Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everybody, and welcome. Oh, it's green. It's supposed to be green. It's supposed to be green. All right. Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the September 1st, 2026 meeting of the City of Everett Planning Commission. Would you take the role, please, Ayanna?

Chair Shelby? Here. Commissioner Kachaters? Here. Commissioner Rutledge? Here. Thank you.

And Chair, I received word that Commissioner Welch is dealing with an emergency, but he is on his way and should be here a little bit late.

Okay, fantastic. Thank you. To our land acknowledgement, we acknowledge the original inhabitants of this place, the Stahob's 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. I think we all have the minutes, although Ms. Chatters may not. No, they should have been sent. Anybody have objection to recording them as presented?

No.

Outstanding. All right. Reports and comments is our next item. Any reports from commissioners?

No.

Staff comments? No report today.

Okay. And then do we have anybody that would like to comment publicly?

We do not.

Outstanding. I think that moves us to our item for this evening's agenda, which is the 2026 Annual Amendments Comp Plan and Development Regulations.

Good evening, Chair Shelby. Commissioners, I'm York Stevens Wajda, Planning Director. And with me, this is your first time at this table?

First time at this table, but I have sat over there. But hi, I'm Danielle Marshall. I'm an Associate Planner with Long Range Planning. Great.

Danielle has been working hard along with other members of the team on this package of 2026 annual amendments. This is our first since the periodic update and we'll get some slides up.

It's in our second.

It's our first round of annual amendments. We did one during the periodic update. So we're starting a annual trend here and we will learn as we go and we will adjust over the years. We would love your feedback on the process and the content and how it's delivered and everything. Apologies for not getting a memo out in advance of the meeting. We were working right up to the end of the day today to get a solid set of amendments that we were able to workshop internally first. um our intent today is that we introduce the issues uh start to get too familiar with some of them and then uh we're still turning on a couple of things um and then at either the next meeting or the meeting after that we'll have a final set here okay So, the, why under state law cities shall include a process for any interested person to suggest a comprehensive plan or development regulation amendment. and those amendments shall be docketed and considered on an annual basis. Comprehensive plan amendments especially may only be done once per year, and so that the public is able to see the total implications of the changes. Development regulations can be changed anytime by ordinance, but for the comprehensive plan, these are all batched into one per year, and so this would be The one we tried to time this after the annual report, which we talked through at the last meeting, and all of this were pretty new into this comprehensive plan cycle. So we expect it to get more refined as time goes on. And then, so the first one was from the public. They have the opportunity to suggest amendments. And then internally, as we do project review and interact with developers and development projects, state law is clear that the permitting process shall not be the venue for making changes to the development regulations, even if they have problems or could be improved. The project review shall continue. with the development regulations that are on the books at the time of the permit application and then the deficiencies as they may be get combined into these annual amendments We released a call for specific amendments in May of 2026 and had a 30-day application period. We sent notice to all of our mailing lists of public notices and neighborhood leaders and the SEPA mailing list and all of that and did not receive any formal requests from the public. We are... planning on changing this from a one month period where we have a call for requests into a rolling open call for requests throughout the year. And then we will just docket those for consideration one year from now. So someone could apply tomorrow, we'll hold it and process it next year. We may not have gotten any from the public, but we sure did get a lot from staff. 50 plus, I think, at last count. And these categories, comprehensive plan, land use map, comprehensive plan policies, zoning map correction, a lot on the development regulations and permit fees, which are not exactly development regulations, but are in municipal code. Comprehensive plan land use map. Nothing inside the city. We think we got that right and haven't heard any problems with it within the city limits. But as we discussed at the last meeting, the city is looking into an annexation of portions of the municipal urban growth area or potential annexation area south of the city, which you see on the bottom on the left side. Is that left? You see on the left side with the dashed line around it is the Snohomish County's future land use map for their comprehensive plan. And on the right, you see the city where we have extended our land use designations into that annexation area for pre-annexation land use designations. And we want those to be aligned. And we're taking this opportunity now because we can only amend the comprehensive plan once per year. And so if we were to do an annexation within the next. 10 months, I think we're down to, then this is the time to make any necessary changes to the comprehensive plan. We did in the periodic update align the comprehensive plan map with the counties. Either we missed something or I don't think it changed since then, but there's this little purple triangle at the very bottom of the map on the right that is industrial that should be urban center.

Can I flag a thing real quick there? Just for our lobbyist, this should be like one of those qualifying event things, like an insurance, right? Like when we do this, we should have the opportunity, not just for the whole city, obviously, but for the annexed areas too. Yeah.

agreed i would do this yeah that's silly the way you're describing i was surprised it could be that we could get away with it yeah there are three i think exceptions to when the annual no more than once per year amendments and it is a new sub-area plan a capital facility plan that's changed with a budget or something else if that third thing is an annexation then apologies but at least we're ahead of the game here but yeah i had the same i had the same thought Here is the county's comprehensive plan land use map and the very busy legend on the right. Most of those do not occur within our annexation area. There's a lot of rural stuff and resource stuff in there. So these are the seven or so future land uses that are identified in the county's comprehensive plan map. The city, we have a pretty simplified system. So citywide, we have residential, metropolitan center, which is Metro Everett, mixed use industrial parks and resource lands, which are the agricultural valley bottom near Lowell-Arimar Road. So this is how we propose to categorize the multiple county land uses into the city's system. Light rail community, mixed use corridor and urban commercial would all be mixed use. Urban high density, medium density, and low density would all just be residential. And the public institutional use, if it is a park, it could be our park and open space. If it's a school or something else, I think residential would probably be the holding zone for that. I don't think we have schools. Oh, yes. Yes. I think it would be residential. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think we have them called out in a specific future land use. There's a little purple thing. It is current industrial use. Some of this is the likely location of the future light rail station. But I think it's been several years since the county redesignated this to their light rail communities designation, which is a mixed use intensive designation and would be appropriate for us to recategorize as mixed use. We'll need to take a closer look at some of the residential that we have there, the yellow that you see as well, and make sure that that aligns with the sub area plan and the county's future land use. So there were In my mind, this was just the industrial thing, but in looking at this map of the county, there are a lot of little polygons that are hard to even see. So we need to do a GIS overlay, but generally what you see on the screen here is what we will be aiming for. So at your next touchpoint on this, you will see specific changes to the future land use map. Any questions about that at this point? We will need to do pre-annexation zoning that we anticipate bringing to you at one of your next two meetings. And we anticipate bringing that to the City Council as part of their resolution to proceed with an annexation, which we may be teeing up in October or November. It may be a different action, though. We'll see how that shakes out with the timings. Okay, a couple of comprehensive plan policies. So we're just over a year into this and we're not really expecting to make any major changes to our direction. These were a couple kind of corrections, I think. HO 13, we cannot think of when condominium ownership of a housing unit would be not allowed. So I don't think that part of the sentence makes sense and we propose to delete it. We have a duplicate. We really like block lengths limited by regular public streets. It's a policy so nice we wrote it twice. So we can delete one of those that say virtually the same thing. And then we noticed this one in the critical areas work from a couple years ago. The policy reads, and this was an existing policy before the periodic update, prohibit alteration of category one wetlands. Category one wetlands are our highest value, rare, and we really are going to avoid alteration and prohibit is pretty close to it. But there are some constitutional provisions around reasonable use that make it not that we do not have the ability to absolutely prohibit it. So avoid seems like a more precise word for this, but this is not any sort of a change in the city's approach towards those category one wetlands. Commissioner Welch, welcome to the building. Okay, so those are the comprehensive plan policies. I don't think there's anything of real substance in them. I'll flip back for Commissioner Welch here. H.O. 13, we can't think of any situation in which condominium ownership would not be allowed. And then the two design and development policies are just duplicates that we will delete. And we don't think that we can completely prohibit alteration of category wetlands, although they are strictly limited and avoid seems like a good word for that. Any questions there? We did not do a full review of the comp plan for this cycle. We'll expect to tee that up for next year where we'll go through our capital facility plan lists. We may do some of that along with the budget this year. Do a full review for each department of the policies that they oversee, like the transportation element and. project lists and maps and all of that sort of thing. So I do want the comprehensive plan to stay current. I think before the periodic update, we did not amend that plan for over 10 years. And by that time, it gets drifts away from reality. So I do want us to keep a good habit of annual amendments to keep it fresh. But being the very first year with a whole lot other things going on, this is what we have in this patch. Okay, next is the zoning map. So we discovered, I think, a mistake that we made in the periodic update in which several blocks between Colby and McDougal?

Oh, there's first. Yeah.

I think it's Hoyt.

Yeah.

Between Colby and Hoyt. We're rezoned from mixed use to residential. Many of the properties within this area are existing commercial use. We create a lot of non-conforming things. feel bad about it, but also nobody else noticed. So we all kind of share a little bit, but it's a big city and we had a whole lot going on. So this is something that I think the land use team noticed in conversations with a couple of property owners in there that were asking questions about what they could do with their property and found out about it. So I'll run through a little bit of history just to show how we think this happened. First here are some historical maps before the periodic update. On the left is 1989 and that pattern actually seems to be pretty similar in all the way through 2019. The blocks that we're talking about are the old B2 zone and some residential zones with a clinic office overlay. This area around Colby has a lot of clinics and I think that was somewhat by design. We'll make another version of this with some dashed lines so we're sure what we're looking at here. And then just before the periodic update was all the way on the right in 2025, and most of these blocks were the B business zone, the blocks we're looking at are these ones here and these ones here. Here are the couple of screenshots that we found during the periodic update itself. You may recognize some of these map styles. In May of 2024, all the way on the left, we started with three alternative maps, and they had the colors for the height, and then if it was mixed use, it had these little gray boxes. And so you see the gray boxes in the area that we're looking at, which indicated that when we started, it was identified as mixed use. The zoning draft in the middle was I think that was actually from September 2024. You see the gray dots dropped off, and I think this is about when we did a buffer from Evergreen Way, 41st and Rucker that may have turned that into residential. That was more intended to turn some of the neighborhood residential or single family zones to this mid-rise but it accidentally caught up the uh the mixed use there and then on the right with the first published zoning map from October of 2024 you see it all fully identified as mid-rise residential and it stayed there for the rest of the process This is the area. On the left is the zoning map as it stands right now, the adopted and effective zoning map, which shows that upside-down L-shaped polygon as UR7. Our proposal is to reset that back to MU7, so roughly the same height limit and ability to build residential. So anything that you can build in the UR7, you can build in the MU7. This just gives more allowance for commercial uses in these properties, which is consistent with the existing uses. The large parcels of Zipley, I think it was Zipley Fiber and Daily Herald site between the Evergreen Cemetery and the Interurban Trail there, that was in this area that was rezoned from, let's go back a couple, you know, So you can see this was the business zone, and it had been a commercial zone before that. This is one I'd like to talk to the property owner, and we'll make that outreach. We will also send notice to folks who are within the rezone area so that they're aware of this. I understand they may be interested in a residential development there. It is existing commercial use. It seems less obvious as a commercial site because it's not inside corners and everything. It's more on the edge. It does seem like a good opportunity for residential redevelopment. next to the open space of the cemetery and everything. But we want to make sure that we check in with the landowner to see if they have any other goals there. But also this is the kind of thing that we want to receive any advice we may have on that. This was rezoned and nobody complained. So it's hard for us to know if folks saw it, were happy about it.

And they already planned it. They want to do something, and all of a sudden, you can't.

So I will take any advice that you have from the citywide planning perspective on what should be, but we definitely want to check with the landowners to see what their plans for the future are. I think they're looking towards residential in the future, but even so, they may want to preserve that flexibility. Were there any other special things about Muir?

I would say one of the differences between the two zones, or a couple of the differences, there's landscaping differences between residential and commercial. And so we might not get that landscaping if we keep it at UR7, or at least not as much landscaping as a commercial zone might have to provide between uses. Also signs, UR7 wouldn't really allow for a large area of square footage and signs because it's not a commercial zone, but a commercial zone could have it. So right now it would be a lot of noncompliant signs that are happening in the UR7. Yeah.

This is a identified sign. Community hub or neighborhood note I can't remember but it's one of the mixed use centers that we intend to do some sub area planning but that's going to be a while, so this would be a quick fix and then at some point we'll train our gaze on the area and do some real outreach and really think if there are any changes necessary there. So we'll continue to gather information on this and reach out and notify folks and all of that.

Does the bottom of the L there, where it cuts across just south of, what is that, 43rd, does that stop at Hoyt, where Hoyt makes that weird jog?

This part here?

Yes. So you'll capture the, there's a couple of medical offices, I think, off of 43rd and Colby. They're probably those two parcels.

Yeah, that sounds right. I think it was, so that probably follows the boundary where at some point in the past it was zoned residential. Or maybe it's the opposite. At some point in the past, it wasn't rezoned to commercial.

There's already a lot of existing nonconformity. It's in that area because there's houses that were built in 1901 or 1920. So either way we go, we're not defining what's there perfectly.

Do a change and then that would be. We'd say there's no. Sorry. Where there's no sign, like the signs would be no longer non-conforming, but as long as they didn't update their sign, they're fine.

They're fine. Correct. If it was permitted.

Let's double check.

Yeah.

OK, we'll keep looking through the zoning code for all of what it means. Danielle raised a couple of good, you know, mainly think of the use matrix matrices. Can I have an office building there? But there are lots of little things, too. I don't know if minimum height or anything. I was thinking of a house that's there and if they wanted to build a duplex or something. Yeah. I think UR7 has a minimum height. I think MU7 might have the same one, but we'll detail all of those implications of the change. But either way, we don't perceive that there was ever an intent to change this from mixed use to residential. So to some extent, we're just resetting it to where it was supposed to be. I guess the last thing that comes to mind with the Daily Herald property and the Zipley property and all of that, I'm remembering to the comprehensive plan before the periodic update, and there was quite a bit of language in there about Everett having too much commercial land. And so there was a focus on reducing this. I think there were policies saying reduce the spread of commercial zoning into residential areas and everything. So in general, we have... aired on the side of housing or been a little bit less prolific with the commercial zoning just because of those policies that had been in here. I don't think we've done a comprehensive review lately and it also seems like since that time both office space and retail space have become less popular in the world while housing has become more popular.

If we move away from too much commercial though, we won't meet our job growth targets that were required also, right? So, yeah.

Right.

Okay. Next is one slide and lots of stuff here. Trying to think of how to show this for the screen. I think I can open up the PDF instead at your seats you will have a 17 or so pages of the 50 plus text amendments and there's only a few of them that we want to talk through today and those are I think highlighted green on the rows.

We got it down to 13 pages. OK, nice.

So I'll open this up and Danielle will walk us through.

Yeah, so I'll start just by saying part of, or most of this process was really me sitting with the land use team and asking them which area of a code do they get the most questions on and which areas cause confusion. And so I was reminding them that this is housekeeping. We're not really trying to go in and change development regulations to the point where there's a lot of massive changes right now. We just went through a comp plan update. So we want to see that work and then see what doesn't work and then change that in the future. So the vast majority of these are just clarifying language, maybe correcting a link to a different section of code because some things had moved and we didn't catch that we didn't correct that link. We also have a few where we're complying with state requirements. And so it's just things that we have to have in there, but they're typically pretty small things. And so as York said, we've got four items highlighted in green, which are changes in code. So it's a little bit more substantial than clarifying language, but I still feel like they're fairly small changes. So I'll just jump to the green sections if you like. And then if you have any questions, we can go back and look at the others. So the first one that is green is in our 1908. That's our neighborhood residential development standards. And so we currently ask that for any new dwelling units within 30 feet of the street that they face the street side, we would like to up that to 40 feet of the street to make sure that we do have that street facing presence, that we don't have a development where there's the sidewall there and we're not seeing that development. Friendly, welcoming, open space in the front where you can walk up to the front door. That's just for one unit if it was a multi-unit site. So the rest of the units could still face a shared yard. Do you have anything additional on that?

Yeah, part of this is we have heard from at least one or two developers who have said, I don't want to put a porch on it, so I will just back up to whatever number you put on there, and I will leave the rest of the space empty. That is... fine. We don't want to have unusable space and 30 feet is a little bit, what is the opposite of deep? Shallow, I guess, to fit another dwelling unit. With 40 feet, that is enough space that a future property owner could choose to fill that space with a dwelling unit. So that's the main reason for that. And then the highlighted building slash site there, we want to accommodate multiple unit middle housing type dwellings. So stacked flats or a stacked duplex, a basement accessory dwelling unit, that sort of a thing. And a lot of times it's not going to work well to have both main entrances facing forward. This is something we have run into, especially if there's topography or something, and we actually used to require that duplexes face different streets or different sides within the same building. So we want to allow for multiple dwelling units within one building to face different directions and only one of them needs to face the street. We're having some discussions internally about whether that should extend to the site. There's some argument to have a site where one dwelling unit, maybe a corner lot, one dwelling unit faces the street, but the rest of them face internally towards a courtyard or a shared yard or something like that. And then they would have their side or rear facade to the street. So if we go with site, it would be that kind of a setup. If we go with building, it would be only the multiple entrances within one building.

Do we have any questions on that one? All right. So the next highlighted green area is in our 1909 chapter. So that is we are wanting to get rid of the six inches maximum of ground floor, finished floor level within Metro Everett MU zones and LI MU zones. So it's very specific that we're asking for just this one area to make sure that they have no more than six inches above finished floor ground level. And a lot of our topography here is sloped. And so we're wanting to give them a little more wiggle room so that they don't have to adhere to specifically that six inches, the building would still need to adhere to accessibility standards. And so it we're not expecting a big change where somebody is going to build a building very high up base. This is just probably giving them just a little wiggle room to work with the topography. Any additional Any questions on that one? No? All right. So the next two highlighted areas are in our sign code. And the first one is one that I heard over and over from land use that they were really hoping to change. And that is our schools and religious facilities, anytime that they apply for, it's called an electronic changing message sign, they would have to go through our land use application process, but it's a review process too. And so that is a planning director decision, I believe. Okay. With public notice. And so we were having to notice 150 feet from the site, not even 150 feet from the sign. So if it was a big site, there are people getting notices that would probably never notice the sign there. And then we would also have to post up notices at the site that they would like this sign. And so the land use team is asking if we could bring that down to a review process one, which is an internal review where they would review that and make sure that it makes sense to the site. I spoke with the land use team today and I asked, you know, when you do go out to notice, do you get many comments? And they said pretty much never. Every once in a while somebody might have a question, but they said they go through all of this work and nobody ever comes back to them to complain or complain. ask anything. The land use manager, Kelsey, had also said that when they're citing schools and religious facilities, they're going through a review process already. And so they're already thinking about the surrounding neighborhoods because this is typically in a residential zone. And so they don't feel like they need an extra process for an electronic changing message sign. The word changing feels a little... because they're not allowed to flash messages or change them at a very quick speed. So they might have a message up today and a new one tomorrow, but it's not something that's typically rotating or flashing or being distracting to people in the neighborhood or driving by.

I also see that we had a limit of changing the sign no more than once per hour that has been removed. I think there are some overarching limitations on the movement of those signs in the chapter. So it doesn't mean unlimited.

We also are removing the restriction on full motion video. looks like. So I'm just curious there.

My guess, well, that's a good question. We'll take that back to the team. My guess is that the transition effects effectively limits its use as full motion video. I don't think there was a desire to make it animated. It also could be that elsewhere in the sign chapter is a prohibition on anything video. So I think it's a cleanup and not a policy change there.

Any additional questions on that one?

Just a quick clarification. You mentioned that, well, I see we're striking the sign shall not change more frequently than one time per hour, but you mentioned that there are other provisions that would maybe address that. Can you describe what those other provisions are? I can pull them up.

So here's the general requirements in 1936.03.0. Safety hazard, revolving signs, flashing, rotating, or blinking lights. That includes signs with a changing light intensity or brightness that are constructed and operated to create an appearance or illusion of motion or animation. So that probably would do it for any video right there. Searchlights and beacons, those can be cool sometimes. in nineteen thirty six o five o development standards for specific types of signs subsection c electronic changing message signs any form of technology may be used however animation movement or video imaging is prohibited They shall maintain a 2-1-2 transition frequency, which means a display time of 2 seconds, a transition of 1 second, and a minimum 2 seconds of display time, with all segments of the total message to be displayed within 10 seconds. I guess that's for multiple parts of the sentence. brightness limits, including automatic dimming capability, nighttime limit of 150 nits, which is a unit of light, 1 10th foot candle light trespass standard at the property line of any park or residential property, And changing message signs shall be an integral part of a permanent sign constructed on the site. So incorporated into the framework and architectural design of the permanent side sign video boards shall be prohibited. We were again. And then it goes into the schools and religious facilities. So I, so definitely that's what it was. It was a duplicate prohibition, triplicate, perhaps prohibition.

Be very clear.

Yes, everybody loves the ones on I-5, I'm sure. So we probably heard a lot about it last time we did the signs.

Any further questions on those electronic changing message signs? All right, so the last one is our projecting signs. So those are signs that come out perpendicular from a building. And the first change is really a clarification. It's not that we're allowing for more sign area. Projecting signs have two faces. And so often people would call and say, Am I allowed 24 square feet on one side or is it both sides that I have to add together? And so they would get the question quite often. And so this is just saying, yes, you get the full square footage on each side of the sign. The change in this chapter is that we are allowing or we're hoping to allow projecting signs in our neighborhood commercial standards. And so that is that zone that we allow for neighborhood businesses to and so we want to give them projecting signs but make them smaller than they would be in maybe the commercial zone so we're hoping to limit that to 16 square feet so they can still have a presence but keep the residential feel of the neighborhood i think in the neighborhood commercial there's a limit on the sign square feet separate In here, it would be 16, where typically in categories A and B, it is larger. It would be 24 square feet.

I think I was thinking of the two square foot signs in residential.

One thing that was commented on today on the projecting signs is that they still can have some element of illumination, but different from wall signs, they're being illuminated basically perpendicular with the sidewalk. So if you're across the street, you shouldn't be getting that illumination your direction. Any questions on that area of code?

Quick question for the neighborhood residential signs. So for schools and religious facilities, there's the provision that the sign shall not be illuminated between 10 and 6am. Is there an opportunity to add a provision like that to the neighborhood commercial signage?

I think that's a great idea. I think we'll take that back. And I think that makes sense.

Hours of operation in neighborhood commercial is limited to 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. So that could be hours to match with the sign illumination. Signs is one that we are some point due for, I think it's been a long time since it's been refreshed. It's a complicated one, I'm honestly not looking forward to it, and it'll take us a minute to get to, but we'll do little patches here and there until we can have that fun. Okay, so I think those were the ones that we wanted to talk through. The PDF of this worksheet will be up on the planning Commission page for everyone to review, we will continue to refine our rationales and answer some of the questions that came up today look to bring this back in a few either. It's only two weeks to the next meeting. So we'll see if we have enough ready by that time. Let's switch back to the slides here. There are a couple that we knew we still needed some more work on. Setbacks and landscaping, not looking at any major changes there. It is a dizzying amount of relationships and if-thens, and both setbacks and landscaping interact together and have separate chapters and everything. You may remember in the periodic update, we had a big table that had all the zones and a crosswalk of how each of them related to each other and even some colors for compatibility and everything. We're going to rebuild that so that we know exactly what we're doing. But there were a couple of tweaks around enhanced setbacks between zones presumed to be incompatible. And for example, one of them was... In the UR4 zone or the UR7 zone, sometimes people just build townhouses. And if you're just building townhouses, it probably doesn't make sense to need a 10-foot screening landscaping buffer between that and a neighborhood residential zone. So I think we've got one for... development regulated under 1908, even if it's in UR7, would not have to have that screening. If you've got a brand new Safeway next to your house, you probably want that row of trees. If it's another house next to your house, then we don't need that level of screening. But we want to make sure that we're understanding it and it was not quite ripe. Chapter 1908 applicability is another one. I think we've already tweaked that with the Everett 2044 housekeeping that we did earlier this year, continuing to gain experience with the incredible variety of things that people do with their properties. And we really want to support remodeling and investing and developing new dwelling units and reducing the need for administrative modifications. So some rewording to the applicability section to allow for just more flexibility for those types of things without triggering. I think one example is if you've got a house that is relatively low improvement value, it's not hard to trigger landscaping and some other things. So you can remodel a bathroom and work your way into needing to build a porch or transparency or something. And in a lot of those cases, they'll come in, we'll do an administrative modification so that they don't have to, but we want to try to avoid that as much as possible. So there's some very specific wording around minor exterior alterations and this and that, and what does and doesn't get triggered. We're also looking at, I think Linwood just recently did a big unified development code, and we're kind of jealous by how short their chapters are. And we borrowed a little bit of that when we did our land divisions work. And I know Kelsey has been looking at... With great interest, Linwood has a table of what applies when you do something. Building over x square feet, remodeling under or above certain valuation, adding a dwelling unit, new construction. And each of those then has columns for you trigger landscaping, you trigger this, you trigger that. So not looking to make major changes necessarily, but just make it more clear and less code. And then setting fees administratively, public works and their permit fees, the permit services administers are in 1380 and our land use fees are in 1672. And just looking to pull those out of ordinance and allow for administrative setting so that we can do that more flexibly. We are due a fee study, at least on the planning side, and we're... patterns of development change rapidly. And we want to be nimble enough to be able to resource our permit review staff. We hear frequently from developers, I wouldn't mind to pay a little bit more if I could get my permit quicker. And not that we're intending to raise rates or anything, but this would allow us to follow economic trends and everything. And then I think we're also looking to – we have quite a few developments that go through a whole plan check stage, and we do a lot of work reviewing the plans and getting to a building permit, and then they never pick it up, and most of the fees are due when you pick up the building permit. So looking to shift some of that forward in the process towards the plan check fees. Okay. And then overall, a lot of these fees have been the same other than inflation for 10, 20 years and more on the land use side. So we need to do kind of a fee study. What is the real cost in administrative time to reviewing administrative modification or processing a SEPA threshold determination or those sorts of things? Department of Commerce has a set of technical assistance resources and they've got some grant funds from time to time to support that. So that's something that we'll look at standing up and we'll keep you posted along the way. But in the next draft, you can expect to see a proposal to make these fees administrative so we can be more nimble with them. That's what we've got today. Happy to take any questions on anything we got going here. We have... We have a couple other code projects underway. So there were some proposed amendments, staff proposed amendments that were in the realm of parking. We've got a specific parking ordinance in the works. Tree canopy, we're working on a grant-funded scope of work around trees. So anything touching that, we'll fold into those. It's always better to look at something holistically rather than these individual things. But these are all either obvious fixes or semi-urgent or some combination of them. We will clearly highlight whatever is added after today for your next meeting on this topic. And we have some time, I think we haven't sent notice to Commerce yet, and that's a minimum 60 days of state agency review. So we're at least 60 days away from a council decision backing that up. We have, I think, another month or so with the Planning Commission for this. So stay tuned for more and check the Planning Commission webpage for these materials, the slides, and the worksheet. Is there any...

um i've heard some concerns over our garage setbacks at 1908 060 that it's causing some development on smaller lots and we'll see if there's any possibility of looking at that further yeah

Yeah, that's exactly what was in my mind when I mentioned the parking chapter. So we have received comment. It wasn't a formal. It's a little bit tough to know what to do with. We had a formal application period, didn't get any applicants, but then an email comes in with a request to make a change and So how to fairly slot that into the process. Did hear feedback and have heard that before. It is in 1908. I think it's 050 garage standards. 060, thank you. There's a limitation of 50% of the street facing dwelling facade can be garage. And then there's also required five foot step back of the garage from the main facade. Okay. That we hear is more bother than the value of it. And I think in some cases when you get the cantilevered townhouse and a shadowy garage, it's actually worse than if it were all flat. So I do agree that that that needs some work. We that seemed to fit nicely with the parking ordinance. And that will be coming to you really soon. I think it's due by the end of the year.

Yes.

By the end of the year. So I think we'll you'll see that specific one in a couple of weeks, I think. But, you know, if you hear public comment and we want to get it in sooner via amendment or something, we just started thinking about that one in the context of this updates.

Yeah, I had the comments from someone and then I literally mentioned it to my wife in passing, who's a real estate agent. And the first thing, as soon as I mentioned the setback, she goes, well, that's going to hurt small lots. I didn't even suggest that. I'm sure you had it in my mind.

As soon as you mentioned somebody professionally, they go, Right. And that was a pre-existing requirement, so we didn't enact it, which, whenever that's the case, needs a little bit more research to be sure where it came from and who supports it and everything. That's why I didn't feel perfect for a technical correction, although if we hadn't been working on a parking chapter, I think it would have been appropriate for this.

Yeah, I know you guys are swamped. Yeah. We tried everything we can to...

Yep. Agreed.

I have a meeting next week with Public Works and the land use team to talk about parking. So I just typed, please remember this section. So I'll bring it up to the group. Thanks.