Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Apologies for the late start. We'll bring the June 16th, 2026 meeting of the Everett Planning Commission to order. Ayanna, if you'd call the roll, please.

Chair Shelby? Here. Commissioner Ballard?

Here.

Commissioner Rutledge? Here. Commissioner Welch?

Here.

Thank you.

Alrighty, I'll go with a land acknowledgement. We acknowledge that the original inhabitants of this place, the Stahops people and their successors, the Tulalip tribes, since time immemorial, they have hunted, fished, gathered on, and taken care of these lands and waters. We respect their sovereignty, their right to self-determination, and honor their sacred spiritual connection with the land and water. We will strive to be honest about our past mistakes and bring about a future that includes their people, stories, and voices to form a more just and equitable society. And with that, minutes from the May 19th meeting. Anybody have comment on the minutes? Hearing none, moved as submitted. Any reports from any of the commissioners? None. Staff comments?

You have a pretty thorough rundown of all the work that we're doing at the last meeting, and I don't think there's anything that has changed in any significant way for that. So I encourage folks to take a look at the introduction to the last planning commission meeting for a rundown. Otherwise, no further comments today. I don't think I'll have much on the local projects review procedures update, which is the final agenda item. So we'll see when we get there. Happy to talk about it, but I don't have too much on that item today.

Thank you. Any public comment this evening? None. Alrighty. And I think that moves us to unfinished business, which is MFTE.

Frank Hong, Special Projects Manager for Housing. Take us through our second meeting on multifamily tax exemption.

Good evening, Commissioners. Again, Frank Hong, Housing Policy Development Lead. Gosh, quickly, we were here a month ago. And since then, we had also gone to Parks and Built Environment Committee to provide them a briefing as well. As a recap, last month, I know I provided a lot of numbers, but in simplicity, when we look at based off of our current MFTE program. Main numbers are that every additional unit will cost approximately two cents. So that's the key. And again, we were projecting anywhere from 15 to 100 units a year. So that just sort of gives the scope of what that tax shift is for each typical single family property taxpayer, roughly 30 cents to maybe a maximum of $2 a year is what we're projecting. And so that just, again, is a quick recap of the main issues. You know, we're doing a lot of different changes at the Parks and Built Environment Committee. We heard some concerns regarding can the MFT program be utilized for homeownership, as well as there was concerns on Would the MFT program be used to promote underutilization where in our downtown area when we have higher density zones, would we be incentivizing maybe lower types of development that don't build as high? So we acknowledge some of those concerns at the council meeting, at the committee meeting. But all in all, I'm thinking back to the last meeting, some of the concerns that this commission had were again on homeownership, on whether this program could be used for it. We had a member of the public also inquire about how to use it. I recall that Commissioner Chatters also was inquiring which projects have utilized MFT for housing. I did look at the data and coordinated with folks across the region. And for the most part on housing, it's only the City of Seattle is where we've seen housing projects used under the MFT program. A lot more than I thought. There are a total of 10 projects, about 147 units. But they were all done by Habitat for Humanity or a community land trust. Because again, the MFT program really isn't built for homeownership. There's really no incentives for a private developer to utilize the program for homeownership. But we are still trying to figure out if there are tweaks here and there. And we are making those changes to see, again, maybe something else we can do will incentivize homeownership. developers to do it for homeownership. But those were the primary concerns I recall. And again, it's sparsely used. Our colleagues in Seattle also mentioned that, again, for private development, this is not the right tool for it. So... That's addressing the ownership side. But I believe that was the only main concern from the patient at the last meeting. And again, similar concerns we heard at the Parks and Build Environment Committee. But other than that, yeah, we are moving forward with the ordinance as you see in exhibit A. A lot of different changes, but the main ones again were decreasing the minimum eligibility of the program from 16 to 4, increasing the boundary to include the NR and UR 4 zones to also address middle housing and some of the other housing policies that have come at the state level these past few years. Other than that, I'm here to address any additional questions you may have.

I had a question on the 12-year exemption with the deed restriction. So have you ever had anybody who's ended up having their MFTE canceled as a result of noncompliance for reasons?

We have not had any canceled across the whole state. I believe there was only one case maybe that was egregious enough where the I think commerce initiated the cancellation, but yeah, it's really that mostly, most often it's, we try to work with the property to see what the offense is and correct it. But so far, no, not in here.

I was just reading through the cancellation and I was like, oh, one of the things is not like making sure that the deed restriction remains in place, but.

Yeah, in terms of the deed restriction, again, that's more so, I believe, for the ownership option. And nobody has taken advantage of the ownership option thus far. All our MFT projects have been rental. And again, over the 27 years, the program has been in existence. It's created over 3,700 units. And so far, we've had many issues. Generally, our property owners and property managers work with us pretty well. And we have clear, open communications with them. Yeah.

Commissioners, any comments? All right. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

All right.

And I think that moves us to new business, which is TIP. All right. Tom Hood, City Engineer, is going to come up and walk us through the 2026 to 2031 Transportation Improvement Program.

first one since everett 2044 and the new transportation element were adopted almost one year ago tom thanks yorick uh good evening commissioners tom hood with public works um i'm here tonight seeking a recommendation from the planning commission that city council adopt the six-year transportation improvement program or tip for the 2027 to 2032 horizon The Growth Management Act requires an annual adoption of a six-year TIP for all cities in Washington state, so that's the impetus for this visit. The TIP is essentially a list of projects that support the transportation element of the comprehensive plan. And you'll see the list in front of you is segregated this year. into what we call a financially constrained and a financially unconstrained list. The first page is showing the financially constrained projects. These are projects that either already have some level of external funding or can be reasonably expected to receive funding within the next six years. Some of these are already in design or even construction, but not yet finished, so they are on this list. And they're on this portion of the TIP list because of the combination of need for the project and competitiveness in the grant programs for which they're applying. I will point out that you'll see the dollar amount is pretty significant there at $3.8 billion, but most of that comes from the last three projects on the list. Those three are very significant regional mobility projects that are handled by WSDOT, but they're on our list because the city supports those projects for relief of traffic congestion on the city's network. The remainder of the project list is the financially unconstrained projects. These are projects that are also necessary to achieve the goals and objectives of the 20-year comprehensive plan. They reside on the TIP as an authorization for staff to pursue funding for these projects without coming back to council for authorization on each individual grant application. There's also transit projects included on the last page. And all of these projects that you see are on our radar as funding opportunities arise. Excuse me. This 6 year tip was recommended for adoption by the transportation advisory committee at their May 21st meeting and once recommended by the planning Commission resolution will present the tip to City Council for adoption. And with that I'm happy to take any questions you might have. Mission.

I had a question. I apologize if I missed this detail. Is there a prioritization in the order of how these are listed or?

These are not prioritized individually. However, we actually have five main categories that we prioritize our transportation projects around their community connections, safety, economic benefit, climate and health and regional coordination. These five priorities are expanded upon in the transportation element.

So those priorities then, is there a theme then or how they kind of break down on your categories of the funding then?

Not sure the question, but certain grant programs have different emphases. Some are more geared toward climate and health, for instance. Some are more mobility-oriented. Some are safety-oriented. You'll see some of the new projects on this list in bold. A lot of them come out of our recently completed safety action plan. And so those would be good candidates for safety-type grant programs.

So would you say that the ones that are bolded are a priority within the subgroup?

No. As I hopefully described in the memo to Planning Commission, the bold projects signify new projects to this year's TIP. Just simply new. Yes.

Yeah, I think I remember last time. It's just difficult to wrap our heads around. massive amount of projects that just seem kind of unrelated in comparison to a prioritization of where things are going to go. So it's always hard to, it's difficult for me to wrap, like, what am I recommending? You're putting on new ones. They sound great. You just want me to, you know, the agreement is, yeah, they just sound great. Good job. So it's kind of hard to, without any kind of priority of what you're adding on here and how they're being funded, it's kind of difficult. Yeah. For me to have really an opinion on whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, because I don't know what we're not getting. I don't know what we're losing or what we're adding or how are they? Is it? Are there better things we should be doing or, you know, where the things that didn't get on this list because they didn't meet the threshold and.

Maybe more funding becomes available, you know, whether it be a bed or a stay.

Sorry. They have different requirements and they'll fund certain projects. I mean, I don't love the list. If you're saying, do you like this list? I mean, if we could remove every bicycle, I'd be happy. Well, I mean, $62 million worth of bicycles on here.

Yeah, I understand that you want to put them on the list because we can't, we don't know for a fact where funding is coming from. So you want to be as fluid as you can and have as many options to grab funding as it comes in. But it just seems like there's never an attempt in this to actually show like, okay, when that, where are we really focusing on other than these projects?

broad five categories i ask the same question every year so and i don't get an answer so i assume i won't get one this time as well it's better like if they're shovel ready like how many are ready to execute upon a receipt like are these mainly ready to execute upon

I mean, this is the first year we have a constrained list. Right. Yeah, this constrained list, the first page, these are projects that we either have some funding for or we expect that in the next six years they're competitive enough that we will get funding. You'll see many of them are bridge replacement projects. One of them is also almost finished. Another three of them are currently in design. And so, you know, these top, this constrained list is the ones that we're focusing on as the top priorities. However, we don't want to leave out any possibility that may arise through a funding opportunity for any of the others on the list as well, because all of these support the goals and policies of the element, the transportation element.

So, arguably, if someone saw a high priority project that was not on the constraint list and wanted to advocate for it, whether it was the planning commission or member of the public or something. The constrained list, usually there's local matches. So by sort of allocating or signaling that we intend to allocate our scarce local money in service of attracting a grant, that's a statement of priority. But if someone saw something far down the list that they wished was higher up the list, that is something we could look at.

We would certainly evaluate that, yes.

Is it like the R05, which is a freight corridor, would that be then also on the ports? Do we coordinate with them to make sure that we're on this? Since that would be a port-related issue, are they also part of that plan?

Yes, the freight mobility projects were all... I guess outreach occurred with the port to get their concurrence for including them as useful freight projects. We're a big supporter of the trestle project.

Is there a, I didn't read the memo, the process by which the constrained list is developed and the process by which someone who observed a need might advocate for that need getting programmed? Would it be commenting to the City Council or does this went to the TAC first? So the TAC did have a process here. Yeah, the TAC. Excuse me, the Transportation Advisory Committee.

Yeah, there's nothing formal in the memo to Planning Commission about reprioritizing a given project up to the constrained list. But we're certainly willing to assess any given project for its inclusion on the constrained list.

I actually had a project that I believe we've talked about here that might have been on the last TIP was the one at Pacific and Grand and maybe not having left turns on the Pacific or something. And I know that I've seen designs for it. Is that not on the TIP because you guys decided not to do it or is it?

No, that is on the TIP.

Missed it entirely.

Well, it's under a different name. That is our freight mobility phase two project. And that one is on the constrained list. It's R05 about halfway down 41st Street, Rucker Ave, Freight Corridor Phase 2. That includes improvements to the Grand Avenue intersection at Pacific. And we'll make that a pedestrian signal only with no left turns. It's a much larger corridor project, obviously.

And then staff adds projects and removes projects as part of area studies, corridor studies.

All of the sort of subordinate plans that are referenced in the comprehensive plan, bike master plan, road safety action plan, all of those feed projects into the TIP.

So most of the bicycle projects were probably the high priority ones in the bike master plan. And as we've completed them, maybe we move down the list with a reasonable estimate of funding that would be available for those types of things. And then the programmatic too, there's a large bucket that we're not going to put every... crosswalk repainting or signal timing or something. So those are the programmatic buckets.

Yeah, those are individual programmatic elements that are talked about in the transportation element.

How much influence of the Vision Zero work has been put into this list so far?

Well, quite a bit. I think there's probably don't know six or eight at least uh new projects in bold that have come directly out of the vision zero plan i'll think about i think bold was okay so you just need us to offer this resolution We are seeking a resolution recommending adoption by City Council. And I believe you have the resolution in front of you as well.

Yes, I believe it's 2602. It should be in the packet. I'll make a motion that we approve Commission Resolution 26-02.

Second.

Any further discussion? Would you please take the roll?

Chair Shelby?

Yes.

Commissioner Ballard? Yes. Commissioner Rutledge? Yes. Commissioner Welch? Yes. Thank you.

Thank you very much. All righty. And our next item of new business will be land divisions, researchers and development standards.

Got some slides here. Okay, this is the most exciting name for an exciting project land divisions, procedures and development standards update. We are most immediately responding to recent state legislation. You'll hear the term lot splitting a lot. We're looking at this a little bit more broadly. And so using land divisions as the term for our work, but it will implement as part of it, the lot splitting legislation that came out of the legislature in the 2025 session. We knew that was coming and we had some conversations about that as part of our middle housing work and our update to the comprehensive plan. So there are a couple of policies and actions about it that we are, policies anyways, that we are taking steps forward on with this project. generally modernizing land divisions for middle housing world. And then, as always, we try to clean house, streamline, simplify, and all of that whenever we work through a chapter or a set of chapters in municipal code. A couple of quick definitions and background to get us started and that's about all we'll get to today. A brief note about the project goals and everything, but we'll focus on introduction and background today and come back in July in two meetings to work through the proposed updates and we'll give you a full code set at your July 7 meeting. Subdivisions, all of land divisions are handled under state law in Chapter 5817 RCW. Subdivisions generally split a parcel of land into multiple smaller pieces of land that you can then sell or transfer or lease. Subdivisions, it depends on the city. You can start sometimes called long subdivisions, the more complicated version, between five and 10 lots. In Everett, that subdivisions begins at 10 lots. It's not a subdivision. It's a short subdivision if it's fewer number of lots. So for setbacks, for example, in our neighborhood residential zone, we have a 10-foot front setback and 5-foot setback on the rest. If you had a fairly large, doesn't even have to be fairly large, but you had a parent lot, you need to keep buildings out of those setbacks. But within that, you could subdivide it into a number of lots that had zero lot lines, such as for townhouses where they touch each other. Otherwise, I don't believe that you can create a lot that does not have a setback between the building. Plats and short plats are the maps that result from a subdivision and a short subdivision. There are preliminary and final plats. Preliminary plat gives the layout, allows the city to respond to it, to make corrections to it. allows the applicant to uh build out the infrastructure the uh driveways landscaping utility stubs and for townhouse developments i believe we require that the foundations be poured so that you know that you're exactly on the line at that point you can record your final plat and only then can you sell a portion of that lot separately Binding site plans are for commercial and industrial development and are similar to subdivisions, although it's a shorter process. I'll go through a little bit of the history of this, which I think is very important to place us in, I guess, this middle housing world. So from Everett's zoning code of 1956 all the way up until 1992, if you were in the single-family zones, the RS, R1, and R2, you were allowed one single-family home per lot. We didn't have accessory dwelling units. Family was limited to eight related and unrelated adults. And you can see on the map those pale yellow up to the pale orange color, which was maybe 60, 70% of the land was this way. That is important because that means the only way to add any sort of development density or population was through the subdivision process. So all of our rules and all of our analysis was put into regulating those land divisions because it was the fundamental authorization to build. After that, the building permit process was fairly streamlined once you had a legal buildable lot. Started chipping away at that one home, one lot in the early 90s. 1993, the Washington Housing Policy Act encouraged, among other things, cities to allow what were called then accessory apartments in single family zones. Reading through the record, it looks like we beat that recommendation by a year because I see our ordinance in 1992 as the first mention that I could find of accessory dwelling units. That accessory dwelling unit provision actually lasted until 2017. Accessory dwelling unit could only be attached, only one per lot. The owner had to live in either the accessory or the primary, and there were other dimensional standards. I think it was limited to maybe 15 or 20% to the size of the principal house and some other restrictions. In 2017, that was surprisingly recent to me. It was the first time that we allowed detached accessory dwelling units. So on a normal sized lot, there were some places you could have a duplex if you had a double lot. But if you had a normal lot meeting the minimum standards, this was the first time you could have two separate structures on one lot, 2017. In 2023, some of you were here. One of you was here. We expanded pretty significantly accessory dwelling units. Now two were allowed per lot. We removed the owner occupancy. I think we relaxed the maximum size. There were a couple other provisions to expand availability of accessory dwelling units. Only 2023, 30 years after they were first allowed, now you could have your second one on a lot. And then things have really picked up pace since then. Last year, Everett 2044 implemented state requirements around middle housing and no longer counted doorknobs or density or number of dwelling units in a lot. So from 1956 to 2025, there were strict limits on the number of dwellings per lot and subdivisions was how you got to more density. And so there was a lot of process around it. July of 11 of 2025, that game changed pretty dramatically in Everett. You can see down there crossing out of all of the maximum density lines, crossing out the different use categories for a single family, a duplex, a triplex, and so forth. Now, as long as you're meeting the principal bulk standards of height, setbacks, lot coverage, you can build as many dwelling units on the lot as necessary. That means that if you have a very, very, very large lot, you could build what would be equivalent to a subdivision without dividing that land. Separate ownership can be handled through a condominium process, or it could be rented, any size development. We did keep the minimum lot area width, depth, and frontage width requirements. Those are still in Chapter 1906, and they range from 5,000 to 9,000 square feet minimum lot area, and then 50-foot width and 40-foot frontage on the street, and 80-foot depth for the most part. State law, residential lot splitting House Bill 1096. It's codified in Chapter 5817 RCW, and it requires cities like Everett, cities above a certain size that are subject to buildable lands, I think, in Western Washington, most likely. It requires us to allow residential lot splits, so an administrative process. And for a lot of these things that the lot split requires, we've already gone that direction for short plats, if not all subdivisions. Up to 50 lots, you don't go to the hearing examiner above 50 lots. It's a type 3 process, and you do go to the hearing examiner. I don't know other cities that well, but I think it's possible there are cities where you still have to go to the hearing examiner for even smaller land divisions and sometimes city council. Maybe? I don't know. Either way, in the past there have been a lot of process public hearings and decision-making bodies involved in land division. Everett's been pretty good about taking advantage of new state laws as they arrived to streamline this, the land division process. So ours would have already been administrative if it's a short plot. Under this lot split, and there's a Department of Commerce fact sheet under their middle housing webpage that provides a good overview of the bill, but it requires that a city allow a lot to be split in two. The lot split can only be used once, although the child lot, the lot that resulted from a split, could be subdivided under other units. processes like a short plat or a subdivision. There was some earlier confusion about that that has been resolved and so you could subdivide a 20,000 square foot lot into two 10,000 square foot lots and then you would be eligible for a further short plat on that 5,000 square foot lot, but you would not be eligible to use the administrative lot split that was provided by the legislature. The child lots do need to meet that minimum lot size. I think that just that right there really reduces its effectiveness in Everett. The administrative lot split cannot require that the infrastructure be installed prior to the finaling of it. So that bit that I said about before you final the plat, you need to have your utilities stubbed, your landscaping installed, your driveway paved, and your walkways paved. With this administrative lot split, you could do the real estate transaction and have those installation of those infrastructure pieces be conditioned on a building permit that would occur afterwards. So there's a sequencing and a time savings in the real estate transaction piece of this. And then there are also some exemptions from appeal and... Yeah, there's a couple other things. Yeah. Okay, so that is part of what we're implementing, but we're hoping to take that a step further. Comprehensive plan. Here are some of the policies, most specifically the second one. Well, in general, boosting homeownership opportunities. That's a lot of why we're here. Middle housing could easily be implemented through a lot of rental units. We want to grab as many of that proportion as and make them available for homeownership as possible. We get a lot of feedback that fee simple ownership is preferable to condominium, which is otherwise the route that you would get a middle housing type development, assuming that it's smaller than the minimum lot size. Fee simple ownership gets access to VA and FHA loans and is otherwise priced a little bit more desirable to the buyer. So generally working on finding all the ways that we can to boost homeownership opportunities. And then HO 13 there specific to this topic, provide for land division into small fee simple lots. I can't say I totally understand the second half of that sentence where condominium ownership of a housing unit would not otherwise be allowed. It seems like every scenario that we're talking about would also allow a condominium. So this is one that we may pick up in our annual amendments and correct that. But if anybody has any idea where that half of the sentence came from, I could not remember myself. And then 14, allow lot splits by simplifying regulations and streamlining the approval process. That is where we're at here. So the project outcomes, we're looking to implement the lot split law. We are, I think, going to be successful. I'm hoping that we're going to be successful at implementing it through a streamlined short subdivision process. rather than being just splitting one lot into two, you could split it into up to nine lots and then defer the installation of the improvements until later, conditioned on the building permit. Really hard for us to imagine many scenarios where you want to go all the way up to nine or even much more than two with that deferred installation. I think one of the common use cases for the deferral of those installations of infrastructure is Someone wants to sell their backyard, for example, and they're willing to understand that a developer may build a home or several homes on it, but that's not something that they themselves want to be interested in. And hanging around through the process while all that work gets done might make the deal fall apart or otherwise just be not value added to that property owner. And so this would allow them to sell the backyard and then somebody else deals with the entire development process. We would condition that to make sure that the access utilities and other provisions that would otherwise be required do get installed along with or prior to the construction of the dwelling unit or the building permit. But at least you have some of that time savings that you can get into. The more lots you have that are dependent on each other, the more complications I can see. There's even things like if it's townhouses and the survey was not perfect, what happens when your foundation is a couple inches off? So those are the kinds of things that we're trying to solve for. And... if you're building several dwellings on separate lots and they kind of daisy chain along the same utility pathway, easement, driveway, what have you, probably don't wanna build it one segment at a time. Maybe there's a scenario where that would work, but it could be that we condition most or all of the improvements on the first building permit. So you can create the plat, maybe even sell the lots, and then the first development that comes along picks up those improvements, and there would be some cost allocation that's handled between the property owners and the folks who are participants. Or if that doesn't wind up being used, I think that's okay too, because it's available in case anyone is able to figure it out. But at the least, you would be able to do the more common two or three, which I can see more of those happening. Lots of corrections, simplification, and improvement to consistency. consolidating all four of these chapters into one chapter. Kelsey Hyde, our land use planning manager, has been doing a ton of research on this, looking at a lot of other cities. We clock in around 13,000 or 14,000 words between these four chapters. It is a lot to slog through. The organization of it isn't always... clear to people so that they can find the information. We have a lot of folks get tripped up along the way. And I think it was very inspiring to Kelsey to see how simple some other cities handle land divisions without any negative outcomes. So I think the latest draft that I saw brings that 13,000 words and four chapters down to one chapter and about 5,000 words while preserving the important parts there. The other piece that we've noticed since kind of the accessory dwelling unit expansion and the middle housing expansion is that we have in just a few places different development standards if you do a land division than if you don't. Frontage improvements. I want to say accessory dwelling units. It used to be up to three, but now frontage improvements are required for all dwelling units. But an addition of up to two accessory dwelling units to a principal unit to remain is exempt from building frontage improvements. But if you were to do a unit lot land division and separate those, then that would trigger frontage improvements. Same structures in the same place, one of them just because you're dividing the land triggers frontage improvement and the other one doesn't. Underground utilities, same scenario. You could build four townhouses and I believe record a condominium on those or rent them out and you would not be required to have underground utilities, but as soon as you get into a land division, you do have to underground your utilities. vehicle access roads. We've got a table in municipal code. We've got a couple of tables in the DCSS design construction something standards, the engineering and roadway design standards that is issued by public works by rule. Could use some cleanup between those two. There are some overlaps that don't work well. And somewhere between a lack of clarity or outright conflict where it comes to land divisions or not so taking the opportunity to clean that whole thing up access drives ABC public roads cross sections and everything And then landscaping there's a table that I want to say it's a five foot landscaping strip on either side of a driveway that is required if you do a land division, but not if you build the exact same development without a land division. Those are either the only 4 or the 4 most noticeable ones for pretty much everything else. Um. We have the authority to condition a building permit to achieve the same development standard, whether it's a land division or not. But with these 4. There's a material difference that is not attributable to the development itself, the number of units, the placement of the units, or anything, just the ownership structure, which in most cases disadvantages land divisions. We had a large townhouse project a couple of years ago that ran into one of these development standards that only applied to land divisions, and they didn't want to do it. And so they pivoted and the development is now condominium, which is not far from, but a little bit less attractive to the developer, to the buyers and others. So we want to avoid that situation and let the development standards follow the physical development more than the ownership structure, unless there's some reason for the ownership structure. So we've got a lot of this drafted, but there is a lot of, there's some more work that we need to do. We anticipate having a full section. Like I said, we have an almost complete chapter to share with you today, but it'll be in much better shape if we share it with you on July 7th. uh have a discussion about the specifics there and then uh two weeks after july 21st uh if we're ready we would look for a recommendation and and bring that to the council any questions or corrections i believe we've got some folks who may know a lot about land division and i only know a medium about i have a question yes

I'm seeing a lot of these projects right now where you have your primary residence and then they're building either one or two units on the back part of the lot. I live in North Everett, so on the alley. And then they're able to sell those two units in the back, one or two units in the back. So what process are they using now for that? And would this be an alternative for those projects? And where do those projects fall in this context?

If they're selling them and it's a North Everett lot that's under 5,000 square feet, then I think that has to be a condominium. This wouldn't be much different. You would trade a condominium association for probably not a homeowners association, although there may be a very limited one, but cross easements or something like that. Yeah. There is a scenario we have an alley access requirement. That didn't occur to me to bring up, but your mention of North Everett alley lots. If your lot has access to an alley and you develop it, you need to take driveway access off that alley to preserve the street frontage uninterrupted sidewalk and street trees and street parking. That, if you divide off the rear lot and build on it, now the front lot no longer has direct access to that alley and would then potentially create a lot of scenarios where you've got new driveway cuts in North Everett, which I don't think is a good outcome. So we're working on how to condition potentially that if your lot is divided in a way that you relinquish your alley access, that does not then give you the right for a driveway cut on the front. So you may want to think ahead in that scenario and get a driveway to your lot as part of that land division. Could be an easement in a shared driveway or something. But that's one I know that we had some concern about.

Is there an issue with, like on the alley lots in North Everett, is there an issue with primary access as far as fire service? When someone had told me there was, I wasn't going to quite follow that up, but it seems like they were trying to put in something, and I think it was in North Everett. It maybe wasn't, but. Yeah, that's where all of our, most of our alleys are.

So that's where that would occur. Yes, lots of alley side development, mostly accessory dwelling units. Right now we require a four foot wide path from the public sidewalk to every dwelling unit. Some call that a gurney path because it's designed to be accessible by the fire department in case of emergency to bring a crew and a gurney to bring someone out who's in medical distress. The address is on the street. And you may have a scenario where there's the existing house, maybe fences, hedges, and then there's development in the back. The aid car shows up to the address and they can't get to the person. And so they're turning around and going down the alley or wasting precious seconds trying to get there. That is so currently that has led to the requirement that if you're building rear yard dwellings that you have a pathway to the front. Sometimes there's either not much room for it. Sometimes there's long distances or topography that's making that difficult, adding quite a bit of cost. those are impervious generally so then that triggers storm water there's threshold at 2 000 square feet you might be adding a thousand square feet a house 500 square feet of dry you know that walkway brings you right over that threshold that then adds even a little bit more cost So we are working with the fire department and permit services and public works is taking the lead on that on finding a way around that literally and working on a potential framework where we could address at least a certain number and some of this depends on those magical distances from where the fire apparatus would be 150 feet I think is one of them at least. but that you could address rear yard accessory dwelling units or dwelling units from the side street where the alley arrives at the side street. And then it is known that that's where you park and the aid crew gets out and walks down the alley instead of down the gurney path to arrive there. Perfect. I don't think it's going to go the whole block. So if you're dead center in the block, we may still require that pathway. But at least if you're near where the alley dumps out into the street and sidewalk, we may have a way around that. So that's something that Fire Public Works, they've got a proposal. I believe it's with the fire chief now. And that's a great one. I'll give you an update on that in July if we've got one.

If you're splitting off of the alley, what is considered frontage improvements? Is the front the alley or is the front the front?

There can be improvements required to the alley if it's a dirt alley or somehow doesn't meet standards, but there's not going to be like a walkway or sidewalk in there. The frontage improvements would be to the front of the house. So in cases where you've got an alley lot, well, it doesn't matter if there's an alley, does it? No, it does if you're on the back of the lot. Either way, frontage, generally it's the sidewalk, curb, and gutter that is the frontage improvements. Sometimes it's roadway widening, very rarely in a middle housing scenario. Sometimes it's improving the alley if it's really in rough shape. But for the most part, frontage improvements is the sidewalk, curb, gutter, and street parking. So if your lot doesn't have the sidewalk and you build in the backyard, at some point, the right number of units, that'll trigger the requirement to build the sidewalk. If you were to split that lot off before you build that, that should not be an end run around the frontage improvement requirement. So that would have to be a condition on the face of the short plat, I would guess.

Because this is a purely administrative thing, I assume that there would be no notice posted, right? That the split was going to occur? Right. Same as current short plot.

And so it would be a guess of a reasonable time frame that somebody would be expecting to have, if they submitted this correctly the first time, that they would have that approval.

I will have to think about that. What seems straightforward and easy may not be, but this seems, you're not reviewing building plans necessarily. So it's, if we can get to work, One of the updates I gave last time was our pre-approved designs. And so we're working on all kinds of different ways to streamline that permit process. And if there are components of this that we can work on, we'll definitely do that or as folks get practice, but yeah, I'll have to get back to you. I don't want to overpromise.

Do you know your timeline for a BLA? I mean, I think it could be similar on that, but I don't know your timeline for a BLA either.

Yeah, I'm not sure. I'll ask the folks for a reasonable estimate, because I hear more about outliers than I hear about the regular stuff. Definitely the whole point is that this is streamlined and quick, though. So maybe in the realm of a review cycle versus the one year easily for a normal process. Very easily. Yes.

So you're all alone there. Yes.

I do understand that San Diego issues ADU permits if you're using the pre-approved in a day over the counter. That's your goal.

I personally haven't done one of those.

Yeah, we'll take a look. One of our staff members used to work for the city of San Diego. Might have predated this work, but we get a lot of good tips from her on that, on stuff that San Diego does. I was in the Seattle Times this morning, a city in Oklahoma, same thing, overnight or two days or something. Certainly, having been Pre reviewed the building and structural and all that is, uh, should take us no time because we've already reviewed it stormwater. Every site remains different topography stormwater where the utilities come in and everything. So, uh, that. Can I can see how, in some cases that would be very easy if you've got a flat. Backyard and, uh, meet the setbacks and, you know, where utilities are and everything. It's pretty easy to check. Um.

Do you need to meet all the stormwater for the land division? Because if you don't know what's going to go there...

Like I said, it being a problem. Right. I think we want to not create unbuildable lots for any reason. So, but we won't know what exactly is going to go on there. So probably, I mean, I'm all ears to what a reasonable standard would be, but maybe you pick sort of a minimum level of development. And if it is possible to do the stormwater for that project, I don't know if it's a 1000 square feet. Uh, so something reasonable so that not every development is impractical. You may not be able to build a house. That's twice as big. Um. But I think for the most part, by spending money, you can. Trim down the area required for storm water. Um. But adequate provisions for all the utilities, including stormwater and access and fire and all of that needs to be possible to the lot. Maybe not possible in every arrangement. So yeah, I'll make a note to think about that.

Just because like in the alleyways, you'll have most of the utilities are in the alleyway, but your stormwater is usually towards the street. So if you split that lot and you don't have the access to the street direction, wherever you're going to build there, it's got to go somewhere. Right. Right.

Yeah. Yeah, that should be provided for.

I guess I'm taking north of it.

David Apsley, North everett's in the combined sewer system too so it's a little bit more straightforward this the stormwater requirements. David Apsley, yeah. David Apsley, I think you don't have to do treatment just flow control. Yeah. So yeah, I'm not sure if we need to sketch out the stormwater system for a reasonably expected development, but then they could change as long as the different building that is ultimately built meets code as well. So you at least have that backstop that something reasonable could be built with that lot.

yeah the land divisions yeah it's why why why the need to i mean i mean i think you're right i see the example of this is there's a homeowner that's got and they're keeping they're separating a lot off and then probably a developer or somebody's coming in and doing that that study myself it's simply a transactional thing why the burdens um the person buying that property right you can't can't come in if it doesn't scenario.

Sure.

trying to keep those it makes me concerned that you're making it too complicated on the city aspect if you're trying to figure out what to defer everything it's just whatever you're not giving them anything to defer they can't do it right so it's just about It might be different if it's just solely a financial transaction.

But you don't know what they're going to be building on it or what they're going to be using it for. So therefore, what constraints are they trying to meet with the city?

But why would the city care?

That's what I mean because you could just buy the lot just because you want to park a car there.

Sure. Well, anything that's currently legal for what it's existing, if you want to make it something different, you're going to come in, you know, trying to figure it out and then deferring these things is, that was the word that was kind of throwing me off.

They're going to come in and do whatever they want to do, whatever they legally can do through the codes, and then you're going to have a control over allowing them to do it.

Yeah.

That's a very fair point. There's probably a city interest, a public interest in not creating unbuildable remnants that wind up lasting for a long time. We have unbuildable lots now. I guess they wind up functionally becoming an extra large yard for somebody if it's attached.

Very much exactly what I want to do to my neighbor's property is buy it so it's not buildable.

Yeah, exactly. But I could see a situation where, you know... it becomes an inefficient use of land or you wind up with all kinds of interruptions because somebody had an idea and it felt, you know, I'm going to build a, Frank sometimes inspires, tries to inspire me with these. They have some very interesting, tiny, irregular shaped houses in Japan. And he's like, look what they were able to make on this like hundred square foot lot. And it's a trapezoid or something like that. So maybe somebody has that idea, doesn't pan out, somebody else gets it. Now, what do you do with all of that? It's kind of very difficult to develop. Is that worth extra process to every transaction? Maybe not. So, yeah, we'll think hard about that. We do still have state law. That we need to meet the requirements that's what I was looking for the adequate provisions for I know that words in there somewhere. So i'm not sure how much. room to maneuver we have on that, but yeah i'll take that back. I don't I don't imagine people would want to create useless. Lots.

You know, for so long I've been trying to solve and coming to be a bad character.

Sure. And every year we're seeing significant changes from the legislature every single year. It's so hard to, by the time we make a law here, they're changing it in six months and we have to go back and do it again. If we just keep it simple, I think it'd be easier. That way, who knows what's going to come up next session. Perfect.

Any further comment?

Ah, okay. There's not sure exactly how this applicable is or how hard and fast it is, but in 5817 110 factors to be considered conditions for approval. The city shall inquire into the public use and interest proposed to be served by the establishment of subdivision and dedication. It shall determine if adequate provisions are made for, but not limited to, public health, safety, welfare, open space, drainage ways, streets or roads, alleys, public ways, transit stops, potable water supplies, sanitary wastes, parks and recreation, playgrounds, schools and school grounds, and other facts. So I don't know if that means we are required to, for any short plot, lot split, whatnot, Provide for adequate... Find adequate provisions are made for drainage ways. I think that's what we're talking about, kind of. Or if... Probably almost anything could be engineered. So is it only when you get to an absurd one foot wide lot That you really can't. I mean, you couldn't fit a building that's buildable under the building code on that. So yeah, maybe error error on the side of housing is kind of a good mantra in general. That's, that's been our, our guiding light these past couple of years for sure. Great.

Tom Preston- Already, and you had no local project review update. Correct. Tom Preston- Right, very tiny one.

Yeah, that one is local. It's similar to this title 15 of those are procedures for all of the land use actions that we that we do. A very similar overhaul for consistency, simplification. I think we are considering bringing this into one chapter, too. It is difficult for me to switch between chapters, where sometimes you expect to find it in 1502, but it's actually in 1503 and vice versa. The main reason is to implement the provisions of Senate Bill 5290 from a couple of years ago, which enforces timelines on permit review and decision by the by the city. All of this is on local project review, which excludes building permits and construction permits. We already work to those timelines, and so we enforce them on ourselves, including the provisions for refunds if we don't, partial permit fee refunds if we don't meet those timelines, but we're overdue in time. uh writing that into code um so we've we've got that piece done and uh looking at opportunities to reorganize consolidate and streamline i think i saw that one come in at 35 000 words in uh title 15 that's why these are really and they interact too um title 15 and land divisions um play with each other so Working on both of those together. We're very close. I think we have a full draft of both of them. Just need to do more error checking and workshopping internally first. So we'll bring that back to you. I'm trying to keep these two together. So you'll see the two together going forward. um there may be some minor changes to what is a review process one two three and above uh review process one minor administrative review two is uh planning director decision with public notice three is uh hearing examiner decision um I have one that comes to mind as a parking administrative parking reduction used to be a very big deal. Now there's not much to reduce anymore, but that's a rev two with public notice required. Um, I don't know if that makes sense to be a rev two anymore. Do we need public notice for that one? Uh, for one we've streamlined it so much to begin with. So there may be a couple changes like that. Those are kind of just optional cleanups, but for the most part, it's, uh, One more cleanup on aisle six and a big aisle that is.

I would voice my opinion in support of knocking that down because I think eventually the state's going to remove your parking minimums anyway at some point.

Yes, we've got an ordinance that we're working on, um, to finish up the parking law that came out. We did half. We did the residential piece in the periodic update. We need to do the commercial piece. And I think there were a couple of little things. So, uh, we will be diving back into parking specifically later this year, too.

Translate.

Well, I think if there's nothing else, that is our meeting, folks, and we are adjourned.