Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

attendance this evening. I'm also curious to know how folks found out about this meeting. If I show of hands, how many people received an email? Okay. I see Ryan is here too, so. Yeah, okay. So we have participants here because they saw the notice by email, so that's great. We just like to get that feedback so we understand who's looking at the newspaper, legal notices, things like that to make sure our communication channels are working. I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Nicole Stickney. For the record, I'm with AHBL. We are a consulting firm in town, and we are working with Franklin County on their update to the comprehensive plan, which is a 20-year outlook for growth and development throughout the county. I'm joined by Millian Van Dievender. And she's also with AHBL. And we've been working on this project for some time. We do have a project website. And I'll explain a little bit about that in the presentation this evening. So you can look there and see materials as they're drafted. Primarily as they go into the planning commission for their review, we will be posting those materials online. I also wanted to explain that with this comprehensive plan update, the county has issued a determination of significance pursuant to the State Environmental Policy Act, SEPA, and in doing so has initiated an EIS process. So that's an environmental impact statement. And the EIS is significant for many reasons. I think we're ready to start broadcasting the slides. Oh, thank you. And I wanted to call out in particular that there has not been an EIS produced for any previous version of the Franklin County Comprehensive Plan. So this is a good opportunity to come into alignment with some of those processes that are typically done. I don't know historically why there was not an EIS done in the past. So with that, I just want to welcome you once again. Tonight at our meeting, you can learn about the update. I want to just turn it so I can see it. Yeah. So we'll give you a little overview about the comprehensive plan update and the environmental review process that is happening with that. We will talk about the applicable review procedures and we will also talk about, as I mentioned, how you can get those documents that you may be interested in viewing. The comprehensive plan is still in production and it's not unusual to have a scoping meeting early in the process. We're pretty far along with our drafting, but it's still a great time to take a pause and talk about the environmental impacts and aspects of Franklin County and what this comprehensive plan update will look like. And we'll also give you an opportunity to ask questions. Now, I wanted to also disclose that there is a grant that we received from the Department of Commerce pursuant to the Climate Commitment Act. That is a priority of state right now. And so that is underwriting the effort, providing the funding for that. So you can see the information there. OK, and before I go on too much, I wanted to just explain a couple of acronyms or different terms that we use just to be very clear about these different terms and these different actions. So first and foremost, we'd start with the Growth Management Act. The Growth Management Act was approved by voters. in 1990, and so for many decades now, the whole state has been planning under the Growth Management Act. There were a lot of reasons why the GMA came about. But there was notably a big concern about sprawl and unplanned development. So that was one reason why it was looked at. It was modeled a lot after the state of Oregon's growth management approaches. And only a few states throughout the United States are planning under a growth management model. sort of scheme. So Washington and Oregon are two examples. Florida is another example. Next, an environmental impact statement, EIS. I think that's familiar to a lot of folks. EISs are done across different industries and throughout the country. In Washington, under SEPA, we do prepare environmental impact statements. They don't come around as often, because many times with SEPA, we're able to evaluate environmental impacts with a more streamlined process, we're able to cite what mitigation or what controls or development requirements are already in place, and so we don't have to go through the full EIS process. But that doesn't mean that it's completely not used. Instead, the EIS process is used for a very formal and very thorough review of different environmental aspects. In an EIS, it's typical to have three different alternatives. It's not necessary, but it's typically done that way. And that's a good way to show comparison and assessment between different choices or alternatives. When we have three different scenarios or multiple scenarios, then we're really able to identify exactly how different proposals might impact the environment or have different results over time. And then finally, we talk a lot about urban growth areas. So in the state of Washington, all cities are contained within an urban growth area. And many times there's additional land beyond the incorporated boundaries of a city, which is the area that it can grow into. Urban growth areas are meant to be sized for 20 years of growth. That's not always the case, but that's the intent. So urban growth areas can expand over time, But using growth management principles, we do prefer to see compact development in Washington state. And we do want to preserve farmland and forest land and open spaces. So those urban growth areas are supposed to be constrained by these principles and these goals in the Growth Management Act. So let's move on and talk about EIS procedures. So if you're not familiar, an EIS, again, is a tool used to evaluate different probable impacts. And the purpose of our meeting tonight is to do our scoping work, which is to really identify what are those different categories that we're going to study as we move through this process. Every EIS is pretty unique in terms of what the proposal may be, what the alternatives are, and the local characteristics. You always want to cater your approach to what needs to be looked at, essentially. And then it can also identify mitigation, of course. So the proposed elements of the environment, and we have put these into our scoping notice, which if you don't have that official notice, we can provide that to you. and put this out for review, there's a number of different categories here. It's pretty expansive. But we're here tonight to talk about those and see if you have alternative views, things that you think that we've not included on the list that should be included. And that's really what that scoping period is all about, is to provide an opportunity for stakeholders, community members, people who are interested to come forward and say, well, That's great and all, but I have a particular concern about transportation, and I really want you to look at X, Y, Z. So that kind of explains the purpose of tonight, but also the approach that we've set out to take, which is subject to change following this review period. So we do have some milestones identified that any EIS will always follow. The first stage is scoping. That's the stage that we're in now. having a conversation about the project and what the procedures and process is going to look like and what the content to be studied will include. A draft EIS is our next step after we pass through the scoping period. That is a lot of heavy lifting. That is where we are drafting a document. Ideally we try to keep tangible ideally it should be about 150 pages maximum that's kind of the the expectation and Then that is put out for distribution and that is put out for a comment period and that's that is going to represent our work looking at whatever final environmental Elements are selected to move forward and this is countywide and But our analysis is going to be for the areas outside of the cities So we're looking at the rural lands. We're looking at the unincorporated lands throughout the county and Then once a draft EIS has been Prepared put out we've gotten comments, which by the way, we will also have this robust period of time where we'll be going through those comments and responding to them one by one. We catalog comments and then we respond to them. Then we will move into the process of creating a final EIS document. I just have a few more slides. It's pretty simple. So these are the process steps that I just described graphically. Again, scoping. This is where we're inviting comments and feedback as we set out on this journey to create this document. We'll be refining our different scenarios that we've selected for growth alternatives. And we're going to look at what are those impacts and mitigation measures that are going to be analyzed. So again, it's just like it's called scoping. It's trying to figure out what is included in the things we're going to be analyzing, discussing, and identifying what is not included, essentially. When we prepare the draft EIS, this is really the part where we're doing the analysis and then looking at those probable impacts and reasonable alternatives, these different sets of scenarios. So when we're talking about probable impacts, what we do is we would talk about population growth. and how that leads to housing, and that leads to additional car trips and things like that. And then what is the impact of that? And so we look at it through the lens of all those different categories, for example. And you may have particular questions about certain subjects, and we're happy to discuss that tonight. The draft EIS issuance would be the next step in the process. As I mentioned, that's the comment period. That's where it's out for review. Folks can read through the materials and go line by line if you wish and, you know, make comments. And it's an important process because we want this to be transparent. We want this to be collaborative. And we want to show our work and have it be held up to scrutiny. As I mentioned, the final EIS is really hopefully taking the draft EIS and making minor modifications. Hopefully we don't have too much off or too much that we're missing. But of course we can't anticipate all the things that folks may be concerned about or thinking about. So we'll do our best work and then we'll incorporate changes, modifications or adjustments in that final EIS preparation stage. And then the county will be issuing a final EIS and that'll be an exciting milestone because as I mentioned before, Franklin County has not provided an EIS before in the comprehensive plan, which is very broad in scope but important to do. This is our preliminary EIS schedule. It is subject to change, but we wanted to put in some dates to give you an idea of how swiftly we will be moving along. And we do intend to really expedite this process. We have been working for many months on the comprehensive plan update. We've been thinking about the environment, of course. And so we already have a lot of ideas and concepts and research that has been done. But we certainly haven't started looking at these scenarios yet. So that would have been premature. So that's kind of where we're at. But we do intend to move swiftly. So the scoping notice was issued on July 6. That started the scoping period. That was the day that the determination of significance was issued. Tonight is the scoping meeting. This is a requirement. And so we're happy to have an audience tonight. We weren't sure we'd have much of an audience. And I think we might even have a few folks joining online tonight, too. So I want to recognize that as well. So we're glad to see interest in the project and the process. On August 5th, that is the deadline for any comments on the scoping process. So there's a lot of time between now and that deadline. We intentionally planned this meeting pretty early on so that we could have a lot of time to work with interested folks and have that conversation. And I should also mention all of these dates meet the statutory requirements for an EIS preparation, because there are a certain number of days that we have to allow in the process. Also happy to say that It's not the worst time of year to be doing something like this. It's always challenging, and the holidays, things like that. But now is a really good time because we have availability to meet and maybe even still have some daylight at the end. In terms of the draft EIS, we will move into that phase in the late summer, so pretty quickly. pretty not far off from now. And that will happen once we issue an EIS scoping report. That EIS scoping report will go through, kind of memorialize what we did to advertise the scoping process, what we did to receive comments, and also our analysis of how we will move forward. So we will take into consideration comments and the questions and recommendations and Once we issue that scoping report, that will set the stage for what's expected to be included for the content in the EIS. By fall of 2026, we intend to have a public open house and that's when we will present the draft EIS. It'll be a written document, but we will be presenting it probably with some slides like this and go through what our findings have been and what the analysis conclusions are, and also set out what those mitigation steps may look like. I should also be clear that this is going to be an integrated process, which means that The organization of the comprehensive plan will be mirrored in the EIS in as much as we want to make sure that the documents align with one another. That doesn't mean that the topics will necessarily be organized that way, but we want to be very clear that we are not just picking and choosing through the comprehensive plan, we are analyzing it from start to finish. Again, it's an integrated process. And if we find down the road that Well, there's an environmental impact that wasn't previously considered. It wasn't in previous plans or something in our drafts. Then we would go back and make those adjustments, which is useful because we won't be adopting our final comprehensive plan until the EIS is in final form. As I mentioned, the draft EIS, once available, that will be presented in the open house and that will be a part of or start perhaps the comment period for that. So there will be an opportunity to, again, pour over that document and provide feedback once again. And then the final EIS issuance is targeted for end of 2026. Just to talk a little bit about the proposal, I'm going to call it the proposal, which is comprehensive plan update. Just a few high points that I want to make mention of. There's a lot of requirements for counties that are fully planning under the Growth Management Act and what they need to include in a comprehensive plan. Franklin County is a fully planning county. So that means we're looking at transportation and housing. We're looking at land use, capital facilities, utilities, parks and recreation. and a natural environment as well. Climate is also new, but it is also now a goal of the Growth Management Act to look at climate impacts and what the sensitivities are, especially to vulnerable populations. And on the flip side, look at what we can do to be more resilient and prepare communities for things that may threaten their quality of life related to climate change. An example might be, we all know we have more forest fires or wildfires, I should say, more commonly and smoke is a problem and there's other impacts too. Another example, especially for coastal communities, is sea level rise. And then just the changes in the frequency of very hot days or other extreme weather events. These are the types of things that the climate element will look at. Because of the Climate Commitment Act passed by the state, there's also a strong component looking at greenhouse gas emissions, trying to benchmark that, and then coming up with goals and policies to not increase on a per capita basis what that rate of emissions looks like. And a key component of that, as put out by the state, is to really try to reduce vehicle miles traveled by folks, because transportation is one of the highest, they call them, sectors that are producing these emissions. Transportation is a huge one. And there's also a lot of other really good reasons in many cases to reduce vehicle miles traveled, not just environmental impacts, but people are also looking at the social and other impacts of alternative modes of transportation. So all of that is to say there's a lot of different components to the comprehensive plan. And we'd really aim to do a complete work. The Shoreline Master Program is also incorporated into the comprehensive plan. So for those of you who are concerned about shoreline areas, I want to be very clear about that. The difference, however, is that the Shoreline Master Program that is set up by Franklin County, which was updated just a few years ago, it is a part of the Shoreline Management Act. not the Growth Management Act so they're a little bit different form and function and and different acts of course by the state different policy but it's important to realize to the interplay between those different documents and how they work together this slide here shows a little bit about anticipated growth how do we know how much this county is going to grow by Well, nobody knows, but we have to come up with a good scenario. We need to come up with an estimate and a benchmark for moving forward. So this is how it works. Every five years, the state of Washington, under the Growth Management Act, directs the Office of Financial Management and the demographers there to anticipate and study what is trending in terms of all the different factors that can affect So this would be things like death rates, birth rates, immigration, growth due to people coming for jobs, people leaving for jobs, all of those types of things. And they constantly track building permits and other indicators of growth and look at these things. So they come up with a scenario for each fully planning county a low and a medium and a high scenario. And then what happens next is that communities are, they work collaboratively at the county level to decide which scheme is going to be used for the planning going forward. And invariably in Franklin County, we're always going with the medium because that's what everything is tracked over time. pretty remarkable, actually, how close it is. But in any event, that's how we work through that. And then the other step, again, at the more local level, county level, is working with cities to decide how that growth will be divvied up. Now, in some larger counties or counties with more jurisdictions in that, that can be very complicated and very political. For us, you can see that there's very few cities in Franklin County. Largely, the population is centered, of course, in Pasco. Connell has a small share. Colotus and Mesa are very small communities. They're among the smallest communities in the state They are in Franklin County, which is fully planning. So they're part of growth management, but but they are small as you can see and then the rest of the population is counted as unincorporated Franklin County because those are the residents outside of city limits and at this point i would typically talk about how to know if you live in a city or you don't because sometimes people are confused about that and they think that their address is proof of where they live and that's not always the case addressing doesn't tell you which jurisdiction you live in but i think it's pretty clear-cut around these parts at least if you're voting in elections that means you're you know voting in that district or that city where you're voting for that's always a good indicator And of course Pasco does grow through annexations. So that's also brought into the mix I talked about some of these population numbers and forecasts and how they prognosticate what's going to happen in the future and annexations which is when you bring in land and it's It may have a population or it may not it may just be raw land in any event that also does cause that swell or that growth and so as you can see the distribution is shown in the table but also in the pipe chart for those who like i'm seeing it that way again pasco is large oh there is a difference here so on the left hand side this shows the population distribution as of 2024. And then this share of countywide population growth has to do with any increase and how that's apportioned out. So we think that more people will, more growth will occur within Pasco, um, as compared to their current rate. of population share over time. This is appropriate because we do want to direct growth into cities and places where services are available and services in terms of infrastructure, but also social services, things like that. We want to concentrate growth in cities so that we're preserving other land, again, for agriculture, open space, and preventing sprawl. So the other thing I would call out here is that we've listed out the 2020 population. We've shown what that growth projection looks like in terms of what the add-on is, and then what the final population that's projected looks like. So as you can see, if we're just thinking about our comprehensive plan and our EIS, we're looking at going from 13,668 Residents in unincorporated Franklin County and those lands associated with it up to nineteen thousand seven hundred seventy six That's still a lot of growth in 20 years. So we want to make sure we're identifying those impacts And then population growth I want you to also as I mentioned before think about it's not just homes not just people who are here But it's also people who have jobs people who are in the schools people who are traveling so it's really dynamic in that regard and Before we leave this slide, I'll also call out that we're not expecting really any growth for Colotus or Mesa. Even if they were to double, have a 100% increase of growth, it still wouldn't change our other numbers very much. So just keep it simple. Okay, I did touch on climate change and climate resiliency as new planning requirements. And I mentioned also that that is supported by state funding given through the Climate Commitment Act. So we're excited about adding that on. That's a new item. The other new item that I would highlight that's very significant and something I would call out as being something that is certainly worthy of environmental review and scrutiny is how we are looking at planning for housing. So there's a lot of different aspects to that. The state legislature in recent years passed a whole host of new laws. Bills were passed that require cities and counties that are fully planning to plan for housing in different ways. So one call out is requirements, and actually it's a preclusion from limiting certain uses in certain zoning districts. And what I'm talking about for that is things like temporary housing, shelters housing, like shelter beds, and temporary housing, those types of things. There's a lot of different programs out there for permanent supportive housing, and they want to make sure that cities and counties are not excluding that from their zoning, but instead being inclusionary and affirmatively showing where those uses can exist and not barring them with some exceptions. The other story to tell is that we have more work to do than we did previously looking at different income tiers. So for a long time, the Growth Management Act has required communities to plan for different income levels. And that was the requirement, and then you could kind of interpret that as you want. And so some cities or counties would take that to various lengths and extents in terms of how they studied that or analyzed that. The state now requires documentation to show where in the zoning, and this is best explained for cities, I think, but where in the zoning code you are able to accommodate development of different housing types that would translate directly to different income types. So an example that I might provide is if your zoning doesn't allow any apartments, that could be an issue because apartments in many communities are places where lower income housing is available. Really, we're looking at density. That's really the benchmark here. So they're looking at what is the density of development that you allow, and it's not saying that you have to make everything high density. We certainly don't want that. It's place specific, but it's making sure that those areas can perform in the market with developers and people building housing to be able to provide those different offerings. There's a lot of different components to this. One way that the state is advancing this is by requiring many communities to offer what's called middle housing. So that's the span of different housing types from kind of the traditional suburban houses on a big lot or states. and anything between that range to maybe a high rise in a highly urbanized area. So we're talking about things like town homes, we're talking about courtyard apartments, cottage housing, being able to do housing on flats, shared walls or duplexes, all of those types of things are different examples. Shifting to another topic, there are also new requirements by the state in how we address accessory dwelling units. And so we've been talking a lot about that, and we are looking to really be a lot more generous in terms of when that can be allowed, I guess is the way to say it. Kind of open it up and remove those barriers to ADUs where it can be appropriate. ADUs are not meant for all parts of the county, but there are certain places where they should be allowed if folks want to be able to move forward and do that. So this shows the actual allocation that has been developed. There's a methodology behind this. The state put out what they call a housing for all planning tool. So they actually had some different scenarios, and you could look at these different approaches. And they also estimated what the current supply looks like. So this is showing... the new housing that's been allocated to different municipalities according to these different income levels. But they also have a benchmark that I could also share with you that shows what they say we have now in terms of these different income bands. And I want to explain the income bands for a minute. So following on with like HUD programs, the federal programs and things like that, they are benchmarking this to the area median income. And that's helpful because inflation, monetary costs change over time. There's fluctuations in the market. But what they're doing is they're saying, what percentage of the range as compared to the area median income? So if you talk about the area median income, that means half of the households are making more, half of the households are making less. And then what percentage of that moving down are folks at in terms of their income? They're not too worried about the right-hand side of the chart. It's all consolidated. If you're 120% or higher area median income, that's probably good enough. We don't need to look any further into that. The market is probably providing housing at those levels. It's these levels below that you find that it's harder and harder, especially as you get into the deeply affordable housing range, to find that that is available. The state recognizes that in order for these numbers to be attained, there needs to be market interventions that could look like housing subsidies, different programs, things like that. What I always talk about, too, is that cities and counties don't build housing. So how is this all supposed to work? The idea here is that you don't want to have barriers to housing. I was talking a little bit about co-regulations and where you can have an ADU, where you can have a duplex, things like that. So we want to look at that very closely and assess that fully. And then additionally, we look at what are those different programs that can be brought forward. But as I was saying, the cities don't build housing, but they can create policies and the environment, the structure for these to happen, or barriers too. So this is just trying to kind of peel back the layers. One quick remark, if we had met a week ago, I wouldn't be talking about this, but federal government did pass the Road to Housing Act. So that's new on the horizon. I don't know how much of our work will be influenced by that in the near term, but it is good to see that housing is being worked on at the local level, but also at the national level. In short, that bill does a lot of different things. But one thing it looks at is investment by firms outside the United States buying up single family housing, which has contributed to some of our housing crisis problems. And we go on and on about the housing crisis and prices for housing right now. But that's why we're here talking about it, because there is an issue. The other thing I would highlight is that these percentages are kind of hard to talk about related to area median income. But the area median income in 2025 was just about $105,000 a year. So that makes for easy math. If you think about it as like $100,000, then you know that the 0% to 30% would be about a zero to $30,000 income level. So I think that makes it a little easier. It's not such easy math in places that have higher income levels, certainly, but ours was right around 100 in the year 2024. So that gives you an idea. The other thing I would note is that this is not the AMI is for the area so You might go that seems kind of high It's for Benton and Franklin counties combined Because they look at the metropolitan statistical area So again, we're just borrowing federal stuff that already exists, but that's how it that's how it works Yes, please Yep, so those are both the 0 to 30 percent income band, but we're putting it in two different buckets one is Permanent supportive housing and the other is non permanent supportive housing So it's just an indicator of what living arrangements are going to be required to make it happen Um So it's still permanent housing. It's not, uh, we're not talking about the supportive housing is the key word because this is all permanent housing needs.

These are emergency units.

So that's temporary by nature, but the permanent supportive housing or non-permanent supportive housing is what we're trying to distinguish. And supportive housing is, um, like, uh, What do I want to say? Housing authority type situation. Supportive housing. So that's the different programs.

Are we going to have access to this slide presentation?

Of course.

Yep. It's generally subsidized, correct? If it's supportive.

Yes, but there's also other programs that the state wants to see you do that kind of looks like subsidies. So it's kind of not a bright line, but that's the general idea. Subsidized or government housing. You just said government housing, maybe. All right. I've already hit on this, so we'll just go to the next slide, please. So now let's talk about these different growth alternatives. These are what we've put in our scoping notes. This is what we're setting out to look at. I'm going to start from the bottom and work up. Alternative three is the no action alternative. That is useful because it's a benchmark for comparison uses. or comparison reasons. It's based on the 2018 plan. It's basically like very little growth, just kind of continuing with what we have. And again, that's a benchmark or used for comparison purposes. It's not likely. We would be in some trouble, actually, if we didn't take action, if we didn't adopt a new comprehensive plan and update our plan for the current requirements under the RCWs. But for the purpose of analysis, that's where that sits. Number two is a broad growth alternative. So some of the things that we've listed out that would happen in this scenario is that the Pasco urban growth area would be expanded in this year for industrial land. So there'd be a transfer of some land which is already designated as industrial but sits in the county. It would be moved into the city's urban growth area. and therefore be eligible for annexation. Next, we would establish a code or provisions for a master plan resort. And so that we could process an application for something like that. So we need to look at those impacts. The next is adoption of standards for a major industrial development. That is something that is a little unique or not common around the state, but there are provisions for major industrial developments. And there might be a need for that in the near or not so near future in Franklin County. So we would promulgate an opportunity for that. And then providing a variety of densities and reducing some of the zone's minimum lot size to one acre overall base density. So we might play with this a little bit. We might modify it, but this is generally kind of where we think we're headed right now for alternative two, which is broad growth. And then alternative one, which is a focused growth alternative, that's a little more conservative. You'd keep the UGAs as they are. You wouldn't make any changes. You would still establish that master plan resort code. And you'd look at really focusing on shrub step conservation with development options for cluster development. That's kind of a on-site transfer development rights scheme. So those are the three alternatives that we've set out now. And this is kind of a summary, too, that you can read the full detail in our scoping notice. So I will go over how to comment now. The scoping comments are accepted through August 5. There's lots of time still. Comments can be submitted by email. We do want written comments. We're going to take your questions tonight, but That won't, unless you put it in writing, it won't be official on the record for these purposes. Not as though we're not listening or anything, but we need a written statement in order to process it through this very formal process. So we have brought comment sheets. You don't need to use our comment sheets. You can write in an email. You can... mail a letter to the county, kind of go old school, however you prefer. So the members of the public, we've reached out to tribes and agencies. Anyone interested is invited to review and comment on this scope, including these alternatives. You can write to us and explain your concerns or thoughts about probable significant adverse impacts. mitigation measures, and some of this other detail. The email address that we're using for the comprehensive plan update and for the EIS process itself is pretty simple. It's plan2026 at franklincountywa.gov. And we'll go to the next slide. have a lot of that information here and then there's a project website you can get to this project website in a couple of different ways there's lots of materials we've put out where you have a qr code if you want to take a picture you can type in this address you can also just access this from the county's main website There is also a Facebook page that's been set up by the county. I forgot to mention that too. That's a way if you like to use social media, you could follow that and hopefully that would show up in your feed. This is just a quick picture of the project website. So we're maintaining it. Right now, we've got the materials that went to the planning commission quite recently. So their meeting packet, they looked at the introduction draft of the comprehensive plan. And a few other chapters the natural environment was among that so you can see exactly what was provided And then we will continue to add materials Certainly every month as things are taken to the Planning Commission, but perhaps more often for there there's also A lot of information on this website, this project website. You can see the public participation plan for the comprehensive plan update. You can see our survey results. You can see a memo about what we did for open house events. We had three open houses throughout the county. All that reporting, all that information, this is your repository. This is where you can go to find it. And this is just a slide that we were going to leave up so that we would have that information still available. I want to thank you for listening to my presentation. Hopefully I set out kind of a little bit about our program and our approach here and hopefully gave you some interesting information along the way. And now we'd like to open it for questions.

So anybody that has any questions or comments, you could come up to the mic so that it's recorded into the WebEx so everybody gets to hear that. Or the YouTube, that'd be great. Either mic.

Yeah. Last time we met, we talked about sideboards on some of the policies and regulations. You recall that? Yes. And I was, I was curious about how those are going to be spelled out in our, in our plan. Cause it sounded like you were having some flexibility you wanted to have built into it.

Um, so specific misunderstanding. No, you're not misunderstanding. So, um, You're kind of getting down in the weeds a little bit, which we don't have all developed, right? We're developing those now. But essentially, if you have a development project, it's where should it go? What should the density be? Should there be mitigation measures around it? Again, I use the term in the open houses, sideboards, and I did that specifically to kind of give people a general idea that it's just not development in the Wild West. There are gonna be some specific parameters that you have to follow. So for example, right now, if you wanna do a planned unit development, you're required to have 15% open space. So that 15% open space, I would consider a sideboard, right? You can't just increase the density without giving us something back. It's a sideboard. You can have more than 15% open space, but you have to leave that much in open space. All right. So that's one example. Okay.

Thank you. I think that as we get into it, I'll be writing some comments.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

So I'm not sure if this is a question for you, Wes, or for Nicole, or Millian, I know there was a lawsuit that was brought up with the previous comprehensive plan with Futurize and with the determination of soils. Has that been addressed with this one or will it be addressed with this comprehensive plan?

The previous comprehensive plan, which was for the year 2017, adopted in a different year, it was appealed to the Growth Management Hearings Board by Future Wise. The main concern that was expressed in that appeal was the extension of the urban growth area for the city of Pasco North. So this county did prevail. UGA expansion went through. The appellants were denied that when it finally went to court. There was a couple different layers to it. One of the points of contention was whether or not the expansion of those urban growth areas were going on to lands that were classified as agricultural lands of long-term commercial significance. And so there was some debate in that appeal process about what the county had determined were agricultural lands of long term commercial significance before and what they had not. If you read the decision, by the appellant court that turned back the decision of the Growth Management Hearings Board. It was very clear that they found that there was a lot of ambiguity, that that there wasn't a clear answer, but they saw they deferred to what the county had on the record and what they had done. And it was shown that I forget exactly how it was argued, so I might get this little detail wrong, but basically what we showed was that the expansion of the Pasco UGA was not into lands that had been so designated as agricultural lands of long-term commercial significance. Rather, there had been a one-mile buffer basically drawn around the previous line where those lands were not designated. So they had actually... back in I think the year 2008, from what we could tell, they had actually set that land up for potential future development. They did not give it that special designation that would protect it. A lot of that comes down to also a debate about soils. And we are not reviewing that at this time. But that is something that continues to be something that I think it would behoove the county to go through and do an analysis. It's not a part of the scope at this time. Yeah. So the mapping will not change during this comprehensive plan update that shows those lands that are considered resource lands, agricultural lands of long-term commercial significance. It's going to stay the same. Does that answer your question? Yeah, please do. Yeah. And I just wanted to make sure that I was kind of given the full picture because.

And that's basically a full picture of that.

It's complicated. But thank you for the question. We are clarifying the maps, which means that we are going to step up our efforts to be very clear about the labeling. Our labeling in the 2017 plan was good. It wasn't great. Upon review and looking back in the rear view mirror, it was like, oh, it should have been a little more descriptive. It would have really helped. So now we get to learn from those lessons and make those improvements. But I will say in the 2017 plan, it was less ambiguous than the 2008 plan, which had a lot of labels on a map that weren't ever talked about in the plan. And so we try to do our best work, but look out for those kind of slip-ups. And actually, that's an actually nice part of this EIS is that I think we'll get some more look through our comprehensive plan, which is just gonna make it better and bolster the process. This is all about public engagement after all. It's your plan for your community. So we'd like to have eyes on the comprehensive plan. So it's exciting to know that this might induce more interest and contributions.

So I'll just add a little bit to that. I know Quincy lands was discussed as part of that. And it was determined that, you know, didn't really matter how we classified whether they're irrigated, non-irrigated or not. Those were upheld as all being long-term commercially significant. So that was one aspect of the lawsuit that, that stayed. And it did help clarify that those were classified appropriately and uh... the other uh... piece is and just add a little bit more context to what nicole said we'd previously have a lot of zoning that was you know agriculture protection twenty some of that was natural resource land some of that was or areas of long-term commercial significance some of it wasn't so we're will be proposing uh... changing those ones that are not in the overlay of long-term commercially significant to a rural designation. It'll still probably be an ag rural designation, you know, 20 and 40. So we're not proposing changing the density, but we are proposing to change that name so it helped clarify to the public what we're trying to do there.

Okay, thanks for the clarification on that. And then the other question I have is you guys were projected to see what I think was 6,000 increase population for that incorporated. Do you know where do you expect that 6,000 to be, where that 6,000 will be at? Like, is it focusing the landlords? Is it going to be, I'm not sure exactly, I guess how the OFM came up with 6,000 additional residents for unincorporated, but. Just kind of curious on that one. Okay.

Sit here because I took notes. So we met with you all a month ago or so, and one of the biggest concerns for Save Our Shoreline is the potential reconveyance of Army Corps lands to local governments, including Franklin County. in the intervening time between when we spoke and now, we learned from a state official, and I could be getting this wrong, but that in order for a transfer of land to, especially such a large transfer of land to occur, it would need to be in the planning document. And I don't know the details of that, I don't know the RCW, I was gonna look it up a while ago and haven't, but that's y'all's job, so we're good with that. Anyway, so that feels to me like a scoping thing, that a comment would be make sure that on the previous four years of discussions with the county commissioners and the other local agencies, I mean, it's obvious somebody's thinking, Franklin County is thinking about acquiring a whole bunch of lands, free or not, so it should be in this plan, I think. So that's the question, must it be?

So I would think that we would want to include contemplating how that land would come in. So yeah, I mean, we're supposed to be thinking 20 years out. in this whole planning exercise. So if we expect that to happen in the next 20 years, we should address it. Doesn't necessarily mean we have to have all the detail. We just have to mention that it's in there. I'm pretty sure we've included that discussion in our drafts. I know we're still working on it, but we can definitely make sure, we'll make note of your comment and make sure that we include it.

Yeah, not just that a whole bunch of lands may come in, but if they were to come in, how the public, how the process would work for how we decide that yes, Franklin County should have them, et cetera. I know, for example, that part of the negotiations with the local governments and the area tribes is that there is gonna be a memorandum of understanding with the Umatillas and the Yakima. There's gonna be ground disturbing protocols and cultural resources easements. and those are the documents that have been developed so far. There's also legislative language that I think will, well, it'll be a done deal, I think, by the time this plan comes out, but how those, at least those documents that exist, I don't think they exist too publicly, but they exist quasi-publicly. I think if you asked Tridec, they would give you copies of those. They made a presentation before the commissioners and I don't, anyway, so figuring out how given those documents, how those would work. So that's a big one. And part of that reconveyance, well actually maybe not, So skip reconvance, we're done with that. And I will of course, we will submit comments on that. Second thing is you all are aware that we're working with the State Department of Natural Resources and a willing seller to acquire the self-landing boat launch from again a willing seller and make that public property for the duration that won't happen at least until the end of this year but that also seems like something that would be worth noting I know that the well I don't know I don't know I guess again this is not public comment time it's question time How might that fit into an EIS related to the comprehensive plan?

Yeah. Please.

So I talked about the 20-year lifespan and 20-year outlook of a comprehensive plan. They can be amended. Once per year, they're they're limited to how many and how you do amendments and but they can be amended. So my suggestion would be that if you look at the land use designation and the zoning of the land, once that entity has acquired it, they could make application to make a change if they so choose. It would be premature right now. Or it would be necessary for the current owner, I think, advance such a request. Uh, but to your point, I don't know that there needs to be any change to the zoning. So that would be a, another conversation to have is what's the benefit, you know, does it need to occur? If this is something you're going to be putting into a longterm land conservation through like a deed restriction or something like that, but not that, then that's a private matter and it doesn't need to go into the comprehensive plan.

Okay. Yeah, it won't be quite that. Because we want to continue the existing uses, which is launching boats in an undeveloped but publicly used for generations area, a conservation easement won't work because that's a different thing than a boat launch. That's good to know.

And then going back to what you were talking about with the shoreline reconveyance and the memorandum of understanding, I do have a copy, I believe. I know Richland and some of the other cities are a party to it. If it's one and the same in Franklin County is also listed, then I certainly have that document and will provide that to you. You can.

Oh no, I have it. You have it, okay. It's how it fits into this EIS and the.

Okay, so what I would do is suggest that we can look at crafting language that talks about this memorandum of understanding has been passed. This is being looked at and basically putting language in the comprehensive plan to say this is in the works. It's obviously not a done deal. We can't talk about it as though we know all the details or that it's going to be successful. But we can say that that has been initiated as an important call out. And I appreciate you bringing that up because I don't even I couldn't surmise how much land in Franklin County would be, the unincorporated parts would be subject to that, but certainly even if it's an acre of land, we need to include that.

Thank you. It is substantial, but it's unknown. It's just corresponding.

Make sure you're talking to the mic so people can hear you.

Yeah, it is, I think, a substantial amount of land, and it's unknown, and it's hard to get that information. I've been corresponding with the planning folks and saying, hey, let's sit down and figure out this land, and they say, go talk to the Corps. The Corps says, go talk to the county. It's a challenge.

so to your point what we would do is we would characterize it as something that is conceptual um you know there's a lot of steps in the process there's a lot of uncertainties about how it might turn out but that way at least we're putting a kind of a placeholder in there and also you know when the comp plan is maybe amended in a couple years maybe that is the place there where you can update the language and and put it in and take any necessary actions that would relate to that. That would be my.

Yeah and you know of course we would prefer given our nervousness about this all to have the plan include a sort of at least a step by step on how this would come to be. how the public will be involved, et cetera. I don't know if we can go that far, but it's a big deal. Okay, one of the other things. We talked about urban growth areas and boundaries. I guess those terms are somewhat interchangeable. One of the... The most important areas to save our shoreline is called the Richland Bend, which is owned by the Army Corps of Engineers. It's a mile of riparian habitat that is amazing. It is in the urban growth boundary of Pasco. It is right next to the development, I don't need any adjectives, of coming on Broadmoor. And the Broadmoor developers are hoping for that to become a city park. Save Our Shoreline is hoping that nothing happens whatsoever, but when the Gallants, the family that owns a wonderful family farm across the street, decides to sell it, instead of it turning into commercial and residential, mixed commercial and residential, it would become a city park. So that bend is in this urban growth boundary. And I don't know how in a scoping context in the EIS we call that out. Because again, I know there are comments on alternatives and there's, but before that, we're now in the scoping, how do we get that area recognized?

I'm trying to think exactly. Is that inside the city limits now? That's in the county. It's in one of our donut holes, right?

Yeah, it's right. A little chunk of it's in the city of Pasco. The sign's right there. It's right there at the Burns, where the Burns pump is and the sharp turn along Shoreline Drive and Burns. It's that. There's all this green there, and that's where it is. So it's mostly urban growth boundary.

So it sounds to me as though you would be a proponent for seeing a reduction of the Pasco UGA because you don't want that to become eligible for annexation and those types of uses.

Well, we don't know. Do we trust Pasco more or the Franklin County more?

I was going to say that that would probably be an uphill battle to work through the different entities. And unless you could start with the city and they would be on board, they're probably not going to give up their urban growth area.

And we don't, yeah, so right. So since we're in the scoping and I don't know how to make, how to achieve most what we want. By the way, if the reconveyance doesn't go through, it's Army Corps land and it's safe. and we get our wish. So it's really only if the, I mean, because the feds aren't going to let anything happen to it.

So, I mean, I share that information just kind of off the cuff. We're not here to help you strategize. Oh, yes, you are. We're glad you're here. We're glad you're asking the questions. We want to support the process here, but... I think the bottom line is that there's a lot of different components to that and that would not be addressed in the EIS. Okay. It would be typically outside of our scoping as we've set it out now. So if that's something you want analyzed, I think you would actually need to go to PASCO.

I know. We're not paying as much attention to them. Do you happen to know how far along they are in their comprehensive plan? We're meeting with them next month, and then we'll know more. Because that's my next question. Thank you for that. I don't know if anybody else has anything to add.

Well, if what you're referring to is also tied to the reconveyance, again, I think having us put something in the comprehensive plan, just kind of broadly discussing that so that it sets it up for future success would be appropriate. Perfect. But I agree with Nicole. How do you analyze something that at this point in time is... What's the right word here? Well, I'll say it takes an act of Congress.

Yeah.

Because it does. Well, it already has.

The act of Congress has happened, but if the current law requires NEPA and the act of Congress that is winding its way through would waive NEPA, and that's where, yeah, things are happening. Okay, good. Speaking of PASCO, This you had you talked about an integrated process But you were really talking about the EIS and the comp plan It seems like an integrated process would say would have Franklin County and Pasco working together You say you're gonna meet in a month, but that's if you look at that timeline stuff is Stuff is pretty well written. So I

Part of this entire process was coming up first with a public participation policy and second was developing the countywide planning policies. And those kind of lay out the foundation of how we're working together. So as we get our drafts and they get their drafts, we will be sharing the drafts with the cities. They will be sharing their drafts with ours. um and we're going to be working together on coordinating a lot of that right so there's still a lot of coordination that has to happen we kind of do our draft rough draft i'll say and they kind of do their rough draft and then we when we start sharing that um we're able to do that and i know that they had I'm trying to remember what exactly PASCO put out, but they did put out a piece for us to comment on already.

Okay. Scoping for their, are they doing an EIS too?

It wasn't the scoping for the EIS. It was a piece of their plan, and I'm trying to remember exactly what it was. Do you remember, Nicole, what PASCO had out that we were commenting on? Oh, yeah, it was their economic... Thank you, Alex. It was their economic development. They were just kind of looking for some broad input from the county major stakeholders like Tridec and, you know, Port District and stuff like that, just to kind of, I guess, preliminarily look at their economic development plan. They haven't quite gotten... beyond that yet, so again, it's pretty rough information that we were given to try and have some comments and input on.

Okay, thanks. If you don't mind, I thought I would just share real quick the website, project website, so you can see some of the materials that are there presently. The planning commission materials are available. This is what's happening tonight. So the scoping notice official is there.

And then I also wanted to highlight because Wes brought it up.

You can see the adopted countywide planning policies and existing conditions report. That's more like demographics and information about the county. The public participation plan, slides from when we launched this project.

And this repository, as I mentioned, will grow. So there's quite a few.

quite a bit here to go through and digest if you're so interested. Thanks. I have looked at that.

And I will tell you, I would really suggest based on some of your questions you're asking that you look at the countywide planning policies because it really does kind of lay out how we plan on working together as the city and county and trying to coordinate that. I know I have met with my counterpart over at the city at Monthly, and we talk about a lot of different broad scope type things at the moment. It'll get a little more in the weeds as we both get a little closer being done. Okay. But... again, some of your, even your reconveyance and what are you gonna do and how does this work with the city and the county and it's in the urban growth area. You know, a lot of that that's in the urban growth boundary right now, we try and coordinate. Where are the roads going to go? Where, you know, what is your development that you're planning on trying to put here? What are we doing in the meantime so we're not messing up the ability to do infill and things like that? So those policies are really good. And we beef those up pretty good from all parties. Mesa, Colotus, Connell, Pasco, all of us were there at the table. So it was some good collaborative effort.

Cool, yeah, no, I have not looked at that, thank you. I will take a look. Turning the page a little bit to transportation, I was surprised, I kind of tend to think of this plan as a, yeah, land use thing. And so, and emissions, is it gonna talk then, the plan is gonna talk about Benton Franklin Transit? I mean, that's like our one thing we can do for emissions.

So I will tell you that in our transportation drafting, drafting the element and coming up with policies, I don't know that we specifically bring out Brenton Franklin Transit, but we do talk about transit, yes.

That's all we have.

I mean, they're mentioned in the actual document now, and we're not taking them out. But transit, I know when we were developing the policies for the climate, the vehicles miles, reduction in vehicle miles traveled, transit was thought about a whole lot. And not just what Benton Franklin Transit may provide, but just thinking from a broad perspective, how do we reduce vehicle miles traveled across the entire county? because the transit only serves where it serves a large population, you know, you have to think about somebody who's kind of in the middle of the county in a rural area and where do they go grocery shopping?

Right.

You know, how many miles does it have to go? So that was a lot of our thought in, um, trying to come up with some draft policies and how do we reduce those? So again, that's some of the things we're going to be looking at, uh,

Okay.

In the CIS.

Melissa, if I may, there are also other transit. Is this mic?

Mm-hmm. I can hear.

Is the button green?

It's on the stand.

Oh, okay. Yeah, now I hear my voice echo. But yeah, so we have actually two other entities that work to provide transit with, in conjunction with Ben Franklin Transit. So WSDOT operates called what's called the grape line and the wheat line that um serve um services to walla walla and spokane and there's also a non-profit agency i believe called people to people which serves connell and provides transportation to the tri-cities and they coordinate with bft um stops so there are multiple agencies and we didn't want to exclude any other um agency that works in transit, especially ones that serve rural communities.

Yeah, good, thank you. You mentioned the Shoreline Master Program and that it had just recently been updated. How binding are those changes which addressed shorelines, which is the thing we care a lot about, on the Growth Management Act and this comprehensive plan?

I will tell you that when we did, when the county did the shoreline management plan, one of the things they had to do was characterize the existing shoreline. And we had a proposal up on the Snake River Dam to think about changing what that was. I don't want to get too much in the weeds of what this proposal was, but essentially they wanted to expand their operation, that's perfectly fine, to some land that's owned by the same entity, but the shoreline characterization wouldn't let them do that. And we found an alternative where they could stay out of the shoreline and do that without having to change the process. to make an amendment to the shoreline plan to like recharacterize the shoreline is a major Undertaking because not only do we have to amend it similar to mending the comp plan But it has to go through the entire state process again Which can be a very long drawn-out complicated expensive process so they are looking at our alternatives to do that. So that's just one example. When you talk about how binding it is, I'd say just the complexity and the work that was done helps preserve what's there.

OK. just a sec let me make a note so I don't forget okay um so does that then have what you were just talking about does that have to do with this in in both of your alternatives you mentioned a major resort what in the world is happening and do we know where and why does somebody get their resort in and it seemed like a funny kind of thing frankly

So we have an application for a master plan resort, and it's connected with the golf course out there at Levy Park. And master plan resorts are talked about in the Growth Management Act. They are allowed. They are a component of it. Again, just like in the slide presentation, major industrial developments, we don't actually have one. but we're, you know, trying to line up again, you're trying to think 20 years out, out. Um, so we're, we're trying to think ahead, you know, can we do this, uh, and make it, um, uh, more of a streamlined process if somebody does come up with that type of an opportunity.

Yeah. Okay. And you know, for some reason I was thinking of that golf course on along the snake, But that's not Franklin County. So where is Levy Park?

Anyone know?

It's on the Franklin County side.

Yeah, it's on the Franklin County side. I'm going to say it's, what, about a 10-minute drive out from Pasco?

Yeah, because Sacajawea is in Franklin County. And it's, okay, yeah, so it's just take a left and go up the Snake River.

I would point you to just get online and type in Levy Park.

Yeah, anyway, no problem. But that's the planned resort.

Well, that is.

Oh, good.

That is the current golf course that's there.

Yeah.

Their proposal is to further develop that into a master plan resort. Right. That will be decided as part of this process.

They have an application in. Yeah.

Okay. We have to amend the comp plan to do that. We have the application to do that, and the commissioners will have to act on the actual changes to the comp plan plus the actual application. Got it.

Okay, we won't worry about that quite yet. Boy, that was, it polled, how many cities are there in Franklin County? I would not have guessed four. That is a really small number. Yeah, okay. So let's see, last, I think just about, I enjoyed that future-wise conversation. Okay, I think I'll stop. Thank you very much. I appreciate your answers and information, and we'll be in touch.

Right, thank you. And if you have scoping comments, please put them in writing. I will, I guess I'm just, yeah. Trying to figure out how to put them in writing, yes.

Right. Well, and I'm just still not exactly sure what a scoping comment is versus I like alternative X versus Y or, you know, but anyway, I'll write it and you'll say that's not what a scoping comment is and that's all right. I guess I just would waste some time.

I would encourage people who think they have scoping comments to put them in. Right. If they're out of bounds of what the scoping would be, we still have comments on the record. Yeah. for the comp plan. I would rather encourage people to put the comment in and have us tell you, well, we really can't go there in this process, than to not hear your comment.

True, thanks.

Anybody else have questions or comments, scoping comments?

Anybody online that wants to ask questions, we do have a call-in number. The phone number is 509-545-3555. Meeting number 2962 Pound, attendee code 3555 Pound. Again, the number is 509-545-3555. Meeting number 2962 Pound. Attendee code 3555 pound.

Thank you. And I imagine that we'll probably wait and see if somebody does call in since we do have online participants. But in the meantime, I'll just take this opportunity to let you know there are policies already in the existing comprehensive plan about master plan resorts. They were introduced in 2017 so That groundwork has been laid for a while as Wes mentioned. It's in the RCW, but Franklin County already does have some Policies in place and discussion about that in the current comp plan, so it's not a completely new concept of course We just haven't seen any be developed, but Yeah, I just wanted to mention that as well. Thanks. I

We're here at 8 o'clock, so if you have other questions, please let us know.

I was just going to say to keep watch on the website or your emails, however you're receiving the information, because the Planning Commission is going over the draft documents for the comprehensive plan. You had asked about or you had questions about emissions and vehicle miles traveled. We're going to present the climate element, the new climate element to the Planning Commission on August 4th. That's their next scheduled meeting. And you're welcome to come. It won't be the public hearing, but it's an opportunity to get to know the draft.

Thank you.

Okay. Thanks for coming. Well, it was very impressive.

Hi, I'm Sarah.

Nice to meet you.

Thank you.

You can still see that there's people watching?

OK. I'm glad you did. Yeah, next time we'll .

on camera how do we so

Amen. Thank you. you Water.

Beyonce? Yeah, I guess, yeah.

Like a singer? Yeah, Beyonce.

You're like such an insider. There's a lot of it.

Thank you. Thank you.

Those are things that . Thank you. There's something about it.

. .

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

And we didn't receive any emails. We are concluding the video. If you want to ask questions or comments, you can send it to plan2026 at