Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

i say we redo chair discussions if they couldn't hear anything sure sure you guys i mean you guys have any any comments or discussions with regard to the uh the chairman nomination did anyone make a nomination if you couldn't hear us um commissioner kelly and commissioner cyrus were both nominated for chair And we had brief comments, and then we voted or offered a vote, which we can redo if you'd like. The three people that were present voted in favor of Chair Cyrus. I abstained. Do you guys have a differing opinion?

Is this a time that we would vote? Are you like, are you asking for us to participate in the vote or.

So would you like, let's just redo it since you guys couldn't, couldn't hear what we were doing.

Sorry. Okay.

What's that?

Oh, sorry.

Go ahead.

Just redo.

Okay. Let's just, let's redo it. So, um,

I, Commissioner Williams, moved to reappoint Chair Cyrus as chair.

Commissioner Hofkamp nominated Commissioner Kelly as chair.

And then you speak up.

And did either of you have additional nomination you'd like to make?

Not additional. Second.

Okay. Remaining. So, go ahead.

I think I'll speak.

And then folks actually... Assuming she still wants to.

Yeah, no, then I spoke up, and although I was honored by the nomination, I expressed that I would prefer Chair Cyrus to continue as chair.

And at that point, we closed nominations, and we had a... which we'll vote again. So all those in favor of Commissioner Cyrus, say aye. Aye. Aye. Raise your hand. OK. All those in favor of Commissioner Kelly? OK. It appears the election is the same as before. So I have been reappointed as chair for the coming season and will reopen nominations for vice chair.

And I move to appoint Commissioner Kelly as vice chair.

And I offered Commissioner Stockcamp as a nominee. And is there anything? Would you guys like to nominate anyone? OK. Is there another motion to close the nominations?

Move to close.

All those in favor say aye. Of closing? Yeah, of closing. Aye. All right. Aye. So would those who would like to elect Commissioner Kelly as vice chair, please raise your hands.

Aye.

Looks like three. Okay. All those in favor of Commissioner Stockkamp, please raise your hand. OK, it appears Commissioner Kelly is our new vice chair. Congratulations. And the sign's already in front of her. So with that, I think we're ready for the next item on the agenda, which is the approval of the minutes from December 11. Is there a motion to that effect?

I move to approve.

Is there a second? It's been moved and seconded to approve the minutes of December 11. Is there any discussion? All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries. Public comments. Are there any comments? Since we have nobody in the room, is there anyone online who has any comments they'd like to present not pertaining to anything on the agenda? Is there anyone online? Great. Thank you. All right. Action items. We have a work session, 2026 Housekeeping Text Amendments, presented by Kyle Collins, Senior Planner. You're up.

Good evening, Commissioners. For the record, Kyle Collins, Senior Planner. I'm going to share my screen here. little presentation to help us walk through this. So as Chair Cyrus pointed out here tonight to present a work session on a series of text amendments. These are housekeeping text amendments. I think maybe all of the commissioners at this point have gone through at least one round of this. Maybe not Commissioner Kelly might be the only exception. But you've listened previously. So just as kind of a general snapshot, we try to do these annually at least once a year. Sometimes it's a little longer than that. But in essence, these are a series of errors to the code that we're trying to correct, updates and things like state and federal laws that need – subsequent updates within our local code to maintain compliance with those new laws. And then finally, we're also allowed some latitude to change the code in insignificant ways just to help it function more smoothly as we're talking to customers across the street who are submitting. So really, those are the three big buckets of things that fall into housekeeping. Most of these don't require any major policy choices. These are just technical edits, so to speak. I'll try to go through these relatively quickly, just as like high-level overviews. You obviously have a more detailed accounting in your memo attached, spelling out what these are individually, and you can see the specific edits and strike out and underline. We, as with all of our text amendments and hearings processes, we have a project website that contains the full record for all the materials. You can see it on the screen right here. So if you have any interest in public comments or et cetera, those will ultimately be held at the website. Right now, it's really just the application materials for the most part and noticing to some of our state agencies. So some background, as I stated earlier, these are, again, just intended to correct errors, reinstate omissions from the code, and reflect updates to state and federal law. There are some minor impacts to some permitted uses and use standards, but generally those are things that are in alignment with state statutes or federal standards. And because these are required changes to maintain compliance in most cases or just to correct those omissions, there's no state statutes or administrative rules at the state level or land use goals that actually apply to these. So unlike things where there might be a policy choice, These are not ones where we have to go through each of the statewide Oregon land use goals in essence to implement these changes. So on the screen you can see all of the affected chapters of the Jutes County Code that would be affected by these proposed amendments. I'm not going to go through each of these in detail. It's just to give you a general sense of we're affecting quite a few areas across both our Title 18 and Title 19. Those are the main chunks of our code that deal with land use and planning. So the first big bucket of proposed amendments are just those scriveners and reference errors. These are usually things that happen with previous edits in the code where references become misaligned. And so they point to either things that just don't exist in our code or to the incorrect portions of our code. And so it doesn't make sense in terms of implementation. We have three sets of these. They're relatively minor. Most of the time, they're just changes to the actual letter references in different sections of the code. The next big bucket of items I'll talk about are changes to state and federal law. The first one I'll discuss is House Bill 2809 that passed in 2021 allowed the establishment of temporary dwelling units in recreational vehicles if a property is damaged by a natural hazard event. So we actually passed that relatively soon after that House Bill was in effect. However, in 2023, House Bill 2898 actually extended the approval window for those allowed uses. It was previously only allowed for two years, and that's now been extended up to five years. And so we effectively just edited our code to maintain compliance with that new state statute. And additionally, we've added this use into our Title 19 areas. We have a few zones that aren't governed by the largest portion of our code. Mostly these are areas adjacent to the city of Bend. You can think of like the Westside Transect Zone or our urban area reserve zones. We neglected to include this as a use in those areas. And so this just instates that use in alignment again with state statute. The next big section of code that I'll talk about is the ORS that deals with recreational vehicles that are established inside either manufactured dwelling parks, recreational vehicle parks, or mobile home parks. There's a standard of state law that says local governments cannot prohibit or set a time limitation for people that are residing in recreational vehicles as long as they're inside one of these three specified uses. We actually had a section of our code that limited RV dwellings effectively in these areas for no more than 30 days in any 60-day period. And again, to maintain compliance with state rule, that's been stricken out of our code. So as long as you are in an RV in a recreational vehicle park, for example, or a manufactured dwelling park, you can stay in that place for as long as you'd like. There's no limitations in state law on that. Next section I'll talk about actually deals with the most recent set of housekeeping amendments that we passed back in 2024. We went through a pretty big update dealing with residential homes and residential facilities to maintain some alignment with state law that had gotten out of sync over the years. Residential homes and facilities are effectively like treatment facilities for adults that are run out of residential uses, whether those are single unit dwellings, duplexes, multi-unit dwellings in some cases. And the difference between residential homes and facilities is really just the cap on the number of persons that's actually receiving treatment in those. The state government has decided that these uses, they want to expedite as much as possible and allow effectively in all zones that allow residential uses. And so we are required to allow those in any place where we allow general residential development, which is most zones in Deschutes County. And so we actually went through and made sure to include those uses across all of our zones in the most recent housekeeping effort. However, in trying to maintain alignment with state statute, we actually unintentionally removed residential facilities from some of those zones. It's just an oversight. It's a lot of things to keep track of as we're going through these kind of technical edits. And so this new set of amendments would reinstate those uses where they were unintentionally excluded in the last round of housekeeping. And then finally, rather than take the chapter-specific approach, which is what we decided to do last time, where we're referencing either residential home or residential facility or both in every instantiation of a new zone, we decided just to have a one-stop shop in our code that is effectively a table that lists all the zones where residential homes and facilities can be allowed and under what standards they're allowed within those particular areas. Goal of doing that is just to make the code more readable. And again, if not one stop shop, the hope is that if anybody were looking to establish one of these uses, they would know exactly where to go in our code and see specifically the standards that would be applicable. Next section that deals with this is we went through a recent set of text amendments. I think the planning commission is probably aware of this that deals with temporary hardship dwellings. We needed to conform our local code again with state law changes and have some consistency with how we reviewed temporary hardship dwellings across all areas of our county. Temporary hardship dwellings, as the Planning Commission might be aware, these are intended as temporary dwelling units that are established on properties that already contain a dwelling unit, usually to provide care to either an aging family member, someone that requires some medical assistance, etc. And there's a carve-out specifically in state law that allows these temporary uses to be established on site for the duration of time that that care is required. As a part of that recent series of updates to these standards to match state law, we determined that we needed to actually add this into our Title 19 areas. Again, those are those areas, those few zones that we have surrounding the city limits have been, but we were far enough into the process that we didn't actually have time to include those. And so this new set of amendments would simply add those uses and describe the standards that temporary hardship dwellings are approved within our Title 19 zones. The next big set of amendments that I'll discuss actually deals with changes in federal law. This is something that has been forthcoming for a while. It's just taken a few different steps to get here. So back in 2012, the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act, which was otherwise known as the Spectrum Act when it was passed – was passed at the federal level, and the whole goal of the passage of this act was to reduce barriers to telecommunication facilities across the country. It seemed like a lot of local jurisdictions had rules on the books that were getting in the way of establishment of things like cell towers or co-location of antennas on existing cell towers in those areas. So this federal legislation was intended to streamline those efforts and remove local barriers where possible to a lot of these more simple requests. Most of them are for things like co-location of antennas on existing infrastructure. So this doesn't deal with things like the establishment of new telecommunication facilities. It's basically just if one company says, I want to stick some antennas on another company's tower, they're allowed to do so with relatively minimal input from us as the local government. We've actually had our rules in place in Deschutes County to deal with exactly what the federal requirements of us are. For the last several years, if someone has come in for something like a co-location facilities request, we have been approving them under the federal standards. This is just instantiating exactly that language within our local code so that everybody knows if you're applying for something like a co-location of an antenna, there's federal standards that apply and basically says we have a specific duration of time that we have to approve those and we can't deny them. We effectively have to let these developments move forward in a timely manner. The only other thing associated with this is, again, we wanted to add in some specific language to our Title 19 areas just to make sure. We didn't previously have any language dealing with telecommunication facilities in the Title 19 zones. So this just spells out specifically, again, under those provisions that are covered by the SpectraMAC, regardless of what zone you're in in Deschutes County, including the Title 19 areas, you're governed by the federal statutes, and we have to approve those types of requests. The final thing that I'll discuss is what I'll describe as a miscellaneous ad. This is not something that was mandated by a state law change, and it's not technically something like a Scrivener's error, but it does require some changes in our code to maintain sort of an orderly functioning ad. Chair Cyrus pointed this out earlier, but there's a little bit of confusion within our Title 19 zones and who the appropriate review body for certain quasi-judicial or legislative matters are. We make reference to the Planning Commission in Title 19, but in these areas, that actually means something very different than the DeJuice County Planning Commission. So the current definition of Planning Commission for Title 19 zones is actually the Planning Commission of the Bend Urban Area, which was a body that was set up zones were established many years ago and the goal was much as yourself as the planning commission to review development applications and and make recommendations ultimately to the deschutes county board of commissioners that body has not been functional for quite some time um never in my tenure of being here coming up on 10 years now has it been functional and so it's really just been sort of sitting around as a relic of of these zones when it actually was a functional review body and had some some role in guiding development in these areas And given that it's not a functional review body, you see the conundrum. We don't know exactly who the review body should be in these sort of limited instances where they're specifically called out in the code. And so in order to align our Title 19 and Title 18 areas where we do have specific direction on who reviews these matters, we are replacing all of those references to the planning commission, to the planning director or hearings body. That's exactly the language we use in all of our Title 18 areas. And planning director or hearings body is specifically defined as either a Deschutes County hearings officer, Obviously, the planning directors called out the Deschutes County Planning Commission or the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners. Those are really the three big arms, depending on the specific request under which somebody would review those proposals. And then given that defunct status of planning commission, that definition has actually been stricken from the Title 19 areas. And we've just pulled in that broader conception of planning director hearings body with those parties that I outlined earlier. Does that answer your question from earlier, Chair Cyrus? Yes. That's the full scope of all the amendments we have here today. So agency comments, we've only had one to date. It's from our senior transportation planner, Tarek Rawlings. He's reviewed these proposals and proposed amendments in detail and has determined that they comply with our transportation planning rule, given that we don't anticipate any impacts to transportation facilities or traffic impacts associated with any of these changes. We have not received any public comments to date. That's uncommon given that we very rarely receive public comments for our housekeeping amendments. But finally, next up on the docket, given that this is a work session, we'll actually have a formal public hearing. I'll go through all of these in detail again, but obviously at that time there'll be an opportunity for public comment if anyone wants to chime in on these proposals. And that'll be at the Planning Commission's next meeting on February the 12th. that I'll take any questions that you might have.

Thanks. Any questions? Commissioner Williams.

Just a couple of them. And the first one might seem a little silly. It was in the parking section. What does POD mean? Like park on dirt? Or it was parking? P-O-D?

That's a great question that I don't know the answer to offhand.

OK. It was maybe near like, it was in the section that had like parking adjacent street, parking adjacent river, and then parking POD was its own little section, but I didn't quite understand it. And it talked about paved non-dusty. So I was just curious what POD meant.

That's a great question and one I can certainly get an answer from.

Okay and then my just my one second question is so with the emergency housing RVs, what if an HOA say River Meadows has something stricter, does emergency dwelling override an HOA's bylaws? Or CC&Rs or whatever.

That is a great question. I think that is ultimately something that would depend on the result of somebody challenging this particular rule and code in a court setting, a litigation setting. All this does, that passage of that House bill, is remove specific local land use rules and state rules that would have disallowed this use and says local governments have to allow the establishment of RVs as an emergency housing type in the event of a natural disaster of some kind. If a specific neighborhood has something written, for example, into their CCNRs that disallows that use – That falls outside of the realm of land use law and planning. It falls more into kind of civil actions and things that would need to be addressed outside of us as local government administering rules.

Thank you.

Of course. Commissioner Hofkamp. Just a question on process. Uh, next steps are for the hearing here, um, you mentioned already, and then pending what happens in that hearing and so forth. What are next steps subsequent to that?

Next steps would just be you making a recommendation on the proposal, um, to the board of commissioners. And then ultimately I'll take this exact same set of amendments to the board and they'll have their own hearing probably sometime in March, I would guess, maybe, maybe late February. Okay.

You know, this is just an editorial comment here, maybe, but, again, a suggestion. This is another one of these areas where, in the name of efficiency, because these are housekeeping amendments and because we're conducting a public hearing, a suggestion, again, if anyone's interested to pass it upstream to the commission, I'm probably not going to do that myself, that if the commission was so inclined to give us that authority to sort of be the decider here, might save some time, staff time, their time, if we were inclined to take that off their plates for these kind of routine matters, updates, compliance with state law, federal law, housekeeping, cleaning up language, and so forth. It seems like one of those areas, but I'm not dying on my sword about that, falling on my sword. Just, again, a suggestion, but thanks for that opportunity.

Thank you. Mark, or Commissioner Stockcamp.

Yeah, I had a Title 19 question for Kyle. So I appreciated what the update was for the planning commission with that being crossed out as a definition. I was just curious because planning commission is used in a couple other, like within the definitions, like even like under hearing initial, it says by the hearings officer planning commission. Should that be changed to county planning commission then? Because is that what it's referring to since planning commission has been struck out as a definition? Yeah. There's just a couple throughout there. So I wasn't sure if we just need to add county to it or if planning commission just needs to be stricken then everywhere. So to me, it just it makes it a little confusing when the definition for planning commission is struck out. So just wanted to raise that.

We're planning director.

I'm sorry.

Or planning director hearings body or planning director.

Correct. Yeah. So if you look in specifically the included the new definitions to the Title 19 areas where we've gotten rid of planning commission, it's kind of buried there.

midst of there.

We actually made edits to hearings body. And in this case, we've removed planning commission from there, but county planning commission is actually still listed. So as long as county planning commission remains in the hearings body definition, then that is kind of the obvious reference internally in the code.

Yeah, but the ones below it, like hearing initial, that should be county planning commission instead of just planning commission since that's stricken from it.

We can easily include that.

Yeah, just a small detail. And then it's used in a couple other definitions. So that was all I want to throw out there. So thank you.

Of course. Any other comments?

Great.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

No. Do you have any next item on the agenda? Comments? Unless you have any comments?

I can provide one comment that's sort of an exciting one. So last week, the Deschutes County Board of Commissioners voted to pass new wildfire mitigation building codes for all new residential development in the county. They'll actually have second reading on that proposal next Wednesday, and it'll come into effect as of April 1st of this year. Obviously, the Planning Commission had an opportunity to review that proposal back in December. That's been a priority of the board for... So it's been a long time coming. It's been on our work plan for quite a while. And obviously we've been waylaid by efforts at the state level. So that felt like a successful outcome. Great.

Thank you.

Good evening, your planning manager, Will Groves. Kyle's also working on our next update to our clear and objective modules. We've been talking about this for a while. This one has to do with multifamily housing. That's largely baked and will probably be the next thing that you'll see coming before you with those changes with significant edits to the code. Again, under the previous philosophy of trying to create an apples to apples clear and objective path without minimizing policy choices. Something we've been discussing internally is that some of these standards are really developed for a rural county. And as we think forward to our towns like Tumalo and Terrebonne having sewer and maybe seeing more intense development, that it might be worth revisiting those standards. But that would be a separate project that would involve community engagement. This is really trying to be a policy neutral effort to ensure legal compliance with state statute. Also of interest is that there's a transition, administrative transition going on for our natural resources department. So following departure of our county forester, admin has signaled to CDD that a longstanding goal of moving that department to CDD to take advantage of our But it's our infrastructure, you know, we're a larger organization, Natural Resources is a three-person organization that deals with community wildfire protection plans, project wildfire, grant funding associated with that, a lot of coordination on wildfire issues as well as noxious weeds. And so that will be coming over to our shop soon. And I'm waiting for admin currently to develop a job description for the county forester who will now be the natural resources program manager. And I'll be leading a recruitment for that. Although they'll be housed in planning, they won't become part of the planning staff effectively. This is really just to provide them a place where they have access to our financial management, computer resources, office supplies, all these things that We're kind of difficult for a three person organization to manage as a standalone that will have, I think, some significant synergies in CDD. Look forward to working with them on future topics. You know, we've discussed previously, you know, certainly the R327 building hardening standards that the board's working on, working on doing second reading on. The next thing that follows on from that is questions about defensible space. And so the state fire marshal is in the process of developing model code for defensible space. And it looks like from the draft, it's going to be voluntary and has a lot of options in there. So one of the things you'll see us doing in this coming year is returning to the board and asking them if and how they want to engage with that. Certainly defensible space, and particularly the first five feet around your building, but in addition, kind of radiuses out of there. The benefit apparently from reductions in vegetation to protect yourself from wildfire and the question about how and if the board wants to engage with that to try to encourage education, outreach, marshalling the variety of departments and organizations that touch that, as well as consideration of maybe regulatory approaches at the county level. uh will be brought before them for exploration so this is a just kind of a broad outline of a project at this point um and we're really going to come what you'll see next is us coming back to the board for some guidance in that space once they uh once they get past the r327 standards great thank you thank you peter

Just to build up the natural resources section piece. Um. And although the natural resources section doesn't necessarily under the strict kind of confines of. Land use, um, I think it might it will be appropriate to introduce them to the planning commission. You are our citizen involvement arm. and um i'm even what was there was that there was that old for those of us who were a little older there was that basf commercial you know we don't we don't make the clothes you wear we make the clothes you wear brighter so i'm hoping better remember that like that make it better better not brighter make it better but they yeah so So, under that, uh, metaphor, I think, uh, housing, the natural resource section. Uh, we can, I think, give them the space to to operate autonomously as as we'll noted. But I also think we can, we might be able to help elevate what they do. Um. And the you know, this is all kind of real-time brainstorming, but a presentation from their team on the front end, you know, so they don't have to stay, you know, and have a a extremely long day. But it would not be an opportunity to let the planning commission know of of the work that they're doing and You know, we have many planning commissioners who represent certain regions of our county and sharing that information. We're going to see cross-pollination. And so stay tuned. I think it would be an important and informative overview. They do it all the time. So that's something that I think is important. So that'll happen in the next month or two. Very quickly, I want to recognize not only Tracy Griffin, but Amir Zavadi, who is our assistant planner, who's been with us for a few months, who's getting trained as a backup when Adam Bale isn't here to help with audio video resources. So, Amir, we're grateful that you're here and want to just recognize you in front of the Planning Commission. And thanks for spending part of your evening with us. Two more things. I sent the Planning Commission Um, a copy of the annual groundwater protection report, and in that communication kind of highlights that pertain to, uh, Senate 1154, which is, uh, legislation that gives the department of environmental quality in coordination with their commission, the environmental quality commission. If they, uh, find it's necessary to declare, uh, they have the ability to declare. to declare what's called a groundwater quality concern area. If they were to do that, it elevates state resources that can be deployed in an area that is given such a declaration. And just as a reminder, if such a declaration is made, it waives Goal 11 exceptions. And so, you know, in Southern Deschutes County, there's for years, there's been a conversation, you know, we want all options on the table, not just on-site wastewater. So not trying to get ahead of the board, not trying to get ahead of the planning commission or the community for that matter, but just that legislation was significant. It's on the heels of the controversy and the complexity that is often in the newspaper about what's happening in the lower Umatilla Basin, which is a groundwater management area, and they're dealing with significant nitrate loading from a different source from agriculture. But that was one of three circumstances that were worth highlighting. There's been some rule changes with the Department of Environmental Quality that help strengthen the kind of regulatory oversight and processing and coordination that comes when counties like ours are requiring what are called alternative treatment technology systems. These are those advanced septic systems that treat nitrates on a higher level um these this rulemaking it hasn't happened in a long time really since the inception of when this type of technic technology was allowed to be utilized large part due to the work that's uh deschutes county did with deq and the usgs decades ago as part of the U.S. EPA national demonstration project. So I wanted to highlight that opportunity, or not opportunity, but that outcome. And then lastly, as I noted, Deschutes County owns property in the Newberry neighborhood. The Planning Commission is aware of that. the sale of that property goes directly into a discrete fund for groundwater protection. And we, I left a message with our property manager, but There every expectation is there's going to be a, there's a prospective purchasers agreement that is being signed for 1 of the 2 quadrants and neighborhood to quadrant 2 D. And there's some conditions as noted in my communication. I've got to get the tentative plat submitted, ignored, approved, acknowledged, and they want to. developer wants to um ensure that their civil engineering drawings are are consistent with public works our public public works design standards but it's quite possible that in 10 months there could be seven figures over a million dollars in this fund that would then be reinvested into southern deschutes county with input from the board of county commissioners So it's a really exciting opportunity. We haven't been in this position really ever because there's been so much work. And at first, investing in the Newberry neighborhood, getting it value polish, which is not the developer, by the way, was the one that really invested in what's called Crescent Creek. And and so that was the third piece. It's still. some real potential momentum in Southern Deschutes, but I mean, I just wanted the Planning Commission to be aware of it. You know, these issues, you know, will likely be prominent topics, you know, when the long-range planning team is has completed the tarabon community plan as this planning commission knows the revisitation and updating newberry country uh area plan is on our work plan so um again these are these are noteworthy circumstances that will certainly uh be prominent topics you know when we engage in that process in the next couple of years I have one other topic just to talk about the Planning Commission and recruitment and appointment processes. Just being totally transparent, Chair Cyrus is for your term. um ends in july and excuse me in june and uh chair cyrus i hope it's okay just to acknowledge that you've expressed um interest in being reappointed to a second four-year term so this is pretty standard last year commissioner i think commissioner williams you know you went through that reappointment process it was very straightforward i'm assuming that will uh be the case just waiting for plan the board of county commissioner to provide direction i presume it'll be on a consent calendar as it has in the past And then, secondly, Commissioner Karras is winding out her two terms, and just we get to take advantage of her institutional knowledge and her service for the next approximately five months. um i wanted to let the planning commission know that in early february we'll initiate a recruitment for that redmond tarabon area we'll have a recruitment for a month and then we will i'll work with the board to determine how they want to go through that process in the past they've had the chair and the vice chair join you know, each member of the board in the past has been interested in the planning commission interview process. So Chair Cyrus, Vice Chair Kelly, if that just making you aware that as part of that interview process, if the three commissioners want to participate as they have in the past, the three of us, we would each be matched with a commissioner and we would go through the the finalists. And then you would provide input. I typically don't. And the board ultimately will make a decision on that vacancy. But wanted to let you know that recruitment is going to go out early next month. And then I will be coordinating with the board of commissioners in early march and we've got plenty of time uh interviews would likely happen in uh all things being equal in april um maybe with an appointment in may and then which would be effective on july 1st and then that commissioner elect could if they so chose could be in the audience or participate remotely just to Doan Nguyen, Get a sense of how the planning Commission is structured and functions, of course, we will onboard the plant that that new planning Commissioner as well, so. Doan Nguyen, Those were the items that I had i'll turn it back over to you, Mr chairman, or if you have any questions of me I I did provide a lot of information, but great to see you in in the new year so.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Any questions. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, hey Commissioner caris.

No, thanks for a quick meeting and I look forward to enjoying the next few months and I'll be sad to go, but I'm excited for a new person. So thank you.

Yeah, we're sad to see you leaving, but you got a few more months.

Yeah, I just want to thank Commissioner Cyrus for serving as our chair again. Thank Commissioner Kelly for being our vice chair this year. Just excited for another year serving on this team. So good to see you all again. Feels like it's been forever since our last meeting in mid-December.

Commissioner Hovkamp. Commissioner Williams.

So talking about having the natural resources come and talk with us, uh, my neighborhood is having a meeting the last Saturday with Firewise and, you know, being a South County, uh, resident in a very high fire, uh, area. If we ever have a really boring day, would we want to have Firewise talk? It's just purely a thought. We're looking to try to motivate some of the homeowners that have not hardened their properties against fire and in the hope that we can become a certified fire-wise community. So I don't know if that would be something we would ever be interested in. And then otherwise, awesome. Quick meeting. And congratulations, you two.

Commissioner Kelly. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. all of the individual firewise neighborhoods within deschutes county um so i think when they do come to speak to you they can obviously talk specifically about that program what it means um how many firewise communities who have and kind of what that certification process is so like when natural resources i i gathered uh peter that you meant that natural resources would talk to us so would project wildfire want to at that time talk to us as a planning commission So Project Wildfire is a collection of quite a few individuals. But the sort of head of Project Wildfire is the Deschutes County Forester. So previously that was Kevin Moriarty until his departure a couple weeks ago. I also serve as a part of that group. But the county forester, renamed natural resource position, whatever that ultimately winds up being, is likely to continue in leadership of that particular group. including specifically firewise certifications for neighborhoods, what that process looks like, what it means from kind of a local standpoint and from a national standpoint, frankly.

And I would say, Commissioner Williams, my thought was to introduce, it's a very small team, the team of, it's a trio, it's three people. So once that supervisor position is filled, I think it would be, my thought at this point is just set up an agenda and make sure it's not gonna overwhelm any particular agenda for that meeting, but to have them on the front end and have them introduce themselves you know, give a, give a sense of kind of what they touch. I mean, rope in Kyle, just as he, Kyle is the liaison for the community development department at one point decades ago, I was in that role too. So it's a, it's a, it's a community-based organization as, as, as you're likely aware. But I, like I said, I, I would like to, because they're part of the community development department family, I want them to be able to share. Yeah. what they do, how they do it. It will likely lead to an extraordinary discourse, which could lend itself to follow-up topics. We're not saying at all that they're going to be irregular, but because the Planning Commission is the citizen involvement arm, and I think maybe this is a blind spot, but we can't correct the past, but we can focus on the future, right? And the fact that they're in the department, I think, heightens what Kyle has been doing, leading the fire-hardening code amendments, the conversations that he and Will will be ultimately having with the board as a starting point about what it means for defensible space. We do natural hazard planning and a coordination role, you know, in the regular update plan. So it's just, I think we'll start there unless the Planning Commission has really strong opinions. But like I said, I think it's, I'm continuing... not just in front of the Planning Commission, but as we assimilate them into the Community Development Department, to bring them on so it's auspicious and they feel like they're integrated and part of the broader team. And then there's going to be this synergy, this cross-pollinization that will happen organically because of what Kyle Bruursema, most of what most of our divisions do on a regular basis, so that was the that was the spark that I started with a pun terrible but the spark that I wanted to introduce. Christopher McConkey, Great Thank you.

Christopher McConkey, Commissioner Kelly. Commissioner Kelly.

Commissioner Kelly. Thank you, Kyle for your presentation this evening housekeeping is always riveting. Commissioner Kelly. And thank you for another sign up for another year of leadership for Commission.

Thank you. And I'd like to offer a couple comments. I mean, once again, thank you everyone for a nice, efficient meeting. I think it's great that the Natural Resources team is going to be part of this. I think it's a much better fit and I could certainly see input from them on a much more regular basis on a lot of the different topics that we cover. I'm excited and I'm looking forward to having their expertise participates. I mean, I can think of a lot of the different topics we've covered over the last few years that I hadn't even thought about inviting them or encouraging them to come and give us input and it certainly would have been appropriate. So, I mean, even to the point where, you know, it might behoove us at some point in the future to even have a panel on wildfire with folks from the fire or both wild and on the, you know, band or some of the other community fire departments. Talk to us about issues that we probably should be aware of as we're making decisions going forward. So, like I say, I'm actually, it was kind of, when you mentioned they were coming over, there was kind of a, well, gee whiz, no brainer. I think it's a great idea. Also, I would like to thank Vice Chair Altman for her service this past year as Vice Chair and congratulate Commissioner Kelly on this upcoming year as Vice Chair. And with that, meeting adjourned.

Oh, man. I heard it was kind of crazy.