Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Vice Chair are not with us today. So before we get started, we will need the Planning Commission to nominate and elect a temporary chair for tonight's meeting.

Happy to do it, if you'd like. Chair for another commission.

Would somebody like to nominate?

I move to nominate.

I'll second the motion.

Okay, so yeah.

So all in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All right. With that, we'll turn it over to the interim chair.

Interim chair. Okay, did we want to take a roll call first? So I would like to start. There you go. Those are the names. Just give her the list. Okay. All right. So we've got Brent, Katie, Kim, Mark, you are Brent. Sorry, Brent. Brent, Katie.

You could just call our names and then we say present. Right. Brent.

Here.

Katie.

Present. Kim. Here. And Rosie. Rosie. Here. Here. Okay. Thank you. And did everybody get a chance to review the approval of minutes from the May 21st, 2026 meeting?

Yes.

And motion to approve?

Second.

Minutes from the prior meeting are approved. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Yeah. And do we have, we have one guest, Carolyn Beck. And Carolyn, if you'd like to make any comments, feel free to raise your hand. And it looks like we have one member of the public who has just arrived. Hello.

Looks like we have two in total.

Two total. One online, one in person. Oh, two in person. I'm so sorry. Would either of you like to make a public comment to the commission today? Feel free to step up. Would you like to step up to the, okay.

Go up to the podium and push the button. So till the light turns green.

And please state your name and where you live in Gig Harbor.

Well, good evening. My name is Nicole Bennett, and I live at, at this current time, 472 Apollo Way in Gig Harbor. I'm here in regards to the property that I own in Millville neighborhood in the hope to build a modest single home in the future. So one of the topics I'm particularly interested in is the hard surface limitations and how they affect smaller lots. In our case, the roadway configuration requires an additional driveway hardscape, which reduces the amount of allowable hard surface available for the home itself. So we're not seeking changes to existing setbacks or just the height limits, or they require a 20-foot view corridor. We support those standards and appreciate the character they help preserve in Millville. We're also not proposing a large home. The combination of the setbacks and the view corridor requirements and roadway related driveway needs that are already limits what we can build on this lot. Because of that, the hard service limitation becomes the primary factor affecting whether property owners can build a practical modest home that fits within all of the existing development standards in the Millville district. So looking forward to learning more about tonight's discussion and how the city is thinking about these issues moving forward.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. I can expand, but I figured it's just an introductory at this time. So I don't know how much you want me to elaborate on, but.

Yeah, we appreciate that. We usually keep it to three minutes, if I'm not mistaken, but we don't really have a ton of folks that are commenting. So if you have more minutes you'd like to speak, you're welcome to.

Yeah, I think if I may, since you're on the topic there, and I guess since it's a proposal and the first time it's being brought up, I think that, you know, I guess for personally as a resident of Gig Harbor for over 50 years, I grew up here and the natural beauty and the small town character. And so the unique charm of the neighborhoods like Millville are exactly why I chose to stay and invest in this community. Sorry, I feel like I have my back towards you guys. And so I care deeply about preserving that in this area and make it special. So I support the thoughtful development that everyone here is trying to preserve and respect the character and history of the neighborhood. I actually grew up in the first part of my childhood right above Finn Homes. So even back then, you see it was just fishing vessels and small cabins. I'm obviously dating myself anyways. And so really, you know, based on the lot where it's located in the mid block access, which is directly across from Suzanne, I can give you a specific address. The garage must come from the roadway with no alley access. And that requires a driveway alongside the home to reach the garage. So unlike some of the other hard surfaces, this driveway is not optional, right? So it's necessary to access the property. And as a result, the significant portion of the allowable hard surface is consumed by the required driveway access before we even begin building the home. And so anyways, in that limitation, it's what we're facing right now and the house size, we don't have any limitations with the setbacks, the new corridor, all that makes sense. It's just the driveway. And so what we're hoping to get is the opportunity to get for lots like that that have that types of constraints. Increasing the allowable impervious surface percentage to 55 to 60% would create a more equitable outcome while still preserving the neighborhood protections that residents value. So again, it's not the home. It's not any of those. It wouldn't change the character of Millville. We even have the house design. It's just allowing that impervious surface so that we can have a stamped concrete driveway that goes behind, have a nice home that's not too big. It can preserve that character. if you actually look in a lot of the mealville area and drive down there none of them are meeting the 40 so if you actually and i know it's been quite a few years since some have been built um that we wouldn't be meeting if we were meeting it right now so if you drive down a lot of them are over that 40 right and like a lot of that main harbor view drive down there so We just would simply like to recognize that some of the properties require this additional hard surface in these kind of situations and the access and allow homeowners to build a reasonable home that remains consistent with the vision and character of the neighborhood. So thank you for your time and your consideration and for continuing the conversation about these regulations affect property owners throughout Novo.

Thank you, Nicole. We appreciate you coming today.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

Okay, would anybody else like to make any comments? Okay, I think with that, we can move towards our agenda items. And Eric, looks like you have a presentation on housing basics for us.

Yes, thank you very much for the record. My name is Eric Baker. I'm the community development director for the city of Gig Harbor. Before I get into kind of an introductory conversation about housing, this is part one of a million part series of presentations we'll be giving. So before I get to that, I kind of want to give you guys an update on where the critical areas ordinance currently stands. If you remember the last time we were here, the Planning Commission recommended approval of a draft critical areas regulation that applied to wetlands, streams, steep slopes, frequently flooded areas, and aquifer recharge areas. That presentation was made to the city council. The city council reviewed the planning commission's recommendation and has sent it to first reading and public hearing at the next council meeting. They did not have any proposed changes to the planning commission's recommendation at that time. Which is somewhat rare. So that again, congratulations. You guys did a lot of work kind of wading through that information. After the public testimony on Monday at 530 here at the Civic Center, the council will consider any additional testimony that has been provided both verbal and in writing. They will have the option of potentially taking action on the 22nd, but if any kind of substantial public testimony comes in, I would expect that it would go to second reading, which means that it would not be considered until their first meeting in July. So it is still moving forward. Again, thank you very much for the planning commission's thought and recommendations on this as the council had very few questions related to it. And we'll see what the public comment looks like moving forward. With that, are there any questions about where the critical areas ordinance is going between now and the end of next month? All right. So with that, this is the first of, again, what will be multiple presentations as we kind of walk through what are a series of housing-related updates that need to be done to our development codes. The city of Gig Harbor has a series of development codes, zoning, subdivision procedures, a number of things that affect how development can occur. That is residential, commercial, and industrial. Most of the effort that we're going to be looking at between now and the end of the year is going to be focused on our housing regulations and in many ways, how to make housing easier, faster, and in turn, more affordable to construct. Just as I kind of something, a lot of this you folks are going to say, hey, I already knew that. But in general, I just kind of want to set a basic here's some planner speak that we may be using throughout the rest of the year. Our current housing supply, we have taken on a significant amount of growth over the course of the last 15 years. However, most of that has been larger single-family homes, three bedrooms, 2,800 to 3,500 square feet. We have more bedrooms than people at this point. That has led to a lot of larger homes that have some relatively high price tags. If you take a look at the entirety of the housing stock, those are homes that have been built just recently, all the way back to homes that have been here since Gig Harbor first became a community. The average of those home prices is about $900,000. If you kind of take a look at that from a financial standpoint, that's about, with 20% down, about a $4,900 a month house payment. That is... out of the range of affordability for a vast number of the people who work and shop in Gig Harbor. The average rent is a little more affordable. It's between $2,000 to $2,400 a month. So as you're getting into apartments, you are getting closer to what people making 80% to 100% of annual median income can afford, but they are getting to the point where they are... at a financial point that is very dangerous for them if anything else changes in their lives. Not having that type of housing in Gig Harbor has created impediments to workforce and affordable housing. Every business that I've talked to, whether it be the small businesses downtown to larger companies that are looking to locate, they basically indicate, what's the housing market like? Where can my employees live? That is a question that's very hard to answer in Gig Harbor because unless it is, again, a very, very high-paying professional organization, type company? The answer is almost nowhere. There are a series of apartments that have a certain level of vacancy, but other than that, there's not a lot of opportunity. Also, we aren't just talking about growth. We are talking about limited opportunities for seniors looking to downsize out of their 3,200 square foot homes that are now too much home for them, or in certain cases are somewhat isolated where they need to drive and they don't feel comfortable driving at night or in the rain, or as I always say, in the night, in the rain. Yes, ma'am.

You could finish that statement, but I was wondering if you could define workforce and affordable housing.

Okay. In general workforce housing, the way that we are using it is between 80% and 120% of annual median income. Annual median income for this area is around $114,000 to $120,000 for a household. Affordable housing is generally going to be less than 80%. That includes a series of permanent supportive housing, but also just housing that is at a price point that's getting close to the need for some form of government subsidy. This also, again, has created the seniors can't downsize and the youth can't continue to live in the community after they move out of their parents' basements or when they come back from college and return to the community. There's very few places for folks to be able to live at a particular price point. More than that, one thing we've been hearing a lot about is the transportation issues in Gig Harbor, the number of cars that are particularly coming through our three interchanges during peak times. People have highlighted it is the growth in Gig Harbor that has created this scenario. Honestly, it is the lack of growth in Gig Harbor that has generated this scenario. The people who work in Gig Harbor don't live in Gig Harbor. The people who live in Gig Harbor do not work in Gig Harbor. everybody is driving either in or out of town through three main interchanges during the peak periods of the day. That combined with the fact that seniors can't live near services because we don't have housing options. If we continue, unless you feel that we can stop growth coming to the peninsula, that it will just, we can actually indicate that it won't come anywhere. And that's Port Orchard, that's Belfair, that's Key Peninsula, that's the rest, that's Artondale, all those places, we can't do that. All those folks are gonna come to Gig Harbor to work, to shop, to use our parks, all of the various things. If we don't provide opportunities for people to live near the services, we are only going to exacerbate our existing transportation issues. And with the limited transit options we have in the community, we need to be thinking about how people can live closer. So if they are driving, they aren't impacting five, six, seven intersections, they're impacting one or two on their way to the Y, on their way to the hospital, on their way to medical services.

Can you remind me how many additional people we have coming through daily, what that number is?

In general, we have about 13,000 people who live in the city. That is anywhere from, we grow from about 8,000 to 10,000, so we don't quite double, but we come close to doubling during the daytime. And on top of that, we have 90,000 people who are traveling Highway 16 every day. Some of those people get off, but most of those people are on the highway. And when we are trying to get on and off of those interchanges at that peak times, you end up with the traffic that we see on the highway. Having a state highway as kind of your spine is both good and bad. It gives us the opportunity to get easily get on and off and go north and south. But the downside is we don't control the infrastructure improvements. We aren't generally allowed to do state highway improvements. And if we do, it is extraordinarily expensive. And most people would say it isn't necessarily our business. But being able to create a growth pattern for the people who are coming to the community, the people who are working in the community, the people who are shopping in the community in a way that does not require them to get on or off the highway does have a transportation benefit. That's the point of that last bullet. I've kind of gone through this. Even if you don't agree with any of the things I just said up to right now, the state has indicated that we have to be providing housing diversity in our jurisdiction. It isn't just Gig Harbor. It is all communities need to be providing opportunities for people making less than 100% of annual median income all the way down to 30% of annual median income. I'll go over that a little bit more as to what those numbers look like. But a series of bills have been passed since 2021 that have required jurisdictions to remove barriers to certain types of housing, certain types of housing being townhomes, multifamily, cottage housing, pretty much anything that is not a large single-family home. A lot of that, it requires us to look at a number of things I'm going to talk about in regards to site design and regulation. It also is requiring us to allow certain types of housing that is not abundantly clear. I do want to say Gig Harbor does not prohibit affordable housing options. We aren't explicit about them in our code. we are being asked by the state to be more explicit about what supportive housing looks like and where it can be located and in what zones. But I do want to highlight that while we are not explicit in our codes, we are not directly prohibiting certain types of housing. However, we have land that starts at a very high price point. The first thing in development is the price of the land. When price of land starts at around $200,000 to $250,000 for a residential lot, you now are really limiting the ability for you to be able to deliver any product less than $450,000, $550,000. I'm going to pause there in case there's any questions.

Yeah, I had a quick question backing up, kind of tying this whole state thing together. Are you aware of any... proposals or projects that the state has for Highway 16 on our three intersections that could affect development.

They're in the process of doing some studies. We actually are doing two potential projects at the Borgin and Wallachia intersections. I think next year we'll be putting in right-hand turn lanes on Wallachia, allowing so that the roadways are not just one lane, which hopefully will help move traffic both going northbound and southbound. Additionally, we are looking at putting in a timed light on the roundabout to actually allow the roundabout at Borgen and Burnham to have more holes for the other three sections to get into. Basically, that looks like what we have on the various on and off ramps at peak times basically requires people to stop as they're coming eastbound over the interstate to stop. and then allowing other vehicles coming down the hill from the shopping area or coming in from the hospital to get into that roundabout. Those are the two projects that we are doing as we do have some responsibility for those pieces of infrastructure. But beyond that, other than them doing some studies, most of the state's interest in Highway 16 has to do with fish barrier removal.

Would the lights be added to the existing roundabout or would.

Basically the light would be before you hit the roundabout. So as you're crossing over, it would, it would stop traffic and then the light would turn green and you then would get into the roundabout. The idea being is that the vehicular traffic coming off the highway into the roundabout at that eastbound leg is having an impact on allowing the westbound leg to be able to find holes to be able to slide in. All of this does require the community to continue to grow their comfort level with roundabouts. As a big chunk of our issues with the use of roundabouts is people's discomfort with using them at certain times. Roundabouts aren't stop signs. And if you stop, the people are going to think they have the right-of-way. And then I'm like, they didn't let me in. It's like, well, you stopped. So they kind of thought that they had right-of-way. They could keep going. That's an entirely different social engineering question that is not part of anything you'll be talking about. The biggest component of all these is the fact that beyond the fact that the state legislature has passed these bills, they've also passed a Housing Accountability Act, which requires jurisdictions to address all of these issues or potentially run the risk of losing state funding, predominantly for transportation, parks, and other things. That's why that one is located in red. Red is a bad color. The Housing Accountability Act would indicate that at some point Gig Harbor could have its housing element and its code reviewed for consistency. If we are found noncompliant, the state will tell us what the answer is, and that's never the best outcome for a local jurisdiction. The state also indicated that the Department of Commerce was to provide a series of estimated housing targets. When you do comprehensive planning, you really kind of focus on population and you focus on employment. You have to provide a certain number of places for X number of people to live. The state legislature moved that to, okay, now you need to provide a certain number of housing units and those housing units need to be spread out over a series of income bands. While real estate is location, location, location, they did kind of make an estimate as to what type of housing fits into these bands generally. Similar to what I had spoken about before, when you're looking at 80 to 100% of annual median income, you're looking at everything from apartments to townhomes. And after you get above 120%, you're now talking about low-density detached single-family homes. So as you take a look at these numbers, you're noting that... Per Commerce's estimate, we needed around 218 single-family detached homes for the 24-year period between 2020 to 2044. We produced 500 of those units just in the first four years. So most of our current code effort is really focused on Town homes, cottage housing, fourplexes, duplexes, accessory dwelling units, but also apartments and condominiums. So vertical construction for three, four-story garden apartments for people who are making less than 80% of annual median income, because in this community that is... pretty much what folks in those income bands can afford and then once you get particularly below 50 annual median income that is going to require non-profit or housing authority or some kind of public investment in public housing of some kind or another either a substantially subsidized You can accommodate some of that through private development as well, though that is a substantially greater challenge. When we're talking about private development, helping provide some of this housing, you're really talking more about apartments in the 80 to 100% annual median income. So you'll note a very large challenge we have here to make missing middle and multifamily housing more affordable. We're not looking at having this happen everywhere in the community. Largely we're focused on our centers. Those areas are in green. You've seen this map a number of times. Obviously not all centers are created equal. The three centers that are located along State Highway 16, Gig Harbor North, Kimball, and Westside are where we're looking to focus a vast amount of our growth. When we're also looking at focusing our growth, we're also going to be looking at focusing our infrastructure dollars to those areas, ensuring that if we are going to be putting money into roads, pipes, and pavement, we need to make sure that it is serving the greatest number of people. That isn't just housing, that's also economic development, so it also includes shopping, medical, and employment services. Just to kind of illustrate some of the housing that we're talking about, obviously, you have duplexes. Duplexes come in two different forms. People usually think of the two homes kind of stuck next to one another on a horizontal format. But oftentimes, duplexes can also be vertical, like you see there in the northeastern quadrant. Now you're looking, as you move down, you're looking at accessory dwelling units. Accessory dwelling units, the Planning Commission reviewed changes that we made last year to this code. These are smaller units that are developed on existing sites. So when you're talking about providing housing, you're not necessarily talking about just developing vacant lots or tearing down what you have on a property. you do have the opportunity to build smaller units on some of our larger parcels. And then you see cottage housing. That is another affordable housing type that is usually a series of smaller units, usually single story, located around a common amenity. That can be an open space like you see there in the southeast quadrant, or it can be located around some kind of recreation center. In certain instances, it can be around common cooking, community gathering spaces that are internal. And then you move into what are the higher density uses, townhomes. Townhomes can be everywhere from a triplex up to six, seven, eight units. Those are usually horizontally connected. Each of the units are owned vertically all the way up by the same person. These can be both rented, but oftentimes they are fee simple purchase, just like any regular home. Then you have the other three, low-rise, medium-rise, and podium multifamily. Here, you're largely talking about three-, four-, or five-story construction. I put a question mark over the podium multifamily, as pretty much everyone I've shown an image similar to that gasps slightly. Obviously, this is a mixed-use version where you have some kind of commercial on the ground floor. That definitely increases the need for more stories of residential. I can go into that in more detail, but generally when commercial is the hardest thing to finance, and usually you need a certain number of units above it to be able to amortize the vacancy rates that usually come with commercial. So there's a period of time that usually people aren't paying anything. Additionally, commercial needs, higher ceilings, more HVAC, more costly endeavors. And those costs need to be amortized out and need a certain number of units to do so. These housing types don't just look different. I think what a lot of the folks we're going to be focusing on is the fact that these look and feel different, but they carry with it a lot of different characteristics that impact their ability to be developed. These carry with it different construction and site design requirements. They have their, in certain cases, like multifamily or larger units that are larger overall buildings that have less flexibility to work around a site. Meanwhile, single family has more. The various crews that work on these types of facilities aren't the same. A developer can't just decide, okay, I'm a single family developer. I can, I'm going to do a multifamily project. They have crews that do particular work that have skill sets in particular types of work. Single family construction is very different than attached housing and multifamily construction, largely because once you start attaching walls, you start bringing on insurance and liability issues. As you start moving over time, that shared wall construction needs to be taken into consideration, and you need to make sure that you have crews that are able to do that kind of construction and can do it well, because it will have 10-, 15-year implications if not done properly. There are different thresholds for financing. A single family developer who's done, say, even if they have a ton of cash in the bank, if they have not done multifamily construction, banks are hesitant to loan to them. Again, goes back to multifamily is a much riskier investment. largely because single-family construction can be phased. You can go about building your roadways, and then you can build homes incrementally over time. When you're building an apartment complex, you're largely building it all at one time. All the cost goes in at one time. So you have to, A, have a lot of cash in the bank, and you have to know that you're going to be able to fill all of those units day one. Otherwise, very likely you are taking a hit. I only highlight those because while a number of those don't have anything to do with our zoning regulations, they are all components that the development community have to grapple with when they think about constructing something different than single-family construction in Gig Harbor. I've said a number of relatively inflammatory things in those last sentences, so any questions, comments? All right. Well, moving along, now we're moving kind of into the actual development regulation components. The Planning Commission has already looked at this first set, and that is density. Density is planterspeak for the allowed number of units per acre that you can put on developable land. In Gig Harbor, those range from four dwelling units an acre to 38 dwelling units an acre, depending on the zone you're in. The table you see off there to the left basically shows zoning from R1. The downtown area would fall into the R1 zone in a number of cases. That, again, is intended to be very low density and then ramps up to 32 to 38 dwelling units an acre when you get near uptown And you get around the Kimball area and Gig Harbor North. In between, you have 12 to 32 dwelling units an acre. To kind of give you an idea, we do have some descriptions. When you're talking about four dwelling units an acre, you're basically just doing single-family detached housing. When you start moving up to six to 12, now you're talking about single family detached, but also duplexes and town homes. When you get to 12 to 32, you're now talking about row housing. And when we say garden apartments, that is a term that's in our comprehensive plan. What we largely mean by that is roughly three story apartments. And then when you get to 32 and 38 and above, you're now talking about four stories and higher. If you are factoring in mixed use, you're probably now talking about five stories because you need those four stories to be able to afford that fifth story of commercial. There's a number of things that will all factor into that. These densities were set with a comprehensive plan. They were updated in our zoning map, which the planning commission reviewed last year and updated. So these are things that are semi set in stone and not necessarily what we are looking to update, but this is kind of the foundation for some of the other things. But also when we're talking about density and one thing that we may want to discuss is how do we calculate density? Currently, density, when you're talking about how many units, whether it be 6 to 12 or whether it be 12 to 32, what is the acreage you're basing that off of? And we base it off net developable acreage, which pretty much means that if you have a critical area on your property, which again, we just updated our critical areas regulations, any of that land that is encumbered by the critical area cannot be counted towards density. So for an example, I give a very crude example here because that's what I do. Basically, if you have a one acre property with a stream and its buffer covers about half of that, you only have a half acre to work with. That half acre is what you calculate density off of. So let's say you're in an R2 zone where you're allowed six to 12 dwelling units an acre. that half acre could build anywhere from three to six dwelling units on it. Obviously a half acre and three to six is somewhat dense, but a developer is losing a substantial amount of opportunity based upon the critical areas that are on the property. You will find that most of our vacant land does have one of these features on it, or many of these features on it, wetlands, streams, and maybe even throw in some slopes. So the calculation based upon net developable acreage does have a relatively big impact on how much can be built on that lot. Some of these slides I'm gonna include options for our discussions moving forward. One of those is instead of basing density on net developable, you could base it on gross acreage. So instead of the developer losing that half acre of potential units, they can utilize the entirety of the site. So that one acre, you could do six to 12 dwelling units versus three to six. Again, these would be at the choice of the developer on the low end or the high end, but it does provide some greater opportunity for people to recapture, provide smaller units, provide single family attached housing rather than focusing their energies on how am I going to get the single family homes on this lot, which is already going to be challenging. Setbacks, setbacks are how far a building can be from a property line. In certain, in most of our zones, we have what I'll call very generous setbacks. These come in basically the front yards. Basically your front yard is if you are, is the side of your building that is facing a roadway. And yes, if you face more than one roadway, you have two front yards. Also, your side yards, those are on, hey, guess what? The sides of your building. And then you have your rear yard. Generally, you are not allowed to build any structures within these setbacks, unless in certain instances you can put a garage in your setbacks. The purpose of that is we wanted to encourage people to build garages so that they aren't the focal point. For example, setbacks in the R1 zone are 26 feet on the front, 30 feet on the back, and eight feet on the sides. So you're looking at almost 55% of a lot that is encumbered in something you cannot build homes on. So if you remember, say that you have that lot with a critical area on it, and you've lost half of it to critical areas on their buffers, and now you've lost another half to setbacks. you are now greatly decreasing your ability to do any of the housing types we're talking about, townhomes, ADUs, etc. So what you're going to be seeing is likely proposals to reduce these setbacks. The R1 zone, with its four dwelling units an acre, we probably are not looking to change too dramatically for the folks in the downtown who are listening to this presentation. But if you're an R2 zone or higher, very likely we are going to be looking at reducing those setbacks to something that allows for more of the lot to be developed. That could change eight foot side yards to five foot side yards. It could take 30 foot rear yards to 10 foot rear yards. Again, this creates a different housing pattern, housing that's a little more akin to what you see in Harbor Hill versus what you see in other parts of the community. Those proposals would come pretty much by zone. We wouldn't be looking at one set of setbacks. Each zone would have a separate set, but you should expect that those setbacks are going to be proposed to be reduced so more of the lot can be utilized for building, whether it's an accessory dwelling unit or a fourplex instead of a single-family home, a duplex instead of a single-family home, a lot of things rather than a single-family home. Much like I'm really happy that she came and presented as she did because she really highlighted the fact that we asked for a lot of different things on the lot at the same time. So let's say you could deal, you can deal with your critical area, you can deal with your setbacks. you now have hardscape, which is the amount of your property that you can actually put impervious surface on. She illustrated it quite well, that if you need a long driveway, you are eating up huge amounts of your hard surface requirement. with that, which means you then can build less. So what are impervious areas? That's driveways, that's roofs, that's patios, that's sidewalks. All of those types of things would be considered impervious. Also, to a degree, impervious pavement, pervious pavers also can be considered impervious for the purposes of calculating hardscape. If you take a look at the hardscape requirements in our current code, the R1 zone caps it out at 40%. So the setbacks we're taking up, say 40, we're leaving you less than half of your lot. The amount of that that you can put hardscape on is even less than that. So we have the need to adjust our hardscape. A lot of these were put in place for two reasons. One, we've made a lot of stormwater improvements over the last 15 to 20 years. One of the reasons you limit hardscape is so that you don't have as much stormwater, you don't have as many stormwater issues. We've made a lot of stormwater improvements and continue to make stormwater improvements, so that's not as big an issue as it used to be. Additionally, there was the aesthetic component. We wanted more landscaping. We wanted more lawn. We wanted a number of those types of things that, again, have limited the amount of developable land and have increased the price of our homes. Larger lots cost more money than smaller lots. Larger homes cost more than... Smaller homes. So what you will likely be seeing is that hardscape requirements likely will be increasing. Again, very much like setbacks, R1, you probably will not be seeing dramatic changes. But as you're moving to R2 zoning and above, so again, that's 6 to 12 dwelling units an acre all the way up to 38. We're going to be looking at allowing more of that lot to be encumbered by impervious surface. Folks are saying, well, that's just going to discharge tons of stormwater everywhere. Stormwater still needs to be addressed either onsite or in a regional manner. We have a very strict stormwater manual. That stormwater manual doesn't just handle water quantity, which is the amount of water coming off your property, but it is the quality of that water, making sure that it is treated properly before it leaves the property. So while we would be allowing more of the lots to be developed in potentially impervious surface, we would still be addressing stormwater in all the ways necessary to protect our environment. Questions on hardscape?

Can you elaborate on may include pervious pavement and pavers? What determines whether it qualifies or not?

I say that because I think I've probably said that in this room on a number of occasions. Pervious pavers and pervious pavement only work in certain soils. If you're going to take the stormwater and you're going to expect that it's going to not run off the top of your pavement, instead it's going to go down through the pavement into something, ultimately it has to, that something can't stop. And we have a relatively impervious clay layer that is underground. So the water, even if you can get it through the pavement, it doesn't necessarily make it down to the aquifer. It just goes to some clay layer, three feet, four feet underground, and then run, and then pop out at some poor person's house who's at the bottom of the hill. And everyone's like, well, where did all this water come from? I don't know. So the reason we say that is if you put impervious pavers, it may be considered hardscape even though it's not pervious. But what I want to highlight with that is pervious pavement and pavers can't be utilized everywhere and actually in many cases can be more detrimental than putting down impervious surface.

So for this, and I know that you're going to be looking at that and like re-examining it, but in the meanwhile, is there like a study that a property owner can do to maybe, or think about how to mitigate, do like stormwater mitigation that would be sort of like as a way to address the concerns of the impervious surface?

Currently, our code is relatively firm on this. You aren't necessarily able to exceed these. Again, you can try utilizing impervious pavement and impervious pavers, but again, there's not a lot of lots where that's going to work great. We have a lot of hills. We have a lot of clay layers. So at this point, if you want to exceed your hardscape requirements, we need to adjust the code.

Thank you.

So lot dimensions, this is a lot of words on here. I'm not going to read all the words. It is exactly what you expect. It is how wide your lot can be and how big your lot can be. Currently, we have some very large minimum lot sizes. I'm sorry. Yeah, we have very large minimum lot sizes. So basically, if you're going to subdivide your property or if you're going to do a townhome structure, you have to keep lots 70 feet wide in certain zones or 50 feet wide in certain zones. Townhomes can be 25 feet wide, and if you're putting four of them next to one another, those are still going to be lots. but they need to be much smaller than that. Additionally, we in certain cases require 7,000 to 7,200 square foot minimum lot sizes. Again, that's five dwelling units an acre. Again, single family size. We don't allow you to get smaller than that unless you go through a planned unit development. which is a laborious process that takes you before the hearing examiner. Again, one of the other things we'll factor into all this, the code is a factor in what it costs to develop time is the other. So the more process you create, the more time oftentimes you create. And every monthly mortgage payment is a issue. And those monthly mortgage payments are going to get amortized over the final cost of the lot. So what we want to do is we want to make sure that the lot dimensions are smaller, they're more flexible, and they are more attuned to what is required by townhomes and multifamily construction. Building heights. This is another area that we are relatively limiting. Most zones, you can't go higher than 35 feet. 35 feet is roughly, you can get two and a half stories maybe. into 35 feet. What if you're looking at, again, allowing folks to do true garden style apartments or doing higher story construction, you need to provide greater, greater building height likely if you're a four story, you need about 45 feet. If you are looking at having some form of commercial underneath it, you're gonna need again, 50 feet or more. Are we talking about this development being appropriate everywhere? No. Are there places in Gig Harbor North? Are there places in Uptown where this could be available? That is something that we might be considering. So as you're talking about the C1, B1, B2 zones, you could be looking at our proposals to increase either a blanket increase, allowing everybody to go up to 45, or allowing people to go higher if they are providing certain amenities, certain kind of public spaces, or you have some kind of affordability factor. Some of those requirements for other amenities sometimes cost more, which means that you're starting to eat into the benefits that you're getting from that new housing type, and that needs to be considered as we're moving forward with building heights. Building heights are one of the more sensitive topics, as I think we view ourselves in a very horizontal manner. Gig Harbor larger structures even places like Heron's Key if you could see Heron's Key better from the roadway I have an idea that it probably would have been more objectionable in certain instances we need to be careful at as we are developing this to ensure that we are still allowing opportunities for this type of housing that we currently do not easily do today

As you consider the height, are you thinking about approaching it like with transitions, like a step, like a stepping?

Yeah, if you are abutting a lower residential zone or some kind of other zone, that yes, you would stair step back. You wouldn't be able to go 45 feet right at the first level. You would be 35 feet tapered back. Right. 25 feet then you could go the full 45. you also can indicate distances you can only achieve 45 feet a certain distance from the property line so if you don't start your building until 50 feet back you could go 45 feet right from the start there's a lot of ways to get at that kind of blended height parking yes sorry just taking that approach though just kind of encourage people to have a large building in the middle of the property surrounded by a bunch of parking lots uh not that that's one of the things that you do have to take into consideration as to exactly whether you allow parking on the perimeter of your buildings or do you have your buildings kind of around the ring um it is something that does need to be considered in when you are developing your code um in many cases i think the stair step approach that was described just a moment ago where you basically require the buildings to be um around the perimeter of the property but don't allow the 45 feet right up against the property instead the 45 feet is facing the inner parking ring um and again it would also be helpful if some of this parking was in the ground floor or subterranean i say both of those knowing that both of those increase cost but does does allow more units to get constructed on the site in conjunction with that and the other setbacks we were talking about earlier

um has it been considered at all to go to a using build two lines rather than setbacks yes that that is something that we that we will be considering you mentioned in your discussion about um building Heights uh C1 Zone C1 that's currently 100 commercial no residential correct

No, currently we allow residential in all zones except for our public institution and our economic development. So at this point you can do multifamily. Some of those require a conditional use permit, though that may also be changed where multifamily can be done outright as a permitted use without a necessary hearing. Why is that a conditional use permit? requires a hearing, takes more time, time is money, increasing the price of that multifamily construction. And in many cases, we're gonna be trying to encourage property owners to think about their land differently. We can talk about the community, what the community wants, we can talk about what developers want, but ultimately it's gonna be the property owners to decide what happens with my property. And we need to make sure that the processes and the codes make it easier for the property owner to say, I can see something other than single family homes on my lot.

So we, I guess by nature of how that comes about, if we increase the height, that would have to apply to commercial property as well as residential property?

Yes, so very likely if we're talking about height, about increasing the heights, we are talking about the commercial zones, C1, B1, B2. We're talking about all the PCD, that's planned community development. All right, no, we got that. Yeah, planned community development zones that are located in Gig Harbor North. All of those zones would likely have some kind of increase related to them. Again, the idea being is that we're putting as many people next to where they shop, where they recreate the services that they get, especially when we're talking around the hospital, as we do have 33% of our community is 65 or over. Our seniors need to live closer to medical services, not further away from medical services. Again, transit is somewhat limited here. We need to be able to close the distances between our community and our key medical services.

Question.

Sorry.

does the urban growth areas play into this? Where does things stand on that? Because that would really help if we could have cheaper property right outside city limits or things like that. Where's that tension at right now? What is the possibilities in regards to meeting our housing requirements?

The urban growth areas have their own population and housing requirements, so they aren't like land that we could absorb and then put our numbers in that land. If we were to annex that, we would be annexing part of Pierce County's required housing numbers. Additionally, when you look at the urban growth areas that are around the city, you're going to find that a lot of them are developed in a lot of ways. um so we if we were to go about annexing land we always have to take a look at what are the expenses of taking on that land versus the potential the development potential that generates revenue um that's a kind of a separate conversation but yeah i get that question a lot can we just annex more land and then put the people there It's like, no, we have to not only take the people who live there today, but we also have to take their expectation of new development in land that oftentimes is harder to develop than what we have in the city.

I might be getting a little far off track. Is there any concern that if we substantially increase those building heights and they apply to residential and commercial properties, that we might be opening the door for strictly larger commercial buildings within those zones, thereby maybe reducing the opportunity for residential? Is that making sense?

I think more we have the concern that we are going to be absorbing our commercial zones with housing versus the other. What we're finding is that housing is incredibly attractive right about now. Jurisdictions are concerned about their loss of revenue base. Obviously, multifamily housing has a higher property value. And as long as people are getting things shipped to their property, we collect sales tax revenue as well. But as we start seeing more residential allowed in commercial zones, we're seeing more proposals for people doing solely residential. And thus now you're starting to create a situation where you have a lot of people living in a particular area and they still have to drive someplace because the commercial isn't near them anymore because we've allowed it all to go residential. That is something that the city is monitoring closely. And at this point, we are looking to expand opportunities for multifamily housing in commercial zones. If we start to see that type of pattern where all our commercial zones are going residential, we may have to come and make some kind of adjustment requiring mixed use in certain instances versus just encouraging it.

Thank you.

Parking, we have some generous parking standards. Usually they're based on land use. If you're talking about housing, you need a certain number of spaces per unit. If you're talking about commercial, it's usually by square footage. If you're talking about restaurants, it's by seating. We do require a good amount of parking. The market is going to determine how much parking a development has. What we're looking to do with amendments to parking is to make sure that we are not requiring something more than the market is currently needing. And a lot of that focus is going to be on housing. Single family and duplexes, we would keep parking by the unit. But as we're talking about triplexes and multifamily, we then would start to do housing by bedrooms. We already kind of do that to this point. If you have a studio, you only have to have one spot if you have a one bedroom or two bedroom you have to have one and a half spots if you have three bedrooms or more you have to have two you have to have two spots i think there is a discussion to be had as to whether we graduate that down where in a studio and one bedroom is only one spot or we take the two bedroom out of the two to three and we move it down into the one to two so that we are requiring fewer parking stalls. That does not mean people are going to need fewer parking stalls, and the market is going to acknowledge that. They are going to oftentimes, especially in the retail boom, they provided more parking than they needed because that's what they wanted. We need to make sure that we are not requiring more parking than the market is currently asking for, which right now we do.

So yeah, so what you're saying is you're going to reduce the minimum, but however, if they want to build more, they can't.

They can't. And at some point that may lead to a conversation about creating parking maximums. But if we're going to do that, we need to have a substantially more robust transit system. because you can't just make cars go away. People need them to get places, and they need to have an option. Some people may like to bike, but ultimately, if you're going to get any significant distances, that is going to include some form of mass transit, whether it be smaller shuttles to full-size buses.

Is there any sort of parking minimum specifically around multifamily housing for EV chargers?

We do require certain EV charging at multifamily and commercial. We also have a climate element that is expecting to potentially have to adjust that higher. which is leading to a separate question of exactly what is our electrical grid like here on the peninsula. As we only, I think we get electricity from like two main lines coming in. I know that Puget Sound Energy is looking at other alternate ways of generating power on the peninsula versus bringing it from wherever those high tension lines come from. Though, of course, any place where they talk about installing battery plants or what they call peaker plants, which are plants that are usually fueled through some form of natural gas to generate energy. People are very hesitant to have those anywhere near them.

On a question. about the parking this makes a lot of sense because like down here where the photo is um this is probably just a really silly question but i've noticed that there's a lot of anthony's parking and not a lot i go to devoted kids and i've always thought to myself but and they have a lot of seating so it's probably how they're able to do that but just on a practical note like i've always thought i don't know if you guys do this or how this works but with devoted kiss now having more seating i've been thinking about that like how they have more people going to park to it's go and i didn't know if you guys allow or if it's a private or if it's a public thing but for like devoted kiss closes at two anthony's only opens at noon i'm like can they use the parking in the morning and anthony's in the afternoon or like what is the plan for downtown because i'm really excited for devoted kiss to open so again it's like a personal question but

Shared parking is entirely allowed what? Oftentimes Anthony's will say is they will say that they have as many parking stalls as they are required If we adjusted parking for restaurants and moved it away from seating and moved it to square footage They would be required to have less whether that means that they would be open to opening up their parking lot or I don't know, but it would mean that they wouldn't have to have that many stalls because they have that many seats. So the conversation isn't just going to be about housing. It is also going to be about commercial.

How does street parking factor into these calculations?

Street parking is public parking. No one is allowed to claim it for any particular business. That is a broader public conversation. We just completed a parking study for the downtown. What we're finding is that we don't necessarily have a deficit in stalls. We are having a situation similar to how the commissioner indicated that we have a lot of stalls that are vacant at certain periods and not being utilized. A lot of those are on private properties, and we're in no position to be telling private properties what they can and can't do. But we are looking at having a conversation, much like housing, to how to talk to the businesses in a way that makes them think differently about using their parking lots in at times they are not using them. and opening them up for public, allowing businesses to broker particular stall trades. That gets a little harder because businesses change hands a lot more than churches change hands. So it gets a little more challenging. But yes, we are looking at creative opportunities like that in the downtown because we're not building a parking garage anytime soon. It also is a type of parking scenario. Issues have trouble parking on hills They also a lot of people don't like to parallel park a lot of that's as a preference not necessarily anything else So what they really want is they want parking that's right in front of their business that happens to be in a parking lot which for the downtown is not common But we do need to provide opportunities like, say, working with the churches. The churches have a parking lot. People feel comfortable in a parking lot. People are able, can park there, walk down the hill to the various businesses. Is there a conversation to be had there? Stay tuned. Moving to step housing, I probably should have changed the pictures on this one. I did not. Not all of this is considered step housing. State legislation requires us to be clear about where we allow shelters, transitional emergency, and permanent supportive housing. Here we're now talking about people who are making 50% of annual median income or lower. In the case of the unhoused, you're talking about 30% or lower. If you remember the numbers that I showed you previously is we do need to ensure that our code is not prohibiting or not making it harder for this type of housing to be located. The legislature has taken a step forward or further and has indicated that jurisdictions have to allow this type of housing in certain zones. with the same regulations that apply to non-supportive housing. So basically focusing it just on the type of housing. Step housing can come in a number of different formats. It can be in single family homes, it can be in town homes, it can be in apartment complexes, it can be in hotels, motels. What the state legislature is indicating is that we cannot create obstacles in manners that create requirements for that type of housing that we wouldn't for a normal multifamily complex or a normal town home complex. So this applies to most types. Outdoor emergency shelters are, Don't fall into that category. You still can provide additional requirements for buffering that you wouldn't necessarily do otherwise. But this is going to be a conversation where we already allow these types of housing. Any place that has a hotel, motel can do permanent supportive housing today. Any place we have safe parks in town right now, I'm not going to say where for a wide variety of reasons, but we're collaborating with nonprofits on providing those. Those are allowed. However, those types of amenities are not clearly called out in our code. State statute and the Department of Commerce is strongly recommending we call it out in our code. We also have incentives that we're going to be looking at. These won't necessarily be coming for the Planning Commission, but I will say that just changing the regulations is not going to be enough. We are going to have to provide opportunities for the private development community to provide some forms of these housing, and they are going to need some kind of incentive to do so. Those incentives can come in the form of property tax exemptions, in the case of multifamily tax exemption, If you provide 20% of your units to people making 80% to 100% of annual median income, well, actually anything under 100% of annual median income, you can forego having to pay property taxes on all your residential units for 12 years. This is important as it is, of all the things we're talking about, the only mechanism that will guarantee you have an affordable unit at the end of it. All the other code changes we're talking about, we are making housing cheaper. But like I said, real estate is location, location, location. The market's going to generate what it is. Multifamily tax exemption guarantees that for 12 years, you are going to have X number of units that are going to be affordable at a rate that your dental hygienist, your surgical technician, your school teacher, your fire personnel can all afford to live in. However, after 12 years, it can turn to market housing. What we see in a lot of jurisdictions at the end of that 12-year period, the developer oftentimes works with the housing authority or works with a nonprofit, and those units are spun off and then managed by one of those entities. But there is a possibility that it can become market rate housing year 12 in one day.

Is there an opportunity to increase that 20% number?

We can increase it to 20, 30. Ultimately, you need to create an incentive program that people are going to use. What you see described here is very similar to what other jurisdictions have been doing to success. So they have developers who are building in this manner and providing units at that level. But yes, all of these are sliders. We can decrease the amount of annual median income. We could say that it has to be for 80% and under. We can increase the number of units to 20, 25, 30%. We also have the ability to indicate how many of these projects we could take on because this is not an exemption, this is a tax shift. So the taxes are still getting paid somewhere, usually amortized out over the remainder of the jurisdiction. What does that look like? You'd think you'd be able to come up with an answer, but I've talked very closely with a number of individuals and coming up with, including the assessor at Pierce County, Generally, it can be anywhere from $80 for a standard home per year in property tax, that's the worst case, to zero. Why? Very good question. But it all depends on exactly when the assessment is made, how far along the development is when the assessment is made. But ultimately, yeah, we do need to be transparent that this is not a tax exemption, it's a tax shift. The school district, the... the school district, the fire district still getting money. They're just getting it from a different location. Before people say, well, I can't believe that. Well, everybody who has a senior tax exemption, anybody over a particular age at a particular rate, who enters into that program, that is a tax shift. And we have dozens of people who are doing that every year. So it is the same principle. It is just done upfront versus more retroactively after somebody gets into a particular position.

Is this sort of tax exception considered to be kind of standard practice at this point? If you want the developers to come, you have to do this.

It used to be considered an encouragement. Now, based upon recent hearings board cases and commerce guidance, it's feeling more like the price of admission to this conversation. So it is something that staff is going to be raising significantly, as well as the concept of fee waivers. Every project that comes in has to pay sewer connection fees, water connection fees, transportation impact fees, a whole number of things. We do have the ability to waive those, not necessarily for 100% AMI development, but it is available for development that is trending towards the 60% and lower housing rates.

I was just going to get into that about have you guys done some market studies or just like your own sort of comps to what is currently being offered on the market and where that is? I know that you said at the beginning of your presentation that average rent was between $2,000 and $2,400. And when you said up to 100% of AMI, If you're doing the traditional calculation, that would be well above 2,000 to 2,400. So you have to balance that. So someone, a developer, could come in and literally provide, do a project, provide units. that are quote unquote affordable up to 100% of AMI, but it is what the market will bear. So you're not getting an actual discount and you're not reaching the affordable band. I just want to put that out there that there is like, there's a little bit of math that needs to happen because We can't always assume that 100% of AMI is what the market is. Sometimes it's below.

Oh, yeah. And the numbers that you saw in my initial slides are based upon all of the apartment stock, including ones that were built back in the 60s and 70s. All these MFT units are going to be brand new units. So you're going to be looking at the market rate is going to be higher than 2400 for those types of units almost regardless. But your point is very well taken. If we're going to endeavor on this, we need to make sure we're setting these numbers in the right spot to make sure that we're achieving what we're looking for. The model that currently was drafted last year is similar to Sumner's model. Sumner has been very successful in utilizing the multifamily tax exemption, not just the 12-year model that has the affordable component, but also the eight-year model, which encourages people to build multifamily period without the affordability component. So if you have a downtown, say you wanted a bunch of multifamily in your downtown, you weren't getting any, the eight-year model was available to them. They used that as well. They just got multifamily units at any price downtown, which happened to be near their transit.

Is it also possible to have different targets or price points where if a developer provides a certain thing, then they get this next incentive? And if they you know, increase the number from 20% to 40% affordable, then they reach another incentive level and they get an additional break.

We have limits. We have to deal with the concept of gift of public funds. So there are certain state statutes that allow you to waive certain types of fees in certain circumstances. You can do something similar to that, but it has to be under a state framework if you want to avoid any gift of public fund challenges.

Another question about the fee waivers. Is that the same where it's really just a fee shift? Does that mean that those new sewer costs and water costs will be passed on to the rest of the neighbors, or how would that be absorbed?

In general, all of our sewer, water, and transportation fees are all calculated based upon a set of projects we're expecting to have to build. Those projects have a number. If we aren't collecting it from that development, it has to be collected from someplace else. That either A, could affect the rates for other folks, or the funds could come from other locations. Either A, state grants, they can come from the general fund in certain ways, but ultimately it is Yeah, it doesn't make projects less expensive. We still need to fund those. The harder part is when the projects have nothing to do with growth whatsoever. It is, you need to treat your water for say manganese. Everybody needs that. It has nothing to do with new people coming in your community and that costs you a million dollars. The bigger question for the folks who are concerned about growth in Gig Harbor is can 13,000 people continue to afford million dollar capital improvements without bringing more people to the party to pay? And that doesn't even cover wastewater related because we're only allowed to discharge certain types of water to the sound. And the things we've had to filter out and the things we've had to do have increased over time. So as long as the people who live here continue to flush their toilets, recommended, there are going to be capital improvements that are going to need to be done. And the bigger question is, can 13,000 people afford those without new people coming?

I guess it just begs the question, though, if the new people coming, vis-a-vis the new developers, are receiving these tax exemptions and they're also not paying for the additional infrastructure that's needed to bring the facilities in, how are we boosting the tax base in the city by bringing additional people in? How do we cover this?

At that point, we are achieving other goals. We are creating... Possibilities for youth to live in our community where you're creating possibilities for seniors to downsize You are having a financial impact in exchange for a series of other societal benefits And it is up to the council to determine how to go about achieving those societal benefits And which ones do we need to achieve? Unless the state comes in and tells you those are the ones you need to achieve and you have to do those right now Which is kind of where we're at right When it comes to housing, yes, we are definitively right there, and I have no expectation that the requirement is going to get less stringent.

How does the development impact fee differ than, say, just like a usage fee when it comes to water? Because everybody's paying a water bill every month, but only paying an impact fee like one time.

You have particular connection charges as, I guess, let me just focus on sewer rates. Sewer rates are intended to go into the operation and maintenance. A small amount goes into capital projects for, again, those types of capital projects that aren't growth related. But most of it is just to keep the pipes and pump stations working. um when you're talking about the capital charges those are intended to go to a capital fund so when you go to connect your home at the first it's intended to go to a capital fund that is intended to go and pay for capital projects only thank you um just to kind of highlight i won't spend a whole lot of time as everybody is probably tired by now um We're getting a lot of growth in the Gig Harbor North area. The trail side development, Canterwood commercial that's now being proposed to turn into housing. The Gig Harbor North annex, it's a subdivision that is also proposing multifamily housing. And then the long gestating village property located there off of Harbor Hill Road. All of these projects have some kind of multifamily component to them. I highlight these projects as these projects, the trail sides outside the city limits, and they are moving forward today. So they're going to occur. The other three projects are currently in some form of permitting process. I highlight these because without the multifamily tax exemption, or the opportunity to discuss fee waivers, those apartment complexes may go online at market rate. and have the impacts of market rate housing. It'll be great. We'll have more multifamily, but we will not be penetrating some of those lower demographics that state is requiring us to meet. Today, they're telling us we need to provide multifamily housing to achieve these percentages. Ultimately, if they see that this is not working, I do have the expectation that they are going to be requiring a greater level of involvement from the jurisdiction, which can come in the form of requiring apartment complexes to have a certain number of units of particular sizes, maximums on the size of town homes or single family units, those types of things. If we've already brought 500 units into the community onto our roadways, et cetera, and now have to try to find homes for another 500, now we've kind of doubled our requirement. And it is important to have the tools in place when the development is coming forward, similar to what the commissioner was bringing up earlier, that we need to make sure that we, between now, as soon as possible, we can correct some of these issues to be able to see the benefit while development is coming in. And I will say that these developers are not looking to rush in before we make these changes. they are really looking at what we're going to be doing and how that may affect their projects. So it is important that we factor them into the conversation, but also make sure that we're moving with all due haste to be able to give these projects the opportunity to provide, say, 20% of the units as affordable for 12 years or take advantage of a rate decrease to be able to provide another set that are actually truly affordable. to people making 50% or less of annual median income.

Do we know how many units these four proposed developments

One I can say for certain, that's the trail side, which is, I believe, about 82 units. The others are a varying set of pre-application proposals. I think if you add them all up, the rumor mill would have the other three. If you added them all together, you're probably getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 450 units.

And we expect under sort of the current example that about 20% of those would qualify for the low income?

If we adopted the MFTE program and they elected to choose the MFTE program, 20% of those units would be affordable. And again, every developer I'm talking to asks, hey, what about the MFTE program? Do you have one of those? So it's something that they are definitely interested in utilizing. I also show these here because when I show them, they're like, everybody expects these units are going to go online next year. It's like, this is a lot. What are we going to do? It's like, no. Multifamily development due to the fact that it's so expensive to do takes a significant amount of time. These lots, even if they continued on their current trajectory, very easily could be five, six, seven, some 10 years out. Because one thing they don't want to do is they don't want to all come online on the same day. that increases the supply impacts the amount that they can do to rent. So they are doing similar math to the commissioner was laying out, which is what's the market. So these, these are going to come online over the course of multiple years. However, it's something that we, if they are going to get their initial entitlement, we would like to be able to get any public benefit that comes from that.

Yeah. And just doing the math real quick. I mean, that, let's just assume all four of these come to fruition and they all have 20% low income. I mean, you're still a far cry short from the- The quota that we have to achieve by 2044.

Yes, but we have made substantial progress in giving an actual opportunity where some business wants to come in and say, where are my surgical techs going to live? I actually can say, yes, we have, say, 40, 50, 60 units that are going to be affordable for a particular period of time. None of the other changes we're talking about, I can guarantee that.

Are these numbers all assuming rental units, or is there room for, say, permanently affordable homeownership?

In most of these zones we're looking at here, you're looking at about 32 dwelling units an acre is the density. So if you can get condominiums perhaps, you can probably get some very, very dense townhome type developments. There's nothing in here that restricts them from being permanent home ownership type scenarios. But this area here does limit opportunities for, say, Habitat for Humanities, who really handles the single-family type units. You are looking at, at minimum, very, very dense townhomes, but you're largely talking about apartment complexes.

To that question, is there the MFT thing, does that also work for homeownership? Like if they were to build condos, is there any incentives to say, we want you to build affordable condos and sell them cheaper so people can be first-time homebuyers?

Generally, it's kind of in a title, but yeah, it's multifamily only. There are other ways to achieve what you're describing. That is in the form of land trusts, where organizations buy land. They then... offer up the land to a particular developer. The developer has covenants under the land indicating that these lots will only be sold at a particular or will be only sold initially at a particular rate and then will only increase at a certain rate over time. There's like a million different permutations of how those types of agreements are established, though those usually are done by non-profits versus done or public housing agencies versus... the city.

Would we have freedom to do anything unique here in Duke Harbor?

I think we have a lot of very creative individuals here. The hard part is going to be the land price. It isn't a matter of buying a $100,000 property or you can't get 10 acres for a million and a half bucks. We don't have that type of land. the creativity may bump into some cost factors as if you are going to try a creative endeavor if a Nonprofit is going to say I'm going to try this they really want to start someplace where again the first number the land value is as low as possible and They have the opportunity for success in that there are support services nearby that can serve these folks including the T word transit and

Just one other question. We have the quotas that are laid out based on 30 to 50% of MFI, 50 to 80%. Is there any opportunity to shift within those categories and still staying in the low income, low and moderate range?

At this point, we're largely just being requested to generate the housing units that are multifamily or townhomes. So basically, if we show that we generated 300, 400, 500 multifamily units, whether those are affordable or at those price points or not, we have removed the barriers to doing so is what our current task is. For the other number, it's town homes. If we generate 75, 80 town homes, we've achieved that 80 to 100% per the state requirement. Did we really affect affordability? likely not in that scenario. That's where other incentive programs really have to come so that we are giving developers the opportunity to lock in these rates. Because just changing the regulations alone in a high value area may not be enough.

I guess, could you kind of clarify what the state mandate is? Are we just trying to update our code saying that the city now has the potential to provide these units and it's up to developers to come and do that.

Our requirement is to ensure that we are not creating barriers to the development. The large setbacks would be a barrier to the development. Those small hardscape would be barriers to people being able to build affordable units. Building heights being capped at 35 feet is another example. We have to remove those barriers that make our regulations the reason why development's not happening. And to that end, we also need to employ certain incentives that can be utilized. Again, we don't have to make people do it. That can be utilized to achieve that, to show I'm going to coin it as the good faith effort by the jurisdiction to do its part towards this. I wish it was more specific than that in certain areas, but really what we need to do is need to make sure that you can look at our code and say, our code isn't the reason why housing is 800,000 a unit. It is...

That's kind of the that's kind of was the basis of my question so like as long as we remove the barriers and make it possible, but if all these developers race in and there isn't any condo apartment kind of dwellings but it's all expensive townhomes like are we have we achieved that goal.

We have to do our best. And the reality of the housing market is we are a piece of the puzzle. My concern with the state isn't that the state is wrong with what they're trying to achieve. My concern is how they're trying to achieve it. The government and regulation has a role, but they are putting a heightened level of responsibility onto that role. Our role is somewhat small. The responsibility that they're putting on, it feels a lot larger. We can do our part. It's my feeling that we need to ensure that we are not the reason why housing is as expensive as it is. We need to ensure that we're processing permits quickly, that we have efficient processes that are getting value added. We aren't just adding process for process sake. There's something valuable that comes from it. And then our codes have to not be taking away land for development unnecessarily. And unnecessarily is going to be in the eye of the beholder. People are going to say that this is going to create touch-your-neighbor housing, pretty popular topic. But a lot of the market right now is looking for housing and not necessarily looking for a lot of yard. We need to be able to provide those opportunities and then hopes that labor costs, that materials costs don't continue to go up, that gas prices don't continue to go up, that all these pieces affect the cost of housing in ways that I don't have the ability to change. So I know it's kind of a frustrating concept to be changing a very small piece of a puzzle in a way that could impact your community in a way that some people are uncomfortable with. but we just need to make sure that we are not part of the reason why this is not happening. And I think that is what the state wants to get at in its very blunt instrument way. Please don't tell them I said that.

I think this is a public meeting, Eric.

I think it might actually be videotaped as well. And the number of people who actually watch these The number of people have told me, I have to watch the planning commission meeting. My old job, nobody watched a planning commission meeting ever. So again, the work you folks are doing here is being well absorbed by the outside world. With that, I really appreciate your time. Again, this is intended just to kind of be, these are what these constructs are. These are some of the things that are beyond what we're going to be talking about, but have other factors. um and uh it really is trying to move the needle with the property owner allowing them to look at their property in a different way and be able to see housing that isn't the standard gig harbor million dollar who am i kidding million five home um one other thing i didn't hear about in here is any is there any requirements on building sorry oh no

building like for people with disabilities. Is there any requirements of how much housing we provide that has a ramp or has something like that to provide for people with disabilities within these units?

We do have ADA requirements for almost all construction. So if you are not single family homes, but as you're talking about multifamily complexes, we have ADA requirements for all, not just the buildings, but all of the facilities around the outside of them, commercial structures, industrial structures, all of those types of things. Is it housing specifically for folks with disabilities? no we don't have a certain requirement that if you build an apartment complex 10 of those units have to be open have to be built with the wide doorways and the all the other things but we do have ada requirements that people can get into the buildings and generally operate thank you okay any other questions for eric Since you folks have been so kind to listen to me, we don't have anything for the July 2nd meeting that would be worth asking people to come here on July 2nd. that the following day is a holiday. Actually, tomorrow is a holiday as well, though I will say that a lot of folks, especially in the 250th anniversary, might be looking at taking some additional time off. So we are recommending not holding our meeting on July 2nd. The next meeting would then be on the 16th.

I think that's probably okay with everybody. Can you give us like a general... scope timeline of the process moving forward and what we're looking at.

Awesome.

I was going to also ask about, my term was up at the end of this month and I did reapply. When should I expect to hear back to know if I'm coming to the July meeting or not? And I heard there was other vacancies. Has anyone else applied for those? I know we were looking. So that was my second question.

Okay, do we have a motion to, or do we need to move to cancel the July 2nd meeting? No, we just canceled, okay. Okay. Okay, I guess with that, is there any other business or comments any of the commissioners would like to make? Okay.

A motion to adjourn.

I'll second that motion. And with that, we're adjourned. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. I always forget that part. Thank you.