Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Can you hear me? I can hear you. Okay. I'm having trouble with my computer. So at any rate, I am here. So is everyone present that we need for a quorum? Looks like we have, like, yes. Okay. Okay, so I'm going to call the meeting to order at 6.03. And we'll do the Pledge of Allegiance.

Just a moment, Joanne, if we can make sure that the audio is on for the city.

Oh, okay.

And I do not believe, is it recording yet? I don't think so.

I thought I heard them turn it on.

Possibly.

Can someone from the city verify that you've got the recorder on?

Sorry, Joanne. We are now live. Just a chair, our former chair Overfield. Staff's going to lead the meeting while, since we don't have a current chair. So as soon as nominations are done, the chair will take over the meeting.

Okay. Okay. So very good. So

so you just want to open and then um take the nominations is that what you're that's correct so but we can start with the pledge of allegiance so will everyone please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I will now call roll. Cybele Nguyen?

Present.

Joanne Overfield?

Present.

Tom Green. Present. Andrew Hardisey. Present. Nick Franchovich. Present. Layla Church.

Present.

Carla Lenore, Illinois.

Present.

Thank you all, we have a quorum. Our next part on the agenda, we'll be doing the nominations. So tonight we need to do a chair and vice chair appointments. And we need a motion for the chair. So first we'll start with the chair and then do vice chair. Do we have any motion for chair?

You just need a motion to start the nomination. Is that what you're calling for?

Calling for a nomination for the planning commission chair position.

Okay.

Motion for Joanne Oliverfield to be chair.

Agreed.

Can we have a nomination for John O'Field to be the chair? Do we have official second?

Second Carly Lenoir.

All those in favor of John O'Field as a chair, please signify by saying yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes. Hi. Hi. I hear a unanimous vote. So Chair Overfield is going to join Overfield as the chair for this year's Planning Commission. Do we have a motion for Vice Chair?

I'd like to nominate Tom Green.

We have a nomination for Tom Green. Do we have a second?

I'd like to nominate myself. Commissioner Church.

And Commissioner Church would also like to nominate herself as the vice chair. So we have two nominations. Commissioner Green, would you accept the vice chair?

Yes, I'd accept.

OK. I don't know how to handle two votes.

We don't normally have two.

Okay. So, I guess we'll, well, I'll do it this way. Well, Commissioner Green, do you want to provide the Planning Commission as a reason why you want to be chair before we take official votes?

Yeah, I could do that. I was not prepared for this moment. I've been on the commission now, I believe it's been five. Maybe this is my sixth year. I also have a lot of experience in meetings with Robert's Rules and such. So I feel like just my past history plus a little bit of professionalism, I can fill that role.

Thank you. Commissioner Church, would you like to provide a statement of why you would like to be vice chair?

I'd like to be vice chair because I've been a resident here for more than two years now, and I'm very passionate about uniting our community and speaking up for resilience planning. I think that's really important. It should be at the forefront of a lot of our planning measures. And I also want to see more cross collaboration across the different boards here at the city of Edgewood. So planning commission working with the economic development board as well. And there's other things that I would like to have the staff work on, and I'd like to be able to advocate for that more too. And I strongly believe that whoever is elected to chair or vice chair will be a great representative for our community. I just hope that they are present and available for what our growing community needs.

Thank you. With that, we will do a vote for the first motion and then for Mr. Green and then a second one for Commissioner Church. So all those in favor of Commissioner Green being the vice chair, please say aye.

Aye. Aye.

I hear three votes all in line. Same vote for Commissioner Church. Can I get an aye for her position as Vice Chair?

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Um, yes, you could have, uh, commissioner, uh, new, new gen, uh, sorry. You win. Yes. As asking to abstain, which I guess is your choice that case. We have a tie. Um, I actually don't know what to do with the next steps in that case.

Uh, I. Can I speak for a moment? This is Commissioner Green. I will rescind and I would gladly let Ms. Church be second chair for this year.

Thank you. So we'll just do a final vote then for Planning Commissioner Church being the vice chair for this year's Planning Commission. You all say aye or nay.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. All right. Hearing none, let's vote. So Commissioner Church is now the Vice Chair. Now I pass the agenda over to Chair Overfield. Chair Overfield, do you actually have a copy of the agenda?

Yes, I have it on my phone. So we need it. We are having a public hearing on the West Valley Highway Comp Plan. Is that correct?

That is correct.

Okay. So I will open that public hearing at 6.12. And I don't know, Josh, are you going to speak?

Yes, Chair. Just to provide some additional context for the public, a public hearing is a one-way communication that allows citizens to present testimony on a specific topic for the Planning Commission's consideration in their decision-making process. Please frame your testimony as a statement of fact or opinion rather than a question. When it is your turn to speak, those attending in person should approach the podium. While virtual attendees should raise their hand option in Zoom. I will call you or the chair will call you when it's your turn. Please clearly state your name for the record. You will then have five minutes to speak. Staff will first do a presentation. Okay. All right, this public hearing is for the West Valley Highway Rezone Comprehensive Plan Amendment. As an overview of the annual docket process, City Council made final docket action in February 2024, approving two items to be reviewed on the annual docket, the West Valley Rezone, which is item one, and Shrove Rezone, item two. Staff has reviewed the application materials and did the complete the SEPA review. We are now having the Planning Commission hearing and recommendation steps. After that, after Planning Commission provides their recommendation, we go to City Council for review about the staff report decision and the recommendation from Planning Commission. They do have an option to hold a second public hearing. The City Council does have to make final action on the two items by the end of this year. And here's a review of the timeline. On your screen is the area map showing the West Valley Highway Amendment and Rezone. It is the properties along West Valley. On the far right, there's a little insert that zooms into the area in question, highlighted, outlined in the dash. This is a vicinity map showing the neighboring cities' zoning districts. Let me see if I can... Where my cursor is right now is the city of Pacific. They have commercial and... What was the other one? office park. And then Sumner is below that and has got the industrial center and light manufacturing. Those are the zones from the nearby cities that abut the West Valley Highway area. From the land use study that was done in 2025, the following maps are provided to provide additional context to the area. The image on their left is the utility providers showing the orange is the Mountain View Edgewood Water, the yellow is City of Sumner, and the Blank or not colored space actually isn't provided any water and need wells. Um, although we've had contacts with city of Pacific. And city of summer regarding those areas as well. The middle map is your critical areas map. The yellow, which takes up most of the colors, is steep slopes of around 20% to 40%. There is some additional red that's greater than 40% slope. And we do have wetlands and streams in the area. This is just showing context. Those areas, regardless of what it's re-zoned as, will need to meet critical area standards. So just because it's rezoned to something doesn't mean it suddenly gets out of these standards. It still hasn't made it regardless. And this last map is that development limitations map, basically combining them all. That shows the brown showing areas that are highly limited for development based on the steep slopes and critical areas. And then green shows areas that could potentially be developed being a little bit flatter. And then we have gray areas that have already been developed in that area. So what is Vaping Pros? So alternative one is to redesignate the comprehensive plan feature land use map and current zoning map designations within the West Valley overlay area from residential and commercial to industrial as recommended in the 2025 West Valley Highway final land use study. The proposal would redesignate about 185 acres from residential to industrial and 23 acres from commercial to industrial, but leave the 30 acres to public zone property. As a reminder to the public on this, This rezone was actually discussed last year and was part of the amendment process last year. We did receive some public comments from the agencies, which I'll discuss later here in this slide, that had staff recommend its removal from the docket just so we can address those comments. So in the meantime, applicants did, I believe up to seven, did apply for this rezone. to continue the process go through so the city has a second alternative being proposed is same as alternative one but including a live new limited industrial overlay show loaded on this map by having the purple diagonal hashing the limited industrial overlay would change some of the permitted uses so it would allow for parking lots make sure the commercial parking lots semi-parking then it would for conditional use allow for limited manufacturing and storage and warehousing so this conditional use would require a public hearing and a decision by the hearing examiner so it wouldn't be a staff decision And then some of the proposed prohibited uses from industrial that would be limited in this area would be gas stations, heavy manufacturing, where our storage is over 50,000 square feet, waste management services, and sexually or entertainment. So we received notice of application public comments, which are provided in Exhibit G. Generally, there are a number of comments that would discuss a variety of topics. We try to summarize it here for the presentation, but the comments are all provided in the exhibit sheet. Generally, with general noise, light, traffic, and air quality concerns, reduction in property values, concern regarding traffic, noise, lighting, and air quality impacts. We did get one or two comments that said the corridor is no longer compatible with a residential neighborhood. So staff's general response to this is staff's proposing alternative to limit the industrial uses. We did a super review that provided the mitigation measures to mitigate some of the public concerns. And then generally as projects are submitted for actual development, we were doing code compliance reviews. So we'd be making sure it meets landscaping design standards, critical area standards at time of development. So just to provide you a quick SEPA review, SEPA was issued on July 26th, 2026, or sorry, July 26th, 2026, with the following mitigation measures. 100-foot minimum natural buffer along the west edge of the overlay area on the image here on your screen. There's a green line. We measured out 100 feet from that west boundary, and that would have to be maintained as a natural buffer and not developed. additionally it requires a future development requires project specific noise studies so each project industrial type project would be required to submit a noise study and that noise study would have to look at the impacts that project would have on its surrounding neighbors a 20-foot landscape buffer with solid screening required between proposed industrial uses and existing adjacent residential uses which is greater than what our current code requires and then design review for any commercial industrial to ensure compliance with the status curl areas and site layout etc a comprehensive plan amendment requires a planning commission to make findings and city council to also either accept and make those similar findings on whether the pros amendment conforms with the growth management act is consistent with the 2024 comprehensive plan That circumstances in the area have substantially changed since the adoption of the city's comprehensive plan. That the comprehensive plan assumptions are no longer valid or new information's available. And the proposed amendments reflect widely held values to the residents and to the city. As identified in the comp plan, this area was identified for a special land use overlay study. That's why we did the 2025 land use study that was provided in the packet that looked at a variety of different zones that could be rezoned to and what would be the most appropriate. The full evaluation of what the The findings of these criteria is provided in the staff report. However, they're not final and we'll be working with the planning commission to finalize those findings based on their recommendation. So. um unfortunately this is staff recommendation but the better way to say this is if planning commission does want to move forward with this rezone staff would recommend alternative to um it's unfortunately it's a show over i'm apologizing now that's this show over it should be west valley um a comprehensive zone so staff's open to the planning um planning commission's recommendation but we would recommend if you do decide to move forward going with alternative to And that would be it for the staff presentation.

Someone that wishes to, if there's someone that wishes to speak, they should speak then.

If you're in attendance, want to speak to the West Valley Highway rezone that you just heard, please step up to the podium. If you're online, please raise your hand.

Is there someone online?

Yes, there is one online. Let me... Heather, you should now be able to speak. You have five minutes.

Can you guys hear me? Hello? Yes.

Yes, we can hear you.

Okay. I am one of those people who did agree with the change of changing it from from residential to commercial because it creates more job opportunity. It increases the tax revenue, helps the local economy. So I'm just giving my input on having it. It should change from a residential to commercial or industrial, sorry.

Okay, would you state your name and address for the record, please?

Yeah, it's Heddle, Adjudea. Address is 1618 West Valley Highway East in Edgewood.

Okay, thank you. Okay, is there anyone else who would wish to comment?

We have one member of staff walking up.

Okay, please state your name and address.

Sorry, my name is Michael. My address is 1, 2, 7, 2, 7, 32nd street East and Edgewood. I should note that I own some parcels that are in the affected area. Although the parcels I own are quite steep slope and probably not developable. And I would just like to say I understand the motivation for this. I agree that the corridor is no longer suitable for residential development. And in fact, I was formerly on the Planning Commission and participated when we resumed it from residential to make commercial possible there. um I would say that if if we do proceed with a rezone it's extremely important that we have adequate protections for people who live in the area against noise light and other pollution like that I see that has been touched on in the staff presentation but I would just like to reinforce that point that we already those of us who live up on the hill like Commissioner Overfield does, that we already have considerable issues with noise and light pollution from the development down in the valley, and we don't want to make that worse. So that would be my main comment is let's make sure we have strong protections against those kinds of environmental influences and interferences with people who live in the area. Thank you.

I do want to, let me share my screen real quick, just for the record. We did receive a public comment from Steven Jaworski, requesting to be excluded from the property rezone of the area. This has been printed out and provided in person, but for the planning commissioners online, we'll be providing that, We can provide that via email. But just wanted for the record to include that this comment has been provided. So I'll just slowly go through it just for the record. I'll scroll through it.

Okay.

Thank you. And then we also were notified from the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department that they will be providing a comment letter tomorrow. They had staff outs and weren't able to meet the deadline today. We will still provide that to the Planning Commission, but it's up to the Planning Commission to decide if they'll take that into consideration because it's outside the public comment period. And we have another hand online. Laura, you're able to speak.

Yeah. Hey, can you hear me?

Yes.

Yeah. My name is Kevin Singh. I'm a property owner on 830 West Valley Highway, Edgewood. And I would like to state that I am in support of the rezone. However, I do want to make sure that all of our neighbors are taken care of and that there are adequate safeguards to kind of protect their interests as well. I know some of the concerns were regarding noise and kind of property values and things like that. So as long as everyone is taken care of in that regard, you know, I think this is a good initiative and I fully support the rezone to industrial. That is all.

Anyone else from the audience want to make a comment on the West Valley Highway Rezone? Yes, go ahead.

My name is John Tiemann. My wife and I live at 815 125th Avenue Court East in Edgewood. I think our property is right next to this area, although we're at the top of the hill. And it's frightening to me that you would consider doing this. and this rezone just opens the door to who knows what down the road and it's in my mind unconscionable to do that but the noise impacts the pollution impacts the traffic impacts and who knows what's going to happen it just I can't state strongly enough how much we oppose this. Thank you.

Okay, another call. Go ahead, sir.

My name is George Hulbert, 12418 8th Street East, Edgewood, Washington. Mine is more of a question than it is a complaint, but we have the road Jovita that intersects with West Valley Highway and it intersects with Highway 167, and I realize that Jovita is probably county and 167 is state, but that's already a jungle and a mess to get through. So if we allow further industrialization along West Valley Highway, how does the city interconnect with the other agencies to make sure that that intersection that we have is functional? It's not functional now most of the day, and this will only add more to it. And then you look at what's going on in Sumner, They have that huge warehouse that is being built where the old golf course used to be, which will even add more traffic to that intersection. I go down that road, and sometimes you go through three or four lights. So imagine adding more industry to that one little intersection. That's my comment.

Anyone else for the West Valley Highway Public Rezone Amendment? Yes, ma'am.

Hi, my name is Cindy Casey. I live at 12415 8th Street East with these guys near these guys. Um, I reading through all the materials, I know you have intentions to address issues like noise and smells and such. I'm directly above this property. I don't know how you're going to stop a smell or noise coming up. You can't build a hedge. You can't build trees to stop it. There's already right below me, there's already a little industrial business that I hear noise from all the time, banging. And so I don't want more. I saved my life to buy this house with the view and just moved in a few years ago. And now this is going to happen. This isn't, if it were you and you're living right above it, just, It's not okay. It's going to impact property values. It's going to impact everything. So I really hope that there's, I hope it's declined. I hope that's an option, not just the second option, but declined altogether. It's just not okay. So my opinion.

Thank you. All right. We got another one.

Thank you. My name is Phil Cannell, and I live at 124198 Street East in Edgewood. I am Cindy's neighbor and right up above the property. I understand that you guys are pushing forward with it due to tax revenue benefits. I think that's probably the biggest reason. Mr. Singh said, you know, he wants to take care of it, so I'll do a noise study through the SEPA review. The noise study, okay, it meets the criteria. Who's going to police the noise study after it's zoned industrial? I've seen it happen. I've seen it happen more than once that, okay, it passes a noise study and gets louder and louder and louder, and it's like the business that's down below Cindy's, and hopefully it's It's a commercial business and non-industrial business. We can't see because there's a huge fenced area around it. But the noise from there is getting louder and louder and louder. And I really don't think it's a good idea to affect the neighbors along the valley.

We have another from the public.

Debi Maté, I live at 805-125th Avenue, Court East. I agree with all of them. When we moved into our home, I had a neighbor who said, if you turn your back to the highway, it sounds like the ocean. It no longer sounds like an ocean. It's awful. The traffic. I don't know how you're going to add more traffic to that area without it impacting... Worse than it already is. The banging, the clanging, the everything that's coming up from there. I get that we can't do anything about Sumner. But I'm right about that. I can't talk on my deck most of the time. When we have snow, I love it because it's finally quiet. I love my home. I love my view. I love Edgewood. I don't want this to be industrialized.

Last call. We got one more.

Well, I'm Skip Harris, and I live down at 2417 126 Avenue Court East. And I agree with everybody. It's very loud. It's backup alarms, LED lights. Uh, there's other issues you talk about bringing tax money and why don't know the bulk of that goes to the school by the time whatever's left comes to edgewood. How much is that? I don't know what that would be. What about the police? There's a crime down there. They got to leave edgewood. Go down there. There's only one way down jovita. That's an expense. So there's a lot of expenses, I think, to be considered as well as the quality of life that we want to preserve in edgewood. So That's my comment.

Thank you. Last call for West Valley Highway public hearing comments. Not seeing any more. Thank you.

Okay. Since there are no further comments, I thank the people who commented tonight, and I'm going to close the public hearing at 637. And so next we have public comment. If there's anyone in the audience that would like to make a public comment regarding anything not on the agenda, you can come up and state your name and address.

We have one walking to the podium right now. Okay.

Melissa Hollenbeck, 9722 36th Street East, Edgewood. I'm not here about West Valley, but I am here about issues that Edgewood has. And I love what you said about getting together and coordinating with planning and other departments or commissions. I'm here on behalf of nature, which the city seems to have forgotten about. My statement is for all Edgewood longtime residents. A rural community, small, valuing trees, parks, animals, and quality of life. Now we have an out-of-control development. It's changing the nature of our community. Example, 1 36th Street East on the west side has four new housing developments in the last 10 years. With no thought for nature preservation, No thought for traffic impacts. Just more housing at costs, which at any cost for more tax dollars. I want this commission to consider the items when considering future planning for a city of our size. Overcrowding of roads. 161 has two lanes now because we have had that impact. We tried to get Phil Fortnato to come to a meeting. He did. He said he'd try to help us get emergency funding to fix the road. They're in an EPA study. Who knows how much longer that's going to be down. We have air impacts because we have less trees. And these developments are some cases wiping out nature and old growth timber. And the air quality goes down. And if it's on the corridor and you wipe out 84 significant trees, which is one of the plans on five acres, which will be later this week if you want to speak on that. It's not edgewood when you start doing that. And you're going to put impervious surface at 60%. So guess what? There goes the ground too. And you guys are worried about global warming? Hello. Cover the ground with black asphalt. Let it get hot. Okay? So traffic mitigations on these roads in Edgewood on the 36th Street has one egress and one in and one out onto the road, right? It's a two-lane road, has no sidewalks, has irrigation on one side. And when you're putting that much development in the last 10 years on one side of 36th Street, and you're putting so many units of housing, we're talking over 300 more cars potentially on that small road with no mitigation because it runs into 161. They want to put a traffic circle. There's 2.5 million Edgewood doesn't have. And they're talking they need to plan and get another property to put a road in. So... All I'm saying is, like, we're not planning ahead strategically. Schools are going to be impacted with the multifamily housing, which is right past the church, that farm that was there, 10 acres. Yeah, that's going to have 13 buildings with six units each. Was 10 when the developer talked to us. Now it's 13. And right across the street, the Denison Platte. And that's five acres. And like I said, they're wiping 84 trees off. So they do have to replant, however. And that's what the city says. And I'm like, well, yeah, how many years is that going to take? And who's enforcing the replant? And I can only speak to my situation. D.R. Horton promised to preserve a plot of trees that is adjacent to my property line. It was about eight trees. And D.R. Horton said they'd keep them. They built the houses. House one and two were sold. There was no HOA set up like D.R. Horton said there would be. And then those eight trees went down because the city of Edgewood says if the tree is a hazard, we have to let them take it down. But there is no arborist report. There's no... logic to, you know, why were they kept there? The house is built and the plat was supposed to be preserved. It's on a preservation plat map. So I'm concerned that we're not doing our job here in Edgewood to preserve and protect our environment. And with the West Valley thing, think about all the streams and downstream runoff and wetlands and birds and fowl and I mean, I had a saw spike deer after D.R. Horton took two more lots down. So, like, there are animals in that area. There were before. It was 22 acres before D.R. Horton went in, the one I'm talking about that is abutting my property. So I don't know what else to say except that I would like to continue to have a rural community valuing trees and parks and animals and quality of life. And I think we need to really consider what we're doing here with planning before we become South Hill, which it's already starting to look like up here on Meridian. And I'm pretty sure no one in this room wants that. Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Anne Percival, 13021 56th Street East in Sumner Heights. I came to talk about the rezone in Sumner Heights, but I also would like to digress a bit and say something to the woman who just spoke, and that is, please come to our parks. meeting, our PrEP meeting. It's this Wednesday, 6 o'clock. We all would love to have more parks, more open space, and fewer homes and apartments. Now I'm going to talk about the rezone in Sumner Heights. I've lived in the same home for going on 50 years. It'll be 50 years next April. My first husband died and I decided, my children and I decided we wanted to stay. We live in a neighborhood that is neighborly. We have Christmas parties, get togethers at other times of the year. And we know each other. We're kind of like a family in a lot of ways. This rezone, bringing industrial to our residential area, It would bring traffic. It would lower home values. It's just it's not appropriate. You need to ask yourselves if you would like this in your neighborhood. And if our mayor would like it in his neighborhood, I'm quite sure he wouldn't or any of you would. And so think of it that way. We don't want it. We don't want it. We want to keep our neighborhood neighborly. And residential, I haven't really thought of edgewood as being rural for Oh, many, many years, I think of it more as being suburban. But being suburban requires some controls. It doesn't mean letting everybody do what they want, including developers. Yeah, thank you.

Go ahead. I'm Jim Fuller. I live on 11928 53rd Street, Port East. in Edgewood. I just have a couple of comments. One is I'd like to know what kind of traffic studies to mitigate the problems at the corner of West Valley and West Valley and where the old cannery is have been done. And are you working with the city of Sumner and Puyallup to mitigate those traffic problems that occur there? And that's all I have to say.

So is there anyone else that wishes to comment at this? Okay, go ahead.

I do. This is Karen Diego. I live at 131-2256 Street East in Edgewood. My husband and I, Sheldon Bowen, have comments to make about the new area that wants to become or I should say the old area that wants to become a developed business. Questions to the board this evening. What exactly will turning a substantial residential farm property located in one of Edgewood's most beautiful semi-rural areas rezoned to industrial do for the city of Edgewood? More taxes? Is subjecting the homeowners to this considered community development? And I put Mr. Metzler's name on it. If the rezone is pushed through, will it be used as a catalyst for the city of Edgewood to keep doing it all over the place? My property is 60 feet from the two parcels on Sumner Heights, one of the only four that got notifications starting this whole thing. For over two years, we've been subjected to pollution, nonstop noise, lack of safety, excessive huge semi trucks carrying and dropping metal at every hour of the day and night, all under residential zoning. I wonder how that happened. Getting away with it because of the city of Edgewood allowed it. Now the Community Development Department seems to be pushing for the rezone at all of the residents' expense. The residents have been tasked to produce quantifiable mitigation to prove their points on rejecting the rezone, while very little has been provided by the parcel owners, their lawyers, and Community Development Department of Edgewood. Key problems, trees and eight-foot wall not expected as sufficient mitigation unless applicant proves with a site-specific study they will actually reduce noise at the affected homes. Per the Federal Highway Administration, the wall may not block the line of sight. Our homes are substantially uphill from the proposed industrial property. Federal guidance says noise walls provide very little benefit to homes on hillsides that overlook the noise source. A barrier must interrupt the direct path between the trucks and the receiver, not merely by an eight-foot-tall wall. The necessary wall height depends upon the elevation of the trucks, loading areas, backup alarms, wall location, distance terrain, and the elevation of homeowners' yard and windows. And per the USDA Forest Service federal guidance, as vegetation alone must be exceptionally dense, evergreen stand 100% feet deep to produce noise reduction. Vegetation is less effective against low frequency sound. Diesel engines, heavy trucks, idling, loading impacts, and vibration containing low frequency energy that travel further and is harder to block. Neither trees nor a wall adequately mitigates diesel emissions, vibration, headwood glare reaching our elevated homes, truck traffic, backup alarms, road safety, or evacuation access. Plants take years to mature, new and must be continually maintained to follow through, which is highly doubtful given the owners have already shown that they can't be trusted running an industrial business on a residential partial and the city allowing it. Thank you.

I'm her husband. I live in the same place. I'm her husband.

I live in the same place.

I used to live next door to a gravel yard. It had an eight-foot wall. It didn't do nothing. And our area is like an amphitheater. Where this property is, it's like an amphitheater. And you can actually hear people playing music down below. And people used to play music down there below. So we'd hear people screaming music at three or four in the morning. So trucks a lot louder than people screaming. And like she said, the vibration, we've already had two landslides on our property. And it takes 100 feet of trees to block it. And we look down, so there's going to be some darn big trees. It's going to take years to grow that many trees. I don't need the noise. I'm retired. I want to relax. I don't want to have to live down in a truck yard. I don't want to have to listen to the noise in the middle of the night. I don't want to listen to the noise in the middle of the day, actually. And I don't know how you guys are going to control all that anyway, you know? It ain't like you guys are overstaffed. I didn't get a vote on it, but if I got a vote on it, I'd be saying, man, we don't need it. We don't want it. I don't think anybody here wants it. Thank you for listening.

Good evening. Eric Page, 13428 56th Street East, Edgewood. Thanks so much for hearing us. Planning Commission members, we really appreciate the work you do. And we appreciate some of the comments from one of your earlier meetings where you said that you really take what the public has to say seriously. And that's really important. It's really appreciated. And we do want to provide you some very specific information about this proposed rezone, the Shover rezone, because as you probably gathered, the community has very strong feelings about it for good reason. And I'd like to suggest that you take consideration of three ways of looking at this proposal. Realism, respect for the law, and consent to the governed. The first one, realism, you're going to hear a little bit of talk about potential property tax benefits or tax benefits from converting this to industrial. And there might be some, but they're going to be negligible in comparison to the negative impacts on the community. There's going to be some talk about mitigation, but if you take a close look at this particular property, you're going to find a property that is really very different than the one that's being considered on West Valley Highway. We won't talk about that proposal. This is just a property that's really in a residential area. It's surrounded by a residential area. If you tried to drive through that area in the traffic, the traffic is a real challenge. And those roads, when we founded the city in 1995, we knew those roads could not sustain heavy vehicles. The vehicles that they're trying to put on there, they're just far too heavy for those roads. And most importantly, slow stability. It's a real challenge. You're going to hear some of our neighbors probably speak to you about the increased erosion that we've seen as a result of this relatively short period of industrial activity, which was not authorized. And it wasn't authorized for good reason. So realistically, this is not a good proposal. The second thing that's worth considering is respect for the law. The reason that this is being brought before you is because an illegal use was brought in and now we're trying to fix this in a very, very backwards way with this proposal. You've probably heard some testimony earlier that a rezone is a pretty dramatic remedy. And this is a case in which we really shouldn't be solving a code violation with a rezone. And that's what's going on right now. This is a situation where we had a code violation and now we're looking at a rezone. Respect for the law means that the burden of proof for this change should lie on the applicant for this rezone. They should demonstrate why this is a good idea for the good of the city. They haven't done that. In fact, I've yet to hear any of the applicants Speak to us as a community. We want to work with them as good neighbors. We really do. We're not saying we don't ever want to see something happen on this property. But what we are saying is we want what happens on this property to be sustainable. We want it to work well with us as neighbors. We want to consider them as neighbors. Let's do that in a cooperative, constructive way. And the way to do that is to keep this residential. And then finally, all the decisions we make should be driven by the consent of the governed. For our city, for our nation, everything we do. It's not just John Locke who taught us that, it's just part of who we are as Americans. And when we look at this, we need to look at it in terms of who we are as a community. What does the community want? Now, not everybody in this room likes to get in front of a microphone. Not everybody in this room wants to be here. I mean, you guys are charming, but the weather's beautiful right now. We're here because we care. And this particular issue, it's got us motivated. And we want to partner with you to get a good solution. This proposal, not a good solution. Please vote no.

Amanda, you can speak.

Yes. Hi. I'm Amanda Leenan. My address is 129-1156 Street Court East. I did want to speak about the Sumner Heights rezone plan. I have my comments and concerns, but up until about 30 seconds ago, I was completely unaware that the entire rezone was based off of a code violation. And I have to say that that... It's kind of knocked me off a little bit. It's unbelievable to me that when someone violates a law, we're now looking at ways to help them get around it. But more than that, my concerns have to be about my neighborhood and my street and my road that I live on. Sumner Heights, I have lived here for over 13 plus years. I have seen maybe one small road fixed done on a patch that had raised up. This is not a road that is well maintained by the city as is. The thought that multiple trucks will be coming through every day beating up the road even further. The barriers along Sumner Heights are non-existent. We've had multiple people drive off the road in the middle of the night because they didn't realize it curved to the right. My neighbor has had to rebuild his home multiple times because of this. And these have been small vehicles. I can only imagine what would happen had it been an 18-wheeler. You know, the vibrations of the trucks alone, the slides that have already occurred just with the normal traffic trying to avoid West Valley and 167 has been detrimental to our property, our neighbor's property. The addition of more is concerning as well to me. And not only that, with Sumner Heights turning onto the small roads, how often are we going to be dealing with a truck who's stuck on Monta Vista? Yeah. all these things that haven't been taken into account. And it really is something that my family and I, and I know my neighbors who I see there in the audience are vehemently against. So I please ask that you all vote no on this rezone on Sumner Heights. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Sally Gergen, and I live on 131st Avenue Court East in Edgewood. I have been a resident of Edgewood for 53 years, 52 living across the street from the proposed rezoning on Edgewood Drive. We lived in Edgewood in a two-story house built in 1930. It's going to be 100 years old soon. We were there even before 167 was constructed. Our address, our first address there was Route 1, Box 653 in Sumner. Last October, we decided it was time to move to a one-story Rambler, but we wanted to stay in Edgewood, and we were lucky to have found a house four-tenths of a mile up the road. up on Edgewood Drive on 131st. The primary reason for continuing our desire to live in Edgewood was the city's character, ambiance, charm. And I quote here, the applicant's amendment proposal on this poster says, we will be supportive of the community's social, health by supporting and sustaining the city's small town character, ambience, and charm, end quote. He doesn't even live here. When I first became aware of this rezoned issue, I immediately went to Edgewood City's website to learn more. I saw photos of rural areas with pastures and horses, just what I expected to see of the charming Edgewood. So that was my somewhat of a contradiction to this proposal of industrial rezone at the bottom of the hill. Like any retired teacher, I consulted Webster's definition of the words used that all parties seem to agree with, the word charming. Sorry. I found several synonyms for the word charming. Alluring, pleasant, attractive, delightful, friendly, lovely, pretty to see, cozy, captivating, delightful, appealing. There were a lot more, but you get the idea. In my opinion, big rig trailer trucks coming and going even in the middle of the night, unloading heavy equipment, making incredibly loud noises that I can still hear up on 131st, It's not just 300 feet, which is where some of the announcements came about this issue. Vibrations that shake the hillside and clogging up the intersection of Summer Heights and Edgewood Drive hardly meet the definitions of charming, to which everyone agrees is what makes Edgewood, Edgewood. and why so many choose Edwards as a place to live and raise their families. Even the applicant uses the words sustaining character, ambience, and charm in their rezone proposal. Big rig trucks and trailers, loud crashes, earth-shaking vibrations hardly bring up the images of pleasant coziness and delightful. I fear that this rezone, if granted, will detract from what Edgewood is now and begin to wear away at Edgewood's character, ambience, and yes, charm. Thanks.

Let's go lower. I'm kind of short. Okay. Hi. My name is Mariah. My partner and I live across the street from the proposed rezone. My home was built in 1929. It has stood as a residence for nearly a century long before this applicant purchased the property and long before industrial is proposed here. This is not a vacant land waiting for an identity. This is an established residential neighborhood with history, families, and homes we're prioritizing. In the last two years, I have documented the real effects of the industrial activity at this location. Large trucks, backup alarms, nighttime noise, vibrations, disruption in sleep, and interference with my ability to work from home. I would like to play a clip from my lived experience, if that's okay. So here you see an 18-wheeler pulling in front of my home. And then This is at 19 on the night. Thank you. Mitigation of an eight-foot wall and vegetation has been presented. Based off Google Earth, which I understand is not a survey, our home sits 43 feet higher than the proposed rezone. From this position, we would look over the wall and not be protected by the wall. Vegetation may provide visual screening, however, it is not the same as noise mitigation. The burden should not be placed on residents to prove that untested mitigation will fail. The applicant and the city must demonstrate the credibility and independent evidence that will work. The applicant has legal representation and professional resources, which affects who can provide evidence, who understands the process, can control the narrative, and continue participating over time. While residents are expected to analyze technical documents, research land use laws, gather evidence, and defend our homes at our own expense. We understand that residents are not automatically appointed attorneys in land use proceedings, but that does not eliminate the serious power imbalance. The people who live here are not obstacles to development. We are a community that Comprehensive Plan is supposed to protect. I respectfully ask you to deny this request. Thank you.

We have another one. Oh, okay.

Hi, I'm Paul Gerg, and I live at 131st Avenue Court, Eastern Edgewood. My wife spoke earlier. We own property across the street from this post-action for 52 years. I'm coming late to this. I learned about it accidentally, and I came to the hearing last time, and I didn't say anything because I didn't know anything. So I looked into it, and the first thing I did was look at the zoning map. And the zoning map shows this vast area of residential development in this tiny little industrial zone that's evergreen precast. And I thought, wow. I said, does that make sense to have that here? And then I thought, oh, my goodness. If this thing is approved, what you have is the seeds of an industrial park. Now, I didn't know about this West Valley thing, but it's not hard to creep around that corner. And I hope you know that industrialists only care about the bottom line. And I think this applicant, when he bought the property, either didn't do due diligence to find out that it was zoned residential or chose to disregard the zoning code, thinking rather than ask permission, we'll ask forgiveness. If you grant this, you're setting a serious precedent for other industrials to come in and use the same argument and say other properties along Sumner Heights Drive, which is no barrier. I heard last time that the alternative city proposal said Sumner Heights Drive is a barrier. That's not a barrier to anything. It's a, if you know what it is, a narrow two-lane street. And an applicant can claim, well, we're not, the property lines aren't adjacent, but it's just across the street. I mean, what difference does it make? It's you've already got industrial properties there. So I think this is a terrible, terrible precedent. And I, again, and with others, urge you to recommend against it.

Thank you.

My name is Andrea Preston. We live on 56th Street East. We're at, where am I at? 13402. The neighbor that showed you that video, we live directly across from Edgewood Drive from her. um she i had not realized that those sounds as soon as the sounds we hear them coming from across edgewood drive and um about 80 feet up higher because we're on the slope there. I spoke to Traffic Impact at the last meeting, and I got thinking, why would somebody buy this property for this industrial reason? It seemed to have been presented as a mom and pop corporation that just was doing some extra work on their property, wanted to run their business from there. I have been a paralegal for more than 20 years. I put some of my skills to work and found that this is a corporation. They are located in Ellensburg. They are primarily known for installing guardrails. They do residential service, but they also do a lot of work for WSDLT. And they are, in fact, working on the I-67 project. And Now, they're not a huge company. They sometimes clear $1 million to $2 million a year, sometimes shy of $5 million, but they have been in business since the early 1990s. They have currently eight active LLCs. One of them owns this property, but they are all under the name of the owner of the primary LLC. And Like I said, they've been in business since the early 90s. More than two decades, almost three decades. They have a pattern of naming their LLCs based on the address, which was the case when they first bought this property. But in... June of 2022, which this happens to be right around the time they were awarding contracts for the 167 work, they renamed this property and put it under Sumner Heights LLC. And they also renamed all of their other LLCs at the same time. And instead of having this LLC under the name of the owner of the main corporation, it is now under the name of the corporation. Now, there are many reasons completely legal to do that. And I don't have any problem being in legal business and doing business and doing business that we profit by. I like guardrails on our highways. However, I think clearly this business, who is now represented by an attorney and had an attorney rename all of these, should have known that this was a residential property and i believe they must have and i believe they never had an intention to use it as a even partially as a residential property um certainly i don't think they would want to live on this property with all of that noise um And I am appalled that they have been able to break the law and flout the land use regulation and continue with activity that is not supported by the residential zoning. If there is... An administrative code, the city needs to change. When someone is obviously not complying with the code, there should be an injunction to stop them from continuing until they get a reason if that's what they would like to do. We should not allow them to continue to flout the law. And all these people that can't sleep at night and worry about their hill sliding down. I don't have those problems because we put new windows in a couple of years ago. But I do hear the clankety clank clank clank even with our new windows. I would just... I appreciate what Eric Page had to say about us. We shouldn't have to plead our case. the plaintiff here. He should be the plaintiff. And he should be showing that he has a justified reason to have this property. And I think he does not.

Well, we have one, two people coming up. So first.

Kyle Rury, 131st Avenue Court East. I live pretty much next door to Paul and Sally. We bought about 10 years ago. There is no mitigation for noise in the valley that will not rise up the hill. We have a 70-foot deck. We've never been able to eat outside, have company outside, sit on the deck and just enjoy because there's too much noise to hear each other. It's all the trucks clanging into the late night, early mornings. We also got new windows in our house to try to mitigate the noise. We still have to have noise machines on and different things running just to be able to sleep because of the noise. I would say this applies to both rezonings is there's no way to mitigate the noise that won't impact residential communities that live above. As far as concern whether the city will actually enforce zoning, you're not enforcing the residential zone right now. We had a developer build a new house on our street a couple of years after we bought 10 years ago. And they cut down a several hundred foot old growth tree that had three eagles nesting in that tree. I called the city to complain about it. And the answer I got was, oh, well, it's done now. And I think that's the same thing that will happen here. Obviously they've been getting away with what they're doing. The city could care less. We add more stuff there. They're going to not care about the zoning or the noise issues. The noise will get worse. Edgewood Drive already has huge trucks driving up it. Most of them do not drive within their lanes. Several times I've almost been driven off the road. Bit of PTSD because I've been hit by cars sometimes. And last thing I want is to get hit by a semi truck on a narrow road. I can't imagine what Sumner Heights is like down there. It already is difficult to traverse the intersection down there. Then the railroad tracks and then, you know, just the trucks that are already trying to get through there. Most of which do not follow the even the lights there, they just drive through them. They practically run over you when they make turns. So I would be concerned with whether the city really is prepared to enforce zoning since they haven't proven to do it so far.

Yes.

Good evening. My name is Jim Coats, and I live on 5623, 131st Avenue East, Edgewood. But actually, our house actually sits on 56th Street Court East. Anyway, I Our family is against the Schroeder rezone. And I wanted to show you this jar that's filled with dirt. It used to be a part of our 56th Street Court East, but now it's down in the gutter of Sumner Heights Drive because of a landslide. From the city code for the site-specific rezones criteria of approval general rules, it states the proponents of the rezone have the burden of proof to demonstrate the conditions that change the original ruling. The applicant has not shown this, but the citizens have repeatedly provided testimony that this has been a well-established community for 100 years. And there has been no change that would warrant or justify a rezone. My family has lived here since the 1960s. Our neighbor Carol has lived here since 1960. She attended the last meeting with us, and her family built two homes on 56th Street Court East. My daughter and her friend Sally played at Sally and Paul Gergen's fish pond in the early 1970s. Sally and Paul attended this meeting, and both of them spoke tonight. In the early 1970s, my wife taught Sunday school with Barbara Heising, who was present at the last meeting, and I would assume is here tonight. And the list goes on and on and on. We are a tight community with a long history. And the legacy continues with our newer community neighbors. The general rules for a rezone also state that the rezone must enhance the public health, safety, and welfare. And again, Schober has the burden of proof to show that this is true, and they have not. And we residents can and have told you from our collective experiences gained from their conducting industrial activities on the rezone lots during the past two years that it not only is not enhancing our health, safety, and welfare, but had a significant negative impact In our January landslide, my daughter was out looking for my wife, who had forgot to leave a note that she was out on the edge of one of our lots working on the flower beds. And my daughter had discovered that she was gone and raced out to the edge of the hill, fearing that she'd gone over the hill in one of the landslides. Fortunately, that didn't happen. Our neighbor, Charlie, a five-year-old beautiful little girl that likes to come over and play in the flower beds and whatnot, looking for Alice in Wonderland. Or a daughter had to run out and warn her mother and daughter to stay away from the edge of the hill because it it is landslide area. Again, this of Industry causes vibration, and vibration significantly contributes to landslides. Again, that does not enhance our health, safety, and welfare. We feel that rezoning from the residential to light industrial, loosening the codes, is only going to make things worse. And one last thing I would like to add, I think the city council should consider obtaining the two parcels for a city park. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Hi, my name is Jacob Hamilton. I live up on Monta Vista currently, but I grew up on 53rd Street, Court East. I think it's unfortunate that this project was brought up the same night as the comprehensive rezone because they're quite different projects. One is a full comprehensive rezone of an area that I'm not going to offer any opinion on that project, but this is a spot zoning situation that's quite a bit different. I've heard it referenced as the bottom of the hill quite a bit tonight, but it's really not. It's really part of the hill. And in this specific location, you've got literally a hundred years of precedent of a Really strict delineation between residential and industrial use. It starts at the bottom of the hill, the residential use does, and proceeds up the hill. And you've already got the evergreen cast area down there. And, you know, that's not an ideal location either. However, it's been there for decades. probably close to 100 years, so people put up with it. We understand that's precedent. That's an industrial zone lot. That's meant for an industrial use, but that difference and that geography has existed before even 167 was there, literally 100 years ago. I recently built a home in Edgewood in 2024 up on Monta Vista, and the building officials were hard asses. I mean, to put it any other way, they were very difficult. We couldn't let a drop of water leave the property, so we had to build a... very complex underground water system that captured all the water from the lot half acre lot we had to put nine inches of soil on the property that cost i don't know 30 or 40 000 to do but that was the rule my neighbor across the street applied for a 10 foot deviation in the 25 foot setback And it was denied. And it was an open and close case. The reason being when they bought the property, that was the rule. Those were the regulations that they purchased. There was no hardship. They understood the rule when they bought it. Therefore, it was denied. I'm a little bit disappointed that this project was recommended for approval. And it's essentially flipped the burden of proof to the public when it should have been approved. the developer who is requesting the rezone in this hearing, not us having to request that it not be approved. But I think we all make mistakes in our job. I make mistakes all the time. Community development is not going to bat 1,000. I think that they use the comprehensive plan to justify additional jobs, which are negligible here at best. And I think they use that to recommend approval. And I think it was a mistake. And that's fine. Like I said, nobody's batting a thousand here. We all make mistakes. Not everything's going to be approved. That's why we have this hearing so we can shine some light on the facts of this case and get it right. I think that you should be overturning their decisions occasionally. That means everybody's doing their job. Not every decision. And I understand it can look like a NIMBY fest. And sometimes perhaps that's the case. But I think if you look at the specific facts of this case, particularly the fact that it was zoned residential initially when they purchased the parcel. I mean, the purchase price, everything that they did was representative of a residential parcel. They could be, I mean, I have clients that request to do this, to do rezones. And if I knew that they've been operating illegally for two years, I'd be like, dude, you're in shit out of luck. That is a terrible move, a terrible move. You can open yourself up to a ton of liability doing that. And frankly, most businesses don't do that. That's a bit shocking, to be honest with you, that it was recommended for approval after knowing that that use had been taking place for two years. So I just think... It was a mistake to recommend approval, and I understand they're trying to create a limited overlay zone to account for some of those mistakes and some of the community opposition, but that's just getting too creative. It's getting too cute, and we're trying to create... a specific overlay that addresses every concern and that shouldn't be the case this honestly it should not have been approved initially and the only real solution here is to not allow that if you wanted to allow an overlay then do it with the residential zone have a residential zone that has an overlay that allows more of a commercial use there's no need for the drastic rezone to an industrial use particularly when you look at the facts of this case the geography

and how this lot has been zoned historically thank you hello my name is jacinda barnes j a capital c i n d a b a r n e s and i am a king county resident all the way down here in pierce county to support my friend, Mariah Guyana Champ, because the noises and the trucks and everything that you hear, if I run a search in my phone for the phrase, are you serious? It's probably me responding to her at nine something at night because she's saying they're at it again, they're back, they're here. Or in the morning when she's at work, working remotely, and saying, they're still here. They're across the street. So I'm here to support Mariah. And again, being a King County resident, I am not directly impacted by this at all. But I've received enough of those late night messages of frustration because she's being kept awake by the noise from the trucks. So I'm going to add my voice to everyone else's against this reason. I know she works from home occasionally, as many people have started doing with COVID. And the noise that comes through the windows and through the walls have made concentrating on work and projects difficult, if not impossible. Not to mention taking any important phone calls and meetings. And since it's her home, just being able to relax after a long day. So again, I'm here all the way from King County to, I guess, represent the people who are indirectly affected because the people who we care about are spending all of their time for the last two years worried about their livelihood along with her neighbors, trying to protect the peace that they've cultivated in Edgewood for many years. So I'm asking you the same thing that everyone else is asking, to please deny this request. Thank you.

We have another one to the podium.

My name is Andres Goyinechea, and I live in 3905, 124 Avenue Court East in Edgewood. I've been living here for over 51 years. My kids, they went to school from 1 to 12. My wife, she was a librarian for over 30 years for elementary schools here in Edgewood. That's Norwood and Mountain View. And we always thought we'd build a home right on the corner of Summer High Drives and 53rd back in 1975. We lived there for a long time. And we always thought, what a wonderful place to live. What a wonderful place to raise family and live a nice, comfortable life. And we did. But I'm here just to mention a little incident that happened to me in regards of big trucks. Back, I don't remember exactly what year, but before I went to work early in the morning, I'd hear a noise about a block. And there was a big semi coming up about a block in there making noise at 8 o'clock in the morning. And also not only making the noise, but I could feel the bounce within a block right on the street. So I looked into the window, went out. I want to make sure, because they didn't supposed to be driving in that place. As soon as he got into the corner of 53rd and ,, which my house was, he decided to turn around. Well, it took him probably half hour to turn around that huge truck. And I was just looking from the window. They just happened to hit my fence and destroy my fence in there. I ran down quick, and I think he was pretty much ready to go. He wasn't going to even tell me that. But I grabbed him, and I got all the information from him. Well, it took me six months to collect $7,000 to replace my fence. But my point here is that was only one truck. Can you imagine with that many trucks now? We have a beautiful community, wonderful neighbors that they walk every day, 8 o'clock in the morning, midday, in the evening. Never had a problem. But now, with all these big trucks and the traffic that is becoming bigger, it's going to be tough for the neighborhood. So we want to keep our community the way we have been for the last 50 years. So I request you guys to deny the result. Thank you.

Another walking up to the podium.

I'm Karin Coates. I live at 5623 131st Avenue East. Edgewood. I'm against the show for rezone. So this meeting, I'd like to focus on the city's criteria of approval for rezone from Chapter 1840 of the Municipal Code. So first and foremost, there is no presumption of validity favoring the action of rezoning and the proponents of the rezone have the burden of proof. So let's start with general rule number one. The proponents of the rezone have the burden of proof to demonstrate the conditions of change since original zoning. As citizens have attested to at previous meetings and this meeting, this is a long established neighborhood with 100 years of history. The applicant has not demonstrated that conditions have changed that warrant a rezone. As stated at the last planning meeting, Jake, who just talked again, a citizen who happens to be a lawyer who represents companies seeking rezone, said this type of rezone is unheard of in his industry. So general rule 1C, the rezone must enhance the public health, safety, and welfare. Examples have been provided to you from actual experience, which includes lack of sleep due to the noise, vibration shaking the bed hard enough it's slamming against the wall, waking you up. Those vibrations accelerating the landslides, safety concerns from children walking down the hill. We feel the applicant has provided no proof to contradict the impacts we've already actually experienced. General rule number two, the applicant must demonstrate compliance with the following criteria for approval of a site-specific rezone. So the proposed rezone is consistent with the comprehensive plan. So as Sally Gergen stated and others have stated at previous meetings, we do not feel this is consistent with a comprehensive plan. Light industrial in a long-established residential area is not charming, and it's not in keeping with the character of our community. Edgewood would have voted in as a city with the understanding that its character would be maintained. The rezone isn't in keeping with that vision. And the comprehensive plan should not be changed to accommodate this rezone. So C&D talked of transition zones and buffers. So this applicant has shown no proof that the transition zones and buffers proposed will work. And in fact, the citizens have told you why they won't work. So, for example, the noise barriers. Citizens have talked about the scientific fact. It is not a theory, but it is a fact. The noise is line of sight, and it will not work in this topography. We've also had practical experience. Sheldon has talked about when he lived across from a place that had an industrial barrier wall, and he had tested on the second floor, it does some noise. Didn't do a thing. Sally told me that Edgewood Drive, it's a funnel for noise. So the mitigation is not going to do a thing. So they did not prove to us that they meant that. F, the rezone will not materially detrimental to use the property in the immediate vicinity of the subject property. The applicant has not proven this. The citizens have spoken to you about the choke point of the lower entrance to Semner Heights. It's an issue already. Having additional industrial vehicles at that intersection will exacerbate the problem. People did not receive flyers because they live greater than 300 feet from the rezone site. These members were present last meeting in this meeting, and they were not happy. So, unfortunately, in this particular case, the negative impacts of this rezone reach people that live much farther than the 300 feet that's required to notify people. Also, we've expressed concern over the fact that the value of our properties will be negatively impacted. Parents will be less likely to want their children walking and riding bikes down the hill, let alone walk down the hill themselves. Finally, I, the probable adverse environmental impacts can be mitigated. I've seen no proof the vibration issue can be mitigated. We've talked about the issues we've had already with the current codes that are more stringent than the proposed codes. Those issues lasted two years. Mitigation is not immediate. Loosening the regulations makes no sense to our community. It makes no sense to the people who have been complaining to the city for two years over the negative impact of industrial use. We feel the applicant should provide proof that they are meeting these rules prior to the rezone, not after the rezone. And I'd like you to look at the picture over here. This is another one of our landslides where they took away two dump truck loads. This one had sumac on it, which is a great soil holder, especially on steep banks. This is after they took the dump truck loads away. They hauled away a bunch of our sumac. And you can see one hanging on the edge. Awesome.

If you can please speak into the mic so we can hear you.

And here again, I showed the last time this is only 27 and a half feet of stuff off from a door to our house.

The five-minute period for comment has ended. Thank you.

Please vote no.

I hadn't planned to speak, so I'll try to keep it short. Julie Wyatt, 5226 Sumner Heights Drive. And thank you. Thank you for listening to us. You've heard a lot. And you obviously care about Edgewood or you wouldn't be sitting here. So at least I would hope that would be the case. So I'm here with my neighbors because we love our neighborhood. And Sunder Heights Drive, Edgewood Drive is a very eclectic neighborhood, almost a little strange in a beautiful way, but it's peaceful. And it's our home. And many of us are walkers. And like other people have said, people walk their dogs. My neighbor back here, she has a little white dog. Little barky dog. Anyway, we're neighbors and it's a safe, peaceful place. One of the things that makes it peaceful is this piece of property. And that may sound silly, but when you drive down on your way to work and back or wherever you're going, there's this beautiful piece of land. And we've seen goats on it and horses and fruit trees and all of those things. And I just think life is already so hard and taxes are so high and property taxes keep going up. that taking that away makes life even harder. It seems silly, but that's the approach to our home. That's the way we leave. We see it. That's what we come home to. So we're asking you to preserve that for us because it will just help us have a better quality of life. We would appreciate it if you would consider all of our requests. Me and all my neighbors from Sumner Heights Drive. Thank you.

Last call for public comments. Just for the record, many of the citizens are wearing a sticker. So for the planning commissioners online, just wanted to note that this has no reason for the Schroeder property. That's what the residents are wearing as part of the public comments. Chair Overfield, we are ready to move on. I can't hear you. All right, Chair, we're having a difficulty hearing you.

Okay, can you hear me now?

Yes.

Okay. Um, so I just want to thank people for coming in and sharing your comments. Um, and, um, you know, it's good to have participation. It means a lot for the planning commission. So, um, I'm going to move on now to our consent agenda and I need a motion from, uh, planning commission to, uh, Motion to approve the agenda. Okay, may I have a second? Commissioner Church, second. Okay, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Okay, consent agenda passed. And so we'll go on to the first item, the next item on our agenda tonight. Hold on, Josh.

It's the concurrency code updates.

And do we have an action item on this?

Yes, we had a public hearing. I believe it was last month on it. Okay. And then the primary changes were the trip thresholds, the multi-level service, and the annual report frequency.

Okay. So regarding this, is there anyone on the Planning Commission who has any other comments on this particular item? Okay. And so if we don't, then if nobody has anything they want to add or questions.

Commissioner, do you have something to ask?

Go ahead.

Um, I'm just wondering, I know, I've been reading through this, this agenda item and update. I was wondering if you had a chance to reflect on the question that I asked at the last meeting.

unfortunately i don't great answer for you on that uh church uh the director metzler was leading this one and he's not here today um so i don't know if he provided a direct response i don't think there's any in the staff report on it so i don't have any additional to add to that

I don't know if you're asking us to approve this update or recommending it, right? Yeah. So again, what I'm concerned about is how we are changing the way we monitor the level of service on these roads. So if we're only specifying, if we're only specifying, I think, vehicular traffic, is that what it is?

Currently, it just refers to road facilities to avoid conflict and confusion. We're recommending that it reference vehicle level of service because there's no definition of road facilities, what that actually means in our code.

So is this just to specify vehicles because i guess my concern was from the last meeting was that we are not diluting our efforts to make this a more multimodal kind of transportation um community so i'm wondering if we're not measuring the level of service for you know um for other modes of transportation how we are i guess valuing such modes too if we're we're not measuring it here how are we going to measure it

So what I can speak about on this topic is that typically with the level of service, we're looking at roadway life, intersection, turn lanes, those type of improvements for the city. Our comprehensive plan does have a bike and pedestrian level of service. It's harder to say that this particular project means 2 miles away needs to add this bike lane to make it... Those are considered off-site improvements, and there's a lot harder to make those requirements. And the way it's written now, it kind of plays that we might have to, even though we're not sure if it's fully legal to do it at that point. Any project that is built has to comply with our trail bike... requirements. So if something is being built on Meridian, there is proposed bike lane on Meridian, they would have to construct it in their portion. Regarding level of service, that would extend further than that. Offsiting could be further, could be a mile away type of situation.

I guess you can educate me on this then, Seth. Where are we promoting bike Bike lanes in our city. How are we planning for them?

We do it through our tip list or project list. So when we do street improvements, we bring it up to standards. We also do have projects for trails. Unfortunately, those are very costly and we're trying, the biggest one we're trying to do is the inner urban trail, which has taken most of the funds to do. So they're put onto those project lists that are identified by city council as priority and those parking back fees and those go into that system.

Thank you. I guess if we need to later on revise this for whatever security or safety measure, we could do so, right?

Correct.

Okay. So may I have a motion to pass this on to the concurrency on to the city council for review? May I have a motion? Someone?

Motion to recommend this on to the City Council for the concurrency.

Okay. That's Carly Lenoir. And may I have a second?

Second.

Okay. Second by Tom Green. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed? Okay. All right. We're good. So now we'll go on to the next item, which is the multifamily tax exemption.

Yes, so we had a public hearing last month on the multifamily tax exemption. had a really good discussion on the item. We also recently brought it to the Economic Development Advisory Board last month. They did ask if to have a joint meeting with Planning Commission and have this on the topic. Based on scheduling, it would be likely meeting Planning Commissioners attend the EDAP meeting. And, uh unfortunately though that edad meeting was falling on labor day so we're still in the process of figuring out what day to do it on um so the options for um planning commission tonight is recommended to city council just to review you can also ask to um trying to get the right word um delay it for a month while you have and request a joint meeting with EDEM? Or you can recommend denial to City Council?

Okay, so we can send it to the City Council to review, but we can also... bring it back to the Planning Commission? Is that what you're saying after hearing EDAB?

Yes, after a joint meeting with EDAB at next month's meeting, making that recommendation or decision.

Okay, well, I think it would probably be worthwhile for us to hear EDAB. So if we send this to the city council for their review, then we can have them bring it back to us so that we can comment on it after we hear EDAB. We can do that.

We would recommend that you would hold off any recommendation until you had the EDAB meeting, if that's what you choose.

Okay, so we will, let's hold off and not send it to the city council. I think we should hear what EDAB, their input on this.

A recommendation to table this until next month.

Yes. Okay.

We have a second? A second. Okay.

Okay, so I need a motion. And did we get a motion to table it?

Yes, we have a motion from Commissioner Green and a second from Commissioner Hardesty.

Okay. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, so we will table this to our next meeting.

I will reach out to you when we figure out the EDAM meeting and invite you, and we will make sure it's noticed that way, that it's a joint meeting.

Okay, great. Okay, so now we've got to go on to the West Valley Highway Comprehensive Plan and Zoning Amendment. Okay.

Yes, we just had the public hearing tonight with a few comments on the West Valley highway overlay area. On your screen here is the list of tax parcels. um that are within the overlay area as a reminder the overlay area was established by the 2025 west valley highway land use study that was in their packet and that was taken from the comprehensive plan for future land use study area so all these property owners have been contacted with the letter and letting them know that it was under consideration for rezone then on top of that uh postcard was sent out to these property owners and then those within 300 feet Okay. The applicant requesting the alternative one, which is the, or applicants, there's about seven, I believe, from the, within that area that wants, that are requesting a rezone, to rezone it to industrial as provided by the West Highway Final Land Use Study, based on comments from last year. I've mentioned in previous meetings that last year we had comments from WFW, Ecology, Puyallup regarding the rezone. And so that's why we had it asked for city council to remove it while we consider it based on discussions with them, those agencies. And hearing what the comments were from the public, that's where staff has provided a separate alternative, which would be the limited industrial overlay. now as a reminder to planning commissioners you are allowed to make any adjustment to this amendment as as you see fit that fits the findings you can make any recommended modification to city council for their consideration it is still up to city council to make the final decision so you can even propose a separate alternative if you would so choose or request to go with one or two the issue for staff and going here is that we need to provide findings to the city council as part of your decision so we would just need to know in the end which direction your your the planning commission board is leaning onto this amendment and then we can work on drafting the criteria We have as mentioned, um, at least 1 property owner requesting to be removed from the rezone primary because they don't actually have enough access. Um, to their property, um, for industrial, their access with is actually too small for them to actually put industrial use on the property. Because it has to be at least 24 feet and they only have about 15 feet. They are also have are closer to the top of the hill. And they have other restraints on the property that are limited their kind of footprint where they can see maybe just two houses can be able to fit. Staff is aware of that area. Let me see if I can show it. In the packet. It is right here next to the Public Works. If you can see my cursor. They have also reached out to property owners down here to see if they're interested in also removing themselves from the rezone or requesting it. So that common layer has been provided to you and it's something that you can consider as you're reviewing the materials.

I have a question regarding the limited use overlay. Yes. I see that, you know, we allowed work live, parking lots, and then conditional uses on warehousing stuff. What is the... I should know the noise ordinances by now, but when we get into this limited industrial, what kind of noise, pollution noise ordinance do we run into? Yeah. Hearing from all the people speaking, especially the residential, we have no buffer for them. So I'd almost want to implement at least a nightly noise ordinance to knock down and allow for restful sleep and quiet in the evening hours.

We do have a noise ordinance in place that has just like the counties and it sets the decimal levels and there's a daytime level and a nighttime level. And the nighttime level is lower, especially for residential. So in this case, what we would need any project to do is submit a noise report based on the proposed use. And they would show the existing levels, whatever they may be, and then their proposed use. If they're increasing that noise level above the minimum threshold, that's when mitigation is required to do the use. If they can't meet that mitigation, that means they can't do the use.

Okay, I mean, yeah, no, I, yeah, no, I understand that. I just wanted to, there was a lot of concern. And, you know, I definitely want to hear from a lot of people are saying, the last time we talked about this, you know, we had a bunch of proponents for it. Now we have a lot of people that don't want it and and understandably so for various reasons um my concern you know in their favor is wondering about how they're going to have restful sleep and their residences with no buffer zone and then also um the fact that the even the limited industrial is a stepping stone to the next level of just removing it to full industrial so i'm a little concerned about that I do see the need for doing this because I do like the fact that a commercial use or industrial use is going to have such a higher tier of oversight than residents just chipping away at the neighborhood or the hillside and doing whatever they want and possibly causing problems. I also noticed the letters we received from tribes and from Fish and Wildlife that they were opposed to it also, so... I don't know. I have a lot of negative thoughts about this. I'm just trying to find some positive in it.

Steph would also just like to note that with noise complaints, we are with code enforcement complaint-based right now, meaning someone needs to basically file a complaint that there's a noise, and then we would reach out to the property owner and try to address it. But it could take a week or two to figure out what is exactly happening, if not a little bit longer. The second option is also reaching out to police. So police could potentially receive additional noise complaints based off this as well. So regarding enforcement of the noise, if we had a complaint with noise, even though they have a approved report, we would potentially require them to do an updated report based on their current use. So they would have to do a revised study. That's how we would see any complaints going.

Point of clarification, we are discussing West Valley overlay right now, right?

Yes, we are discussing West Valley overlay. We did receive some public comments that did cross over a little bit into both. Yes.

Clarify for the record. Yes. Because I want to make sure that we discussed both on tonight's agenda.

I have a question, commissioner. Um, so just so we're clear, we're, we're talking about the industrial overlay right now, right?

We're discussing the West valley highway. Rezone. Okay. Okay. The same limited industrial overlay.

Okay. And are we going to be addressing the Sumner Heights area separately?

Or is that appropriate? Next discussion. Okay.

I just want to make sure because I feel like we are going back and forth and kind of covering multiple things. But I can hold my comment until that part of it. I do think that it is significant and my, you know, I am right up the hill from Jovita. Jovita is my backyard and I hear considerable noise down below already from the one business that is down below. Um, I would like to just say for the record though, that, um, I am genuinely concerned about the noise mitigation being effective, being that we are all above it. However, I will say that with that, when you buy a home on a hill, you are unfortunately going to be exposed to things that are down below. We don't own all that land. And because of that, we will have to adjust to the sounds that come from the valley. I hear lots of noises. I am concerned. I guess, again, I'm going to hold my comment for the next portion just because I want to be more specific to that area. But that is what I want to add just because this area does specifically affect my area that I live. I am concerned about noise mitigation even being possible when you're above it, but I do realize that that comes with living on a top of a hill. And that's all I'm saying on this one.

Okay, so... Are my planning commissioners, are you still in favor of this overlay as long as there are some mitigation factors that get addressed? Okay, go ahead.

This is commissioner church. Um, I do have some questions, um, for the discussion on overlay. And I believe it's more correct to say that we were in favor of doing the research of what this would look like to this area. Not that we were in favor to begin with the reason we were in favor of staff being able to have the hours, um, to do that research. Um, But as far as what my fellow commissioners have shared, how confident are we about these mitigation efforts as far as how we're gonna be able to enforce them over time, particularly the 100-foot buffer as individual properties redevelop or ownership changes? I understand that, you know, by project you're going to review, but you know, if we think longer term, like how reasonable is it for us to be able to enforce it?

enforcement overall is a difficult topic for the city staff because it can be anything from in the own wanting to do a hazardous tree removal versus um someone that thinks they can use their property as they see fit because they own it uh more wanting to build a shed we we get code enforcement quite often and takes actually a significant amount of time and all we can do is tell them the other regulations that you have And this is what your permitted approval is. We expect you to follow it in the sense of like a commercial project. By final building inspection, they should be complying with all their standards at that time. After that, it always falls into just code enforcement complaint-based, meaning we either get a complaint, see a complaint, see some life safety issue, then we'll try to take action as staff availability is required. available and this is the serum severity of the complaint we will always treat life and safety first over um something that isn't okay thank you and i would just mention as part of our issue with west valley in general already our most of our code for some in cases is west valley because people um a lot of realtors actually market it as commercial and so people move in with commercial some type of use and we're spending a lot of time years trying to resolve issues down there.

That's good to know. I have some other questions. As far as for understanding how this impacts existing residents, there's a couple of things. First, I'm wondering how many people have we heard back from in that group? Because it looks like we have a long list of residents and we have only received maybe a handful of responses.

I haven't done a specific calculation or identified that.

Okay, but knowing that anytime we do this large of a reason, we're going to have to help our residents transition a bit. Um, and that might cause some displacement pressure in already a difficult housing environment. So I have some concerns about how, what kind of process we have in general, um, to support our residents when there are reasons, um, done. Um, And have we even looked at cumulative impacts as industrial development occurs incrementally rather than as a single project? So I'm looking at long term for the city development. Have we looked at that?

So for the first question, all the houses that are existing down there would be considered legal non-conforming. They would stay that status for the life of that structure. So there wouldn't be an immediate, everyone can still live in those houses. That's not changing. The issue would be, yes, there might be some pressures of don't want to buy the property to go commercial. So there might be more pressure for people to sell because it might be a higher value at that time that people are asking for. So yes, there could be some pressures that way. It's just based on the markets. The area's been zoned residential and technically, yeah, a lot of residential can be subdivided and built there, but it just hasn't happened yet either. So we don't have any additional displacement requirements in any of our codes at this time. Long term, the land use study did look at a larger. We do look at it as if the whole entire area gets rezoned or developed as industrial. So overall though, we need to also, we don't have all the specifics of what that means. So that's why we rely on the site specific reports that are required at the time of development. So each one, if they cross threshold, require a traffic study and we'll look at all the traffics. Same thing with utilities. They would always have to provide us the critical area mapping to ensure that they're not impacting critical areas. That's one of our biggest issues down in that area is they don't realize that there are so many critical areas and are building into wetland buffers all the time. And so that's a lot of our code enforcement is actually would be protecting those buffers down there. So that's why staff actually thinks it might be a benefit to rezone because then we would actually have more control over the area thinking that they would actually be required to get commercial permits instead of thinking that they can be residential and then... we're always pressed about someone's living there. How much should we press them out of that house? If any, we don't want to do that just because they have some commercial activity. So we do take it very seriously that they have commercial activity, but we also understand someone's living there. So we try to work with them through voluntary correction agreements.

I think it's... Layla, have you ever driven, uh, taken a look at some of those, those areas down there?

Um, yes.

Yeah. Well, I think we all have, it's, it's pretty chopped up, you know, it's, um, some properties have, you know, a lot of slope and there's not much space, you know, that's frontage and, um, Unless some people went together on something, I don't even see that there would be any space for any big warehouses on a lot of it. I don't know, Josh. Am I speaking out of turn here?

It seems chopped up. We don't anticipate anything big happening here because of that. It's pretty restricted. It would just allow more of the building... Development along the frontage of West Valley to be that commercial. Yeah. Um, we don't anticipate anything because of the critical areas and slopes and everything else that tree retention requirements. That there wouldn't be, um, they can't develop it any further. Um, so the limited scope.

Right. So does anyone else? So, you know, I think the overlay, you know, makes sense regarding that area. Does anyone else? And I and, you know, I do feel for people above. I mean, Carly's point is that. Unfortunately, when you live above something, you never know what's going to happen below you. I mean, I. I live in an area also that, you know, my family was, my husband's family was there from, you know, the twenties, but the 1920s, but everything's changed, you know? And so there's noise from the freeway. There's lights from the, you know, the warehouses in Sumner. It's, There's some things that you just can't stop, but you can try and do the best you can for the people above. And I think that's the only thing we can do is try the best we can, but certainly it's not an area that is real friendly to residential unless somebody decides to stay there. So-

I have, I have another question. This is commissioner church.

Sure.

Go ahead. Um, it was a vote for co-chair and Lilla voted for herself and I didn't vote for, I voted for green because I wanted him to win.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm not sure what, what just happened here.

Commissioner Church, would you like to move forward with your question?

Yes.

Okay. I am just, as far as the critical areas and hazard exposure, I know that we're looking at it as a project basis, and we're trying to get ahead of mitigating some of the the hazards to our natural resources, which I really appreciate. But I'm wondering now that we're moving into climate action planning as a city, if there is more value to this area, this area and our connecting area that's being considered for rezoning, as far as their resilience factor, how they help our cities, be resilient. I'm not a scientist, but I would really like to know more about what it can provide naturally to help mitigate some risks that we're facing like heat and smoke and different kinds of air quality and storm runoff. I mean, I have to pay attention to the land around me. and understand that we have been very fortunate in some of the recent flooding that our neighbors have been impacted by because we stand up on a slight plateau here. And in riding my bike around these neighborhoods and understanding where these residents live, I do think that it would be worthwhile to consider not only how to protect what's already there, but how that natural space already provides us some resilience infrastructure.

That's all correct. We're doing climate planning in the process of doing that. We do have limited policies regarding that so far and nothing as you've kind of mentioned so far. So it's not built in our comprehensive plan at this time. Is a larger difficult question about development because technically, um. Someone can build, uh, 3 houses on each lot. They can potentially do subdivide and build on the lot as they see fit meeting the same standards as the industrial. There'll be, um. residential still has less impervious. But again, we're not expecting a big development to happen here. At this time, we haven't discussed it within the staff report, and we don't currently have criteria on it. um and it would make it difficult difficult to compare in any development not just the rezone for this particular zone if it was on up on the hill and flatter it would actually be easier than it is with these significant sensitive areas because we're under assumption either way they're going to be have to be protected So I'm not sure if I can fully answer your question adequately enough.

Yeah, you did. Thank you, staff. I guess what I am requesting is maybe we consider that be brought up at our climate action planning meeting this month and explore if the agency assisting us with that research could maybe help us to better understand what these rezone measures might mean for our capabilities to provide a natural mitigation or ensuring that that natural mitigation or resilience is protected.

You know, I think that one of Josh's comments is that if somebody redevelops their property there, we have more control over what they do than what's going on down there right now. um and and that and that's a good thing because from an environmental standpoint um like josh says we can we can mitigate better if somebody is redeveloping that a piece of property there and and luckily there are some steep slopes and areas that will you know benefit us because they're never they're going to stay green and they're not nothing's going to happen with them so but um Anyway, you know, your concerns are, you know, certainly legitimate. I have a question.

Yeah. When you guys are done. Go ahead, Carly. Okay, so my question is, this was, again, I'm kind of getting a little confused between the two areas of discussion, but this one specifically for West Valley, did I see that it said 50,000 square foot warehouse or smaller, essentially, like up to 50,000 square foot would be allowable in a light industrial area?

With the conditional use permit, which is another public hearing and hearing examiner decision. And that's just that threshold of 50,000 only because that's what our current code. As as the, it's either lower than 50 or above 50 is kind of our 2 thresholds. So that's we just went with the. That threshold so again, this is that could be recommended for change.

and yeah that's that's what i'm thinking is i feel like because there are some current obviously i always want to take into consideration when we discuss these things that there's a future that we're talking about as well as the current situation obviously residents that are living residents that live there right now don't have to change the use of their property until they decide to sell. And I think that's something to always consider. It's just that as we go forward, I think it would be kind of a nice gesture for us as a city to say, Hey, this is a more functional use of this area going forward. It doesn't mean you have to leave, but going forward, you know, this is a, something that we can do, which would be a smaller type warehouse limit, like maybe 30,000 or 25,000. I can see that being a functional business space. I've looked at warehouses over the years. You can do a lot of activity in a warehouse that size without it being that large, large scale size where you're now getting massive amounts of traffic. I just feel like it is difficult with these both being on the agenda at the same time because they are different situations and yet somewhat similar. Um, and I just feel like it's really important that we're taking the consideration of the residents and people who are, you know, not supportive, but there are obviously beneficial reasons. A lot of this I think is a lot of talk about things that probably won't happen for a long time just because I can see a lot of that land just not being usable. Um, But that was just something I wanted to add on there that I do think it would be a good gesture to reduce the size of the warehouses that would be allowed in that area.

Okay. And that's something that certainly can be looked into and addressed. Okay. So, Josh, what else do you need from us?

The plan was to take action, either whatever the recommendation is, at next month's meeting. I am not hearing definite confidence on how the Planning Commission wants to move forward yet. So my question is, does this need to be delayed another month? or additional planning commission discussion, or based off of tonight's discussion and comments regarding square footage, are we ready for a recommendation?

Well, the square footage might be reasonable, you know, to look at in terms of the warehousing, even though we have, you know, so many thousand square feet you know we might look at having a little different for that area can we do that yeah stuff can do that um yeah go ahead who had a question yeah hi everyone this is commissioner nguyen um i had

a few comments and questions as I was going through this material. This is generally new to me as I'm a brand new commissioner, and it's a lot of information to go through. So I really appreciate the staff report, really put together a nice summary. But some of the things that stood out to me that were of concern within industrial overlay, the idea of an industrial overlay were the residential pressures on people who are already living there who bought that land in that condition, and that there might be some pressure to change their situation was a concern. And then reading the agency comments, as well as the Puyallup Tribe of Indians letters were incredibly moving. And the strong push to protect the environment in that area really stood out to me. And then looking at the critical areas map, getting a sense of just the landslide possibilities, the protected wetlands, the trees that are helping hold that slope up. just really hit home for me. And then just gut instinct without having all the background on what an industrial overlay actually means. It was just a gut instinct that that's not right. Hearing the public comments, both from people up the hill and even in the citizen comments, the woman who spoke about the character of Edgewood is really there about, The character is, to me, it sounds like there's a relationship and a love for the land. It sounds to me that an industrial rezoning puts that relationship at risk. And as I was reading the SCJ report, the consultants who analyzed this rezoning report, I was curious to see why different zones, zonings, I don't know what they're called, like the multi-use residential, why that wasn't a consideration where it could be mixed residential as well as businesses and commercial, but not industrial.

The primary driver of that was the utilities service and traffic. Multifamily actually brings up quite a bit of traffic. And then, um, also as a higher demand on utilities, and as I showed them earlier, the utilities in there in that area are closer to non existent. So, we didn't feel that multifamily would be actually appropriate in that case, because they would have to install. It would give the false pretense that they could actually develop multifamily when it's likely not able to because of the utility services currently that are there. while that's part of the limited industrial overlay, was looking at those less utility-intensive uses.

Again, maybe I don't fully... My concept of industrial always, to me, it seems like they're would be a heavier utility demand. I mean, either electricity or, depending on what goes in, water. And so that piece to me didn't compute, because I don't think the city code has real control over what industries go in there? I saw that the overlay excluded certain things, but some of the things that were included to me didn't seem like they might not burden the utilities.

Part of it is our land use code. It uses the NIAC system, which bases on the numbering system, basically, of linking groups of businesses together. So a lot of them are grouped. So something like a contractor yard, which wouldn't be... a significant utility use maybe just one bathroom and maybe in that case could be on septic and maybe um and very limited water in that case is lumped in the same category as a warehouse building however also warehouse buildings tend to also except for power are very limited draw on the other utility but a point noted that yes uh It is difficult if it's subject to that NIAC code and they can get the correct utility approvals that they could get that, yes.

Okay, and then final comment. Last night, I drove the West Valley Highway, not intentionally, but Jovita was blocked off for whatever reason, and I had to, which ended up being great. It's a nice, scenic, windy road with lots of trees and very green. I... I was thinking through some of the land use goals. And in the staff report, it is saying that it meets three of the 15 land use goals, the overlay. And I didn't think that was comprehensive enough. As I read through the land use goals, there are many in there that have to do with, again, maintaining community character, as well as respecting the environment, which I, again, think is critically important, especially in areas like this. And then I was thinking, well, what if industrial isn't the draw? What if the draw is the environment? And then realizing that the city actually owns land there. And it was nice to see in the SCJ report that that could be a potential future park. To me, that idea was really attractive. And then in conjunction with the connection to the interurban trail, if there were a bike path that also went down the West Valley Highway that connected to this amazing park, I feel like that could also open up all kinds of other opportunities. I want to draw residents in and have more recreational activities, to draw people from outside the neighborhood in, thus hopefully promoting economic development. If there were, say, small businesses that popped up around this park, that could be an anchor. if it could be used as outdoor recreation and education, maybe by universities or students who want to learn about wetland wildlife conservation. And to me, the idea of putting an industrial zone on that area detracts from those other possibilities of really emphasizing the treasure that's already there.

I guess that's it. There are some things that you have to take into consideration down there since is number one, It wouldn't be a very good area for multifamily housing because it's all warehouse right across the street. And it's, you know, although that seems like a possibility, it would, you know, the fact that it would, it really, I don't think would ever happen. You know, nobody would probably take that on. Yeah. Preserving, there are areas that, yes, can be preserved there. And some of the area that you say is green and stuff, part of that is because there are hillsides there and other areas that just, even if we put an overlay, they can't be developed. And so, you know, there is there is going to be some preservation in terms of the residential, you know, through the years. And I've lived here since 76. Those people who want to continue to have, you know, residential down there. if they can, you know, they, they are, some of them are used to what goes on. So, you know, they just choose to stay there, but, um, but it is a, it is pretty, uh, chopped up area. And, um, I, I don't see that it'll ever be, you know, a great residential place, uh, If the city decided to buy some other area for a park, that would be great. you know, conservation futures, you know, some of that could happen. Um, if there was a grass, you know, roots movement to do that, we did a, the farm in, in Edgewood through that. So, um, I mean, that's a possibility with the parks department, if they thought there was something there that seemed reasonable. I mean, you know, those things are reasonable, you know, can happen. Um, but anyway, uh, you know, for a lot of it, even mixed use, small business that you couldn't use businesses that would attract traffic, you know, traffic and, you know, consistent traffic is not likely to happen there because of where it is, you know, and, and anyway, that those are a lot of the things that we've taken into consideration and, in thinking about it being an overlay. I mean, we've looked at this for a lot of years. So, and all input is, you know, I like to hear all input. Everybody does. But I think that it's the industrial overlay is really the only thing that makes sense based on what's going on there. And like I said, we can have more control over mitigating some of the natural areas Like I said, there's a lot of areas that are forested that can't be touched. There are slide areas. Does anyone else have any comments to make about this? Do we maybe need another

I mean, I don't really have too much of a comment, Chair. I agree with you on every bit of that, basically, because I've seen the hillside. I've been in construction. I've been around areas that are light industrial, heavy industrial. And The areas of concern there, it's going to be, there's going to be so much oversight when you have a commercial or industrial type operation, getting their permits, getting the approvals, having all the SEPA. I mean, even the letter from the tribes, I really respect what they had to write there. But whoever builds there is going to have to go to the tribe again just to build, right? So just the matter of oversight that's going to be there if we let it be in that light industrial overlay, I do believe is probably the best option for that area because the city's right. What they can control when the residential person just wants to do whatever, it's very, very difficult versus that industrial level. I would be in favor of pushing this to a vote next month and in favor of it.

Right. You know, I live overlooking the Sumner Valley on the hill and the property below me has a fantastic view of Mount Rainier. And it had been and it happens to be owned by Sumner. There's a little nook. in uh along west valley that belonged that sumner uh that the owner got sumner to you know take take it and um it it got bought by someone who it was zoned residential it got bought by someone who wanted to do major industrial luckily um you know, the people like us up on the hill got it to be zoned light industrial. It took a lot of work and they finally put in some small warehouses below me, which luckily because they're a smaller scale, you know, it doesn't impact us a lot. But that is a perfect example of, you know, it could have been residential, but nobody would have bought there because what was around it Anyway, this is just a, you know, I'm digressing here. But yes, I think we should bring it back for the next meeting to make the final decision. Is that okay, Josh?

Yes, because we can always make changes at the meeting as well as the planning commissioners wish.

Okay. Okay. So, Let's move on to the Schroeder property, Schroeder comprehensive plan. You know, um, I need to go drive around that area more. I, I, you know, listening to everybody who had comments, um, I think that all of us need to take a little more time to take a look in that area. Um, There were some good comments tonight. I don't know what anyone else feels.

Steph just wants to make one clarification in the area on that topic, specifically regarding code enforcement. So yes, there was a code enforcement case that is currently still active. We're under a voluntary correction agreement. That means they are working towards, it's not just that use, there's a couple other items that are being addressed on the property building permits still need to be finished or some other things here other than just the use. As staff is aware, once that voluntary correction agreement was signed, I believe around February, all use on the property stopped. Okay. Hasn't stopped. We very much ask the public to let us know because, again, we're complaint-based. So if someone's there operating, let us know, and we'll get in contact with them immediately to stop it. They should not be utilizing that property for any commercial business right now because it's built in their voluntary correction agreement. So from and after the public hearing last month, staff did drive there just to see if anyone had been in there and it looked like it has been not been used. But again, if public knows anything different, reach out to staff and then we will immediately get in contact with the property owner and talk to them because they could be in violation of their voluntary correction agreement.

Right.

Quick question on that video that was shared. Was there a date on that video that she shared?

No, there was not. I did ask if that was recent, and she said it was a few months ago or later. Okay. Because I had the same immediate concern that was that yesterday's situation? Do I need to go out tomorrow with a cease activity? Right. That type of thing.

For their record, also, we did not hear audio on that video online.

Yeah. Okay. I believe we heard it here, though. Okay. Sorry about that. I can potentially be able to get you a link for that then to view it online.

That would be helpful. Thank you.

Yep. Thank you for letting us know because we heard it in the building.

But Josh, this piece of property has been, you know, the noise that's come from it has been ongoing for a long time. You mean the city's been getting constant complaints on this?

Oh, there was a time period that it has been. From all our understanding, it has been stopped for at least, since this amendment was published.

Right.

But if we get a complaint, we will completely... try to resolve that. So I'm just want to make sure from a funding or comp plan amendment, um, review, review them two separate items. Uh, so we have the code enforcement case, which allows them to do come into compliance. One of those items was to apply for a reason. It didn't guarantee anything. It just said, apply for it. And then it's, that's the result. And there's nothing else you can do about that. Um, the, uh, So we can treat that separately than the comprehensive plan amendment because of the separate criteria. And so your purpose is when your staff is just considering it against the criteria for any property owner. local or not local, however they are, they can apply for a rezone of their property, doesn't mean it has to be corrected. So that's the only kind of caveat I would like to add to the conversation, just for awareness of the difference between code enforcement and the comp plan.

Right.

But I have a question. What is the zone currently in terms of residential? I was trying to look it up. I couldn't find it for that area right now. What is it zone for? Resident R1 or?

It is R1, no MR1. Yeah, here's a map. This light orange is MR1. And then the gray is industrial.

Okay. Remind me, please, would an apartment building be allowable or some sort of multifamily home be allowable in that zone?

They are allowed a duplex on each property or a single family with two ADUs.

Okay.

Unfortunately, I can't remember off the top of my head if they might be allowed to build six plexes.

Okay. The reason I'm asking is just because I know that the concern was traffic and noise. And I do know that, you know, obviously with it being residential, obviously that the kind of the goal is to have it be more quiet. But I did want to make sure I mentioned just kind of that concern of like, would we be able to, would they be able to build multiple homes there? And then in terms of traffic, you'd be getting probably about the same amount of traffic considering how many units they put in there. Correct?

I would say potentially, it would depend on what the exact commercial industrial use is. And yeah, depending on the exact, obviously a single family wouldn't provide much, but if it ended up being six plex on each price, it would be increased. This is actually a good note regarding noise. So for residential, we really don't have any avenue of correcting any noise. So except for police action that they are partying too loud type of situations. So outside of that, we don't have any mechanism to enforce noise. With a commercial industrial property, we do actually have a mechanism to enforce and require noise studies. We don't require noise studies for single families or multifamilies. Although the likelihood of it being a regular occurrence obviously is lower, but we can't stop people from working on their cars at 8 o'clock p.m. And we do complaints regarding that type of use as well.

To the traffic, though, I mean... Obviously, even if it was the same number of vehicles, the weight of the vehicles is totally different scenario and needs to be considered in terms of the road base.

I was just thinking in terms of, you know, like you had said about being able to monitor, manage residential zones. I could see, you know, there being maybe concerns about that type of activity as well with apartment complexes and a lot of, you know, you're you're allowed to park your personal truck there you know potentially if you are a resident and you drive a long haul you know there's still potential for some vehicles and things that could be there um and it would be still difficult to manage you know what is allowable and what's not when it comes to um the business activity if it's small business and who's living there um I am still leaning very much towards not allowing it to be an industrial area or light industrial. I just want to state that for the record. And I don't know how the other commissioners feel about that. But at this point, I have not heard enough information to support it being a beneficial change of rezoning. From what I've learned over the years, just with my own business on a residential property, I operate so respectfully and so carefully, um, in order to not bother neighboring properties. And I just can't imagine, um, me, the, the feedback I heard just for a business with a dog business, um, trying to get my business approved was, you know, enough of a concern that just for dogs barking, um, I can't imagine, um, getting this far if I had had, um, you know trucking and you know industrial happening here on this property so I am I am genuinely surprised it's gotten this far I do understand and I know personally people who have had interest in purchasing that property specifically for, you know, using it as a home-based business for, um, a small local business, but, you know, and it was difficult for them. So I am surprised that it has gotten this far, um, through the city to have taken up so many of our hours as a planning commission to go over this so much to the time of the staff working on it. Um, It does make me wonder, you know what, how is this getting pushed to this point? However, again, I do stand firm that until I've been presented with something that's just overwhelmingly like, you know, mind changing, I would say I'm still against going forward with this rezone.

I'd like to jump in there real quick too. I have a question regarding, did I miss something where the city is positioned with the recommendation on this? Or is this just them proposing or just requesting this and going through the steps?

Maybe if I back up a little bit. the applicant applied in december into for a comprehensive plan amendment which then brought it in front of the planning commission for consideration to be put on the docket to be analyzed Planning Commission recommended to city council that it be put on a docket to be analyzed and city council also adopted the docket to be analyzed. So that's as far as we've gone so far. And so now we are analyzing it currently the. Staff recommendation, if you per se, is if plant commission wants to move forward with the rezone, we recommend the limited industrial overlay because it provides a specific focus for that area. Okay, that makes way more sense. Yeah, I'll leave it at that.

Yeah, I was somehow mistaken when I heard all the comments that I missed something that the council is recommending this. I'm opposed to it. I'll say it out loud before we even come to a vote. I've not heard from the people wanting this. to even come forward and say why they want it and be present and speak to the people. Yet we've had every single person in that neighborhood, all the citizens that it really impacts have come forward. And that's part of what we got to be here for is steering the community towards the direction the community wants. So I just have to be opposed to it. I have not one person has come forward saying why this should happen.

Yeah, it's, you know, that area has been a neighborhood that, yeah, I just, I don't think it's a good idea either.

Commissioner Church, you have a question?

Yeah, I'm just wondering what action would you like us to take on this tonight? Do you want to hear more feedback from the planning commissioners, or do you want to hear whether we would vote yay or nay for this? I am not sure what is appropriate at this time.

it depends exactly uh where we need to bring this mostly together with the other rezone to make a recommendation to city council because it's a two docket items basically together on the annual docket process so in the end we do have to take action on the same day so that's on the same docket so uh okay and i was going to add Staff is open to making changes to the industrial overlay because that is a process that we can still work out. However, I believe you've heard from two basically public hearings enough comments to make a general direction. So what staff would like to know is if... planning commission majority as an informal vote here of that you would like to see revised findings and conclusions that the rezone is not meeting the rezone criteria.

Sorry, could you state that again? You would like us to know, you would like us to confirm if we

um that we find that it does not meet the alignment with i don't necessarily need a full decision what i'm asking is basically a recommendation from planning commission majority where staff to put together alternative findings and conclusions based on idea that it doesn't and that through more time you can consider both at the next meeting. So you don't have to make a decision now. It's just staff would like to have time to put something together for you for that recommendation.

Is this what staff needs for us to then have a final vote?

Yes.

Okay.

I feel like that's the best way to approach this one.

I would move to have staff put together conclusion.

I don't need a formal vote. All I need is, can I do just a direction? Yeah. Hands raised kind of thing. So I'll just ask the question and then see if I can get a majority. Is the planning commission direct staff to provide revised findings and conclusions that the proposal does not comply with the comprehensive plan criteria?

For that piece of, we're talking about that piece of property.

For sure over a property.

Yes.

It's unanimous. Everyone's raised their hand. So staff will work on that and we'll provide both of them just so you have them. And then you can make that final recommendation at that time.

Okay.

But do we have to do it? I understand that you want to make that decision on the same day for both. However, If we don't support both, how does that move forward?

It's an annual docket process. So we would specify that in your recommendation, what you're approving or modifying and what you're denying or recommend denying to city council.

Okay. Thank you.

It will be. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. So that's where we are, Josh.

all right so the landscaping standards review and updates um i am okay based on our three-hour meeting if we would a planning commission would like to punt this another month and just look at it and maybe provide comments to staff over the next month to discuss that next month's meeting

I would, yes, I would agree on that. I think we've had, yes, it's been a long meeting. Let's do that. Let's bump it out.

Okay.

Okay. All right. Well, yeah, it's been a long night, and I appreciate everyone. I assume you don't have anything else to say, Josh?

Not tonight.

Okay. Okay, so I'm going to adjourn the meeting at 8.53, and thanks, everybody, for hanging in there.

Yes, thank you. Good night.

Good night.