

And so maybe a bit further, so the levels of service that DKS and this model, this is the critical path item. They have that in their model. I totally agree with everything Ryan said. And I have witnessed this being really fragmented in other jurisdictions where every single consultant has a different traffic analysis piece. So the continuity is... that the scope of this is consistent. So the city is seeing the same thing over and over again, and the levels of service are in fact consistent. But that's up to the applicant. But I would say 95% plus of the applicants choose DKS. They have the total choice. Very rare is that they choose someone else. It's not a huge lift, it's $1,000 to do a traffic study. In the broad scheme of things of doing a land use application, that's not the driving force, that you're spending $1,000, therefore you should use that consultant. So it is totally up to them. DKS is really a branch of us in that sense as well. They're not working for the applicant. They do 100% public work. They don't do private work like other consulting firms. There's very few traffic consultants in the Portland arena. They may be the only one that do 100% public work. So they're not influenced. I mean, I know people feel like all traffic consultants are influenced towards the applicant. And I think largely it's probably because in the end they can navigate and get through the process with mitigation if it's needed. But most of the time that still works. We're not at a point where there's horrible failures throughout the city where there has to be... heroic efforts made to improve those intersections. We're not at that level yet. 20 years from now, there probably will be more challenges. But currently, the road system is working fairly well. But I do think there could be more, and we could even do a work session. I mean, I think they would be willing to come and do a work session as well, and then we could get into more The detail of like, we have these questions around this item, you know, because part of it is they're not really here. And that's another piece is, you know, I think we're unique and can be where planning staff is the only staff that's here. Most jurisdictions, you have a city engineer and you have other people that are on staff and sometimes even the city attorney. can be for whatever reason has not followed that model. And so, and there might be a traffic consultant or, you know, if there was a wetland, there'd be a wetland consultant. We don't have those people on staff, but those are the kinds of things that normally you would have in other jurisdictions. But I totally, we'd be open to having that dialogue with them and having more of that. We need to understand this and how can we do this better? I mean, I totally can make an invite and they could come and present and we could have that dialogue around that.

Right, so I wasn't quite done yet. Yeah, I wanted to add them. Yeah, so thanks for all that. I think the question, but to me, the onus is on them to get us to trust them. And they need to open their kimono a little bit. And so what I would welcome is take this last app we had and have them show us what went into that. I understand models. I'm a career IT person. Data models are data models. But this was a little bit of a unique scenario where not normal day-to-day traffic, this last one. So show me, just show us, educate me, and maybe my head will explode with their data, I don't know, but we're not stupid. I think that would be a respectful thing to do is help us get more trust and understanding just by showing us how they do it, if they can. Compare it to an actual app. Yeah, so my question then that I had earlier is what do we do about that? If I'm sitting there thinking I don't trust that because I don't know enough about it, am I prohibited from voting no because you said this traffic study says it's okay and I don't, you know what I mean? What's the rule with that?

I would say that they are experts in what they're doing.

That's a yes or no kind of question.

Yeah, I would say you have to follow the lead, but this conversation is really about how do we get you more comfortable to that decision point that you've actually received that information. can we ask DKS in their standard template that they do, that they look at all the, like a driveway turn, I mean, if that's a concern about driveway movement turning, which is not something that comes up on a lot of these, but that was a critical item, we could absolutely have them address that.

And I think- Mine was more about the emergency vehicle volumes.

Right. And I think that was... I really appreciated Mark Johnson coming in because I felt like that was a critical path and you all took advantage of that conversation, which was really important.

Right, but that wasn't evident in any traffic study information. And maybe they did consider that, but we don't know.

And some of that is because the emergency stuff is somewhat independent of the transportation stuff. It just is. I mean, it's not like...

That is- How can that be, though? How can that be?

Well, they have their emergency response. I mean, you don't, you really can't- It's part of traffic. You can plan for an emergency to the site and address it so that you have fire life safety there. Yeah. But it's not really a level of surface issue that you can address in a traffic study on a fire truck. I mean, you really can't.

Why?

Let's do this, if I may. I think that what I'd like to see in this discussion is it was mentioned that we would bring DKS in and talk about traffic studies, okay? And what I'm hearing you say is, is that if you disagree with their study, how do you vote no? Okay, and how do we vote no comfortably and reliably, all right? So that's the question. Is it possible to vote no? And that's the question we would like to, can that study be brought to us in a way that we could do that? Michael, you got something to say?

I do. It's not just an engineering degree. When you are a licensed engineer and you get your stamp, you go through, you get your engineering degree, you go through an internship that's four years plus, you go through your e-fundies and a couple of other tests, and then there's final licensure. These aren't, you can't just kinda end up in this business. You have to dedicate your life to it for about 10 years before you can even get to be a traffic engineer. And so, you know, when you start talking about second guessing them, you're talking about second guessing doctors or architects or other people like that who have way more acumen in this than we do. And I understand that there are such things as shysters in these fields, but we do have an extended period of time that we've been working with this organization. What I hear as someone who has a fair amount of communications experience is that you're not hearing what you need to hear to have to feel confidence in the amount of information that you're getting. And that seems to me as more of a communication style issue than perhaps one of engineering acumen. I very strongly question saying that I just don't trust engineers who have been through the process. That smacks, I mean, that is a very popular fad right now to just not believe people who have gone through the process to understand something. And we do that at our own peril. Now, if we don't understand what they're telling us so that we can't make an appropriate response, that strikes me as a different issue. And maybe what you're responding to is that these other firms are better at communicating with you than DKS is.

Right. And I agree with what you're saying. I think it's kind of like going to your doctor and your doctor tells you something and you get a second opinion. Maybe that second opinion just explains it differently, but he tells you the same thing. So I think what we just need to do is, DKS is, I think they're excellent at what they do. We just need to have what they give us packaged a little bit differently so that us as lay people who sit here as individuals judges, more or less, can make better judgments with the information that they give us. They're engineers, they're good people, they know what they're doing, we just need it packaged differently so that we can maybe trust is not the correct word. Digest it. What's that? Properly digest it. There you go.

I'd like to know more about their model, when it was created and what we built it off of. Because you can be an expert, very good at what you do, and also very experienced and still have flaws in your model that are creating problems in some of the results that we're seeing. And it might just be exacerbated by it being such high-level information provided to us. Sometimes it seems like we've got maybe some concerns with the model as well, at least for me personally. So I would love to know more about that.

Okay.

And can we... Please bring in public works for any of the conversations with them because they're assessment of field intersections and issues with traffic seem to be different than some of the concerns that they are bringing to us.

Okay, so I think from what we've talked about here, we've identified that having a discussion with DKS would probably be a good thing. Is there anything else, Judy, that we've talked about tonight as far as criteria and making decisions that you would like to know more about.

Yeah, just one more thing. And it's not something I've ever used as a criteria to say yes or no, but my perspective is we set a little bit of a low standard. This is just Judy talking. when an organization comes in and they want to bring a business to our town and they don't make it evident they know much about our town, all they want is a business in our town, so they don't bring a presentation, that should be unacceptable. I think everyone should bring some kind of presentation. And when I'm asking them about you know, specifics in our town and how their business might impact those specifics. And I know I can't use that as a criteria, but they don't answer. They're all, I don't know, like, why are you asking me? And I think that reflects poorly on us as a city. And, you know, if someone was watching this on YouTube, they said, you know, they didn't even answer the questions. They don't necessarily know that's a criteria for approval or not, but, you know, they come in sort of blindly and just, you know, I don't know, I just think that's a problem because I think it reflects poorly on us sitting here that they can come in and not really know much about the town they're plunking their business down into. So I think they should always have a presentation.

Presentation, yes, but if they haven't done the market research, that's going to impact their business potentially long-term. But they basically, they do all of their assessment of do we want to be in Canby or not in their own little black box outside of this. And at the point where they've come to the commission and said, hey, we want to be in your city, then it just doesn't meet the criteria, yay or nay, even if they don't know, we don't know anything about us compared to anybody else. Even us asking seems like it's potentially problematic. Is that just me?

Anything else, Judy?

No, that's enough.

Can I offer one last thing about the traffic thing before we move on? What about the idea if, and I haven't talked to Don about this, what if we dredged up five or six traffic studies from other firms and distributed them and asked for what are the elements in these studies that we like that we're not seeing in DKS studies? Would that be something Because I think DKS has heard that there's some dissatisfaction, but I think the more specific it is, like this firm is doing X, Y, and Z, and that's what we want to see. If we could provide to them the most explicit guidance possible, I think that would help.

Yeah.

I mean, unless there's another traffic study that everyone has seen that they already know they like or, I mean, I'm open to other ideas.

I 100% agree with you. I mean, if you have suggestions on that, I mean, I've seen probably a hundred of these in my career and a lot of them look pretty similar. But if there are ways to make this more understandable, I think the conversation is invaluable because I think part of it, you know, like it is a very, to Planning Commissioner Hutchinson's point, it's a very technical field with a high skill set to it. And I think there's largely some duplication that happens. But that doesn't mean that they can't make it. We'd like to get to the point where, like, this is not an issue. I mean, that's the bottom line. I mean, that's really where we'd like to be. Thank you.

Do you remember which project it is that we saw in the last year or so that had a really good Yeah, there was one for a hearing that we had in the last year or so that was just a really good example of a throw assessment. And one of the things that I remember sticking out in it that was helpful to see was their assessment of the intersections that were nearby and the turning patterns out of major, both like the... the pathways that were specific to the project, and then its impact on... Was that a subdivision or was that a commercial business? I'm trying to remember which one it was.

We can look for it. Yeah, I can't recall. I think it was probably Lancaster. I mean, I think it was Lancaster. And they did the brew pub, Oregon City Brewing, and I think they did a subdivision. But there are very few... I mean, there's so few that we remember their names.

Yeah, because usually we don't see it. And we do get that feedback from applicants where they're like, oh, well, we were told we had to use DKS. So if that's not the actual reality, it's not necessarily being made crystal clear to applicants that they have that choice or they're making the assumption that they don't have that choice because of the fee that's assessed.

We for sure tell them. I think sometimes it's... They know that they're going to have to go look for a consultant, and they know that in itself is going to eat up time. And so they choose to use DKS because they know it's a known entity.

Yeah, it has the least resistance, and you guys already work with it.

Yeah, even if there's no pressure at all from us. So I'm sure that's an element of it. But we're taking notes. We definitely hear you. Yeah.

I was hoping we could revisit CUP slide, item C. I'm sorry, which CUP slide? The CUP slide, criteria C, that all required public facilities and services exist to adequately meet the needs of the proposed development. So having a conversation with CUP, Mr. Johnson of the fire department after the meeting. Basically, my impression is that when they give feedback, they're asking for the bare minimum of what they need. And they're not necessarily, I don't know if they're not given the opportunity to articulate what they would hope to see. If they were able to kind of say, this is what we would love to see versus this is the bare minimum of what we need. My impression is that we're holding the criteria that we're signing off on is bare minimum is being met. We've met the bare minimum requirements of what is needed for utility access for X, Y, and Z. I would like there perhaps to be some kind of additional credit given in the weighting of the projects or something along those lines where when you are doing more than the bare minimum to check the box, but you are doing something that would be helping the city move in the direction that it needs to or help the community actually have better access mobility through tricky situations with traffic or whatever else, that we're at least presenting that as an option for applicants, kind of like you can get extra credit for making these small accommodations for things that are better than minimum. Because if from a state law perspective, we have to say meet the minimum, then we have to share that information and meet the minimum. This is the bare minimum that the fire department will sign off on or utility, public works or whomever. But then... where we know we have pinch points or things that for future growth would be beneficial, that we can kind of present that as a bit of a carrot to make a little bit more effort to do those things.

Sure.

Does that make sense?

Sure. And those are definitely conversations that happen, especially at the pre-app stage when all those folks are in the room together. I think... And I'm thinking back to the nexus and proportionality because some of these cases have to deal with, is the local jurisdiction finding a private solution to a public problem? And that's where it gets dicey. And I know we've had some projects, and a good example is fire hydrants. Asking for extra fire hydrants or infrastructure like that, if it's not... needed to serve the project, yes, that might be something that we want overall in the community, but it's not necessarily the burden of that particular project to bear. And so there isn't always a bright line, but it does get dicey when we start asking for things that are beyond the infrastructure that it's needed to serve the project.

So then my question is, since I'm interpreting adequate to be minimum, is that a fair statement that inadequate is minimum?

I would phrase, I mean, bare minimum, I really feel like it may be a mischaracterization. I just need to speak to that issue.

Okay.

we're dealing with standardized fire life safety provisions that basically every state uses, at least on the West Coast. So you got a fire hydrant within 150 feet of a building. These have been memorialized for like 40, 50 years. I mean, like, and every city uses those same standards. So... I think they achieve fire life safety. To Ryan's point, and the roads are built to a certain standard to be a certain cross section, which has been determined to be an adequate cross section. So requiring like extra pavement and dedication of additional pavement sections would not be proportionate and not justifiable essentially. We get the whole safety thing, but the bare minimum to me, I don't agree with that characterization because that is the standard that has been accepted for fire life safety across the state. And in Oregon, you have to basically be within the parameters of the state regulations. You cannot go beyond those. That's enforced at the county level as well. So we can't just arbitrarily come up with stuff. I mean, that's why we rely on can't be fired to tell us what the standard is. But I just, I feel like that's an important characterization issue.

And the other problem is the decision is supposed to be based on the evidence and the record. And so the problem comes if I really don't want to talk about the last project we just did because I didn't want to talk about specific projects. But if Mark Johnson's here and he says something in the record, and then the commission asks for something beyond that, I mean, I think in this particular situation, we'll have to offline a conversation with Mark Johnson and tell him, you have free... will to say whatever is needed to serve the project. But if there's something on the record, like verbally or in the staff report, and then the planning commission asks for beyond that, you're kind of contradicting an established and that's where the decision starts to get a little less legally defensible.

That makes sense. And so the established criteria for things such as fire hydrants and whatnot, the criteria that was established 40, 50 years ago, that is... not just a minimum, but it is something that you cannot add additional things to because it becomes a problem for things being too close.

It's really more of a pragmatic thing that are you really gonna be able to fight a fire better with a 50-foot radius to a building versus 150 feet? Does your hose get you to the building or not? Would an extra hydrant really even be adequate? Would that provide any additional capacity? And those are the standards I think were established initially for the state fire code. I'm not a fire expert, but that's the reason. I believe that the state fire marshal would say, yeah, we should change that if 50 feet was a better standard. We don't have that standard. And so, again, back to experts here, and the fire department is an expert in their field, and the state fire marshal is an expert in their field.

There's another part of it, too, in that the city wanted everyone to install backflows on their properties a while back. And that's mainly because so what happens when your kid is making mud pies out in the backyard and the fire department plugs in somewhere and sucks all of the pressure out of the water system that you're not sucking all of that non-potable, disgusting water into the system. But the population balled hardcore at it. I mean, there was a lot of pushback and there ended up being no enforcement for that particular issue, even though it was some that everyone including, you know, emergency management thought that needed to be there. Now, if you start talking about, I mean, I'm not just talking about the little hose end type. I mean, this is something that goes on your supply. On the way in, it's something that has to be tested, recertified on a regular basis, annually is typical. And it's a huge independent expense that this community just decided that it didn't want to go. And so to a certain extent, there is pushback from the public on some of these things, and it's just like we're not willing to endure the expense to come up with a better system.

Okay.

Nope, I'm good. Oh, actually I lied. Perhaps as a suggestion of something we can do when we have the script of now we're going to be voting, something to the extent of no votes, please provide the criteria that you're referencing for your no vote. Just like so that's actually just like stated. If we do or don't have a list of criteria to look at, just that it's that little reminder. If you're saying no, call out what your criteria are.

And inversely, if we are recommending to not approve something and the commission was basically contradicting the staff report, the recommendation the other way would be the same case, obviously. Because the premise of that argument is basically There has to be findings either way, but if you're agreeing with a staff report, the findings are basically already documented. And so when you are, the decision goes the other way, that's okay, but there has to be additional findings that support it.

I think I've sounded off enough, that's fine.

So here's... what I would like to say about this. First of all, I think I'd like to have another, I'd like to see another work session on the traffic. The second thing I would like to see is I would like to see a, I would like to see the criteria brought here. You could put it up on the screen, whatever. And I think that the commissioners we should look at the criteria. Because there's things in a criteria like the words livability. What do you do with livability? Okay? Now, you could have somebody come and present a project, and you can look at it, and you can say... you know what, I don't think it passes that criteria because I don't think it meets the livability criteria. That one word right there. And I think that we need to digest that word and figure out what livability means to us, to this commission. And we need to get a definition of what livability really means. Because we could go one way or the other just on that one word.

Sure.

And so I think that we probably need to look at the criteria so everybody is clear on what the criteria is. And I think that that should be included. We can do it the same work session as we look at the traffic. We could do it in two different ones or the same one, doesn't make any difference. And then I think also, and this is a little bit of a sticky one, this is a hard one, because when we vote, whether you vote yes or whether you vote no on a project, you come to the meeting, you listen to the whole thing, you don't want to make it look like you've come already with a decision in mind, okay? But yet... it is very important for us as the planning commissioners to give these guys direction as to what, why we are voting the way we're voting, okay? So if you're gonna vote no, you need to say why you're voting no, okay? And you may get splayed one way or the other in thing, but you should have it written down as to why you're either voting yes or you're voting no. For these guys' benefit and for nobody else's benefit. And at least a general idea, and I think that you guys should tell us how you think we should package that, because we don't necessarily wanna have, it looked like it's a preconceived idea because that's not right, okay? You see what I'm saying? It doesn't look, that's not gonna leave a good taste in anybody's mouth. And so I think, for me personally, I think those three things are a thing. The traffic thing is always an issue. It doesn't make any difference if it's a, It doesn't make any difference what it is. It's a thing, okay? And I think what Mike is saying is true. We don't want... We have experts. They're engineers. They know what they're doing. We just need to be able to, as he says, digest what they're saying correctly, okay? And... The other thing is, is I think that we need to understand what the criteria, what it clearly means, okay, so that we don't get, so that we can educatively vote on these things. And I think that there are some words in there, like livability, that kind of make things, you know, It's gray, those are gray words. And I think that there's a lot of gray words in the criteria sometimes. And there's nothing wrong. I mean, you can have great words and you can do that. They're in there for a reason. But I think we should discuss that because I think a lot of times the staff will look at those words one way and a planning commissioner who is sitting there reading a staff report that says, I think you should vote to approve, is looking at that saying, there's no way. What are these guys smoking? And so I think that would be an educational process. That's my opinion on it. And then I think that we all need to be able to say why we need to be able to put down in words why we're saying yes or no.

Absolutely, and well taken, for sure. I think that's good guidance. I think the exciting part is, I don't know, I'm excited about it, is we're going through a code update. So these criteria are coming out of a very old code, and three years from now, two years from now, three, two or three, we're going to have a new code that attempts to fix all this. So we definitely need your help because there are items like that that do need fixed or clarified. I mean, you're always going to have a little bit of subjectivity. That's hard to avoid. But I think we have a good brain trust here for... moving forward, pulling out some of the things that we like from here, and then adding what we think is missing, so.

I've got a little thing to tack on to the conversation with DKS when we have it. I want to know how the model assesses school proximity and school traffic specifically because that's been a point of contention for a lot of these locations is it doesn't seem like it's being considered and we have concerns about that.

For safety or for trip generation?

Both.

Are they only taking into account regular school hours or how much did the soccer games account for the engineering totals? That's something I'm kind of interested in hearing about because, I mean, fairgrounds, it's pretty easy to figure out. But, I mean, as far as the impact of a school campus, it's pretty wide. But, yeah, interesting to see how they would accommodate that.

Yeah, and it's hard because, you know, a lot of intersections, their peak hour is not going to be when the peak hour for that school facility is. And so is there a better way that we all, including DKS, can communicate how those things overlap? Because generally, your criteria, and this is true in any jurisdiction, is you're looking at your peak hour, because that's when the roads and the intersections are most taxed, is at that peak hour, because that's when they have the most stress and there's the most delay. But yeah, there are facilities, especially in Canby, that have these sort of like unique peak hours, and that's certainly something we can have them talk about.

we have our peak embers that we all hear about.

But we also have what I call our hotspots. You know, we've got our game fields, we've got high school, we've got these fairgrounds, we've got these hotspots that create incredible traffic impact that that's what our citizenry, you know, if you're coming back from Fred Meyer the, what was the thing that went, the Renaissance thing happened here and you're trying to get home and you live on this side of town and all of a sudden traffic is stopping and you're thinking, what in the Sandville is going on, you know, and so there's a hot spot there at the fairgrounds. That was one reason that I voted no on the fairgrounds is because I thought that they As far as getting traffic, I don't think they looked at that very well at all. And so it was a hot spot for us. And then even outer. I mean, we've got the gravel pits out here and those dump trucks. There are certain hours that they create hot spots going through our town and destroying our roads. So it's, you know, it's... And I think when I look at traffic stories, I think,

Yeah, some of the backstory to why traffic studies anywhere, not just can be, are the way they are. And the emphasis on peak periods is sort of a reaction to the 60s. So in the 60s, there was a modernism movement. Everything became very car dependent. There was a lot of urban renewal projects. And even more so than traffic, and planners talk about this all the time in planning history is, it was kind of the birth of parking standards. And parking standards blossomed in the 60s and 70s, and they were all based on the Christmas shopping period right after Thanksgiving. And what happened in the 70s and 80s and beyond was cities were just getting absolutely paved over by these gigantic parking lots because they were empty most of the time, but they had been planned for this absolute peak worst event. And so I think in the decades that followed, there was a little bit of a reset because a lot of jurisdictions and states said, do we really want to plan for the absolute worst scenario that might happen during the year? Because ultimately what you end up with on the parking side, you end up with these massive oversized parking lots, but on the traffic side, if you mitigate for that absolute worst, every event is happening at the same time, then your mitigation becomes four lane roads everywhere to accommodate that absolute worst scenario. And so that's where... the thresholds come from for peak hours, and they're not perfect. I mean, obviously, you've picked up on that, they're not perfect. But I think that some of the backstory is, and it's important for Canby, because a lot of times we talk about small town character, And I know it always makes me nervous when we talk about, let's change our thresholds to not allow C or D levels of service on streets, because I worked in Southern California for 15 years, and you can drive around communities. I lived in Irvine for a while. I don't know if anyone's ever been to Irvine in Orange County. There are streets everywhere that have been designed for LOSA, faring as much traffic as possible, and there's no small town character because you have giant boulevards everywhere. And so there's some push and pull there. There's accommodating traffic, but also... do we want to supersize our infrastructure everywhere to ferry more cars, which incentivizes more cars, and it's kind of this doom loop of oversizing everything. I'm editorializing a little bit there, but...

I think maybe to Brian's point, though, that part of DKS can speak to as well as on our transportation system plan and having just been and can be Saturday and Sunday, there is more green time on Pine and 99 than I've ever seen because, you know, like that used to take like three or four cars and like 20 of them were coming through. So What do you do to your system to tweak out what you can maximize? And then when are the improvements actually slated to occur in those hotspots that you mentioned? I think those are both critical. That's not necessarily something that Planning Commission gets involved with as much, but they obviously will can speak to some of those issues, those broader issues that you're talking about. Yeah.

So if we have another work session, is there anything else that you guys Can I just, one real quick thing.

So when I think about sometimes traffic, if there's a venue that has some large events, I don't think that necessarily comes up in the traffic studies, nor does the city need to put in bigger roads. But the applicant has to prove that they can manage their traffic. They can get people into the parking lot instead of, you know, all the way down 99 for an hour kind of thing. It's the onus is on them. And anyway, that's my perspective. It's not just about what the traffic study says or that we need to build bigger roads for these occasional events. It's the onus is on the applicants.

It's the more localized impact at the site.

Yeah.

Are we bumping up Morgan's council business with that sort of thing, like mandating traffic management for large events kind of thing?

Well, and I know, I mean, I know just maybe speaking a bit out of turn, I know the fairgrounds is looking to do even things like more shuttling and we've had some conversations with them on, this is post that, you know, exhibition hall, but I know they're looking to do things that are more creative in that process. they do handle the parking pretty well. I mean, the overflow is the lot here in the city, and that wasn't even full. And these are major events on the weekend that we just had and continuing. So I think the parking's being handled pretty well, but the, the, you know, the event traffic piece, I mean, and I've seen worse in other fairgrounds, to be honest with you, where you have the sheriff in the middle of the highway or whatever, because it's that bad, you can't control it. And it felt like it was being handled when I was, you know, observation-wise when I was here. So, I mean, it was not as bad as I was expecting.

Did you have to take a left-hand turn? Did you have to take a left-hand turn onto Pine? Off from 99 into the fairgrounds?

It was more of a right. It was a right going in. But the folks turning left, they've changed that signal timing so that you're not like, because it was horrible for a while.

Get back up to Ivy.

Fourth car back, you wouldn't get through the intersection. And there was like at least about 15 cars going through, maybe more each time. It was significant.

That's exciting to hear.

which meant that it wasn't all backed up all the way to the fairgrounds. So whatever they were doing, I think it's improving, but they can always do more to, like, how can we make it so people can shuttle there? I mean, those things can be done better as well.

And the intersection is near the top of our list in our TSP, so that's obviously a major priority for staff, too. We all recognize that intersection is awful. That intersection is for you, though.

someday it's on the list okay so let's talk about the state law yeah it's because i'm going to go through that with you so there's a couple um state laws that are going to become effective july 1 of this year um that's house bill 4037 and senate bill 974 um there's a there's many many senate and house bills that have occurred and these are uh Each one of these has kind of progressively meant that there is more what I'm calling what the state is wanting, more expedited review. These are targeted at housing in specific. These are housing-related House and Senate bills. What they are going to do is they are gonna change the fundamental structure of the review process for housing. So subdivisions under 4037 will be an administrative type two process and not a type three hearing process to the Planning Commission. And that's the first one. And then Senate Bill 974 is similar, but it will be for planned unit development subdivisions and residential variances. Those will also be type two through our administrative review process. Still the same criteria, but staff is making the decision on those. Senate Bill 974, that can be appealed to the Planning Commission. but House Bill 4037 on regular subdivisions is only appealable by the applicant to LUBA. So these are things that are bipartisan that the state legislature has continued to provide in terms of trying to provide housing. It feels a bit like the state's taking over the entire residential process without really taking ownership of that. This is my editorial, but I wanted to let you know that's coming. The things that will still be in your purview as a planning commission will be apartments, which should be type three, but town homes, which are on their own lots will be type two. And smaller units will be type two for housing. Commercial and industrial will still remain type three. So commercial and industrial buildings will be coming through planning commission. This is the latest again in the whole process here. You have some very strong lobbying going on by the home builders. And obviously these, they're not stopping. So every year we get a handful of these. We're trying to stay ahead of it. We're putting an interim kind of code in place based on state law. Ultimately, Ryan talked about code, the code update. We would like, we have to provide this clear and objective path, which the state law asks us to do. But it doesn't prohibit us from doing an optional path, which would perhaps be an incentive that someone, where we have incentives where they choose a different path, and maybe it has a hearing process involved, but we give incentives back to them for that process. So there are those things. So there'll be two paths in the end when the code update, we're working on the audit now, but the idea is we have a path that would be alternative to the clear and objective path. But we really don't have a lot of choice here that, you know, the bipartisan legislature said this is the way it is. I don't think they realize how difficult this is when you've got like, 12 pieces of like house and Senate bill stuff that you're trying to marry together. But that's why we're doing a code audit to make sure we're matching up with that. But even our attorneys are confused. Um, they're like, it's like, it's clear as mud. Basically it was one, um, comment from our attorney saying that like, this stuff is really difficult. Every jurisdiction struggling with this a bit, trying to get through it with the ever insistent, like, um, pieces of this. And, um, We'll see in the end if it makes a material difference on like housing and housing prices, that's to be determined, but that's what's going on now.

So you're saying all those eventual

They are. And some of those were already in play from previous legislation. So basically middle housing was already a type two. Those would be duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes in town homes and cottage clusters, which we were type two to begin with. Those are all type twos, which will go through us again. And those will be typed through two with notice, but with restrictions on the appealability for planned unit developments and variances could still be appealed by the neighbors that are adjacent, but the subdivisions and House Bill 4037 cannot be.

They can only be appealed by the applicant, and that's two.

That is correct. I don't think we're gonna see that scenario, but that, yeah.

So Senate Bill 974, it's type two now for the CUP and what other?

Right now it's plan unit of development subdivisions would be type three. And variances would clearly be type three, which is where I went through one of the slides on. Those would only be residential variances. And we're also working with other jurisdictions. We're kind of reaching out saying, is this your same interpretation? So I'm just, we're trying to stay ahead of this here and make the right call on these. This is something that is important, but this is our read at this point on this.

I was just gonna add a couple things. Basically, if that sounds like difficult news, I think there's two big caveats. The first is we're going into a code update, so we're gonna still need you guys with the legislative hat that you wear. Maybe not so much the quasi-judicial one, but because you are a partner with staff, you will still get to be involved in what are the criteria say that those projects will apply to those projects. And then I think the second one would be that There's other jurisdictions that have done the clear and objective path and the more discretionary path. And there's applicants that do go into both tracks. And so I would predict long term you're still gonna see some larger subdivisions or PUDs or projects of that nature that are choosing to do something a little bit different. They want flexibility. They might have a DA where they want to Do something extra for the city, but flexibility here. And there are going to be applicants to take that track. That's my personal assessment. I don't know if you agree.

I would agree. You know, I mean, part of this is trying to create something that, like... I mean, the end game really is about providing more affordable housing. I'm not sure if the process really does it, to be honest with you. And so I do agree with Ryan. I mean, in the end, we're trying to create community and character and all those other things. Now, right now, the current trend, even though we have all these, like, tools, so to speak. People are still building very expensive homes on larger lots, and that's the trend. So that probably will continue. Hopefully we'll get a bit more diversification. Hopefully we'll have a bit more school population, and that will help the schools out, which badly need students. And that would be the hope here. I'm not convinced that the process really is I mean, we want to give incentives to give people that ability to, you know, make it more consistent with, like Ryan's saying, you know, more of a different vision, perhaps, than just how quickly can I get through the process. And I think most of the applicants we have are pretty willing to go through that, you know, that extra round of review. We are not getting, there's other pieces of legislation already in place, and we're not getting a lot of pushback at this point, but These laws keep changing, and so our goal is to keep up with that by providing this alternative path. So that probably covers enough on that. And there'll be more updates on this as we get further into it. I just wanted to give you a heads up in case you start hearing things. It's not the staff is going rogue and we're deciding to take all of your authority away from you in your discretion. That's not what we're doing and I would never do that. So that's the situation there. So that covers our updates. I can jump into items of interest reports from planning staff next, if you would like. So going back to, we'll set up this work session. We really don't have anything for July 13th, and it's gonna take us a bit of time to pull this together for the work session. We may end up canceling both meetings in July, but July 13th, we'll cancel that meeting for sure. We'll get back to you on the 27th. There will be a meeting we're planning on August 10th, urban growth boundary work session on August 10th. And that also could end up having the work session for DKS. If we can put that into play there, that might be the same one. And then August 24th, we're gonna have urban growth boundary hearing for the boundary, the urban growth boundary expansion hearing. And if you're interested, there's a July 16th urban growth boundary project advisory committee meeting in the Willamette room, July 16th, Willamette room, 6 to 8 p.m. So more to come on that. We're getting into more of the thick of the final pieces of the urban growth boundary expansion and concept planning is occurring simultaneously with that that will continue after the boundary expansion is determined, but will continue and that'll be where we're gonna have the designation of the underlying land use in concept planning. So between that and the code update, we have lots going on. We will also be doing a system development charge update hearing on July 1st, City Council, that's next Wednesday, and that's to update all our system development charges, which have not been updated for 13 years for the big ones, parks and transportation have not been updated for about 13 years. So those fees are going up to continue to be able to do the things like road improvement projects and parks in specific and can be. And that's all we had unless you have questions for us.

No.

Okay.

Looks like we don't.

Awesome.

Anybody have anything else that you'd like to discuss?

I move we close the meeting.

I have a motion to adjourn. Second. Motion seconded. All those in favor?

Aye.

We are adjourned.