Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening everyone. Hope you all had a happy New Year. It's good to see everybody. We're gonna call the January 8 Planning Policy Commission to order and it is currently 06:32PM. Today's meeting is a hybrid meeting. The Planning Policy Commission is in person. Staff or members of the public may be attending virtually or in person. Kristen, do we have a quorum this evening?

Yes, we do.

All right, and we'll just make a quick mention that Commissioner Krasz is joining us online. Vice Chair Patterson, Commissioner Matthews, and Commissioner Mulberryu all have excused absences, correct?

Mulberry is going to try and join us online.

Okay, we'll see if she shows up. We're going to begin this evening with the approval of minutes and these go way back, way back before Thanksgiving. So if you can remember, this was the meeting for November 13. We're looking for any corrections or concerns you may have about that meeting. Commissioner Olinner?

I have one very minor typo correction on page three. It's the third paragraph down that begins commissioner Adair. The last part of that paragraph, it says, and the city that the city if interested. I think it should be that the city is interested. We

can make that correction.

Thank you commissioner Olinner. Thank you for reading your packet. Okay. Are there any other concerns? Alright. Seeing none. Those meeting minutes are approved with those minor corrections. We're gonna move on to our public comment. And right now we are holding a general public comment for topics pertaining to the commission as a whole. Has anyone signed up this evening to make comment?

Yes. Melissa Navarro has signed up to speak. Then no.

Alright. Okay. How about online? Anybody online? Okay. Nobody would like to speak this evening so we will skip some boilerplate there. We're gonna move along to regular business and tonight our regular business is the 2026 docket of proposed comprehensive plan amendments. This is our first item of regular business and Kate, I'm probably gonna get this wrong. Kate Kaney? Kaney. Kaney.

Kaney. Mhmm.

Our principal planner will be presenting this evening. So, Kate Kaney, please go ahead when you're ready.

K. Give me just one moment to open up my presentation and get situated. Alright. Great. Okay.

Thank you all very much. This is my first presentation in front of this commission, and, again, my name is Kate Kaney. Last name kind of remind or sorry. Sounds like rainy, lot of letters, but that's that's pretty much it. I have been here for two months as Issaquah's principal planner, and it has been just a really wonderful experience so far, so I'm very happy to be here tonight. I am here to talk to you about the 2026 docket of proposed comprehensive plan amendment. Oops. Next slide. And it this tonight is really just an informational briefing. Two main items.

First, an overview process. Many of you may have gone through this already, but I wanted to provide that overview for those of you who are not familiar and for the public. And then also a review of the proposed amendments. So tonight is not about approving anything, it's really a learning and discussion session. So as you listen to the discussion tonight and you're thinking through the next steps, your ultimate recommendation on these proposals, here are some considerations.

Are there amendments proposed in the docket that are not relevant or necessary? Are there any additions, deletions, or amendments the commission would like to recommend? This slide will pop up at the end right before your discussion, so we're interested in hearing from you. Thought that would just kind of help you frame your thinking. So the first thing I'd like to do is start with some background on the overall amendment process.

So, the state growth management act, requires comprehensive plans to manage growth, and there's also requirement for, the public to be able to make, proposals to amend that comprehensive plan. And there are procedures there for that, there's direction on, and many cities call that a docket process, docketing process, as Issaquah does. So the state also allows amendments once a year. Some cities do the annual amendment like Issaquah. Some do biennial processes, but we are here in this annual process.

Kicking it off tonight in terms of the review, the city establishes procedures for docketing in the municipal code, and it includes criteria for amending the comprehensive plan, and we'll go through that criteria as part of this presentation. So I'm gonna go through what the process is as it is stated in the code. Basically, it's a two year process where the comprehensive plan is opened up for the public to provide amendments, but you must have your application in by September in the year before the amendments are actually adopted. Staff works to assemble the proposals from the public, privately initiated amendments, also gathering ideas and proposals from city staff. And in the actual year of the amendments that it would or sorry, the adoption of the amendment, so we're calling it year two in this slide, the code requires the public hearing by the January, and that is held by the planning commit Planning Policy Commission, and the public hearing will be at your next meeting, which is January 22, and that is when we will be requesting a recommendation from the commission to be forwarded to council.

So, at this point in time, this again is an informational review. Public hearing will be your next meeting. Then your recommendation will go to the planning development and environment committee, PDE, that standing committee. They will review and make a recommendation to the full council, and then full council will take action on a final docket, which will be further considered over the year. So what happens after that final docket is established by council?

Well, staff does the research necessary and analysis and develops the text amendments, language for the comprehensive plan, or amendments to the maps in the comprehensive plan, specifically the land use map. The next step is to allow public review and another public hearing is held by the PPC and the commissioners would make a recommendation on the final amendment that would again go to PDE and then council action is required by the end of the year. So that is the overall process. So I mentioned that there is a criteria that is established in the code for review for assessing, evaluating some proposals. Specifically, the code states that staff must evaluate all privately initiated amendment petitions to determine compliance with this review criteria established in chapter eighteen one zero four of the municipal code.

Not only though are privately initiated amendments considered for appropriateness with comprehensive plan, but the Growth Management Act requires that all proposed amendments to your comprehensive plan are consistent with the vision adopted in that comprehensive plan and those existing policies. So staff is well aware of that as we move through working with within our department and within other departments to make sure that proposals are appropriate. So now I want to go through what the criteria actually is in case you are interested. We have only city initiated proposals this year, but again this is valuable for just general awareness. So there's two sets of criteria.

Either proposal must meet one of the criteria you see in a, b, c here. If a proposal is specific to a site, maybe changing the land use designation in the land use map, the property needs to be suitable for the type of development desired, and the change must conform with adjacent land uses. Criteria B is that state law or a legal order is requiring the change, and sometimes there are technical errors in the comprehensive plan that that can be addressed, so that also follows in this set of criteria. The second set of criteria has four criterion. So the proposed amendment must meet all of the following, that the amendment addresses a matter that's appropriately addressed through the comp plan, demonstrates public benefit, and enhances the public health, safety, and welfare in the city, excuse me, that the proposal does not raise issues more appropriately addressed through a city program, that the proposal significantly sorry.

That the proposal addresses significant changes in circumstances and conditions since the last time the conference plan was amendment, and also that it is consistent with the conference of plan and the regional and state goals and policies. That's really consistent with anything as I mentioned before. So those are the criteria that are in the code. Thought you all would find that helpful in in thinking through things. Just in summary, as I said before, all of the proposals this year are city initiated.

We received none from the public. And, again, GMA does require that any change consistent, not only within the comprehensive plan, but also with, you know, the regional and state planning and requirements. Okay. So now I wanna turn to the actual proposed docket and the list of proposals. So we do not intend you to read this list.

This is just a copy of the docket that was, provided to you in your packet that is now, on the city's website, and there are five proposals. I'm gonna go ahead and go through each of the proposals to give you an understanding of what changes are identified. So this first proposal talks about land use designations, and the goal of these proposals are to ensure that land use designations are consistent not only within the comprehensive plan, but also with the development regulations that the city has. And I'm going to go ahead and just go to this next slide, which is the land use map that is in the comprehensive plan. That also shows that there are nine land use designations.

Hard to read. They're on the left. You don't I mean, it's it's really just the colors that I'm wanting you to pay attention to to understand that. Land use maps are very important tools. They identify or they illustrate the city's vision that is in the comprehensive plan.

They talk about or they they identify where and how the city is going to grow in certain areas. So for example, the red mixed use land use designation, you can see in this area that is the city's main mixed use center, the city's regional growth center within Central Issaquah planning area, and the other eight designations also identify the type of growth that is anticipated in a certain location. These land use designations are are important to the zoning in a city because by state law, by the GMA, your development regulations must implement the comprehensive plan. And so this is really if you are looking at a comprehensive plan land use map and your zoning map, you can see how they implement each other. So the proposals identified in the first docket item are really about just strengthening that consistency between the comprehensive plan and land use designations and the development regulations, specifically zoning.

So Do you mind if I

jumped in for just one second? Just for a little planning one zero one. And I think most of you have heard this before, but I just wanna make sure. So the land use designations, the nine of them that we have, we have 35 different zoning districts. Okay?

And the land use designations themselves are like umbrellas, and each one contains so our low density residential contains different single family zones that we have. So it has conservancy residential, single family estate, single family suburbans, small lot, and duplex. It has all of those under there. And those are all supposed to sort of eventually meet the purpose of these individual zones, meet this vision of that designation. So I just wanted to make sure that you all knew kind of how that worked. Yeah.

And that's a great segue into going back to the slide, because you can see the table to the right of the screen, and that table was inadvertently not included in the last comprehensive plan amendment process, and we wanted to reinsert it to ensure clarity around which of those zones implements which designations. Additionally, part of this amendment is to describe and define the land use designations. Right now, the zoning code, which had that big update, the title 18 update a few years ago, did a great job of clarifying the purpose of each zone. So we just want to clarify, and provide more policy basis for those zoning descriptions by also having land use descriptions at that higher kind of policy level. So that's really what this first proposal is.

I could talk about these little planners things all day, so I will stop. But the second proposed amendment is one that was actually proposed as part of the 2025 docket, and then it was removed from the docket because it was really a big lift for staff and there weren't the resources in the city at the time to fully be able to do the research and implement the changes envisioned. So this proposal would clarify the names of the low density and multi multifamily land use and zoning designations to ensure compliance with the state's middle housing requirements. As Kristen shared, you can see the low density residential land use designation is implemented by multiple zones, many of which have single family in the title. But because of the middle housing amendments from a couple of years ago that allowed not only single family uses in these zones, but also duplex, multiplex, and other middle housing types.

It is felt that it is not clear for folks and for the sense of the code that these zones are actually capable of handling single family or middle housing uses. So this amendment is taking a look at, you know, what's the right way to name these land use designations and these zones so it makes more sense in terms of what is allowed, what what the zones are capable of. So that's the research and analysis that will be undertaken to implement this proposal. Okay, so amendment number three out of five. This amendment would update the central Issaquah regional growth center policies as necessary.

So just for some way finding, if you look at the map, the you see Issaquah, and the purple area, that boundary is for Central Issaqua as identified in the Central Issaqua plan. And within the Central Issaqua plan our planning area in the green is this the city's designated regional growth center, kind of the urban core. So that reg regional growth center, RGC, was designated by Puget Sound Regional Council. It is an important designation because it allows the city to be eligible for federal transportation funds and for significant investments like the light rail that is coming to Issaquah. So pug Puget Sound Regional Council, PSRC, did some work on the way to updating their vision 2050.

You may all be aware of that in advance of the the major periodic updates of the comprehensive plans that were required throughout the region. ISQA adopted that in 2024 along with with many other cities in Puget Sound. As part of the process of of moving through that update, PSRC revised some of the requirements for the RGCs. And now they're going through a redesignation process for the 30 existing regional growth centers that were designated, you know, years ago, including Issaquah's. There are some newer RGCs that that use the new updated requirements, and now they want all of the RGCs to similarly show that that we're gonna align with that vision from from PSRC's vision 2050.

So, actually, we met with some PSRC staff and just talked through some of the changes. I think we noted in your memo that what was discussed was ensuring that the targets for how much growth the regional growth center is going to take align with the population and growth population and job targets in the comprehensive plan that were adopted as part of the 2024 update and look at some other data, ensure that what was in vision 2050 matches with what is in the comprehensive plan, again, that is a quite adopted. So that process is upcoming in this proposal where we would go and and do the research, do the math, and make sure the policies and data are working with the new Vision 2050 framework for regional growth centers. So number four, in terms of the proposed amendments, were updates identified by park staff to ensure alignment with the 2024 park system plan update. One of the proposed changes is to change all the references in the comprehensive plan from parks plan or whatever it is to the park system plan.

So there are some just nomenclature changes that they wanna get to be consistent across documents. Another is to change the name of the Green Necklace Park And Open space concept from the Isqua Central Plan to the Creeks To Peaks Citywide trail name that was adopted through that park system plan update. And lastly, well, the one that I can recall anyway is ensuring that the level of service standards for parks facilities is consistent across the parks plan and the comprehensive plan. And there may be others that Kristen, do you want share?

No, I was just going to clarify that one a little bit. Right now, level of service for parks is measured on quantity and number of people per number of parks per number of people, and the parks department has changed that in their park system plan to do quality over quality of the parks rather than quantity. So we're gonna find out a little bit more about that as well.

Thank you. Hey. The final proposal on the docket is sort of a placeholder for potential amendments identified through this year's ISSQA climate action plan update process, the ICAP. I know, Stacy, the sustainability manager was here, maybe in the November meeting or before that to share, what was happening with the ICAP update, and we've been in close contact in case any of the proposals in that strategic functional plan would necessitate any changes to policy. So it's kind of this iterative process, and we will let you know if anything emerges from that process.

So that was an overview of the five proposals on the docket, again, all city initiated. Now I will talk through some dates, few more logistics, and then open the floor to the commission. So, immediate next steps, as I mentioned, at your next meeting on January 22, there will be a public hearing. We will ask the commission for their recommendation on the proposals. The PDE review will be on February 3.

They will also provide a recommendation to full council, and full council is set to act to finalize the docket of proposals for further consideration on February 23. So here's that consideration slide again just to help you prepare for discussion of the proposals I just shared with you. Are is there anything you thought was not relevant or necessary? Any refinements? Again, having discussion now, thinking through for the recommendation that we will ask of you at your next meeting is the intent of bringing up that slide.

And a reminder, in terms of your recommendation, On January 22, the recommendation will be regarding not the final amendment that's done, but regarding a proposal to be examined throughout the process over the next several months. It is not a recommendation, again, regarding the amendment themselves, and you can, of course, recommend to keep things as is, delete things, suggest moving them to another year, or adding to amendment proposals. So this is basically the last slide. I'm just going to leave it up as you have any questions or discussion that you'd like to have on the presentation.

Well, you, planner Kaney. That was great. Wonderful presentation. Okay, let's open it up for the commissioners. And yes, I see you Commissioner Krass as well, so just give me a hand if you do have anything to say. Commissioner Adair is that a microphone that's on? Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi just a follow-up question could you repeat the Puget Sound Regional Council information again for me because it kind of went by fast.

Let me hit the right button. Yes. Of course. So Puget Sound Regional Council designated, regional growth centers, over a decade ago, And the purpose of the regional growth center was to identify locations across the Puget Sound region that would take the most growth, that acknowledging that they would take the most growth, the PSRC opens up those areas for certain funding that they get through the federal government for transportation and other things. And, also, they identify a preferred development pattern around clustering populations, supporting them with walkable transit oriented, transportation modes.

The focus of the vision 2050 update was to ensure equitable, equity was a a thing in the policies in different cities. And as part of that designation process, cities back in the day were required to show, yes. We meet your requirements for how big we are or what kind of development regulations we have for walkable pedestrian oriented, transit oriented development, etcetera. So in 2018, p s PSRC updated the RGC framework because they've been getting a lot of petitions from other cities to be part of the RGC funding process, and they wanted to be eligible. And there were was a lot of growth in in these centers across the region.

And then in vision 2050, additional policies were developed. And right now, PSRC is going to all of the 30 RGCs that that were the initial initially allowed and saying, okay. We we need you to make sure that you meet the new requirements. A lot of work in Issaquah and other places was done in our periodic updates, our major comprehensive plan updates, but there are some additional things that PSRC is meeting with all the cities about to to make sure that the designation is appropriate. So we're in that process right now. You're welcome. Thank you, Commissioner Dare.

Any other comments for planner Keeney? I just had a quick point of clarification. You mentioned adding to the amendments. I didn't think we could do that. I thought we could either recommend them or possibly ask for something to be taken out. But I thought I heard you mention we could add, and I I didn't think that we could do that.

I think your recommendation could request additions at this point. After the final docket is established and adopted by council, those are the proposals. That's my understanding of it. Kristen, do you

That's my understanding as well. Yes.

So when you say council adoption, you're talking about February, not later in the year.

That's right. Okay. The final docket adoption. Okay. Thank

you. Think that's really it for me. Commissioner Kras, anything you'd like to add?

Good. Thanks.

Okay. Hope you're feeling better. Anybody else? Going once, going twice? Unscathed. Thank you, Planner Kaney. Appreciate the presentation. That was great. And also looking at it holistically, it's helpful for everybody. All right.

Well, it's going be a quick meeting. We're going to move on to reports this evening and we are looking for City Council updates from either Kate or Kristen.

I only have one, it's a little quiet at the end of the year, but on we told you back in September, we went to city council. They asked us to go and talk with them to have them prioritize work program for us, especially regarding housing in this year. But then there was an election. So we are going to go back to city council now on March 9, and one of the reasons that we haven't done the calendar yet is because we're not fully sure about what our work program is. So we're gonna go back to city council on March 9 to five to, you know, talk about our priorities, and then we will get that calendar to you.

But you might wanna tune in that night and just see what the discussion looks like and see what you're in for but I do think there will be quite a few code amendments coming your way.

We love code. So what's that mean till March?

We do have other so those are for the bigger amendments we do have other smaller amendments that are coming to you in the meantime.

Okay. No time off? No. Good. Hopefully everybody had plenty of time off over the holidays. All right. Thank you Kristen. Any other updates as far as the city? I know we have a new administration.

Yes. New administration, so that's been fun. Truly it has. Let's see, yes I just found out typically applications for different boards and commissions don't go out until February this year they're going to go out January 16. So keep your eyes open for those applications.

Stacy will be coming back to talk to you, Stacy Viem McKinstry, on the ICAP on in on February 26. And then Thomas Valdez is also going to come back to you February or March to talk about Light Rail. We have criteria a set of criteria that has been established that that he wants to talk with you all about. He's making the rounds. I have a question for you too because we are going to be talking so much about housing this year.

I don't know how many of you have actually received the housing one zero one class, and would you all be interested in having a housing one zero one? That's a unanimous. Alright. So we will plan on doing that in January, February. For you. Great, that's all I have. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Moving along to end this evening, finally any other business or announcements from our commissioners, from staff, anything, any crazy holiday stories, nothing? Commissioner Dare has one. Okay, please.

At the bottom of my hill, I don't know if you guys heard me say this, a mine shaft exploded from all the rain, and it created a massive sinkhole in my neighbor's yard. It was really crazy. And now we have federal engineers coming in. So that's an adventure. And now I'm also panicked. I'm like, is there a mine under my home? And I don't know. But that's all. That was my crazy story.

That pretty crazy. Wow.

Luckily their koi fish survived because it went through their koi pond. So if you're wondering everything was okay with the fish.

I guess I just have one question. How is the city doing as far as cleanup from the excessive amount of rain? I know Newport was washed out. Any major damage to the city or infrastructure? Know that Salmon. I remember reading about that, an article about just their concern with all that runoff and water.

Mhmm. And then Gibson Hall, which is one of our community spaces that we use, I know that it flooded a bit, so there's going to have to be some repair work there. Otherwise, I haven't heard of anything. Have you heard of anything, Kate? Yeah. They did. They just renovated that so that we could open and use it for the community. I don't think it's going to be a lot of work, but there was some damage done.

Yeah. It's been an excessive amount of rain. It just really hasn't stopped. Okay, well thank you for the crazy story. Thank you for the update. Okay, going once, twice, anything else? Anything for the good of the order? All right, we will adjourn this meeting of the Planning Policy Commission at 07:05PM. Thank you.