Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the 15th of September, 2026 City of Effort Planning Commission meeting. If you would be so kind as to take the roll, Ayanna, please.

Chair Shelby. Commissioner Ballard.

15th of September, 2026.

My bad. Sorry. Commissioner Ballard. Yes. Commissioner Sullivan. Here. Commissioner Welch.

Here.

Thank you.

Right, onto the land acknowledgement. We acknowledge the original inhabitants of this place, the Chehob'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, voices, to form a more just and equitable society. And then minutes from our previous meeting. Anybody have any objection to submitting them as drafted? Hearing none, the minutes are approved. Any reports from commissioners? None. All right. Staff comments?

I don't think we have anything new from two weeks ago. Fantastic.

Any public comments?

None.

All righty.

I think we're moving right along on to unfinished business, which is the 2026 annual amendments briefing.

Good evening, Chair Shelby, Planning Commission. I'm York Stevens Watch, the Planning Director. With me, we have Danielle Marshall, Associate Planner with the Long Range Planning Team, who has been helping out greatly with the annual amendments this month. We'll go through a couple of slides on the annual amendments. There are three new ones in there that we'll talk through. There's one that we wanted some direction on from you, and there's some better information on the comprehensive plan map compared to what we had two weeks ago. So we'll revisit that one, and I think we have a little bit better mapping also on the 41st and Colby area rezone proposal. So we'll focus on here. Okay. So, quick recap, we're required to have a process for anyone to propose amendments to the development regulations or comprehensive plan and to take those up. Comprehensively once per year, we did not get any applications from the public, but staff, especially in processing development applications have identified a number of issues worth addressing. The city initiated amendments include proposed amendments to the comprehensive plan land use map. All of those are about coordination with Snohomish County on our future annexation area. A few minor changes to comprehensive plan policies, the zoning map change around 41st and Colby, which we consider a correction. The biggest body of it is about 50 corrections and updates to development regulations. And then the new one, this meeting is about permit fees. Reminder on the Comprehensive Plan land use map. Our Comprehensive Plan land use map extends into our municipal urban growth area or our annexation area overlaps with the county's future land use map that is their jurisdiction until such point as it's annexed. um i was surprised at how many changes there were differences there were between the city's land use map and the county's land use map because i thought we'd gone through a process to align them in the periodic update We did very late in the periodic update. The county adopted the urban core sub area plan and a series of changes to the future land use map. It was too late for us to incorporate those into our periodic update. And I think that is responsible for all of the changes here. So you could call this preparing for annexation. You could call this updating our map to reflect what the counties has recently done in the end of 2025. I think it was. Our crosswalk we have fewer categories in our comprehensive plan land use map than the county does so light rail community mixed use corridor and urban commercial all fit under our categorization of mixed use. Urban low medium and high density residential are all just residential for the city and then public and institutional use sometimes parks and open space if it is a park and if it's like a school. We think we'll place that in residential because we don't have us public use category outside of parks and open space. These were in the memo, but these are the specific areas that will change. On the left is the county map, on the middle is the city map, and on the lower right is just an image of what's in that area. And on the top right is an extent rectangle showing where we're looking. These are different sizes, so some are very small and some are relatively large. This area here was part of the light rail community's mixed use designation and zoning that the county adopted. It expanded kind of a transit-oriented development type designation, and there's comprehensive plan policies that go along with it, and this is the area. I guess I'll linger a second on each of these and see if there are any questions to staff. This is relatively straightforward. The county has already done the work, the engagement with the community, the analysis review under the State Environmental Policy Act, and we're just catching up with them. In general, that's gonna be how we approach this entire annexation is on the land use side and the zoning side is that the county has quite recently done a lot of heavy thinking in the entire annexation area. And we're not intending to attempt to reinvent the wheel here. There are a couple decisions to be made where we don't have an exact match for what the county has. But otherwise, if the county has done the process to decide that this is a mixed use area, then to mixed use we go is our thinking.

Since the county's over the larger, are we required to just accept their Bowing already as it is. We are a couple there.

Yeah. Um, there are a lot of policies around joint planning countywide planning policies that we both operate under where the county and the city should be talking about future annexation areas. And we did, um, we collaborated with them very closely, especially on this kind of, uh, these kinds of areas through the model code partnership. Our planning staff and their planning staff as well as Linwood's spent 3 years together working with sound transit under a. Federal transit administration grant to align all of our development regulations and comprehensive plans in transit station areas. So that as the light rail line extended up through those 3 jurisdictions. that there would be a similar family of development regulations in the station areas, regardless of which jurisdiction you're in, could be helpful to developers, could extend best practices. So through that, we have coordinated and collaborated with the county. We just didn't change our plans to reflect that, but we've been involved with them the whole way. If we disagreed, that would have been a better time to participate when the county was making their changes, when they did notify us and work with us. This is the Mariner area. Around the future centered on the future Mariner light rail station. We have a couple of different designations here and note that light rail communities striped designation on the county side extends into the mill Creek. future annexation area. So we're not addressing that today. There's a portion that would go in our map from industrial to mixed use, a portion that would go from residential to mixed use, and a portion that would go from mixed use to residential. A little bit of everything being shuffled here. We are in the next agenda item going to talk about zoning too. So you'll see some similar issues here. Here is a node centered on the intersection of 112th and 4th. And we did have the mixed use designation was smaller before the county's periodic update. They also did a lot of work to accommodate significant growth within their geography. This in Puget Sound Regional Council's Vision 2050 Regional Growth Strategy, the unincorporated portion that is around the light rail extension is considered a I can't remember what it's called, but it might be light rail communities or transit communities or something that reflects the fact that even though it's unincorporated, it is a significant growth potential associated with transportation investments. And that was new for the county where otherwise regional policies tend to suppress growth in unincorporated areas and try to direct more of it into cities. So this was a change that the county was reflecting in their periodic update that completed in 2025. So you'll see quite a few areas where zoning or designations was increased in intensity. So we've got from residential, a couple of small areas from residential to mixed use and a small area from mixed use to residential and some larger areas from residential to mixed use. Here is a small strip of properties on 130. I'm going to have to learn all these areas. 132nd, it is. It has a curve south there, just east of Fred Meyer, right? Just east of Fred Meyer there. This would go from residential to mixed use. Sorry, there's a typo there. And here at the far corner of our municipal urban growth area is around a shopping center at the intersection of Seattle Hill Road and 132nd. And that would go from residential to mixed use. So those were the map amendments. Any questions to all of those? Okay. Um, we talked about these comprehensive plan policies a couple of weeks ago. Um. Just relatively simple corrections here. Danielle and I were talking before this meeting about. The rest of the comprehensive plan, and it's, uh. compatibility with a larger Everett after annexation. We're doing some of especially the land use map amendments to prepare for annexation and recognizing that we may not be able to change the comprehensive plan on the date of annexation. And we're continuing to think about that and It's an important first start to get the map aligned. There are other parts of the comprehensive plan too. Could be text policies, could be inventories, could be transportation element, things like that, that are going to be a little bit awkward if they don't fully reflect the annexation area. So we do need to do something about that. We're not sure what that is yet. It is possible that we could one idea that we came up with was to call it an annexation area sub area plan. And when you do that, they are exempt from the once per year limit. We could also use next year's. Next year's annual amendment for the annexation and just do it earlier than this year for targeting summertime instead of fall. I don't think we can. Get all of that together in the next month or so, and we want to get these annual amendments done. So it'll have to be something like that. The alternative is also a 4 or 5 month gap in which maybe we can do something that adopts portions of the county's comprehensive plan by reference. Uh, until we adopted into our own comprehensive plan. Okay. And this was a policy that had the potential to conflict with case law around reasonable use of properties that are fully encumbered by even category one wetlands. So minor change to the policy wording there, but no intent to deprioritize the protection of category one wetlands. Okay, so that was it for the comprehensive plan on the zoning map side. We talked about this a little bit last week, but I was able to fill out the story a little bit more since the last meeting. And we've got this dashed line is the area that we're proposing for rezone. On the left, you can see our existing adopted zoning map, and on the right is an aerial image of the same area. This is generally between 43rd and a half on the southern end up to 41st and a half on the northern end and then between Colby and Wetmore. And then extending along the north frontage of 41st Street. Here's the history of what that zoning has looked like. It has varied over the years from, I see B2, C1R, R4CO, and R3C. C is a clinic and office overlay, the C and the O on the left side in 1989. And then we get to R4 with the clinic overlay and a B2 zone and some C1R. We'll have to ask Kelsey what all of those mean. Our land use planning manager who's been here among the longest, and Erica, what all those designations, but they roughly are commercial and residential zoning, so different intensity. And then on the right is just before the periodic update. Most of these were, most of these, this area was the B or business zone, which is a mixed use, wide variety of land uses allowed kind of a zone. And remember at that time we had a separate height map than the zoning map. Here's the progression during the periodic update of our draft maps and working products that show somewhere around September of 2024, we dropped the dots for mixed use off of the map and we were really focused on heights. And for the most part, we knew where all the mixed use zoning was, but somewhere between that September and October with the first published draft zoning map, that section along Colby, became UR7 mid-rise residential. And we think that was not an intentional change, but was made as a result of buffering Rucker Avenue. So that brings us to... There's kind of a focus on before ever 2044 right now and the proposed correction. So all of this area, most of this area would be going from the old business zone to the current UR7 zone and back to an MU7 zone. note that just to the east and south is the uh zipli daily herald gte building in sight and we are have reached out and are in contact with the property owners to see if they have any input into whether they would like to be part of the re rezone or not um the initial staff thinking is that this is a great spot for residential uh with the Inner Urban Trail and the topography and the next door to the open space of the cemetery um it's not as well suited to commercial retail office that sort of thing but it is currently built as a significant office development so there's that um So we will take public comment and we'll send out formal notice to all the property owners in the area and we will report back what we hear from them. But the property owner of the site itself, if they have a strong interest in pursuing commercial development, then the staff recommendation would probably shift there. Okay, any questions on the zoning map before we head into development regulations? Okay, reason on through as we should, we already talked about most of this development regulations. We talked through a couple of the notable ones in the last meeting. There's 1, we want to return to and get some feedback from the commission on and that is the proposed change to 19. 030 neighborhood residential site design. Most of 1908 is, many parts of 1908 are new and it's a frequent topic of tweaking. We will need to do a thorough examination of it and see how it's been going once we've had enough time to see significant amount of development. and then do some outreach around it and everything for more thorough potential changes down the line. But in the meantime, we're hearing of what's been the greatest pinch points and trying to address those. One of these is dwellings near the street must face the street. And we've got this, sometimes there are more than one dwelling on a lot and sometimes it's difficult or difficult for them to face all of the dwelling units on a lot that are near a street towards the street. And so we're proposing at least to allow that if there's a second dwelling unit within a building and one of them faces the street that the other one could face somewhere else while it would be a shared yard as written here. And then the other option that would be a little bit more flexible would be that as long as one unit on the site faces the street, then other units on that site could not face the street. Um, here's a visual of 1 example. Here's an image drawn from that middle housing tool kit that we followed when developing these 1st set of middle housing regulations on the top side there. You see a building and let's say that there is a 2nd dwelling unit, maybe a basement dwelling unit that faces the back. You can see there's a full porch and a warm embrace of the street with that entrance. Number 1. And at least we're proposing that that second entrance could face the other way instead of the front. We have already in the first ever 2044 housekeeping waived changes of use that include only minor exterior alterations from compliance with the entire chapter, or at least the main set of design guidelines. So this would be more if there was also an expansion involved with it, but it still made sense for it to face the back. The one on the bottom is an example of how it might look if we went with the site. There's a house facing the street. Maybe they built a second house in the back and that is a corner lot. Should that second house face its side street or is it okay that you have kind of the broad side and maybe two stories of mostly vinyl and no real door and warm embrace of the street? because another house has it. There are many other ways that a site plan could turn out like this. I can imagine a fairly large lot and you have one house that faces forward and then a driveway going back and all the rest of them face sideways to the driveway. That could be not a corner lot or that could be a corner lot where, for whatever reason, the developer wants to face the houses inward instead of to that street. And so you could have one side or a whole row of backs or sides or something like that. Any opinions? Staff thinks at least building may be site.

I have zero problem with Making it just one building per site, right? Like I have better use of land, I think would be achievable if we don't force everything to face the street. And that gives us an opportunity for higher density and potentially having more people get to that six units or similar in those areas where they can put tinier units and do that.

I agree. I think if you're wanting, we're hoping to achieve the density that we're allowing out there, then we're going to need to do things like that and to unrestrict those.

Yeah. Agreed.

I think next time you see this, it'll say site.

Are you saying that next time we see this, you're not even going to have the shared yard part? The shared yard part?

We could talk about that too. The main question we had is whether to have those words say building or site.

I mean, we all disagree that we don't think that we should prevent building because they are facing the same street. Does that mean we also feel like we shouldn't wrap ourselves around a shared yard language? Or is that just totally different?

No, I concur. Right. Like if you have four or five, six houses and they want to have one big go for it, like zero problems with that.

So like the example on the bottom, number two doesn't doesn't really face anything.

Right. OK.

Number two would not really fit that face a shared yard. You'd have to kind of pretend it does.

I think what I'm trying to say is I don't want. a shared yard to stop somebody from building because they're not facing a shared drive or yard. So I'm just worried about that language. Sure.

All of this is modifiable for relatively special circumstances, topography. special sites trying to reuse existing buildings are all common examples where we do provide, extend those modifications. And remember that anything that is more internal to the site than along the street is already exempt from all of these requirements. So this is just when they are along a street.

Okay.

So at least from an efficiency standpoint in my brain, that drives up the cost, right? Because we're engaging, well, the builder, is engaging you, making sure that that exception exists. You're going, well, Hey, does that exception work? Well, you know, whenever they're meeting, like there's a cost to all of that. If we just say, Hey, no, go ahead and do it and bring us the plan this way the first time. Great. That's in code. It's there. It's not arbitrary. Well, could not be perceived as arbitrary potentially. Like I would be less.

Yes. Yep. And that's the reason for this change. We might have been able to get there for some of these through a modification, but the predictability.

So are you leaving the words shared yard?

I will.

That's what I really want to know.

Right. I'll bring that back to.

May face a shared yard since it's. Right. That's what I'm saying. Can we just not even talk about a shared yard at all?

Sure.

I was very much pro not do this originally. So I'm continuing my pro less is more. I also think that like at some point, like in 50 years, if we feel like this was ugly, well, I mean, sorry, it made sense now. So yeah, less is more.

Yes. I'll bring us back to the staff who have worked with the most of these different situations. And but the recommendation is heard and we'll have more opportunities to talk about this. I have a little bit of when I mentioned that we'll need to do kind of a comprehensive review of this is I perceive some level of a contract with the community that that when we vastly increased the amount of development that could happen remember in most cases the answer to all of these was no you cannot build that at all because of the impact on neighborhood character so there was some amount in the 2022 to 25 periodic update where it was and we had these conversations and community meetings and everything is yes you're going to have uh the potential for a lot more development on your street, but we are going to make it fit the character as much as we can while balancing that with the cost and predictability aspects of that. So I don't want to go too far in unraveling pieces of that without the broad awareness that accompanied the periodic update. So that's why we're taking little bites at this of what has been the most, the biggest pain points in development. And then certainly would welcome, you know, in a couple of years, like, okay, community of Everett, here's a couple of years, here's examples of all the development we've had, the good and the bad. And here's what the development community is responding to and everything that All that said, I think removing the requirement for shared yard would provide additional flexibility and predictability and is a pretty modest and lightly noticeable to the public change.

Okay, I'll meet you halfway on that one.

Anything else there?

uh look at these really quick there we go back to shared yards for a second well additional shared yards up here um why can they not be in the rear setback like why is that specifically being called out this was proposed to centralize the

Shared yards.

I can a little bit. I think the intent was, is that we didn't want to see large buildings up front where they were just kind of squishing some shared yard in the very back up next against a fence line we wanted to make sure that it was used by all the residents there.

So visibility to the shared yard, is there a sense of security? And it's in the back, so I guess that should feel more secure, but windows on the visibility on the shared yard so that kids could play there comfortably where you might not have that feeling if it's, and it could be in the back, it could be behind, if a developer does not see the value of it, they will put it wherever

they can to get it out of the way which may not be the best design for it okay so it wasn't necessarily because I do remember having conversations about shared yards but in this context we're more talking about don't stick a random small plot of space in the back where no one can use or see it not talking about how lovely a shared yard is more of how these residences are facing okay

Yeah, so I think it's to share space to create their own. Okay, visible, I think, yeah, is that's fair. But that's, that's this, this is a change that will similarly limit some flexibility and backyards often go in the backyard. So it's a common place to see it in certain kinds of developments. I've definitely seen, I think, in our prior set of regulations, we had required common and open space associated with larger developments, even if they were townhouses, I think, if you were over five units. And we've seen some pretty sad and never used. I don't know if this by itself is going to prevent that, but...

I don't even know why I'm saying anything. That's because I did not think that was a good idea to begin with, because those unusable, because they were trying to make a checkbox spaces, would have been better utilized by just giving each unit an extra, I don't know, 10 square footage of their own personal yardage, but... Look at all those soapboxes. I remember that conversation.

It became an afterthought for some of the developers. It was just where we could put it, and it was hidden in the back behind parking lots or buildings. And so we just want to make sure they're putting thought into it.

Well, and people just don't use those shared yards very much. Again, creating a space where everybody faces with good visibility, I understand. But checking a box by putting an open space in. They just never maintained. They just end up being this random plot that no one uses. But I think there's a distinction here.

Yeah. I remember a long, really good discussion in this chamber on requiring private open and recreation space or leaving that to the city. David Price- Part of in the 1908 world, which is the neighborhood residential zone and houses and townhouses and those types of things we have a maximum 60%. David Price- Is that called block coverage by building and so some of the shared yard private yard stuff is to make sure that that 40% that has to remain at least some of it is kind of usable and it's not just all chopped up into little channels of unusable bark and fences. Um, yeah, this is an important, uh, this 1908 piece and we talked about it last week, but there's some others around garage facades and things like that, that, um, we have, uh, pledged to bring up in the parking ordinance, uh, in a few weeks, months. So we're, we're not done with it, uh, tinkering at least with a lot of these. So that is why that is the one that I wanted to bring up why this one is on the slide I think the other one about drainage swales and rain gardens is just to support low impact development, as we are required to do under our stormwater permit. Um, the three that are new since September 1st, um, we mentioned last time that this was coming. We just hadn't finalized the language, uh, permit fees that are administered by permit services are in chapter 13.80 and land use fees administered by the planning department are in chapter 1672. For both of them, you see the same general change, which is to take out the fee table and make it set administratively. Um, I don't. No, I'll stop right there. We wanna be more nimble with fees. I was gonna say, I don't think we have a fee increase in the works. That is not the purpose of this, but we do need to constantly align our fees. And I think this is something the development community fully supports. We need cost recovery for the land use team and permit services. There should be 100% covered by permit fees. And if they're not, it's backfilled by the general fund and the people of Everett have some say in that. And the distribution of how much a review to director decision costs compared to a SEPA review compared to a building permit and all of that dizzying complexity. We're due a fee study, and I think it could include some alignments. So all of this to say that it is cumbersome to bring fee changes to the council. We have heard more support from the development community for getting fees right and getting our staffing and our permit turnarounds right, even if that means slightly higher fees, which tells me that it's not a... a pressing issue. So as long as the council agrees with kind of handing over that authority to the departments, that seems like a good move to us. And the last one. I had a question on that change.

So in the existing code, it's said like once per year, I think, or like there's a- It is automatically- Automatically agreed. This moves it to, which is fine, and I think we should inflation, certainly adjust for inflation. Is there a notice and comment period that you're considering then, or you could consider? Like, hey, you're going to propose these, you have, I don't know, 90 days or whatever, and then they'll go into effect. Yeah, that's a good idea. Because otherwise, I don't imagine you would, but you could just arbitrarily on Tuesday decide that the fees are different, and then on Wednesday issue another directive and They've doubled, which I think is less than helpful for folks. Not that you would or anybody would purposely do that, but yes.

Yeah, let's write that in a required notice period, at least for the planning fees. I'll check with permit services if they'll accept that. And... reporting to the council was in my head as being something too. If this is going to come out of the council's ability to set and review, at least they should know when they're being changed. So maybe that's part of the prior noticing or maybe that's after the fact or both.

Oh, nice. Okay. Great. Perfect. Yeah, I like it.

Okay, I don't remember the sign one.

I got that one. So last time we talked about amendments to projecting signs. Some of it was just clarifying language to make sure people understood that the projecting sign when we talked about the area of the sign was one sign face because sometimes people were dividing that by two because the projecting sign has two side faces. The other thing we did was allow projecting signs in our neighborhood commercial zone. So those are the corner lots, smaller businesses, and they have limited hours of operation. And so those signs can be 16 square feet on each side. And then Vice Chair Chatters, I know I have her title correct. Okay, she requested that we only allow for those signs to be illuminated during the permissible hours of operation for neighborhood commercial zones. land use, the team liked it. So we put that in there.

Okay.

Any questions on projecting signs? No.

Okay.

So that was... That's it. A lot of it was rehashed from last week. We polished up the table a little bit and added those three. How many do you say were in the circle back list? Oh, gosh.

I'm thinking it's at least twice as many as this, so at least 100.

So Danielle especially fended off many, many more that either we still need to build the case for justification, the record, figure out exactly what to do, or a lot of them were like made sense at first blush, but then what about this? What about that? So we had to cut it off at some point. There is some chance that some more will sneak in because Danielle gets her door knocked on frequently by the permit review folks. There are a lot of there. There's an infinite number of improvements that we can make, but we had to cut it here. Remember that we're also sending anything that is related to parking into that so that it can be held together. And same with land divisions and same with any other ordinance that we have on our work program.

Okay, that's it for that. Reintegration zoning?

Nope, real quick.

Yeah.

Do you see... that permit turnaround is, I want to say increasing, like getting better, generally speaking? Or are you still seeing stuff that you think, once you can get this done, then you're going to really see permit turnaround timing better? Is the ship going in the right direction?

Yes. The ship is going in the right direction. We have to turn the ship around. Rolling the ship in the right direction. I don't know which way the current is bringing all of us along with it. Um, we can do better. Um, you know, I, it is a real, it's almost impossible question to answer. I, commissioner Finch has been asking for presentations on our permit turnaround times and volumes for years now. And I'm sorry, commissioner Finch, when you watch this, uh, we're still trying to figure out how to have some understandable data, uh, But we, Permit Services has some good statistics on building permits, which are a little bit more straightforward. And they're not even that consistent. The wide variety of permits and complexities and the quality of the applications makes it, I don't know what data point to give you.

It's like apples to oranges. Yeah.

I mean, we did, I don't know, let's say we did 1100 permits last month and 900 permits this month. That might have been a doubling in how much work we did because in those 900, which were lots of sign permits and decks and stuff, were three giant Boeing buildings because they've got the new market airplane or something channeling for the future.

I guess the only reason I bring that up is because Somebody said that, and I wish I could remember who or where. I think it was like my neighbor. I was like, I'm still waiting on my permits from the city. I'm still waiting on my permits from the city. And I was like, oh, really? So I don't know why anecdotally or maybe actually our lovely city has a reputation for taking a long time to give permits. It sounds like it's because we do such a good job reviewing them and we want to make sure everything's right. But

On the stuff I've seen, I saw, I think it was the master builder, somebody had some out and it showed Everett was well under the requirements that the state was putting out. Yeah. Anybody that's building always thinks their permits take too long. Literally, every time I talk to another developer, they go, how's your permits going?

Oh.

Oh.

So they're just wrong.

It all depends on development. This is like one person. It all depends. There's stuff. I'm not going to say they're wrong, but at the same time, there's always, well, what's underneath there when you look? Yeah. Was there critical, was there water that they didn't realize? Was there utilities there that wasn't realized? You never know until you actually see and are they up on it as they need to be.

Well, and I guess like the clearer our code is, the easier it is for people to do the permit, right? It all kind of trickles down.

But then you also have to deal with the utilities, which is totally separate.

Let's just blame that on them.

It's their fault. We'll blame it all on PUD.

Absolutely. That's not even city. Not us at all.

I will say I was with the land use team up until a couple years ago, and I've seen so many positive changes in the last couple years. One of the changes that I think is really great is that when they're sending out a correction letter, it's coming from all the departments where it used to be planning would send one, building would send one. And sometimes the applicant would look at one letter and think, oh, these are all of my corrections and not realize a week later another correction letter might be coming. And so I think they're really doing a lot to streamline the process to make sure that they're working together with the applicants and moving it along.

I think that's a really good idea.

Is there a, do you guys look at, it's like when you're looking at different municipality or when I'm working in different municipalities, it's really the clarity of the code. Because, I mean, you don't, you waste time if you, you know, you're putting something bad. And some jurisdictions are very clear. I don't work in Everett. Last time I did something in Everett was like 1999. Other than my, like I have a deck that's been in about six weeks.

Yeah.

Other than that particular data point. But I mean, what I hear is just the code is very confusing. And so they have to it forces it forces them to guess or make assumptions. And then when the code when the responses come back as friendly and as nice as they're written, it often they're not specific enough. They're general. And then it forces them to have to have a meeting. So it just, that right there is, and it's very uncaptured, right? So there's kind of the capture of when you drop it off and when you get it back, but really there's the capture of the complexity of the code that puts back questions that are still not quite answered. So, and that's, to me, from people telling me and being out here and knowing that I'm on the commission and being in the industry, that's the largest complaint from Everett, that they try to read the code and they're like, you know, it's very... The feedback is you're very responsive. They can get a meeting. You can get the mayor involved. I mean, things get moved. But I mean, the whole fact that you have to do that because they can't just read the code and understand what's being asked. So if there's an area that I think where it could be improved, especially once you get that reputation, it's really hard to go backwards on that.

Yeah.

All 50 of these are attempting to plug those holes and, you know, things like the land division ordinance where we trimmed the number of words by 60% or something for that. So yeah, I think it starts with clear and predictable code and And then the administration of it gets easier all the way through. I think we've done a great job with like our big buildings. And if you build a apartment building on a rectangle, it is going to be, I don't know that anywhere will be easier to build than Everett. If you're building a, you know, townhouse development around an existing house on a sloped lot with multiple this and that, then... there are you know 1908 was brand new and so we've we've had a learning curve in processing the permits and we've changed it multiple times and rethink zoning wasn't that long before uh the everett 2044 so i i'm also conscious of how many changes we're making but i don't know that that could ever be a reason to not make an improvement that you see But yeah, you've laid out our work program in a nutshell between these two. On the administrative side, process them quickly, accurately the first time and clearly. And then on the regulatory side, make it so you know right up front. So, yeah, we'll keep doing that and you've done a great job, um, advising us on where to, where to put our attention or where it's could be clear.

All right. I think our next is new business, which is, uh, annexation comparison. Yep.

So we talked a little bit about the comprehensive plan. Um, here's in general how we expect to process this. Um, at some point later this fall, we will have a resolution by the city council. Excuse me, should we decide to and should they decide to, um, they will consider a resolute resolution to initiate annexation. It will define the boundaries and that is seems like the appropriate time to identify Pre annexation zoning. Um, then I think, because we don't have time for all of the appropriate engagement with the community, because there are some little differences in our code that we'll need to work out along the way. We will have either some probably some touch ups and maybe some changes in the final post annexation zoning when we actually complete the annexation with an interlocal agreement and city ordinance that would be expected in spring of 2027. We also need, not something that we need to bring through the Planning Commission, but we're going to have transfer of in-progress permits. And for the most part, if your permit is in with the county, the county will finish it. New permits after the annexation will come through the city. We also have code enforcement cases, fire investigations, all kinds of services that we need to work out. And we're having all those discussions. They're going really well with the county and the special districts and independently elected offices and all that. State law. This is an ancient piece of language, but the legislative body may prepare a comprehensive land use plan. So this is pre-GMA language, but to become effective upon annexation, and that's what we're doing. As long as it's in the interest of morals. That's some of the language we don't see too much anymore. Um, here, I think we need to follow this 2 or more public hearings at least 30 days apart. And I think the comprehensive plan kind of means the zoning too. This is from back when the comp plan was the was the zoning. Um, so we'll follow all of these procedural requirements and, uh, others in the growth management act when. Processing this, it's a little bit interesting to be bringing annexation to this planning commission when this planning commission does not cover the territory. Well, it's the same thing for us planning department. We're working outside of our boundaries in anticipation of the future, but we will make sure to, uh, we have been talking with county planning staff. Um, we'll, uh. We're working on a contract with some consultants to supplement our own work around engagement and outreach on the zoning and planning side, but also things like what's going to happen to my taxes and all of that. And then, yeah. That's kind of how we're doing it. Here's one example I turned up in our records from 1989. uh the planning commission held a public hearing and the council after hearing the recommendation determined that the said property before its annexed shall be c1 and r3a and amended the official zoning map of the city of everett so i think uh that one of these steps we this is at 1 12th and evergreenway 1 12th being labeled painfield access road yes yes Um, so I think this will take the form of a rezone and an amendment to our official zoning map that will not become effective until the annexation, but it will kind of preload the designations. influencing and guiding what we decide are the countywide planning policies that we work together with Snohomish County on, the county's comprehensive plan, and within that there's an urban core subarea plan that covers a significant chunk of our annexation area and was a brand new document just a couple years ago. There's an inter-jurisdictional coordination element. And then I mentioned the model code partnership, which was that aligning our regulations around transit station areas. and then snohomish county code title 30 is what the actual rules that we're trying to match as closely as we can here's our proposed zoning crosswalk and how we propose to apply it onto the county's zoning map like the comp plan land use map there are many more zoning categories in the county than the city So all the single-family zones would become NR. I don't think there were any that met the 750 feet single entrance, but if there are, we may need to consider neighborhood residential constrained for those following our policies, which will kind of freeze it at closer to the R7200 or R9600, I think. Um, low density, multiple residential and multifamily residential would become you are for what's in parentheses. There is the maximum height limit. Um, The urban center, which the county is currently waiting on county council consideration of a rezone of the urban center zone to the light rail community zone, both of which have a 90 foot height limit and the mixed use corridor zone. So all three of those zones, they're at 90 feet. That's more than our UR7 or MU7, which is 75 feet, but that's quite a bit less than our MU15, which is 160 feet. So unless we're going to invent a new zoning designation just for it, it seemed fair to go higher and consistent with the policies in the urban core subarea plan, which is where you find those designations. Um, community business is a low density, lower density, mixed use designation, and then light industrial, heavy industrial, which I don't think there are any of either of those in the annexation area. So if you applied this and we'll, we'll tidy this up to be public, um, it's not quite yet.

Let's switch my share.

Okay, so we've got a comparison tool here. and i will zoom in on the left is snohomish county zoning and on the right is everett zoning and the dashed lines are in the same place in both so you can see a lot of uh collapsing of many zones into a more simplified zone structure in the city um he Here is the urban center zone. Now we just said that that was going to be MU15, but I see it on MU7 here. So I guess that reflects that we're still working on that one. This is Evergreen Way and Airport Road turning into 128th here. So this is the part just, yes, exactly. Think Home Deep. Yeah, remember that we don't expect many buildings above because podium and, uh. Would frame and construction costs. Um, the zone, which is lots of this area would be, you are for. We do have 2 mobile home parks. The county has similar mobile home park protections to the city. So, and these, um, I think met the same kind of criteria that we used to being primarily. owner residence. So it seems appropriate to apply that NRMHC to those areas. There's a couple interesting ones. Here's a planned community business. We need to talk to the county about this and what they're thinking here. I think I can turn on a base map to satellite imagery. And it may be completely constrained by critical areas or something. I don't know what the story is there, why it was not included in the MU's sea zoning, nor the MR. It's its own zone, but it's not built. Maybe there's a story. I don't know. this is just north of 1 16th yeah still on the west side yes i think this is fourth right here here's mariner high school so it's north america so this was remember with the comprehensive plan land use map this is where that mixed use center grew uh on the comprehensive plan map There's a couple, where's that grocery? So something like this, this is zoned community business. Sometimes these were docket applications from a property owner who had intent to develop some commercial use but hasn't gotten there yet. When we went through all of our neighborhood business zones and it pretty much sunset the neighborhood business zones, we went one by one to see if this really met the right criteria for it or if it could be handled with the neighborhood commercial zoning to still allow 3,000 square feet of neighborhood serving uses. We'll do a similar look through with these, but here's an example where this could go to like an MU4 or it could go to a UR4 with the neighborhood commercial allowance. I'm not sure exactly what's going on on that property. But we'll ask them. Where's that grocery? Somewhere up here is a tiny... Ah, here we go. This neighborhood business is the... It's a grocery. I can't remember what it is, what it's called. So that one would be both allowed as legal non-conforming use, but also would fit under the neighborhood commercial. So maybe it's okay to leave it as you are for, and they can continue and continue. maintain their business under that or maybe it should be the mu4 zoning the main difference is that in the mu4 zoning there's a wider variety of commercial uses some of which you might not want right next door to your house whereas the neighborhood commercial was designed around compatibility with neighborhoods um That's most of the west side, urban center zone and MU7. Again, we're maybe MU15. That's a question mark. This is 128th right here and Mariner High School. That's up here. Yeah, so this is fourth, I think. No, this is fourth. Um, that says this is a new map, so still got some wrinkles in it, uh, says, but this makes sense to, I don't know what if there was a story there. Why not? The 7 or 15, like, the other UC zones.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. And then the farther we go, once we get across 19th, we get into a lot of single family zoning, different types of single family zoning. So between the R7200, 8400, 9600, and then you also have these PRD overlays. That's why you see so many lines on this, but all of which would just be simplified to NR. i'll zoom in you can see some of these uh this is 35th this line here and this is a hundredth here and is one twelfth not continue no it doesn't it's 16 that's gonna be where it looks like okay

why there's the darker on this and this here. Yeah.

I believe in the county's system, if the comprehensive plan map shows something like urban, medium, or high-density residential, but your zone is R7200, that you can come in for a rezone and subdivision application together. And so you will see individual, while the holding zone for a large area sit at a lower density, and then when development happens, magically the zoning changes at the same time the development application comes in. That plus docket applications and some neighborhood planning efforts, I think is why the patchwork, mostly the first one, I think that things sat at a lower zone until someone had a proposal and it was the comprehensive plan that allowed it. Yes. Legal, legal process. It's interesting. I just have not, we don't do it that way in Everett. It's the zoning is a rezone and a legislative process. And I don't, i don't know if we can process rezone at the same time as a subdivision through the hearing examiner like they do in snohomish county commonly i don't know if that's a difference between cities and counties or it's just the way that some cities do it and some don't i don't haven't noticed that in other cities either it's more like we've this is the zone and if you want to change the zone they're processes separate from the development application otherwise what's a zone

when you're you're looking at those the person though so if it's 9600 or 8400 then you're you're going to bring it into nc nr nr yeah so i'm looking when i'm looking at those areas i'm evaluating as the land the underlying building that i that is actually held oh could be ldmr well if the underlying yeah if it's the

but it's not like a rezone, but you don't allow it in different, right? So it's kind of a, I don't know if any B zone in the last 20 years has ever disapproved really.

I mean, there was some odd case, but I mean, it's what that's ultimately go to. You're right, just show that someone needs to come in and have that done.

That's a really good point. So here's, we can flip to the land use map. And the vast majority of this is ULDR. So does that top out then at NR as a fair one? But like here, this.

Yeah.

I'm really curious why that little square there in order to have one to the west. I just do not understand why that's there. I'm trying to think what's there in real life. Cause I'm like, it's just houses.

Why would there just be this random?

We will ask, we'll ask the County and maybe they've got some records on it. It'd be a four story townhouse. Yeah. Right.

They added the two townhouses, but.

Oh, right. Yep. And this could have been a docket application right we'll ask we'll ask the county. yeah so that that excellent pointed out, let me switch to the zoning hopefully. Okay, so in this case, it was already rezoned to LDMR, and so we do have the UR4 zoning on there. We will do an overlay and make sure that if we have any UMDR comp plan land use, that we may want to look at a higher zone than what we see on the zoning equivalency.

Yes, the UMDR can be implemented. I would clarify that. For buildable lands, they would count that as a higher density than 72.

So far, the couple that I'm seeing, they are already LDMR. So we do have them as UR4. But we will look throughout the rest. The majority of the area is ULDR. Here are two more. And zoning.

LVMR, LVMR. Here. Right.

Mm hmm.

I didn't see.

So is this annexation just going to be done?

Council of Council, or they're going to be about, uh, setting it up as an interlocal agreement. Council accounts.

Well, they're being done. Okay. Um, do you just have

Yes, we do have from the last build lands report the parcel a level data set that we can aggregate into any geography. We the county requires and that's on the last slide requires that we not reduce below certain minimums were safe as we don't even have that low of zoning. But whether. I'm pretty confident that across the board, we will be even or above in our capacity.

It seems very residential centric, not very much commercial.

Click, click, click. Every house is a business now. There's a retail store.

50.

No, I mean, I'm talking about e-commerce. If you were talking about the tax implications of it, I think we're up to near 20% of retail sales in the US is through e-commerce and then the sales tax accrues to the residents. Yeah, so we may not be having this conversation if that change had not happened. Because there's a lot of generally low density residential is not seen as paying for the...

It's a loss.

Yeah.

Right. No, it's a loss to annex just houses, like large single, large lot single houses. It's a loss.

But it's getting better now that with e-commerce, maybe if those tend to be higher earning households and they shop more.

Yeah.

So we've got a fiscal analysis going with some consultants and we'll start bringing some of the results of that to the council and that will inform their decision on if and what to annex and

that's also the conversations around the because there's like 17 different fire districts in what you're looking at right now so all that is happening at the same time like yeah are you keeping this fire district one fire district but three water sewer districts well hold on currently there's part isn't um snowmish regional everett is obviously the city and south county all intersect in this area so it

It could, there could be a little Snohomish regional way out here.

That's also, yeah, Snohomish regional is like that far over.

We actually cannot annex all the way because the interlocal agreement method requires that the annexation area be 60% contiguous to the city. And based on our math, that line is somewhere between 35th and 40th. So we've got 35th drawn on here. That's one option that we're looking at right now. I don't think we could get past 40th. So we haven't engaged with Snohomish Regional. And I think that might be why.

Yeah. That suffices to meet the literal law. Maybe not the intent of the law. Right. Okay.

Now we extend it again. I see what you're saying. Okay.

That was quite some math. If you look at the jagged lines there to figure out what is 60%, although it works to our benefit by making so much contiguous because of all the ins and outs. I have one more slide just on a couple other things that we need to think about. Anything else we want to look at on this map? And again, we'll try to get that into your hands to look at yourself in the public as soon as we can too.

So I'll share two slideshow.

Okay, that was our nifty zoning comparison tool. Thank you, Erica, for putting that together. Other topics beyond zoning and also what it means to be a zone, I put the height limit on there, but that's far from the only bulk standard and uses allowed and all kinds of things. I think we're just gonna have to accept that at some point, this is a transfer of authority and it comes with a slightly different set of rules, no matter how much we try to align it. But there's some other things like street designations that county we've got our pedestrian to D residential mixed use and connector designations that interact with sidewalk and frontage improvement requirements as well as some uses. The county has adopted in their urban core sub area plan street typologies which have policies associated with them and sometimes kind of cross section components in them that will need to look at. We've got some notes on how we might map our street designations using this map on to the annexation area. I believe there's some cannabis retail stores. We have a cap of seven, I think it is. And we would presumably need to increase that cap along with the annexation. Is that Everett's own cap or is that the cap that the board gets? It's Everett's own cap. Yeah. I think so, maybe 9, but that's not how many licenses the state would allow, right? Right? The state. It's either a much bigger number or there I don't or maybe there. Yeah, we also have a separation requirements. Um. Certainly not looking to get into a big policy on cannabis thing. We'll see if the council has. So at a minimum, either we're going to have to tell those stories you're closing on annexation day or increase the cap by a couple. But this is also just to get the juices flowing on what other sorts of little things that you wouldn't think of in a big annexation that we need to get. Gateway corridors, we have those designated. There's some special design standards along them for some types of development. The county has a transfer development rights program. So a lot of the zoning you need to to use it. You need to write a check to a farmer and. transfer purchase some of the development rights that they would extinguish um in the valley or the hills forest land farmland um and uh we did away with our density bonus and and tried to provide as much of that development capacity by right as possible and if there's something public benefit that we need just required of of all development The county requires that we maintain in some to some extent the transfer development rights program that they have, and we need to figure out how that's going to work if they require Tdr. Credits for the top half of the building. Do we have to do that for the top half of the building? Can we do it for a little bit less? Um, we are certainly supporters of regional planning and protection of our working resource lands. Um, but we also have a housing. Problem to address, and the 2 can be at odds a little bit, especially with. So looking at that in the model code partnership, there were a few places that we differed from the county in their zoning and the light rail communities and the urban center zoning. They have a minimum residential density that we do not have, and they have maximum parking limits that we do not have. So, I guess we will have to either decide to continue with the way the city has it or or something. I bet there's another 20 behind that we're scouring comprehensive plans and development regulations to find them and we'll pass them along when we do and we'll make try to get to some decisions.