Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I now call to order the 430th Planning Commission meeting of the City of College Place. Today is June 16, 2026, 6.01 p.m. Clerk, please take roll call.

Commissioner Nick Ivey.

Present.

Commissioner Felix Tan.

Present.

Commissioner Claudia Santayano. Present. Commissioner Jim Fry. Here. Commissioner Gayla Rogers. Present. And Commissioner Todd Ricewig is not present. And there is an excused absence from Commissioner Brandon Stepper. You do have a quorum.

Thank you. so with uh with that we have an update to the roster of our planning commission victor valerio resigned after some difficulty attending therefore we now have a new member and welcome jim fry thank you for joining us thanks for having me uh my notes indicate uh that you are a college place resident and superintendent of the college place school district correct

Yeah, I've been here since July of 2019. So seven years living just down by Lyons Park and Superintendent Aaron College Place.

Thank you. Also noted your service to the Parks Arbor and Recreation Board. Thank you. Absolutely. My pleasure. Now time for public comment. Clerk, did anybody submit a written comment in advance or request to speak by telephone or virtually?

We received no requests.

No requests. Yeah. Okay. If anybody in person would like to speak, raise your hand. Okay. And let's see, if anybody in virtual attendance has contact with the clerk and requested to speak, please raise your hand. It might be a star nine to raise your hand if you're connected by phone. Do we have anybody online? Okay.

All right. People online, but they have not raised their hand to speak.

Thank you for the clarification. Okay. Now ready for our consent agenda, consisting of the agenda for today, June 16, and the meeting minutes from April 21. Are there any items anybody would like to remove from the consent agenda? With that, I'll accept a motion to please make a motion to accept a consent consent agenda.

I'll accept the motion motion to accept the consent agenda. Second.

All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? The motion is passed. The ayes have it. To our regular agenda, this is again a workshop for the comprehensive plan periodic update. We welcome Elizabeth Smith, Derek Bratton with JUB to present tonight on the new mandatory climate element of the comprehensive plan.

Thank you, Nick. You've made my job very easy. We'll open it up to our consultants to take it from here.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Well, first and foremost, I am not Elizabeth Smith. Elizabeth is unfortunately unable to join us today, but I am lead public involvement on this project. So I'll be providing that update for this workshop here. But I am joined by Derek. Who is Derek?

Hello, thank you for having us. I'm the senior planner in Spokane. I've been working with Lizzie, or Elizabeth, sorry, quite a lot on this, and I'm here to provide any backup or primarily technical questions.

Yeah, great. Thank you so much, Derek. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen here. Or if you could share the I think the PowerPoint that was provided to you because I don't think I have the ability to do that. Wonderful. Thank you. Okay, so this is just a quick overview of our agenda, the things that we're going to be kind of covering within this workshop. We're going to provide a climate element overview, just again, what we're doing, what the process is, give a good process... a great update on the public involvement. We've done quite a few things since the last time we were able to meet, talk about those hazard and risk identification and the process that went through that, go through the draft goals and policies that we formed, and then finally cover those next steps towards the end. And as I go through each of these sections, Feel free to, you know, before we hop to the next one, if you have any questions to share them or to ask me, I'm more than happy to take a pause there to answer any of those questions. Okay, next slide. Perfect. So this is just, again, an introduction to that. Like I said, I'm Tracy Ortiz. I'm our public involvement lead. Elizabeth and Derek are that senior planners on this team, and we're working alongside John and Michael on this endeavor. So as you might have been introduced to this process, the climate element is brought to us by the Washington State commerce. So they're bringing, they're asking each of those jurisdictions within this year as they are updating their comprehensive master plans to include this climate element into that to be able to kind of come up with a resiliency plan or a game plan for some of these items that we're going to touch on later here today. But truthfully, the goal that we're striving here today is to touch more on that climate commitment. portion of this. And the goals of that, like I mentioned a bit ago, is to build those community-wide climate resiliency to climate-related hazards, whether those are man-made or natural, protect and enhance natural systems and habitat connectivity. So making sure that we're preserving what we do have. and then complying with Washington State Department of Commerce. So those are those three big goals that we're looking at as we approach or with the approach that we're taking for the climate element that will go into the comprehensive plan. So these are the different elements that go into a comprehensive plan and highlighted at the bottom, you see the climate change and resiliency is one of those elements that are mandated within that. So we receive the funding from the state to do that. And so because of that, we have to make sure that we are providing that element within the comprehensive plan update. On the other side of that is those optional elements that we can do, but are not necessarily provided funding for. So that's kind of where the mandatory versus optional is. The mandatory comes in where we are receiving the funding or the city of college place is receiving the funding. So those elements must be addressed within the comprehensive plan. And that new one is the climate change and resilience. Next slide. Do we have any questions about any of that information that I just gave you? Okay, perfect. So this is our project schedule, just kind of where we are in this process. So you might hear us refer to this as year one or year two. We're currently at the end of year one. of this so that what it consisted of in the spring was doing an existing conditions assessment where we were able to kind of look at all of the assets everything that the city had and kind of come up with this list of all of these materials and then to do a climate analysis we did a public survey that was shared with you and then we did what is called the CPAT or a climate policy advisory team. Sorry, those acronyms are going to get me one of these days, but I've done pretty well so far. So our climate policy advisory team met in the spring to be kind of kick off this process, go through it and call to attention what might be those really necessary points for the city college place. And then in the summer, early summer, we did a block. We went to the city of college places block party, which was fantastic. We saw a great turnout. there and then we defined the goals and kind of went through the process of implementation. So what do our draft goals and policies look like in effect? And then we held CPAP 2 and we'll be holding CPAP 3. Later in the summer, we'll have the development of the climate element in its final form. And then in the fall, we will present that final plan within the comprehensive plan. So it's a little bit of a quick one here, but do we have any questions on our project schedule and how we've kind of approached this process?

Yeah. I'm wondering, just for curiosity's sake, what is the outcome of the survey during the block party, you know, how we ask people to vote, what is the most significant or important item to them?

Great question. Actually, further down within this PowerPoint, I have one that breaks it down. So we're going to touch on that here soon. But great thinking ahead. We're going to save that. And we'll address it in our public involvement update, which is actually upcoming in this. So it's the next few topics we have. Yeah. Awesome. Next slide. So this is just a quick overview on our climate policy advisory team. So these are the dates that we had for our meetings and for our upcoming one and what the goals of each of those meetings were. So like I said, the first CPAT is to introduce kind of the climate element, come up with a vision statement for the climate element and identify the assets and hazards. The second one is to review the progress that is being made. and to review those draft goals and policies. And then finally, at our July 8th meeting, we will be reviewing the draft climate element in its entirety. All of these steps are also provided to us through what is referred to as the workbook. So it's lined out for us what steps we need to be taking. Of course, we're tailoring this to make sure that it is meeting the needs and priorities for the city of College Place. So we're getting the outline and we're making sure that it fits your goals, your priorities, and your needs for your community. Next slide, thank you. Public involvement. Awesome. So what you'll see here is in gray are all of the elements that we have completed. that we lined out at the beginning of this process. And we said, these are the things we're going to do to make sure that we're reaching the most people within the city of college place. Public involvement is a spectrum. Not all folks want to be engaged within the same way. So we want to make sure that we're always providing multiple avenues of engagement. So, you know, That is done through a situation assessment. Those are done through going to pop up events like the block party. Those are done through flyers and website materials, a public survey for folks to provide their feedback, but also making sure that we have a point of contact. So on all of those materials, you'll have someone's information there laid out. So if folks have questions about this process or this project in general, they can call the things that are left for us because we're kind of winding down at the end of this year. One process is that third CPAP meeting, which will happen July 8th, and then ultimately the summary of public involvement, which will be then provided for you to be able to take a look at. And that will have kind of a wrap up of all of the things that the LinkedIn group and JUB along with the city has done to make sure that we are accurately and well thoughtfully engaging the community. There's also a QR code if you're able to scan that if you want to take a look at the website there, you know, kind of easy access to that. Next slide. Any questions about our public involvement process, actually?

How has the participation and engagement been?

So it varies. Again, you know, this is a spectrum. And I think within some of these communities or within the community that we've gone out to, we've seen a. a stark difference. We got a lot of engagement at that college block party or the college place block party, which was super awesome. Not so much within the survey, which is totally okay and kind of expected in some ways. It just really depends. But the city in itself, the community has really come out and provided a lot of that feedback to us, which has been super awesome. but just in different and sparing ways, which again is the ultimate goal. We're providing a lot of different opportunities and avenues to be able to share your feedback and to be able to provide goals and to be able to comment. But the engagement in person has been spectacular. We had a lot of folks come up to us specifically at the block party and talk to us for a nice long while about their goals and priorities. Any other questions about our public involvement process? Awesome. So kind of touching on the block party, which I did just now, like I said, the turnout was great. We saw over 150 folks come through and we had an awesome amount of engagement within that marble jar activity that we did that I think one of the commissioners commented and asked about. So just to kind of give you some feedback on that. Um, that process or that activity was done to engage folks and ask them their feedback specifically on what out of the elements that we had listed, um, you know, what was the most important or they were most concerned about the next slide actually breaks it down a bit and is really interesting to see. Yeah, so like you said, participants, they were asked to vote for which of the climate elements they were most concerned about. They were given three marbles. You could put them all in one jar or you can spread them out throughout the different jars there. And this is that breakdown that we had. So for the City of College Place, the folks that we engaged with, it seemed like the most impact that they had or the most concern that they had was for wildfires. And I think we're starting to see the start of wildfire season actually today. um, you know, within the region. Um, so very applicable. Um, so it was really interesting to see those, those numbers there. Um, do we have any questions about the results or kind of how we did that or any thing, um, pertaining to kind of that block party participation activity? Awesome. We'll keep chugging forward. The next slide, please. Thank you. So we put out that climate elements community survey earlier this spring. 10 questions, we got about 20 responses. It was open from March 30th to June 1st. Our real goal was trying to understand the community priorities and experiences and ideas to support a more prepared and resilient city. So our goal with that truthfully was to make sure that we could get all of that feedback possible. And as we draft those goals and policies, we're able to have not only the results of this survey, but also from the block party to see where folks' priorities and needs lie and how we can make sure that as we're drafting this content, as we're drafting these goals and policies, we have that in mind and we're able to have that at the forefront of our planning abilities. Any questions about the survey? Awesome. We'll move forward. so within the climate element community survey uh we broke it down into our top concerns um very much matching that uh the block party uh it's wildfire and riled fire related impacts what does that mean that smoke you know kind of the after effect maybe sometimes even the displacement drought and water supply extreme heat so you know where we can go to find relief from the heat, but also what does that look like, you know, agriculturally and flooding. So all of these, although they seem very general, they are holding a larger spectrum within that breakdown. But those are those top concerns with kind of bullet points under each of them in a little bit more detail. Preparedness was also a really large response within this is making sure that the community felt prepared, had the information that they needed. A lot of folks felt unprepared, but what does that actually look like? That means a lot of folks noted that they just didn't have the information, didn't know where those evacuation routes were, didn't have necessarily the materials they needed to be able to adequately be resilient towards some of these climate elements. And then tools to feel more empowered. So we asked folks, what could we do to help you prepare and to help you feel safer facing any of these either natural or manmade climate hazards? Big one was more education and workshops. So doing educational work, whether that's with uh fire departments or um organizations that kind of focus on this but providing that information necessary to be able to understand how you can not only be more resilient yourself but create a bigger network of resiliency within the community understanding and having clear evacuation routes and planning having more information about local risks understanding what um what folks are facing throughout the year, having that stronger community coordination and improved emergency alerts. Do we have any questions or thoughts on any of those results there?

Question. Could you unpack a little bit the concept of resilience as it relates to the risks that we're considering?

Yeah. So, um, it depends on the different environmental impact that you're facing. Uh, right. So resilience towards, um, fire, it's not necessarily, you can't make the community fireproof, but how do you make sure that you have clear evacuation routes or alerts, or you're making sure, you know, if it's not fire related specifically, like the fire isn't there, um, but you're facing more issues towards smoke from, you know, winds coming from the east or west or, um, coming down south. Is that how are we providing air filters? Or are we providing types of alert systems within homes that help folks prepare for that better? That can also look in extreme heat. Are we providing accurate cooling areas as a community for folks who might not have that within their homes? Are we preparing for water supply issues? How does the coordination of like, one of the topics we discussed at one of the CPAP meetings was like, you know, would the possibility potentially be to, you know, you stagger watering days. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you water, Tuesday, Thursday, you don't, right? So those are some of the resiliency opportunities that you're facing. So it's not necessarily like proofing yourself or anything, but how do you make sure that you're able to withstand these incoming environmental hazards or manmade hazards. The manmade ones might be an electrical pole going down or a transformer going down. Okay, how are we making sure that folks are prepared to be without electricity for five plus hours? Or do they have the tools? Do they have the information necessary to be able to withstand that? Does that answer your question or would you like me to delve further? We can definitely delve further.

That does help, and what I'm hearing is that the resilience planning includes perhaps some actions to reduce the likelihood of an event, but a lot of this is perhaps outside of our control in terms of whether it's going to happen or not, but including then how do we respond and recover is what I hear you describing. Over.

Yes, absolutely. It is exactly that. Because some of these, you know, phenomenons that are happening like wildfire, we can't necessarily prevent wildfire, but we can make sure that our communities are able to respond more efficiently to that and be safer in the long run. But with our manmade ones, like say someone takes out a transformer or there's a type of spill or something, you know, making sure that there are plans in place to be able to be resilient towards that or to be prepared ultimately.

I have comment on the tools for people to feel more prepared. Where does the county emergency preparedness or command center or even the local hospital fit into all that?

Yeah. So all of those folks were part of our stakeholder, our original stakeholder interviews. So we went to some of these folks who had, they were either a part of that ultimately, you know, like how is the, how are we bringing the hospital into that? And we asked them, you know, how can we fold you in? How can we make sure that we're working collaboratively? So a lot of those elements are seen within the draft goals and how are we making sure that we're, we are working together. So they are aware of this process. We're asking them what processes they have conducted in the past, which many of them have, and how do we fold their existing plans into what we're doing now?

Thank you.

Yeah. Any other questions? yeah thank you tracy one more in your plan is there a stage at which you consider parts of the city that might have a higher requirement for resilience than other parts yeah so that is something that we did within the um asset portion of this is we looked at the entire city and we said okay where's the likelihood of you know a manmade disaster happening or what is the where are the opportunities or I don't want to say opportunities. I'm sorry. Where are the vulnerabilities within the community? How can we identify them? And then how can we make sure that we are addressing that within the plan so that from the beginning of this process, that's our hazard and asset kind of identification. We went ahead and we did that. That was a large part in this. within our stakeholder interviews as well, is asking our community experts, those folks who are living within College Place, where are you seeing that vulnerability? Where are you seeing those opportunities for improvement, for collaboration, to make sure that we are keeping these in mind?

So, Tracy, I probably should have asked this question going in, but, you know, so so as you talk about, like, the, the outcome of this being goals, when I look at this in particular, I go to a place of like. so so some goals would be around um prevention and education or actions right you talked about the watering might be a prevention tool um for um you know we want we do want but we have to be cognizant of amount of watering. But then I see like a crisis response, right? We gotta know where our warming or cooling areas are located, have that coordination set up with local businesses and schools, and then sort of post emergency response goals around how do we learn from that and grow? Is that kind of the cadence of how those goals come about?

Yes, absolutely. That's almost exactly how they come about. So those goals and policies that we're looking at come through the feedback that we got. And so how do you make sure that we're doing this within a tone that is applicable, that makes sense, that is within the context of the city of college place and addressing a lot of those concerns? And so you're going to see that we're going to go through the goals and policies together. But that's exactly the process that we took. Okay, any other questions? If not, we can totally move on. I'm happy to answer them. Okay, we'll move on to the next slide. This portion is that climate hazard and risk identification. Derek is kind of our resident expert in that, and he's going to take a little bit more of a driver's seat in this part. So go ahead, Derek.

yeah and some of this might help clarify where we came up with the goals and. Like why we're proposing what we're proposing so as Tracy mentioned, you know, one of the first things we did was determine what are the Community assets through observation. um interviews various information sources provided or created a list um it's pretty extensive you have a lot of assets and what we do is we're looking for assets in specific areas that are mandated through the climate commitment act that we have to We have to look at these things. First, agriculture and food systems. That's things, everything from active farms to grocery stores and the distribution systems in between, storage, all of those, everything that's involved in that. now do we list every single asset in the city that sold food no that's just too to prevent you know too too much um but you know the things like grocery stores and the larger assets farms um processing facilities things like that then buildings and energy buildings and energy is more in line with things associated with um well the buildings the physical structure um and then also how power you know the power so this one's kind of combined um both electricity so like where your transformers are your substations these types of things then buildings are literally that buildings both um primary community assets structures like city hall these types of things um courthouses public works facilities, fire station, lease stations, hospitals, the physical structures that these assets are. Cultural resources and practices has a lot to do with history. It could be local history where there's local traditions or things like that, or community traditions. That go back way times and we're trying to you know, make sure that those don't get disrupted, as well as traditional cultural practices for say like. Native American tribes, you know the rivers are you know in the end of and salmon and those types of things that are very wrapped into their. culture specific areas that are important to them um or just just environments that are important to them um maybe not as applicable and you know you may not have as many of those located in the city because urban areas tend to you know as far as the native american ones but the um the rural areas will be dealing with those primarily more so than than like the cities will economic development is economic development it's looking at things that disrupt commerce that can include transportation but that also falls into another category but things like shipping of the supplies moving the food moving moving you know needing power systems you know what power do we need all of these things that are involved in economic development ecosystems as more environmental areas they're going to be somewhat limited in a urban area but every every area has different ecosystems in there you've got the the the river going through that's an ecosystem along the shorelines, riparian area and things like that. Making sure that those things are being protected where they can be, and then looking at things to mitigate impacts if complete protection isn't possible. Emergency management, fire and police, emergency response, The county wide you know emergency management system, all of those things are wrapped up in this, this is looking at things like their physical building where they're located at. radio transmitters and transponder systems. generators, the things that they're going to need to be utilizing during specific or general emergency situations where they're triggering a response. Health and well-being primarily has to do with things like case in point, smoke from fires. Fire smoke affects older folks and children or folks with pre-existing conditions much more significantly than folks who don't have those issues. We may get irritated eyes, but it's not going to necessarily make it so that we can't move around, whereas other folks in our population, definitely it impacts them. And so the idea here is, again, resiliency. Tracy, again, mentioned it a little bit with this would be where cooling centers and ensuring that the hospital system has what resources it needs, or at least The lack of those resources being on the radar so that you know we can start making plans as to how to obtain those resources transportation roads. pedestrian any anything that's moving whether it's on your feet, you know for your sidewalks and things like that, or whether it's in a vehicle. For moving cars, but also commerce and various other things so it's basically the road rails rail systems. Um, river transport, if you have it, um, I don't think that's a channel that has a lot of barges going through it, but, um, waste management is solid waste, generally speaking. Um, and water resources is your water, both your potable water, as well as how your stormwater is being contained or utilized or controlled. That's the word I was looking for. And your wastewater management for your sewer systems and things like that. Again, this is a mixed bag. Depending on the incident, or the situation will affect these resources differently. Flooding is going to be not good for wells. That's a good way to get things contaminated or they can come through. That's water resources. Then zoning and development involves your regulations. Are the existing regulations conducive to building resiliency or is it case in point building in a floodplain? you can build a floodplain as long as you put in the right stuff to make it so that that structure is resilient. Do you have the requirements in your codes to force those types of situations to where the folks okay you want to build there but you're going to have to you know spend extra money to build resiliency in that area is is one example um but that's basically it's just zoning development where can we use the zoning and the development practices and policies to build resiliency into the systems so each of those we called out various assets that fell into those categories so Next slide. And I'm like Tracy, if you've got a question, jump in. But I will periodically try to remember to ask. So next, we look through and have identified the key climate hazards. Now, how did this happen? Well, one, you can kind of look around. Two, we did the surveys, and we got the local knowledge. Well, also, the state of Washington in cooperation with the University of Washington, created a tool called the, I'm closing my eyes because I gotta remember it, climate mapping tool for a more resilient Washington. And they call it CMRW. And what you do with that is you take that, you put in the jurisdiction that you're looking at, and then you start putting in those different assets and you look in different categories and you start looking and you start plugging in these different factors into this and it starts kicking out things. So some of them, and you'll see some maps from this system a little bit later on But what it does is it's already kind of a programmed, like the state has certain aspects that they want different jurisdictions to be aware of based on their studies. And they've done a lot of studies and modeling and various other things to create this tool. That kind of created a baseline for the potential risks of climate conditions and hazards. It also kind of shows how, over the course of time, these things will evolve. There's 2050. Well, like I said, you'll see on the next slide. Yep. Any questions at this point? So here's the range. So you can hit three time periods. You can go 2020 to 2049 is really your minimum that you need to be looking at. But then there's other aspects where we want to look further out so that you've got a really long range game plan. But as you can see, 2020 to 2049, increased temperature, it's pink. Every 20 years, it gets darker. Yeah, and that's because they're projecting that there will be increase and that will continue to occur year on year or decade on decade, I should say. Extreme precipitation is an interesting one. Right now, you look right there, it's not too crazy. The numbers are relatively normal with what A little bit lighter than it used to be. But as you start looking at the decades go on, it starts getting darker and darker because of the way that the flows change. What is predicted by 2089 is effectively the west side will be pretty dry. And that moisture, due to the way that the flows and stuff go, will flow down. And now, instead of going predominantly from the south to the southeast, those winds will shift, they'll change things. And long story short, there's actually an expected significant increase in the precipitation events that will be impacting college blaze. Then wildfire, again, you see as it gets later and later, that map gets darker and darker. Now, a lot of times these wildfire maps, what they're showing is there's a lot of fire science that goes into how these maps are being represented with the fireside, looking at days of humidity, um levels how dry the combustible material is and then how these things combine with wind and various other things um so yeah wildfire extreme precipitation that's the examples now the surveys did not pull up extreme precipitation but that is not really a now thing it's something that is going to be you'll start seeing that over the next decades um it'll be a wetter it looks like we just need to move to oregon because they don't have those extreme colors on their maps Or Idaho, I guess. I don't know. I haven't seen their maps.

Any questions on this?

Understand this is a model. You put in the inputs. It kicks out the results. But it is the baseline that the state is looking for us to utilize as the source material. Next slide. So the next stage step is to pair those assets and hazards and then describe the exposure and consequences. So it's like, you know, you've got a community asset sitting on a high hill. It's not really a flood risk, but it may be at risk of landslides or some other potential hazards. So depending on specifically where the asset is located is going to determine, generally speaking, what the specific hazards are that they're exposed to. Low-lying lands, structures in low-lying areas are going to be more prone to flooding. properties or assets that are in what they call the wildland urban interface or wooey. Um, so if you hear people, planners walk around saying wooey, they're not crazy. They're just using an acronym. Um, they, uh, they're gonna be much more potentially at risk for say fire impacts, low lying areas and other depending on the environmental wind shears and stuff like that. you know smoke could hover it could move these types of things um and again higher elevation potentially less exposure to the smoke lower so kind of go through that exercise um then we also look at things that Kevin Kelly, increase or Okay, so you got that asset and you got this natural hazard or climate hazard well what other things could make that even worse and we're like let's say transportation we're looking at a particular road. Kevin Kelly, or bridge and the risk that we're looking at is the impact from flooding. Kevin Kelly, Well. As we're looking at that bridge, we notice that it doesn't have a lot of span over the river, it's got a bunch of pylons. Well, those pylons are compounding stressors because they bring in when the flood occurs, the debris can jam up against those pylons, increasing the flood results because now instead of flowing, it's backing up again. those pylons are compounding stressors. They're things that add to the situation and can make it potentially worse, but it's not directly related to the climate hazard. And then summarize the potential impacts. Taking all of that little information and then putting it together in a summary of how this is what it looks like. Any questions? Okay, next slide. And this is what it kind of looks like. So, you know, we look at the hazard of the vineyards and orchards. I'm not going to go through every single one of these, but extreme heat is going to be a hazard, the sector. agricultural and food systems and these are the consequences and we go through these and we do that for each of these different elements and we pull out kind of like what are the highest most likely ones to occur or which ones are the ones that yeah it's a low likelihood but if it does happen it's catastrophic An example would be if one of the primary bridges coming in and out of the town collapsed due to some event or something. it's not likely it's going to happen but if it does you know now the city's kind of shut off from from transportation i'm not saying specifically in college place but you know that's a type of scenario that we're talking about um so do y'all have any questions on this slide i can go through each of these if you want it just it i don't know if you want want me to take some time

Derek, on the list of assets on this particular slide, for instance, like medical and urgent care facilities, flooding and extreme precipitation are the hazards. Is that because of our specific facilities located in College Place are know they're not in a flood zone per se because most of college places not were protected by the milk creek flood district but if that if the levee were to you know to break we would see that that flooding right so it's it's some of these it's site specific um if it were for talking structures and whatnot and what that hazard is okay

But sometimes it's not, you brought up a great one. So medical and urgent care facilities, flooding and extreme precipitation, right? Well, then we're thinking, oh, it's the building. No, actually, it's the impact to the resources that the facilities have. We get a flood or we get a big event that comes through, they're going to get inundated. You've got injuries, you've got potential cross-contamination due to the water getting into weird things. The consequences are care strain, search demand, system upgrades, and costs. Because just as John mentioned, a lot of it's not in there, but it's not just looking at the physical impact, it's also looking at the environmental and social justice impacts. A lot of the folks that are going to be negatively affected that way tend to be folks that are maybe on the lower income scale or on fixed incomes due to know retirement or whatnot and maybe there's things that they need to do more but they can't so they're at a higher risk same thing with say like smoke um you know there's filtration systems people can put in their house but they're not free um you know those types of things these all are are kind of resiliency factors but yeah to john's point Location is key on a lot of these. Again, something on the peripheral of the city is going to be more at risk of fire. Things in the low-lying areas are going to be more at risk. Then you never know, as John said, if the levee breaks. It's not likely it's going to happen, but if it does, it's going to be catastrophic. That's one of those ones where it's a low risk, but catastrophic impact. Any other questions?

Eric, I do have a question, and it could be out of the scope of this project here. In terms of hazard, we seem to focus a lot on heat, you know, flooding. But at one point I remember that it was a big concern on the nuclear facility at Hanford, you know, that is about 60 miles away from us. us being a downwind sometime and then at one point a lot of our disaster drill involves those kind of scenario is that no longer a consideration or the risk is has been very minimal my understanding is that one um it's it's a lot of the cleanups has occurred out there and they've isolated a lot of issues um from the

the actual power plant that you're talking about the whoops facility, the Washington power facility or nuclear power plant, or are you talking about the Hanford site or are you talking about both?

Because yeah, it's the Hanford site. Mostly the Hanford site. Yes.

Yeah. That is that your biggest risk there from what I understand is actually water. not so much air because they've got that stuff pretty isolated to where there's not much of a risk of air however nobody knows what's in the tanks nobody knows where that's going and and i don't believe you're connected to that water system but water's a funny thing um that said that is something that is it's beyond what i think a local municipality would be able to address and if that's a system it that's something where the state or the federal government's going to have to assist if that but i don't believe that that is perceived as a high risk at these these days at least not for college plays i mean you don't even hear about it in benton or franklin county really it's just it's i mean they're well used to it from being next to it but it's just it's they've done a lot of cleanup out there and the nuclear power plant half the time isn't even operating it's you know or it's on low if it's even operating so did that answer your question Yes, it does things yeah there's not much that college place as a municipality is going to be able to do on its own regarding that issue that's a that's a big ecology and EPA type of situation and nuclear regulatory facility Commission. Next slide. So then. again we went through and kind of going back to what i was talking about there um you know the highest risk and or low risk high catastrophe events um and then kind of went through in prior toys now these elements as it indicates there um so task 1.1 That identification with community assets, that was done in collaboration with community members. The CPAT-2, we kind of went through this presentation and vetted the list and everything with the CPAT and staff and various other folks. Like I said, do we have all of the assets in the community? Probably not. You guys got a lot of assets. But we looked at the ones that were most important to, you know, maintaining systems making sure that things continue to operate in the event of a hazard or an event next slide so all together of the 11 um or nine i think is nine um wait yeah the different types of events sea level rise is not an issue you're too far inland um the only way that would affect is if there was a massive ripple effect that somehow that would have to come up through the columbia it's just not really likely um but all the others are relevant you know drought extreme heat extreme precipitation flooding reduced now a lot of these reduce smoke snowpack drought and those those first five six drought extreme heat extreme participation precipitation flooding and reduced snowpack are oddly all interrelated um the reduced when you have drought you end up with drier soils it becomes more compact it helps it so retent so that starts the extreme heat kind of cooks it then you get hit with an extreme precip precipitation event um and all that water just it can't get absorbed and then it causes flooding um and then at the same time your reduced snowpack is due to what's going on is we're getting say the same amount of precipitation but it's a it's a timing thing and the precipitation's hitting at the wrong time so rather than coming in the late fall winter and freezing and staying up there and releasing slowly over time what we're getting is it shows up early or late it doesn't freeze so all that water and all our systems are designed kind of around you know so these these types of things like i said they're all interrelated extreme heat is also related of course to wildfire and smoke smoke um then severe weather that's just um You know more wind more ice those types of things and and there's been an observable increase in those specific number, the number of specific events that occur in a year or or the frequency of those events. Any questions.

I have a couple of questions, Derek. There was some discussion about levies relative to College Place. I did not, in a cursory search of the asset list, find any mention of levies. Could you speak to that?

Yeah, it has to do with, I forgot what the name of it, but the levy system is it's in college place but it's mostly outside of it and um and the reality is is there's very little again it's it's one it's not the college places system it's owned by um it's the core isn't it um but the point is is is those those so it's not an asset that you guys have control over which is why we didn't bring that into this if that makes any sense. Because you can't tell them what to do with the levies.

Does the city receive communication from the Corps of Engineers about the condition assessment of that levy?

I don't know. John?

I've never received any correspondence regarding the condition of that levy.

that's something we can definitely access i mean they have to that type of information is public information to some degree um there may not due to homeland security there may be um some limits to what they but they would be able to at least give you the score and i know the the county public works um in conjunction with the corps of engineers does an inspection of like the mill creek um channel um on an annual basis to to you know

take a look at the condition of that.

So with that, the explanation that you gave on that, so then then anything within the city that is not city owned, I'm thinking university buildings and things that could be used as as cooling centers. They're not assets because the city doesn't own and control them. Is that is that correct?

It's it's not that it's they are listed assets, even the mill creek but it's where the city can affect or influences more what we were focusing the the analysis on so. Using them as cooling systems or centers there's nothing. That's and you'll see in the goals, where we talk about things like that, where it's it's the you know collaborate with with folks to provide those shelter schools things like that they're more general the comprehensive plan is a 30,000 foot kind of thing it's it's broad. It's a 20-year horizon with a 10-year check. You check it every 10 years to make sure that 20-year horizon is still accurate. The specific deets, so the goals are going to be kind of general goals. like that they're not going to get into detail specifics or specific detail yeah um because that's where your development codes your agreements that you're going to enter into your collaboration that comes as part of implementation if that makes sense so just because an asset isn't specifically called out and listed or that we're looking you know at the hazards some of these things are corollary where you can look at okay if it's going to affect that guy it's going to affect that one over there too but generally speaking it's so I can't go so far as to say, but generally, yes, it is going to be assets that the city has control over see the city does have control over the school and such that. it's within the city's jurisdictional 40, whereas the levy system is not under your jurisdictional authority. Those systems are. i'm not sure how they're classified but they're they're state or federal systems that are you know it's kind of like the uh irrigation project down in in the tri cities or in franklin county where you know the bureau of land management and stuff um it's those systems are just not you're aware of them, but there's little to nothing the locals can do as far as saying, hey, we want you to do this, except for to provide comment when they're doing some sort of plan or master planning or something like that. Whereas with the school or with the university even, because they're within your jurisdictional boundaries, they are under the jurisdictional authority of College Place. So that's why some of those things will be looked at, but things that the community has no control over, I mean, we can go into that direction, but it's not effective use of our time. And because again, you don't control those systems. You can only comment on them. If that makes sense.

Thank you for the clarification, Derek. I understood the levees are not within the jurisdiction of the City. Perhaps the condition of those levees could inform the planning and the relative risk or perceived risk of flooding based on the condition of those.

Yeah, we'll definitely reach out. I have to check, and I'll double check that we haven't already analyzed that, but definitely, yeah, I can totally understand that, and we'll get some information on that.

Okay, at the risk of another rabbit trail, maybe a quick question. Cascadia subduction zone, a regional thing, there's some planning in response to that. I don't know if there's any impact to the city on fallback from other jurisdictions to this area or things for that event. Over.

yeah we i don't yeah we didn't really look in that um again the list that we're working off of was was what the cpat and surveys um came up with but what i'm understanding is you'd like to know and that's actually handled by that is covered by the walla walla um county housing mitigation plan that is not a climate topic perhaps yeah it's it's that is a A good way to look at the differences between the HMP the hazard mitigation plan and the climate element is the hazard mitigation plan does a great job of addressing like hard assets and and natural disasters, but what it doesn't really get involved too much in is kind of like the social and environmental aspects of it. Designing the. process to take into account that and and to look at that they call it the environmental justice aspect that's required in the climate element but is not required in the hmp because that's answering to a different master that that answers to fema in the state emergency management that the hazard mitigation plan does whereas the climate element is commerce and the state legislature So anything else? Thank you. Next slide. And I'm handing it back to Tracy. You've probably heard enough from me. Thank you. Thank you for your time. And again, any technical questions or whatnot, feel free to ask. I'm here to answer.

Perfect. Thank you so much, Derek. So we're going to move a little bit more into those draft goals and policies. We did this with our CPAC group. We call it the three R's. That's retain. What do we want to keep? We ask the group, you know, what do you want to keep from the policies that you're reading in its draft form? Revise. What should we change? You know, what is wording that is, you know, kind of missing or needs to be included? You know, the essence is right, but we can change it up a little bit or raise what's missing. And again, these draft goals and policies were built out of all of the public involvement efforts that we had done, starting with the stakeholder interviews, moving to the survey, to the block party responses, to our CPAC group itself, all of that kind of culminating together along with the asset and hazard component that we were looking at, that analysis and pulling this all together into our draft goals and policies. You want to go to the next slide. As we're going through these draft goals, I want you to kind of think about those three R's that retain, revise and raise. This is kind of an overview of goals A through F. We're going to go into a little bit more detail into them, so I'm not going to read them here for you. I will read them for you later. But kind of looking at these an initial glance again, I want you to think about that retain revise and raise. We'll go to that next slide.

Oh, I don't think I. Yeah, we're working off of the, the. Slideshow that you sent us last week, but we can pull up the draft goals and policies in a separate. Document if that's what you were after next. You're muted, Tracy, somehow.

Crazy. Okay. So sorry. I'm looking at a different version of this. Sorry that we didn't send that updated to you. I'll get that to you. for sure. Um, but goal a, so that's reduced risks from the extreme heat and improve community cooling capacity. And each of those policies there, um, are targeting different ways that we can accomplish that goal. Um, these goals are not set in stone nowhere, nor are they used as kind of, um, of an obligation or a necessarily like a legal commitment. It's more of, um, These goals and these policies are gonna help open doors and avenues for us to be, or for the city college place to be able to use them as tools. For example, say that there is a grant or a funding opportunity that comes from whether the state or federal level that says, hey, we're going to give communities funding for heat and cooling zones. And you can say, hey, within our climate element, that we propose in our comprehensive update, we have identified these policies or goals that we want to attain within cooling and heat. And you're able to apply for that grant funding saying, hey, this is something we've thought of. We're ready for this opportunity. We've put forethought into the planning. and implementation of these goals and policies. So I want you to think of them that way. I think folks sometimes look at this and say, so I have to do this. So we have to do this. Is there a repercussion? Is something going to happen if I don't? There isn't. Again, they are tools. There are ways for us to open doors. in the future for whether that's for funding or even if that's for future development, you can use these kind of as outlines or guidelines when you're developing or coming up with new opportunities within the city saying hey these are kind of that the the way we want to go um also because they are living goals and policies or this is a living document it can and will change um as you accomplish things um you know as you are seeing you know different and new information can come to light and we say hey we need to add something to one of these goals Or we need to change or remove, you know, maybe this isn't as applicable as we thought that it was. And so I think, and Derek, correct me if I'm wrong, I think at a yearly capacity, you are able to revise all of these goals and policies and submit that.

to uh the state and say hey these are those changes we want to make to this in an official capacity so you're always able to do that um there's no kind of limit there well just for clarification you're allowed to make one annual amendment and the way that's done and john well you guys know about this i'm sure um but for the public you can do that one annual amendment that's done through um establishing the docket and that would be one of the amendments if you wanted to change one of these you would just establish that in your docket and so yeah that's all perfect yeah um

you have any questions kind of on that process i wanted to introduce that that concept of the goals and policies um before we jumped in too deep okay great so we'll move on to goal b here um strengthen drought resilience and long-term water supply reliability and again each of these policies are helping to do that so promote water conservation through efficient irrigation, drought-tolerant landscaping, and reduce outdoor water demand, protect and support restoration of riparian corridors and soils that enhance water retention, groundwater recharge, and ecosystem resilience, encourage land use and development patterns that minimize water demand and support sustainable growth, and investigate the feasibility of developing an irrigation reclamation water utility.

My wonder on B is what was the reason for not including a goal or a subgoal like 4-0? Because it seemed like in a flood situation, having coordinated with partners and providers to provide access to safe location and communication systems during prolonged flooding would be something that would need to be in B perhaps. I was just wondering about that. I mean, I know that it's kind of covered. I cheated and went ahead to F because I think that's an X a little bit, but I just wondered why it was in four, but not in goal D and not in goal B. Yeah.

Wonderful. Thank you. First of all, we'll note that. And Derek and Lizzie and I will kind of go back and see if that can be included. But do you have more information on that, Derek?

So I want to make sure I heard the question right. The question is, why is flooding? OK. I'm only looking at what's on the screen, so I'm not seeing every, hold on a second.

My question is, is why don't we have a shelter in place location identified for in cases of a flood where we can cover what's essentially in D? Oh, you've moved on to goal C. Well, no, I'm in B, but I'm asking about, maybe I am. Oh, yes, I'm sorry. I'm on to see. Thank you.

I was like, that's good.

There is no one step ahead.

That's totally OK. Thank you.

Yeah. All right. Hey, this is all about making sure that we all understand what we're looking at and we're moving forward. So there are no dumb questions, as they say.

If there are no questions on goal B, and then I will have an official opportunity for you to be able to comment on this too and capture that. So it's not necessarily, you don't have to take this in right now and in this moment and have a thought for it. We have a survey that I think went out to you last week that does that. But if you do have any initial questions as you're looking at this, feel free to ask. But that opportunity to provide concise answers and thoughtful and, you know, more contextual feedback will be presented. So don't feel like you have to share now or forever hold your peace. We are very open to opportunity for you to give us your feedback. But do you have any other questions on B, which is strength and drought resilience and long last term long term water supply liability?

Okay, wonderful.

We'll move to goal C. Reduce flood risk through resilient infrastructure and land use planning. Upgrade drainage and stormwater systems to handle increased peak flows. Expand use of green infrastructure, including bioswells, permeable pavement, and vegetative systems to absorb and slow stormwater. Protect and restore floodplains, wetlands, and natural drainage corridors. Limit development in high flood risk areas where feasible and encourage resilient site design. Yes, Derek.

Now, going back to your question, this you would like, from what I heard, you would like maybe an M that says something along the lines of make sure that there's someplace for people to go.

Yeah, I would basically, I would, I would basically take O and just rinse, wash, rinse, replate kind of for, for a flood.

Perfect. Yeah. I, I'm taking note of that here. So definitely something we can include. Yep. We'll bring to our planning team. Any other questions on C? Perfect. We'll move to D. And D is minimize wildfire risk and improve resilience to wildfire smoke. That first one is promote firewise practices, including defensible space and fire resistant landscaping. Encourage fire resistant building materials and landscaping in areas with high grassland or agricultural fire risk. Coordinate with partners and providers to provide access to clean air shelters and communication systems during prolonged regional wildfire smoke events. And then P, improve evacuation routes and emergency access, particularly in areas with limited connectivity. Any questions or thoughts there?

Tracy, the evacuation route, has it been clearly identified, you know, the route that people should take? I mean, like, for example, in the coast, okay, if there is a tsunami, for example, okay, there is a sign and everything that direct you where to go, you know, but again, just like you said, there are limited access here, but have we identified those?

Yeah, I'll leave that one to Derek, actually.

I was going to say, I mean, that's, there's a few different, so I don't know that you've, you haven't identified that I'm aware of, like within your codes, these are the routes to take. However, there are different plans out there. Again, your wildfire mitigation plan, your hazard mitigation plan. Those should have those types of things in there. However, you bring up an interesting point, and I would have to rely on John or Michael to respond to that, but regarding the signage, because you're exactly right. Usually when there is a designated evacuation route, there's signage that indicates it, and it pretty much just stays up year-round because you never know when the emergency is going to happen, and there is quite often. So P would cover that. If it's not there and you don't have that signage marking it, that would be the type of resiliency or mitigation that would be implemented under policy P by designating those routes. With signage we're now improving the evacuation routes, whether or maybe you do have some of those signs, but there should be more. Or there's maybe secondary access, what if the primary evacuation those types of things, so he is meant to kind of cover that investigation, looking at what what is there, what is available to the public. and things like that, and then where those gaps exist, establishing local programming or going after grants or funding in order to implement and fill those gaps. Did that help answer that question?

Yes, it does.

Wonderful.

Just one thing on semantics on M, I would put including but not limited to because there's more things in Firewise practices, I think, than just those two, including like removing dead trees from parks and things that we know are fire starters. So I might just say including but not limited to.

Perfect. I have that noted. Thank you. Any other questions or thoughts on E or on D and policies M through P? We'll move to E. E reads, integrate climate resilience into infrastructure and community systems. Identify and plan for climate impacts to critical infrastructure and community assets, including transportation, water, stormwater, and other public facilities, design infrastructure to withstand heat stress, drought conditions, flooding, and wildfire impacts, incorporate climate resilience into capital facilities planning and long-term investments, and then pursue funding opportunities and partnerships to implement resiliency projects. Thoughts or questions there? Wonderful. We'll move on to F. F reads strengthen community preparedness and climate risk awareness through education, planning, and coordination. Expand public education and outreach on local climate risks and emergency preparedness through workshops, training, and accessible resources. Improve access to clear, user-friendly information on evacuation routes, hazard areas, and emergency procedures for all residents. enhance emergency communication systems to provide timely reliable and accessible alerts across multiple platforms and then finally coordinate with local and regional partners to strengthen community preparedness response capacity and neighborhood level resiliency efforts any thoughts or questions there

This under Goal F might be where we identify a goal of maintaining awareness of the levees or other things outside of our jurisdiction that impact risk in our area.

Yes. Perfect. And again, you are going to have that opportunity to read through these more thoroughly, you know, at your own time, at your own pace, and provide more extensive comments if you so choose to do so. With that as well, oh, yes, go ahead.

Oh, I was just going to add that by tomorrow, no, just kidding. We do need to keep things moving forward. So if you could respond to that survey, if you feel like you need to within the next week, that'd be wonderful.

Yeah. Um, it would also be great for us to know too, that we're on the right path. Uh, there's an opportunity within those, within that survey, um, you know, to say like, this is great, good as is, you know, to say like, you know, it matches, um, with the, um, goals, policies, and kind of context of college place within itself. It matches. Um, the city, we can move on the survey.

Is not a survey that's going out to the community. It is just going out to planning commission and the CPAP. So. It's directly tailored to your guys's feedback on these goals and policies. So just wanted to let, you know, that that.

Wonderful. Okay, we can move forward. within the PowerPoint or PDF. Okay. that's um so that's it that's uh next steps i think there are just kind of continuing to develop that climate element um and then presenting that tool to our cpat getting that kind of final look through and then sharing that with you all um once it's completed so we are more in the the planning writing portion of this project now uh the fun stuff has happened Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much. That was great. Next month in July, we should be rolling out the completed draft plan for your initial slash final review before we actually release it to the public. So stay tuned for that and we're excited how things are progressing along. Thank you for your time this evening. That was a lot of information. A lot of good questions. Yes.

Thank you for having us.

Yes. Thank you, Tracy and Derek. Any other comments from the Planning Commission about what was presented? Not hearing any, I will conclude this part of our regular agenda and proceed now to the next item, which is our report from staff regarding the comprehensive plan amendment application for urban growth area.

Just a real quick update. Not a lot to provide you because the county has not really moved forward with processing your application. The last action that was taken was on April 29th, where they had that public hearing before their planning commission. And the planning commission did recommend that both of our applications be recommended for inclusion in the final docket. I just received confirmation from Melissa Shoemake, the County Community Development Director, that they have a tentative meeting date set with the Board of County Commissioners for July 13th for a workshop with The board of county commissioners, um, myself and staff and our consultants, um, along with the property owners in that area have been informed of that. Um. Workshop, um, most workshops. uh public is not invited to participate um but uh we will it's open to the public so we will be attending and i'm encouraging the property owners involved in those applications to also attend so that there there's a presence there um and from there hopefully uh we'll get a consensus from them to to see whether or not it's going to be included in the final docket um if they They, it's a rather confusing process. The next step would be for them to, they could either make a decision just to include it, or if they want to deliberate on it, then they could hold a public hearing on whether or not to include it in the final docket and then vote on it. Um, so it's. I mean, I, it could be August, it could be September before we actually, um. They put it on the final bucket, and then I don't know when they'll actually hold the hearing on the merits of it, but there does not seem to be. And insight. But with that, we're moving forward with our comp plan, as you can see. So we'll be diving into the development regulations. We did finalize a contract with JUB engineers to assist us with the next step of basically the implementation of the comprehensive plan. And we are mandated to have all that wrapped up by the end of the year. So there's a lot of work ahead in a very short amount of time. Any questions? Great. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you for the update. This brings us to the end of our agenda or pretty close to it at least. Next regularly scheduled meeting is July 21st. Just to check any other business. Not seeing any. Do we have a motion to adjourn?

Motion.

Second. If there's no objection, this meeting is concluded at 728pm. Thank you.