Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We should be ready.

Good evening. It is 06:34, and I call the 02/02/2026 regular meeting of the Kennewick Planning Commission to order. Tonight's meeting will be conducted through a hybrid platform which allows commissioners and the public to participate in the meeting both The meeting

your attendance. The meeting

will will proceed proceed so so long long as as a a quorum of planning commissioners are present. Please mute your phones when not speaking or your mics. Will the clerk call roll and announce whether or not we have a quorum? Oh, and I do notice that, commissioner Hempstead is not in attendance.

Commissioner Arneson. Arneson.

Here.

Commissioner Barger.

Here.

Commissioner Gregory. Here. Commissioner Morales. Here. Commissioner Perez.

Here.

Commissioner Rahim Lu? Here. You have a quorum.

I will entertain a motion to excuse Commissioner Hempstead.

I move to excuse Commissioner Hempstead. I second.

It has been moved by Commissioner and seconded by Commissioner Perez to excuse the absence of Commissioner Hempstead. Is there any discussion? May we have a roll call vote, please?

Commissioner Arneson?

Yes.

Commissioner Barger?

Yes.

Commissioner Gregory? Yes. Commissioner Morales? Yes. Commissioner Perez?

Yes.

Commissioner Rahim? Yes.

There was a full one two three seven in favor of that. Will staff introduce and attendance introduce themselves?

Steve Donovan, Planning. Anthony Moai, Planning. Matt Holitsky, Planning.

All right. Can we be that. That. To And And that. To

to

do approve the

consent agenda? And

So the next item on approval is the consent agenda. All matters listed within the consent agenda have been distributed to each member of the Kennewick Planning Commissioners for reading and study, and considered routine, and will be enacted by a motion of the Planning Commission with no separate discussion. So now I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. Yes.

Second.

It has been moved by Commissioner Perez and second by Commissioner Barger to approve the consent agenda as presented. Are there any questions? May we have a roll call vote, please?

Commissioner Arneson?

Yes.

Commissioner Barger?

Yes.

Commissioner Gregory? Yes. Commissioner Morales? Yes. Commissioner Perez?

Yes.

Commissioner Rahim Luke? Yes.

So we have all of us voting in favor. So that was seven. Public hearings. Good evening, and welcome to the 02/02/2026 Kennewick Planning Commission. Meeting.

Is important that everyone who wishes to do so has an opportunity to speak. Each person who has either signed in in person or registered via Zoom will have one three minute opportunity to call Please state your name and city of residence for the record. Once you begin your remarks, the countdown timer will start. At the end of your time, please mute your microphone. The order of the hearing shall be as follows: Planning staff shall provide a staff report.

Commission may ask questions of staff. The applicant or applicant's representative can have a presentation. Testimony in favor of the request. Testimony either neutral or against the request. Final applicant comments, final staff comments, close the public hearing, and discuss the questions. I declare the public hearing for development code amendment DCA twenty twenty five dash zero zero six open.

Myself from staff DCA twenty twenty five zero zero six due to an ongoing business relationship with the applicant Harry Mahal.

Okay. Thank you for that on the record. May we have a staff report?

Thank you, Vice Chair Gregory. Okay, so the applicant are Mr. Mo Nasser and Mr. Harry Hall. They have proposed to amend municipal code section 18.12.010B1, which is the table of nonresidential uses.

They're proposing to allow vehicle sales and incidental repair and service as a permitted use in the urban mixed use zone. And they've also proposed to add the footnote, which currently exists in the code, but also to their specific section of the code, which I'll show you here in a minute, that would not allow that use to be permitted in the urban mixed use zone that's considered to be the Vista Field area. So we have more of the downtown along Columbia Drive, which is currently zoned urban mixed use in addition to the Vista Field area. And you can see in this section of the code, it might be a little hard to read, but vehicle sales, incidental repair is a permitted use as shown under the UMU zone with the number one mark there and then the number six in parentheses and underlined. So it's permitted because it's got the dash mark there.

And then with the footnote number six, as you see in the table down below, not allowed in the Vista Field area. So that is what the applicant is proposing tonight. Permitted in the downtown area, not permitted in the Vista Field area.

Does the applicant or the applicants

Oh. Not done yet.

Gave me

a pause. Oh my god. Was just sorry. I I wanted to get to a different screen.

Thank you. Appreciate

it. I just wanted to give you a little bit of history in regards to the UMU zone. In 2017, the city adopted the actual implementing development regulations. The UMU zone regulations are a result of the bridge to bridge, river to rail revitalization plan, which I included in your staff report. That's a little harder to find than the comprehensive plan is when you're looking for it online, so I thought it would be good for you to have the entire plan.

And just kind of as a general statement, the plan stated the area to be zoned mixed use had the most opportunity for new urban neighborhoods, retail, entertainment, personal services, pedestrian related activities. Since 2017, when the UMU zone was established, staff had been asked numerous times if auto sales is a permitted use in the zone. It wasn't necessarily that people were looking to open up vacant sites or anything like that. There was a lot of interest in taking over some of the auto sales lots that had gone out of business or they maybe had gone to another area in town or something like that. So there was some interest in that type of basically locating there in that area.

And additionally, there's been some existing auto lot sales owners have inquired about expanding their existing businesses within that zone. So again, we haven't seen a whole lot of new sites that are necessarily being proposed, either taking over preexisting or own. And

Deere, Board

question comes

council will make the final decision either at the end in March or April once you make your final recommendation to the to the council. And staff is recommending staff that the proposed development code amendment is in conflict with the comprehensive plan and therefore recommends the Planning Commission concur with the findings and conclusions in the staff report contained or conclusions contained in the staff report DCA twenty twenty five dash zero zero zero six and recommends denial of the proposed amendment to city council. And if you have any questions of staff, I'd be more than happy to answer them for you.

Commissioner Gregory here. So with your recommendations there, don't fully understand because there's lots of car lots down there.

There are existing car lots down there. That's correct. The question is, now as the applicant has proposed, do you want to not just allow the existing ones that were there prior to 2017 when the regulations went into effect, or do you want the opportunity for expansion of either existing car lots or more car lots? It's staff's opinion or reading through the bridge to bridge plan and the comprehensive plan is based on what the purpose statement is of the UMU zone is that permitting that type of use is not in compliance with the comprehensive plan in regards to the mixed use and the urban goals and policies that were in your staff report and the excerpts of the bridge to bridge plan that were within your staff report. So that's what it comes down to.

I mean, there are car lots down there now. Does the Planning Commission want to recommend that it's your recommendation that that should be expanded and or permitted in that zone.

You want to go ahead?

No, no, go ahead.

So I'd like to follow-up with that. So is there any way you could make it to where the ones that are there can actually expand and not have a

whole bunch more come in? Or that would mess up? Not via this proposed code amendment. We would probably have to go back and propose some other type of a possible amendment in the nonconforming use portion of the code possibly. That would be really the only way.

No, it would have to be something that would allow maybe a percentage of square foot or something in that regard for nonconforming uses or non permitted uses. And you wouldn't be able to just it would have to be something in regards to the non conforming use code. Make a change there.

Commissioner Gregory, just want a quick comment. Obviously, as I sit back here, I just want to let you know, I do have there's quite a people in the room that I I do have business relationships with and so. Because my office, you know, it's about two blocks away from this area. So, obviously, I know my neighbors in Downtown Kennewick and so, I do want to let you know that I I do want put on record that, I do have I've had transactions, with people out in the crowd, as well as applicants. And so I don't feel that I need to excuse myself from it.

Just as I'm involved in the downtown quarter. Unless staff does recommend me to stay out. So but I did actually have some questions. I'm not sure if you can answer them or actually answer my first question and and I did have some questions about the actual plan. In regards for the staff report has sent over the Bridge to Bridge River Rail utilization plan that was in 2010.

Correct.

And then as amended like 2017. Looking at it kind of reading over, I think the plan really didn't come into fruition, right? Do you have kind of a result why it didn't have it or there's something that was missing? And so obviously, the business owner we see car lots there, but the ones that you do see are either growing or there's other buildings that used to be other businesses. I think there's one like there's like a pet hospital or something like that turned into like a body shop.

And so you do start kind of seeing that area because I drive by every single day is you start seeing them expand. Is that resulting from this plan that was in 2010 just didn't come to fruition? I guess that's my question. Why it failed or it's going to take longer because I know with planning it just takes time, right?

Yes, it does take time. There's a number of factors that could be impacting on why maybe it hasn't happened as quickly as the initial people that worked on it or staff thought that it would. You had COVID that did come into play and did impact some businesses. You have for instance, you have a very large piece of property on the West Side up there against the highway. It's vacant, owned by one person that controls it, so they control what happens there.

The city doesn't have they don't control land down there to kind of promote that in a sense. You've got the port that's done their wine village development and are attempting to do other changes and redevelopment down there for the site. But I mean it comes down to the property owners. What's the value that they feel is? Is it more valuable being a car lot?

Is it more to be more valuable to be some type of mixed use residential development? I just don't think it's gotten there yet. It does take time, even like the urban mixed use zone over the port has over by Vista Field. They've been talking about that for years. It's just now starting to get off the ground. So it's changed sometimes can take time, especially when it takes it does take a lot of money to make that happen too.

Yes. And I also saw kind of in the report, said through Fruitland East or West they were allowing that and then East was really what was kind of pushing away from that.

Correct.

Vice chair if I could comment for a minute just to put some perspective. I've been here since the entire planning process of the Bridge to Bridge plan. And so maybe to add a little bit to what Steve was talking about, the plan itself was adopted in 2010. The implementation of that plan did not occur with adoption of zoning and development regulations until we're we're looking at the slide. The of in future.

And And lot on And the of

half

nineteen.

Time that those development regulations have been put into play, And development down there has been limited as far as things we would like to see in the Bridge To Bridge area. I think one thing that wasn't discussed was what it takes to actually redevelop an to of what we're get

We're

sense going to We're get a sense village and investment of where the city is partnered with them on that from a landscaping and a water treatment standpoint. But we are starting to see private investment occur down in that area. However, limited it might be, there is still things that are happening. So I think a narrative that this has been here for twenty years and nothing's happened. I just want to assert that I don't think that's the case because really the implementation put into place to try to see this plan through didn't come into play until late twenty seventeen.

And we're starting to see some of the fruits of that implementation now however slow it may be. And the anticipation is that it will likely be slow until momentum builds because like I said earlier, we're dealing with a lot of smaller properties, individual property owners, and existing businesses. So,

Commissioner Gregory here. I'm still a little bit confused because the way it states that it was so West Of Fruitland was okay because we have car lots on each side of Fruitland. I'm very like Yeah.

West Of Fruitland is considered the commercial auto row zone.

Okay.

So it's a different zoning district. Right. That's the line between the two, the UMU and the commercial auto row.

So all of those car lots East of it, are they not in compliance?

They are legal nonconforming uses.

Okay. Correct.

It's been a long time. Okay. Any more questions? Okay. Does the applicant or applicant's representatives wish to speak? Are you the applicant?

I am the applicant's representative.

So you don't limit your three minutes I'm pretty sure. So you're not on a timer.

Oh terrific. Thank you. So commissioners my name is Rick Simon. I'm a planning consultant and representing Mr. Mahal and Nasser who are bringing forth this code amendment to allow for vehicle sales within the UMU district.

And as you might imagine, operating a business without the ability to expand definitely hampers their continued business. And that's the purpose behind this code amendment is just to make that use that's well established along Columbia Drive and not only by half a dozen different property owners just to make that legal and allow them to move forward and expand as market conditions allow for. So I believe the reason that staff has recommended denial is on the basis of the bridge to bridge river to rail plan which was originally developed in 2010. So the plan itself is sixteen years old. Although I recognize Anthony's clarification that the regulations has only come about at the 2017.

I would maintain that the proposal is in fact consistent with the overall city comprehensive plan. There are several goals and policies within that plan that promote economic development and commercial development that fall right along with vehicle sales within this area. Further, I would suggest that and when you look at actually the very beginning of the plan, it goes through the process that the city went through in developing the plan and the last step is on page three of the plan is to monitor implementation. And it says quote to ensure the actions proposed in this action plan are effectively realized by all the public, nonprofit and private parties participating in the revitalization. So what we're really asking the Planning Commission to do tonight is some of that monitoring.

Looking back over this plan that's sixteen years old and saying hey has this worked? Has the city realized the vision that they're looking for? And if not is this maybe a needed tweak to the code that would allow for businesses to continue. Again you know if you look at the vision of the plan it really was a bold vision. They wanted you know mixed use development commercial and residential.

They were looking for new types of business. They were looking for you know redevelopment and pedestrian oriented development which is a big change from the existing uses along Columbia Drive which are largely auto oriented uses. If you look at the uses down there you see there's car washes, drive through restaurants, auto vehicle sales, there's auto repair shops. Many, most of those uses I would say are not pedestrian oriented and as Anthony again indicated it's tough. It's a change to go from that auto oriented use along a busy Columbia Drive to a pedestrian oriented use.

And I would suggest that for those developers that are looking for that kind of environment that they would much rather go out to a place like Vista Field where again it's a clean slate the port is the large property owner and they control what goes on there and that makes much more sense for that kind of mixed urban development to occur in that environment rather than along Columbia Drive. Just looking at the plan itself, there were a number of action items that were identified that needed to be done to realize the vision in this bridge to bridge plan. And a lot of those action strategies have remained undone over the fifteen years that the plan has been in place. Some of those things are improvements to the shore line areas for enhancing fish habitat, enhancements to the levee and the stormwater system, acquisition and development of parkland, reconfiguration of the road network, construction of streetscape enhancements, construction of sidewalks, curbs and gutters, and the development of a public market and excursion tree. Now these strategies require the expenditure of public funds and I'm not trying to cast dispersion over the city for not implementing this plan.

It a bold vision when it was developed in 2010 and certainly over time city council have many tough decisions to make about where they should expand their revenues. And so the fact that the plan has not been fully implemented over the fifteen years is not a criticism but it is an indication that it is time to take a look at the plan and do that important monitoring that the plan actually called for. And if you look at the vehicle sales, they're a benefit to the city. They produce tax revenue. They produce jobs.

They actually when you compare them to other types of commercial land uses they do not generate a lot of traffic. They're not heavy users of city utilities or power. And so they're actually benefit. Why along Columbia Drive where you have a half a dozen East Of Fruitland plus all the ones that are West of Fruitland you have this whole corridor of vehicle sale lots. It's like a good place for them.

We should be encouraging them rather than discouraging them. So in application materials that I think were included in your packet, I prepared some suggested findings that indicate that this proposed amendment is in fact consistent with the comprehensive plan. And I would be happy to answer any questions that you might have at this point. I know we have the applicants and some other property owners and business owners here within that district that that have comments to make. I would step aside unless unless you have any questions that I can answer for you.

I have a question of staff with that. Is that what he's talking about? That's what our PDF file is? Yeah. You you

got his packet. Yeah. I think it's Yeah.

Attachment to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We don't get copies of that anymore up here. Okay.

It was like 68 pages long.

Yeah. Was pretty long.

It's too much paper to print.

Alright. Thank you.

I have a question for staff. Could there additional ordinances be put on place since we're talking about prime land? Like I do understand the desire to change the current use, but it seems to me that percentage wise currently current use, we have a huge mix and the only residential area that I can think of is mainly like a mobile home, a trailer park. And then there's several smaller properties that have been continually being sold and really under market value compared to the average for the area. Could additional ordinances be put in place to keep the value of the land itself since it's the section pretty much that is next to the river for Kennewick to develop?

You're asking about an additional ordinances that would allow continued use while maintaining or trying to encourage redevelopment at the same time?

Correct.

Is that what you're saying? Would

provide Yeah, I mean,

I guess that's not something that we thought. Something like that could be crafted. I mean, right now you have the uses that are existing or allowed to continue. They're provided the opportunity to expand up to 25%. And so there's limited, there is expansion available but it's limited expansion.

And then those provisions are set up with intent that at some point the land will redevelopment and will redevelop and nonconforming uses will relocate to an area where they would be conforming. And so that could be revisited. I think that's a little bit of what Steve talked about earlier when looking at our non conforming provisions and potentially looking at modifying those to allow expansion to a greater degree. So yeah, there's potential. I think there are things that could be done to do that.

We would just have to explore what those options were and then bring them back to the Planning Commission.

Would that be a long process like years down the road for these people or is that something that can be expedited for them?

Well one we don't know what those would be and then we would bring them back to the planning commissioner we could work with the property owners or the applicants but ultimately we would have to bring place. Or if we both came to an agreement we would bring that back. Yeah, could be something similar. And that I mean it took time but Steve just mentioned we did something similar with mini storage for those who were I guess I think that was you Tina I don't know who else was here with them.

I think

we had a lot of new commissioners so when we're dealing with mini storage and particularly indoor as And

of

have question that was more palatable for the city that preserved our commercial street frontage for active commercial uses and things like that. It took time for us to develop something and come back but something similar could be done.

So in reference to that, that doesn't initiate another application process for them. That would be something that you would work together with?

Correct, that'd be something that we would work on and come back. I think in that case we just took feedback, some feedback from the applicant because I think they moved on somewhere else. They kind of speculatively looking at that property. So we just kinda took what we got from their original application, like what the issues were, and addressed the issues that the city saw with what they were proposing, reworked everything, and brought that back on our own to address the issue. Like I said, if we were to do that and bring something back and the applicants didn't like it, could come back and obviously voice opposition to that as well.

We were directed by counsel to come up with an alternative for that particular

application. Okay.

Is there any testimony from anyone, any persons in the council chambers in favor of the request? This is the point in the hearing for anyone in favor of the request to comment. And so then we go back again. Is there any testimony from anyone in person in the council? So I guess I should have looked online with that script.

No. We're at the right place right now with people in the chambers. Chambers.

Okay. Either neutral or against the request. This is a point of

We're we're for people that are for in favor of right now.

Okay. We'll stick there. Thank you.

And then please state your name and address for the record.

My name is Mona Sar. 408 West Columbia Drive, down the street on Columbia Drive. I'm the owner of VIP Motorsports. And I just had a couple questions of, obviously, what's going on. So I was informed when I bought my piece of property, even when I actually moved in 2018, that as long as you buy the piece of property, if it was used for the same like basically if it's automotive and you bought it, can still do automotive as long as I think they said six months or three months.

That's what everybody I mean, obviously, Anthony was here when that had happened. So when I bought my piece of property, I bought literally the next day they closed down. So that's where I'm having an issue is why can't I expand if that was what they stated when all this had happened when they treated it 2017. So I did 30 like, almost $30,000,000 in revenue last year for 2025 at our car lot. We bought the piece of property. We cleaned it up. I spent over $6,070,000 dollars just to clean up frontage of Rad's exhaust. Pretty sure he gets passed by. That place looked like a dump. Old cars, weeds, everything, trailers.

We cleaned all that up ourselves. So that's where I'm having an issue is, you know, they stated that as long as it was automotive, as long as the landlord was advertising it or selling it within three, six months, whatever it was, I bought it within the next day they moved out. So why is it different for us? So that's my biggest issue is why why now after they said that we can and then now we can't. I'm already a million dollars in this place. Like, it's not gonna be easy for me just to say no. We we really wanna expand. I mean, that's something we've been trying to do for the past couple years and finally we got it done and now we're having established by the city. So it's not me. It's everybody.

I mean, everybody on that road is having issues. So just gotta come up here and let you guys

Hi. My name is Harry Mahal. I own 520 East Columbia Drive. We've owned it since 2006. Prior to this plan, the Blue Bridge, whatever the name is for this project. I can tell you we've been there twenty years now. Nothing has changed beside the wine being bought up, stressed out there, still sitting empty. It's a field plot. We are proposing to add in vehicle sales where it promotes general revenue versus it it brings a to

ir

then, get And sense a to going get

other areas that are predominant that should be with urban mixed use.

And Because downtown. Don't I mean whether twenty years fifty years from now will still not be a pedestrian walkway there. If you count 20,000 vehicles that come down there every day, try 1%. You don't have any 1% amount of people that walk that street today or or or see any any revitalization going on beside the Wine Village and swampy's coming in. There has been no brand new construction since then on Columbia Drive.

And I own multiple parcels on that street. And what I would say, hopefully, commission would be in favor of is allowing us to do what we've already been doing there. Allowing automotive, vehicle sales, uses along those lines where car washes, gas stations are, and automotive run. There isn't much of an influx of other things going on there. But that's what I would have to say. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Is there anyone else in favor that would like to speak? So then

Hi. Caleb Aldinger, owner of Allied Automotive, 834 West Klamath Avenue. For the first thing I want to start with is, yeah, I'm in favor of this change. We've had a business down there for fifteen years and just like everybody said, nothing's happened. And the worst thing is you guys are making decisions on people's livelihoods and the hope that that area is going to change. The problem is if it doesn't change and these guys leave, that place is going turn into more of a ghost town and it's going to get worse. And who's going to buy up those properties? There's no guarantee good businesses are going go on

those

properties. So I think that it would be in the best interest of the city to keep that revenue within Kennewick and not have them leave. Also it will allow them to expand to make the place even better, to make it look better which is again going to help with the revitalization of the downtown. I also have a proposal that I'm going to bring up which is as a business owner affected by the UMU, I'm requesting to modify the current UMU amendment to include vehicle repair and service, body and fender shops as permitted or use as authorized conditional use permit in the UMU zone. We are ready to expand as well in the automotive space.

In the UMU code, it says we are allowed automotive oriented use I believe which allows for lube shops, tire shops and all other types of repair, light repair but excludes us. So all I'm asking is to either to amend the oriented use to allow full repair or to add into the UMU zoning for the vehicle repair and service. Now we are ready to build, we have the funds, we have the land and I think we would be the first business in the downtown that would from scratch a brand new property. So if we can amend this, we can start and hopefully that could be a catalyst for other businesses to start seeing that there's movement happening down in the downtown. So I don't know if with quarter twenty.

And second then do. And going

then

next we'll to keep hoping for another question. Decade that things will start happening, I

I think

I think would be a disservice to the businessmen out here and to the community and the revenue that we all try to bring to the city of Kennewick. So I hope you'll take it under consideration and I thank you for your time.

Thank you. Having things put together quickly, I was thrown up here quickly too. So I'm with you on that. You did a good job. Is there any testimony from anyone in the council chambers either neutral or against the request?

This is the point in the hearing for anyone either neutral or against the request to comment. Is there anyone online?

You have someone here in the chain. Neutral. Okay. Thank you.

Good evening. Good evening.

My name is Ken Williamson. I have some properties on Columbia Drive in the car zoning and UMU zoning. We own one of the oldest businesses in the city of Kennewick. We've been there for sixty seven years. We're an automobile dealer.

My business is not affected by what board of the planning department, community meetings over the years. The only thing I'm a little confused on tonight is one thing that we were promised by the City Of Kennewick, the city council voted on, is if you have an existing automobile business and you go to sell that later, you do have the right to sell it to continue to be an automobile business. If it's in a nonconforming use for it in the future, you could lease your property. A lot of those buildings, it's pretty obvious. You take a bulldozer and tear it down.

It's an automobile business. There's nothing else you can do with it. So we were given the assurances by the city council that you're grandfathered in, no one's being thrown under the bus, that there was no time limit of if you have an existing business, you have the ability to sell your business, lease your business, pass your business down in the family or whatever as an automobile orientated business. I'm just a little bit familiar with Mr. Nasser's property, and he has a very nice facility.

I don't if you drove by and looked at it. Has, to use his numbers, he has an automobile business created $30,000,000 worth of tax revenue for the City Of Kennewick. The City Of Kennewick has a lot of revenue shortages. To me, that would seem like a pretty positive thing for the City Of Kennewick. He bought probably one of the most unsightly businesses in the whole city of Kennewick, just Columbia Drive. And he's cleaned up the outside. He's asphalted it. He's put up lighting. It's a very nice looking facility. Like I say, he got rid of probably one of the biggest eyesores within the Bridge To Bridge area.

I know before it was a repair shop and it was an automobile dealership. They had a dealer's license there too. And I think he's having a hard time expanding his business. And I know there's a 20 or 25% expansion, but it's a separate piece of property. And the city council made commitment to the property owners in 2016, 2017 that were grandfathered in.

And you will not lose your ability to have a car orientated business. It taking a business that was a restaurant and turning it into a car dealership or repair shop or something like that. So that's my concern. Just sitting here tonight, I just kind of came to listen. As I said, I don't have a dog in the fight.

Was on bridge to bridge committee. I was on the committees with Tom Beckwith. I've been as involved as staff has probably and been to every meeting. So that is one of the that was promised to the property owners and it just seems like that's maybe getting diluted or lost somewhere down the line. There's recordings of the meetings and that was a commitment and voted on by the city council in 2016, 2017, somewhere in that range. That's just what I wanted to add to the record for tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So is there anyone online?

We have two individuals that have signed in, but they did register and as viewers only. Okay. I can ask them.

Do you want me to repeat? Just go ahead and go through

the script then about online? If you're if you're finished with public testimony in the council chambers then you would go to the next item on your script And I can ask them if they wish to speak once you've done that.

Yes. I'd like you to ask that because we're it doesn't show in my script that I gotta say we're done with in here in the council. Is that what you want me to do is end?

Actually, yeah. What you would have done is is gone through all those and make sure that there's no one else that wanted to speak in favor. And then once you went through that, then you would ask if there is anyone else.

Is there any testimony from anyone registered online in favor of the request? This is the point of the hearing for anyone in favor of the request to comment. Please raise your virtual hand and the clerk will announce your name and allow you to unmute your microphone. Is there any testimony from anyone registered online in either neutral or against the request. This is the point of the hearing for anyone either neutral or against the request to comment.

No one has raised their hand.

It repeated the same thing. Is there any testimony from anyone registered online or either neutral or against hearing for anyone either neutral or against the request to comment. Please raise your virtual hand and the clerk will announce your name and allow you to unmute your microphone. Seeing none. Does the staff have any final comments?

Yes, Vice Chair. I can speak a little bit to the non conforming use part that was brought up by a couple of the applicants. So obviously, we're not dealing with a site specific amendment tonight. This is an area wide within the entire UMU zone down along Columbia Drive. Mr.

Nasser does have his existing business on-site that I think currently is on two lots that he has been actively been running his legal nonconforming car lot on there right now. He did buy the two parcels that are to the north of him that were part of RAD Towing, where they were running the towing business, the exhaust business. I think maybe possibly even did some automotive repair there possibly. I know it has been brought up in regards to car sales took place on that site. But when I looked into it, I saw no record that there was any at least approved car sales that were taking place on that particular site.

There was no established legal car sales taking place. So at that point, there wasn't an established auto vehicle sales business there, at least in staff's opinion. When Mr. Nassar purchased the property, I'm sure that he was told that if you did sell your property sell it or want to lease it or promote it as a la carte lot, yes, you would have the right to do that. And you do have some protections in that regard, up to one hundred and eighty days to keep it if you have a legal nonconforming.

But it's also been staff has been directed by our attorneys that if you're let's say you decide you want to just sell your business, no longer have an automotive dealership there, if you're promoting it in that way as an automotive dealership and vehicle sales place, then if and when at some point in time, let's say it's a year or whatever, even though you're beyond those one hundred and eighty days, you still have a vested right to be an auto dealer. That's how you've been promoted. You're protected in that regard. So there are those legal nonconforming rights that they do have. We're not talking I mean, Mr.

Nassar is in we're not looking to take away any of his legal nonconforming rights that he has. That's not what we're talking about. We're only talking about establishing new businesses within the UMU zone. And that's why he wasn't isn't allowed to expand on to the two properties to the north of him because there was never an established business there. At least that's what staff has has found. So, I don't know if Anthony if you had anything else you wanted to add in that regard.

Yes, I would I would just clarify

on

we'll

sense what's the

instigated this next amendment, proposed amendment. That was not a site that was used for car sales. And so expansion is limited per the code up to 25% of the area, not to the extent in which they've expanded or desire to expand. And so that's where I guess the where the crux of the matter is, is that their business has grown, they want to expand, they're limited in how they expand or in what they're able to expand legally as a legal nonconforming use, which is 25%. And now they're proposing that the use just be allowed outright in the zone.

So the legal non conforming provisions, the opportunity to continue to operate a use that was allowed at the time that we're do going And we're

able to

We're

that.

To this amendment allow him to to do do that? It would. The amendment to would allow them to expand there and beyond obviously beyond the 25%. They'd be able to expand and it would just be allowed out right. So all the grandfathering and everything of the uses all that would go away for car dealerships. They would just be allowed.

Yeah, can I have a question expanding on that? Do we know the percentage of residential that we have in that particular area that will change? Like an estimate on current use?

Oh, it's the amount of existing residential currently or land zoned UMU that is currently being used as residential. I don't have that number off the top of my head, no. It's something we could find out if we needed to.

I'm not sure when I looked over that plan for the bridge To bridge, did it give a recommendation of like what the goals were to like a certain amount to reach for residential? Obviously, with mixed use, you do want to have some commercial, but as well some residential that obviously right by March, we see that two, three storey buildings coming in, Kind of reminds me of residential, think about like Clearwater, if you guys know where Excalibur dealership is, I remember the front part of that main road, nobody is going to walk with their kids down that street. We see Excalibur has expanded over the years and then right behind it, so my parents live is all residential, right? So that's where I try to kind of put it in the vision is like what could that look like in the future, and that's what I kind of put in my head for that use of it. If we put it off for mixed use, is it just blocking out that front area of the streets there for that commercial and is that why it's been denied to expand them or?

Yeah, I would the UMU zone is to have that type of street frontage, kind of like what you see downtown where it's they're close everything the businesses are closer to the street, little bit more commercial friendly. You're not having a parking lot in between you've got sidewalk sales lot or other big parking lots and then the business and then the residential and that. So it's trying to move everything face forward towards the street.

Any more questions? Kind of have a quick

you got one? I have

a comment. It's it's something I can't be quiet on just because of things I've seen Red Towing do in the past. So, this is not the first time. Maybe in Kennewick where they're like, yes, you can buy this and oh yes, we sold cars on this property and his grandfather didn't and blah, blah, blah. But they don't always do they don't do things legally.

So maybe that's how it was pitched to you, but the authority they didn't have what's the term operating authority, I guess, to sell cars on that property. And understand this too. I mean, it's not in compliance with point zero three point zero four zero or the bridge to bridge or even with the comprehensive plan. But then again, we don't really even know what's going to happen down there on Columbia Drive. And I've been here since 1996 and it's always been car lots and mean need your tire fixed on a Saturday, Les Schwab's super busy, you're gonna find a place on Columbia Drive to fix your tire or get them mounted.

It's a tough one. I think it's a tough one. But there's two properties in this one, correct? There's 408 West and then there

next

the comes to increase? There is no site specific. It's just for the Zara.

Yes, it's

not site specific.

I see what you're saying. Okay. That's all I have to say. I mean, I'm

ir

facility burns down tomorrow, could they rebuild?

They could.

Point.

I

point.

Going to

We're We're do that. Do there is a 25% limitation. Yes. Okay.

Alright. No more questions? No more discussion? So I'll entertain a motion. Just for helping us out here, our little cheat sheet of motions kinda gets hard to even find it. If we're in favor of it, I couldn't figure out what page it's on that they would look at. But if we're not in favor of it, I'm not sure how to word that either because

first what you need to do is to close the public testimony portion of the public hearing.

I guess

I have one final comment. I think for me that's kind of the area I work in every day. And so I don't say I live there, but I would probably say it's been twelve hours of my day in downtown. And so I hate seeing businesses kind of leave the downtown quarter, right. So obviously from a taxpayer standpoint, we want that tax revenue. Mr. Nasar obviously seems to be building a good business. And so one of the comments and I didn't thank everybody for coming up for the comments. But one that stuck out with me is like, we don't want them to leave across the river to another city looking for tax dollars, right. And so you've cleaned up that area, obviously following the plans that we want the city to grow in.

And in the years that I've seen it, it seems like as Commissioner Berger said, you need your tires fixed on a Saturday. We kind of know that's the downtown, that area at least is you're getting those tires fixed, right? And so by limiting these businesses to grow as a small time business, I think we need to give them an opportunity. That's my standpoint. I don't run a tire business, but I'm in the downtown core. I look at my business and if I was limited to expand, I'd probably looking somewhere else to expand it. So that's my personal take on it. So I do want to thank everybody for coming out.

I'll just piggyback off of think that looking over the bridge to bridge River Rail and nothing's really being done, I think it just doesn't make sense on why we're limiting these people on growing and expanding if nothing's being done on the other side. So I think I'm kind of kneeling with Perez in favoring just because if nothing's being done, we're just waiting on these people to kind of sell things and get rid of things. We can't keep waiting if people are wanting to grow. Think that we should be able to them to grow. And so I'm picking back off with Perez.

Since you piggyback, maybe I could again piggyback. I think back in the 2008, 2009 area with the beautification project, things were torn down. And I get it, it takes time to rebuild. And I understand that we have this comprehensive plan, but things were torn down and question of is

Sachs.

I

create a problem in the future for the comprehensive plan, from but without knowing, I don't see a problem with it, honestly.

Building on that, that's where my question with, ordinances was. Because it seems that everybody that's sitting here wants the best for that area. We all have the best interest for City Of Kennewick, but we wanted also to have grow and have it in an organized manner. So if it's gonna develop in or keep on developing the way that it is, perhaps keeping the the value of the land by making sure that those businesses downtown are creating a safe environment for the community and helping other businesses that will benefit from having them, those these anchors on that section will be great. That's my final comment.

Skipped that, and I apologize. So is there any more comments? The public testimony portion of the public hearing for DCA 20250007 is closed. It's a 7.

It's 0006.

Okay. 0006 is closed. So I would entertain a motion. So is So this is where I need to ask the staff where we find this in our cheat sheet.

The

to suggested deny is within your staff report.

Right, on page three?

Yes, correct.

Do I have a motion?

Based on the above analysis staff recommend that the Planning Commission move forward with the recommendation of denial to the City Council for the following motion.

You would actually state the motion portion below that. Sorry.

So this one here. I move that the Planning Commission concur with the findings and conclusions in the staff report DCA 2020 five-six and recommend denial of the amendment KMC section 18.12.10 b dot one.

Is there a second? So I would entertain a different motion.

Commissioner?

Yes.

I move that the Planning Commission concur with the findings in conclusion of the staff report. DCA twenty million two hundred fifty thousand and six and recommend approval of the amendment of the KMC section 18.12.10(one).

So, if I may interject. So, right now.

Please do. We didn't get a second.

Yeah. Commissioner Morales, you you made a motion for denial and there was no second.

Correct.

Correct?

Correct.

Okay. So then, Commissioner Perez, you've made a motion for approval, but the findings and conclusions and everything that are in the staff report are for denial.

Oh, okay. So then

Now with that being said, I have some alternative for you. You can take a look at them and see what you think in regards to if you want to recommend approval of the proposal to counsel. Okay. So, we'll get those to you. So, as of right now, the motion there's a motion and I guess it would at this point, we're ready for a second to approve. So, the other one did not pass. The

original motion dies with the lack of a second. Correct. Think.

So we're with the second motion now, but we've worded it improperly.

Yeah. So I don't. So I would deny, correct?

Oh, yes.

Oh, where is it? Okay. I apologize. I read it wrong. I was like, think I just got to fill in the blanks.

I move that Planning Commission concur with the findings or do not concur with the findings and conclusions in the staff report, DCA 20 '20 five-six and recommend denial of approval of the amendment to the KMC section eighteen twelve ten b one. Okay. Oh, so I read the wrong one again. Third time's a charm.

So we'd like to correct that motion.

I move that the Planning Commission concur with the amended findings and conclusions proposed by the Planning Commission for staff report DCA twenty twenty five zero zero zero six and recommend approval of the amendment to KMC section 18.12.10b. One.

I second.

So it has been moved by Commissioner Morales and seconded by Commissioner Perez to the motion to move that the Planning Commission concur with the amended findings and conclusions proposed by the Planning Commission for Staff Report DCA twenty twenty five-six and recommend approval of Board the Board of Board Directors of

approval or if we were to vote, what would be the next step? Because obviously there are some questions in regards to obviously my concern obviously is we want these businesses that are thriving or that want to expand. I guess what would be the implications or because I look back as well because we're looking at comp plan update, we do want to have development that the city wants to kind of roll out. Is there what would be like implications of this

that do And the the the

And

the statement for the UMU zone to make sure that that's in the alignment. We'll have to revisit landscaping, I think, because there are some specific standards relative to the UMU zone from a streetscape perspective. There are specific standards for car dealerships. We need to make sure that those are one, do we want to use whichever is most restrictive which is do.

To

And

to

get

a right to to that. We're going be the council adopts the proposed change. And we would do that during our review. Potentially sooner if necessary.

So as I read this that mister Donovan gave us, the way I'm understanding it is you're gonna help these people expand their businesses with to we're able to

so,

going

what the change will do it will allow make sure car sales outright and so they could expand which I think they've already expanded but they could expand Any other car dealership in the area could expand. Any other car dealership could move into the area and start a new car dealership on a property that has never been a car dealership. Hubby's could close down, somebody could turn that into a car dealership. So that's the implications of this proposed change. Okay, thank you. Is

there any discussion? May we have a roll call vote?

Commissioner Barker?

Yes.

Commissioner Gregory? Yes. Commissioner Morales? Yes. Commissioner Perez?

Yes.

Commissioner Rahimlou? Yes. That passed four to one. Excuse me. Seven. Sorry. Okay. 50. Would be total. 50. 50. Okay. Yes.

660. It's just as bad. My pages got stuck together, so that's why I read it double. I apologize. This is all new for us. So it passed. So I declare the public hearing for development development code amendment DCA twenty twenty five dash zero zero zero seven open. May we have a staff report, please?

Okay. Bear with me, commissioners. I'm gonna get my report my PowerPoint up here. Now I kept I just get kicked out. Well, I hit the wrong button.

I think I'm

Okay.

We all introduced now. We're ready to go. Yes. You've just been waiting for me. I'm I take it. So okay. I'm ready now if you guys are ready. Sorry about that. So you may remember this, we I think met our last planning commission meeting. We did a quick new business, brought up unit lot subdivisions.

So this is a proposal. The applicant is the city of Kennewick. We're proposing to basically establish a new section and some new definitions for unit lot subdivisions in seventeen oh four-twenty definitions and then a new chapter 17.14 unit lot subdivisions. And this is a result of Senate Bill 5,559 that requires that the city adopt development regulations for unit lot subdivisions by the time we're done doing our comprehensive plan amendments. So we're kind of faster than what bill had proposed as far as years wise, but we're wanting to get this done so it's possibly another alternative for property owners to subdivide the property within the city of Kennewick.

So this slide just shows, and you probably saw it in your staff report, the proposed definitions for parent lot, unit lots, and unit lot subdivisions. And then it talks about some of the bill, it talks about clear and objective design development standards. And this is what that definition for that is also we're proposing to. And all of these definitions were established by the state RCW, not making any amendments to those particular definitions that were proposed by the legislature. This is examples of what a unit lot subdivision is.

Case in point, you have the original single family residential structure on-site and then developing the one instances where you're developing a new residence on-site. That can be similar to like what a condominium is, where there's going to be common area possibly between the residence and the new structure, or they could be on its own lots like you see on the four lot subdivision there. So there's alternatives than how that land will be owned, size of the lots, housing type, similar to like the middle housing product types that we saw that people can develop their property with now. The staff has determined that the proposed development code amendment is not in conflict with the comprehensive plan and therefore recommends the Planning Commission concur with the findings and conclusions contained in staff report DCA twenty twenty five dash zero zero zero seven and recommends approval of the proposed amendment to city council. And if there's any questions of staff, I'd be more than happy to answer them for you.

So I have one question, kind of like on the en route tonight. What if our legislation changes? Because we're to

then going able

I guess And the simple answer would be if the city chose to make amendments to no longer have unit lot subdivisions as an alternative or middle housing or anything like that, whether we are directed by council, we could amend our code or it could remain as adopted now.

Don't know

if Anthony

So there could be some hope for different areas that we really don't want this of stuff in the future.

It's really dependent on what that legislation would What the laws would be. If it outlawed it, we'd amend our code. If it was just permissible, it would be if counsel we're make sure sure

to This for all zoning, like residential zoning throughout?

Yes.

I your question.

Have a question that I asked it before and obviously maybe this isn't the right time because I know this is something a little different, but it does involve this. What about the infrastructure? Because I live off of 7th and they have built so much West Of 395 on 7th that I can't even rinse the soap off of my truck. I mean, I don't have enough water pressure that my pressure washer doesn't get enough water pressure to the pump. What's in the future to I mean is it something I should call the City of Kennewick and say hey could you guys come and check my water pressure?

Because it's horrible. Horrible. So is it something like infrastructure with these additional units? What is the plan going forward?

So when projects like that come in, they're evaluated by all of the departments, including public works and our fire department, which are looking at available water, like water availability from a pressure standpoint, fire flow standpoint, if fire sprinklers are required and things like that. And then from a water availability I can't speak specifically to like your water pressure in your home, but I would assume that our public works department is looking at that. That's the infrastructure that's required for that is on the developer to get of

going to think, able And

of the growth management act that those services are available and able to serve growth. And if they're not, and the development is the project proposal is to be denied until the time that that infrastructure is available. So I would say for your particular instance, I would call our public works department and ask them just explain the situation and see what they have to say. They may send somebody out or maybe indication that there's something wrong with the system that they were unaware of.

I appreciate the information, Anthony. I'm not making this up. You could literally on your way home swing by my house, turn on this pic.

It's

bad. I just didn't know where to go. I keep hearing this and I keep seeing the more stuff being built. There's a car wash right on the corner, 7395. I'm like, oh, great.

Great.

How much water? Yes, that's all I have to say.

Is that when they're doing a review because obviously we went through that our last meeting with a lot of neighbors that were saying, it's public works taking a look at this with When that and when it arrives at the point where public works says there is a need to upgrade or things need to be done, is that put on the developer to help with that part, not just from bringing question.

With next next takes on that burden with the use of I mean, that's why the rates are you're charged a rate for water consumption and all of that. And those rates go to making sure that you're able to keep that up. If you're extending services or if services are inadequate, it's possible. Definitely, if you're extending, that typically falls on the developer. If services in the area are inadequate, typically the developer will pay a proportionate share and then they have the ability to enter into a late comer agreement to collect future connection fees from others who may connect to the system that the developer extends.

So there are there's a variety of different ways that that's of ir

doing.

Then timeline per se, but the city does have a a comprehensive water plan and a sewer plan that's updated on a regular interval to ensure that there's capacity to serve new development. And they project out what development is going to look like into the future to ensure that there's adequate water availability and that there's adequate sewer capacity to serve additional growth.

They do that with time, right? Not to see what Pasco is going through with their treatment plan, but

they're Correct.

Know everybody a big bill.

Any more discussion? So the city is the applicant, so we will have no applicant testimony. Is there any testimony from anyone in the council chambers in favor of the request? This is the point of the hearing for anyone in favor of the request to comment.

John Lawhead, 2319 West 29th Avenue. I'm here to speak in favor of this unit lot subdivision. This has been created to address the affordable housing issue called middle housing in the state. And it's mandated by the state so it's coming. We can't fight it. It's not going to be applicable to all subdivisions in the city because some of our plants already have requirement on it that you can only have one house per lot. So it's not really citywide. But there's gonna be a lot of it. I hope. My business partner and I, we have two houses ready to go.

We've been trying to do a unit lot subdivision under condominium type plan which has not worked. We're a year into this. At this point, we thought we should have sold our first unit and have been building our third unit. In answer to your question, two of those units are already existing. We're just adding the third one on the end. So, question, really, I just have a question is, when can we get this done and when can we start? You know, the condominium plan isn't working. We're getting different opinions from our attorney, the planning department, our surveyor, our builder, and we're just kind of throwing up our arms at this point. That's all I got. Questions?

What what's what what application are you doing? The condo? You said you were doing what process wasn't working for you?

The the City Of Kennewick condominium requirement. It says that there are elements required on a condominium plat and we were attempting to do a condominium based on the landlines which is exactly what the unit lot subdivision is. But since Kennewick doesn't have any language to address that, we addressed it as a condominium and that's where we're getting hung up. Planning says and I'm not, you know, creating a fight or anything. Planning says the condominium boundary lines have to be the outside of the building and we're trying to get it where condominium is more like a unit lot subdivision where each of our lots are individual.

There's very limited common area if none which reduce costs makes homeowners associations non existent so you won't have it and we're if our plan comes together soon, we're going to try to have three homes priced under $200.00 that are not fixer uppers. They're ready to move in today.

Yeah, know. It's great to hear obviously with with trying to fight with affordable housing. So, when you hear those numbers are great to hear. So,

Thank you. Thank you.

Sure.

Is anybody else in favor? Okay. Is there any testimony from anyone in person in the council chambers, either neutral or against the request? This is the point of the hearing for anyone either neutral or against the request to comment. Is there anyone any testimony from anyone registered online in favor of the request? This is the point of the hearing for anyone in favor of the request to comment. Please raise your virtual hand and the clerk will announce your name and allow you to unmute your microphone.

Will only turn over one page. Not seeing any. Raise your hands.

Is there any testimony from anyone registered? It did say it again. Does the staff have any final comments?

I will just address the one testimony that we did receive in regards to timing. We're probably looking at this being in front of city council sometime in March, April at the latest. It's just a matter of what their schedule looks like, but we're hoping to get this in front of counsel just like the previous application too as soon as we can.

Thank you. So the public testimony portion of public hearing for DCA twenty twenty five dash zero zero zero seven is closed. I would entertain a motion.

Alrighty. I move that the Planning Commission concur with the findings and conclusions in the staff report DCA at 20,250,007 and recommend approval of the amendments to KMC Section 17.04.020 definitions and establish the new KMC Chapter 17.14 unit lot

subdivisions. I second.

Commissioner Arneson move that the Planning Commission concur with findings and conclusions and staff report DCA twenty twenty five-seven and recommend to the City Council approval of the request. Perez second the motion. Is there any discussion? May we have a roll call vote, please?

Commissioner Arneson?

Yes.

Commissioner Barker?

Yes.

Commissioner Gregory? Yes. Commissioner Morales? Yes. Commissioner Perez?

Yes.

And Commissioner Rahim. Yes.

The motion passed unanimously six oh visitors on the agenda are there any visitors in person that are not on the agenda that wish to speak are there any visitors online that are not on the agenda that wish to speak?

Seeing none.

With old business, are there any city council action updates?

Sorry. I had to think real quick. I think the rezone's on tomorrow.

So with new business, is the comprehensive plan periodic update, climate and land use.

We are ready for that and we have tonight with us our consultants who allowed to introduce themselves but who have been working on this proposed update for us. And they'll be highlighting both our land use of our land use section or element updates as well as our climate element. And so with that I'll turn the time over to I guess I don't know who's gonna lead out, Scott or Bob, but I'll allow them to introduce themselves.

Okay, I guess I'll go first here. Thank you, Anthony. Good evening, Planning Commissioners. Bob Engferm, I'm a partner at Maker's Architecture. Scott Von Juukian is here. He's going to run at least the land use portion of the show as he's been the project manager.

Good evening, Planning Commission's members, members of the public, staff. Thanks for having us here. Again, I'm Scott Von Jukin. Bob and I were both with Makers based out of Seattle and have had a great chance to work with the city of Kennewick staff here on updating your comprehensive plan. So what I'd like to do tonight is we're about halfway through our project process and would like to give you a briefing on where we're at and have a focused discussion on some of the concepts that we have for kind of land use and growth pattern elements of the plan and also talking about how the new required climates and resiliency element is going to be integrated into the plan.

So we've got me and Bob and we also have the team members from Cascadia Consulting. I think we'll let them introduce themselves when we get to their parts since we basically split up our presentation in the two parts here. So I'm not sure how long it will take, but I have some notes for myself to at a few points for discussion. There is a lot of information I am throwing you tonight. I know we might need some time to digest it. That's I think I will try to share my screen here.

Bit we're able a a year.

Going kind of give a deep dive into both of those. We're about halfway through the project schedule, maybe a little bit more than halfway. In early February, so here we the kind of the note on the work that's been done today so far is that Kennewick is required to update its periodic or its excuse me its comprehensive plan every ten years or so. You know between the old plan and the current and the new plan updates a lot change over time. Things change with the economy, technology, community preferences, their staff turnover, city leadership turnover.

The state knows that and that's why Kennewick in other cities and counties are required to update every ten years to kind of recalibrate and check-in on how can it be doing in terms of its goals and seeing how it might want to adjust in the future. And so a big part of doing that is to make sure we get all the latest information and do a lot of community feedback and a lot of data analysis. And so you can see on the screen here a few of those items that we have been done to date. We've got some of these are available on the project websites. But we've audited the current plan.

We were also asked by staff to take a quick look at the zoning code. So Bob and I were chatting on the side here kind of interested in the discussion earlier on the UMU zone and unit loss subdivisions. Definitely that's been part of our planning discussions on the comp plan as well so far. And so you'll also hear next month from a big focus on the housing elements and a lot of the analysis that's gone to that. So the comprehensive plan currently is made up of six elements or chapters.

The land use elements typically consider the heart of the plan because everything is tied to how the city develops and how it grows on the ground. You can see a little snippet of what the plan currently looks like on the right side there. A couple of key findings from our audit of the plan, just kind of checking the health of the plan and how it works. We overall found it contained, pretty helpful and useful goals and policies with a lot of specifics. But the overall organization of the elements, at least some things to be desired, it hard to see everything holistically and how the different goals and policies compare to each other.

The element's also very lengthy, about 70 pages with quite a bit of background information and data that most cities would choose to locate in an appendix. And there's also some policy updates that are going to be needed under recent state legislation. We will also suggest a few updates to the future land use map and designations which are the tools that really help shape zoning and the city's kind of ten, fifteen, twenty year growth outlook. So I mentioned organization. Basic item that we're going to suggest is breaking up each elements into a volume one and a volume two.

So a volume one would look like for the land use element at least would look like having an introduction, that future land use map, which is again that key marquee policy tool, then your goals and policies. And then volume two appendix would have all of the additional maps, data, and other cross references, other plans and documents that are needed to make the plan work. And then hopefully make it more user friendly. We've talked with staff about it quite a bit and we seem to be proceeding with that. But just wanted to give you kind of awareness of what you're used to reading in the plan now might change how things move around.

Certainly we'll be making notes of how pieces move or relocated. A lot here on state law updates. I won't get into it because the but suffice to say the Washington State Legislature has been very busy in the last few years. So, there's a lot to do. The city has been proactive on updating its code regarding some residential zoning, allowing accessory dwelling units, middle housing, co living.

You heard tonight about unit lot subdivisions, lot splits, or another tool, impact fees, religious organizations is a there's a special note in state law that they have to be offered a density bonus for providing affordable housing. I'm not sure it's been I don't think that's been used too much across the state but it's notable given the amount of land owned by churches in the city. Childcare has to be allowed a lot of places. Your minimum parking standards have to be reforms and design standards have to be updated for being clear and objective and the list goes on. But you can see there's a lot there.

Certainly city staff are gonna be busy working on this through this year and probably in the coming years to implement these new regulations. And there will be need to be a link in the comprehensive plan and the land use elements. Make sure there's kind of alignment how the city wants to approach some of these issues. Some of these issues the city has discretion in other places the law is pretty strict. We'll get into that soon.

I want to I mentioned how long the current land use element is. You've got a total of 29 goals. The main point is here, there's a lot of good content here and important contents, but we think it could be a little bit more manageable. This is just a really first stab list of how you might organize 29 goals into eight and kind of group similar ideas together and then have more emphasis on policies which will have more kind of the meats and the clear details and ideas kind of nested under each of these. It will also, if policies move around or if they're changed, we would make sure to have that noted as that will be noted in the draft.

You and the council and the public can track how things are moving around in case there's a policy that's important to someone. So that was a lot to start with. Any questions so far on the comp plan overall or kind of our organizational thoughts? Okay. I'll go on then.

So next, we'll talk about the future land use map and the categories that are shown on the map. This is a version of what it looks like today. And as I'm sure you're all familiar with, you can see that different colors on the map correspond to different various intended densities for residential use and separately commercial, industrial, mixed and open space and public facilities. The map is kind of a usually in most cities it's kind of a reflection of what's on the ground today. What's been there for a long time.

In other areas such as Southbridge where you have a lot of vacant land. The map could have a lot of influence on what goes in there as opposed to areas that have been established. It's an important tool. And what goes along with this is each of those categories have a set of implementing zones that can be used to implement those kind of taking a big picture concept and then getting into applying specific regulations and controlling or advising what different properties can do. So you can see on the right side of the column we just have the zone acronyms here.

Generally you can see the distribution of residential, commercial and a variety of other zones. So this is a key table in the plan and we will suggest updating it. And talk a little bit more about that. I think I'll pass it over to Bob to kind of describe how we've done it elsewhere and what other cities are doing.

Okay. Thanks, Scott. So a couple of things, adding a purpose statement for each designation would be one thing. Then adding appropriate locations and desired characteristics for the designations. Excuse me, I'm trying to find my notes here.

Overall, what I do want to say is that one shortfall of the current approach is that really some more information would be useful to connect the comprehensive plan with the implementing zoning to really function as useful document. And so that's what we're trying to do with these by adding the purpose statement, appropriate locations, and desired characteristics of the zones. Having more focus on the intended housing types and forms, but at the same time avoiding some of the zoning code like regulations, because this is at the policy level. Sometimes And when you get into strict zoning code language, you sort of handcuff the flexibility of your zoning. So below is an example and a typical approach we use for this where there you see an example would be the medium to high density residential, and you see that there's a purpose statement where it talks about provides medium to high density residential characterized by blah blah blah.

And then we've got expected uses in form. So it doesn't talk about units per acre. It talks about housing forms and lower mid rise apartments. So it talks about the type of housing, the form, rather than seven stories or 36.5 units per acre. And then of course you've got the implementing zones.

So go to the next slide. So here's some early thoughts of how we would change it. So you can see there taken out the units per acre as such an obvious thing in the land use categories, as again, it's more of a zoning thing. I would suggest taking that out. The second big suggestion you see on here is we suggest you consider combining the medium and the high density residential into one designation, because the densities aren't all that different, and this would allow you a little bit more flexibility.

You'd still have the same implementing zones, and you could still integrate some of the expectations for the implementing zones there that help have more predictability. And we call this medium to high density residential zone. So this is kind of a common thing that Walla Walla did a lot of this when they combined designations to simplify things a little bit. And we've done a similar one in Port Angeles when we did their update. Think that's it on that one.

Go to the next slide. So then looking at the implementing zoning and based on our analysis of your different zones, we would recommend taking out the RMH zone, which is essentially single family subdivisions with manufactured homes, and revert those back to the RL. Because they're basically an RL zone. They just happen to have mobile homes on lots. They're not a mobile park.

They're just mobile homes in an RL type subdivision. So that seemed pretty simple to us. And then there's a lot more commercial zones that are functionally needed. You can see them all listed there. And we've been doing some analysis on consolidating them.

And we think that there's some definite opportunities to do that. And, know, for example, just listening to the discussion tonight about the UNU and the car zone, CC zone, Scott and I were doing some of little analysis on the side to look at what the differences really were between some of those zones. But anyways, we'll probably follow-up on some of those details later. And did you want me to take the next slide or two, Scott? I can't remember.

No, can go next, but I just want to also pause if there's any questions there since we got a little bit of a preview of what we're thinking?

I think we have questions.

Sure.

With the removing of the residential manufactured low density, will that allow for manufactured homes to go across anywhere?

Actually, you have to, I believe by the state law, wherever you allow regular stick frame construction, you can do modular home. You can't like not allow like a modular unit, for instance, on those lots anyways. So it's become almost more irrelevant.

I'll follow-up on that with what Bob said. That RMH zone is an antiquated zone. We are required to allow manufactured homes in all of our residential zones where single family are allowed. And so this was a zone that was used at a time where you could discriminate against manufactured homes. You can no longer do that. So currently they're being built in all the zones where single family are allowed. This just hasn't been cleaned up out of our code. So it's not really being treated any different. It's being treated exactly the same as our RL zone. And so there's not a need to have two RL zones, we only need one. So

I have a question also. So when it comes to these type of zones, the gentleman that was before us is like you can't build them everywhere anyway. And everything that we've been through, it seems like you can do middle housing or all these different in any zone that's residential.

That's correct. You can. But where it is they may not be feasible on every lot, but it's allowed in every zone.

That's what

we thought.

Thank you.

Okay. If if there's nothing else, I'll move

on. Questions?

Kind of touching on some of those questions. Just as you all live there, So you're aware that's just some background information for some of our further analysis and concepts moving ahead here. Kind of what gets mostly built out. Mean, the city's obviously it's been around for a long time. Property owners have developed their land.

And there's not a lot of vacant land left within city limits. You have had your recent middle housing ordinance, which will might have some incremental changes. You have an existing subdivision that's been around for a while, you probably won't see much happening there where you might see middle housing as more in probably some of the outlying parts of town or maybe in some of the central older parts of town where you've got some older properties that are ready to be renovated or redeveloped. Notably for multi family housing or mostly consisting of apartments or condominium buildings. There is going to be a large need for that in Kennewick over the next twenty years.

Believe the planning Commission and staff were briefed on this last fall as a result of the client capacity analysis, which looked at housing needs by income, which correlates to housing form and type. And so there's a gap in the availability of land to build apartment buildings essentially. And so, at the next Planning Commission briefing, our team members from Burke Consulting plan to get into that issue in more detail. But obviously, discussion is closely tied to the land use element here, kind of the regulatory concepts as well. Another aspect of this too that we'll hear about is that's allowing more multifamily housing kind of relates to climate goals by allowing more people to live closer to work, commute less, and have newer buildings also are more energy efficient as well.

That's kind of some of the various considerations to think about. So ways to maybe think about increasing multifamily housing supply is as part of the code audit we did a few months ago are the makers team here found a few ideas to do some strategic zoning adjustments such as eliminating or allowing a little more more flexibility on the zoning standards for how many units you can build on one acre. Maybe expanding your residential high density zoning to more parts of the city. Basically just expanding where the market can build multifamily housing and adjusting open space standards. Another kind of on the financial side of things instead of zoning would be to establish a multifamily housing tax exemption program which is authorized by state law.

And basically, it allows property owners that set aside some percentage of their new units for lower income to moderate income households. They get a property tax break for a certain number of years. And that's been used in a variety of Washington state cities. I don't think it's been brought to the Tri Cities yet. And looking at other options, public agencies often own surplus land for good reason for capital facilities, for public safety buildings and things like that.

There are occasions where public agencies will have surplus property that they don't need or they don't think they'll need it for the next twenty years. And so selling off property or partnering with an affordable housing developer to use that could be a benefit because basically it's free land and that can help reduce the cost of development. We also heard in our public feedback a lot of interest in accessory dwelling units or backyard cottages or basement apartments so people can add incrementally. They can add to the housing supply on property they already own and at a lower cost than a larger development. And so there's a number of tools available for Kennewick to encourage that such as permit ready plans that help reduce the cost of designing fee waivers or reductions for lease types of units or even starting something like a revolving loan fund.

So that can help property owners finance these projects that are perhaps a lower interest rate than they can get through a bank. So plenty more to come on that. But there's a basically there's a variety of zoning policy and kind of infrastructure related tools that we can use to encourage multi family housing supply. Another element we could be looking at your commercial zones. There are some aging or you know where you have strip malls or vacant buildings or particularly prime candidates for where you can maybe look at mixed use developments where you have some commercial and residential mixed in to make more efficient use of the land.

Naturally that sometimes that does happen anyway as older properties we develop and there's typically depending on the business model there is sometimes more real estate value in the residential portion. So you might see that happen naturally over time as property values continue to change in Kennewick. So we don't have anything we'll have a few slides coming up on just kind of some of your commercial corridors with some thoughts on element to consider is not just housing for housing sake but where you put new housing and where you direct it for encouragements and helpful aspect of that is to think about helping people live near where they need to go for their daily needs. An obvious one of those needs is we all need to eat and access to neighborhood groceries and services is often highly desirable and valuable. So you can see we put together a simple map here of where you have existing groceries in Kennewick.

And so this is not going to be the bubbles on the map are not going be used to draw any hard lines, but they just kind of show how we might think about good places to put new housing, especially denser housing where you want people to have closer access to services that maybe they don't have to drive as far to or they leave the car at home if that's an option. But you can see there are some notable gaps, especially in the southern parts of the city. And we do have to consider that there are market trends towards larger consolidated grocery chains. And so it's difficult to encourage or find entrepreneurs that launch small grocery stores. So we want to be realistic about it and not assume that all these gas will be filled easily.

Could think about clustering new opportunities around existing stores at the minimum. And there is a trend as well towards neighborhood grocery stores including a pending piece of state legislation that would require basically all residential zones to allow small grocery stores and other small commercial businesses. So, depending on how that goes this year, Kennewick could adopt that proactively. Another option would be to kind of take it on a more incremental basis and rezone some small areas from residential to commercial and hope for or incentivize grocery stores in those areas. We think this is particularly valuable probably in the Southbridge area which given the plan build outs in future growth there that would probably be attractive to a large grocery operator.

And so there are some possible tools that Kennewick could use to make sure that land is preserved for a larger grocery store to occur there. Just a couple of quick examples of what's a small neighborhood commercials kind of might look like. Another guiding theme that we've been tinkering with I

that's

think sports facilities. But there is a gap good in kind of more local and casual recreation access. And that is partly recognized. You've recently adopted the Kennewick Parks and Rec comprehensive plan just a couple years ago. And that really lays out a lot of this in detail.

But there's not a lot of reference to this need or about parks in general in the existing comprehensive plan. So we think that maybe the land use elements here or your separate capital facilities element could build in a little bit more park supportive policies. And so similarly to grocery access, people are very interested in being active and getting outside. It's nice to have a place to throw a Frisbee or take the dog for a walk or take your kids to a playground. And so thinking about how we add or cluster new housing around parks opportunities, again, to keep people have access to the places that they need to live a full life.

And so this is a walkability map from the existing Kennewick parks plan. And basically the lighter the colors or the gray colors are neighborhoods that are were determined to have very low parks access. And this includes access to the schools which are not always open to the public 20 fourseven. And they the map they also use roadways and highways as the cut off access. So they kind of looked at if you want to walk somewhere what are the transportation to getting there?

And Makers also put together a similar map just looking at park size and access. So we saw notable gaps in access in the Clearwater area kind of in the Northwest part of the city, Southbridge again, and the kind of the more rural Southeast corner of the city as well. So again, this might be kind of an influence on where we think about where new housing should be directed. A bit of a technical aspect is there's large portion of some residential neighborhoods that are still on private septic systems. So they have their own septic fields that are not connected to the city sewer, which is permitted.

But state law generally is nudging incorporated areas to move properties towards connecting the public sewer as much as possible. And the city does do that incrementally. For example, repair a street or repave a street, we'll try to expand the public sewer system as it goes or sometimes larger development proposals might be required to expand sewer to be concurrent and provide the level of sewer capacity that's needed for higher intensity developments. But there is a gap in the current comprehensive plan and how all of that is addressed. The city has its codes and practices, but it would be good to have some policy direction in there to make sure everything is lined up to coordinate land use growth with that infrastructure connection.

So that's the end of that subsection of the presentation. Want to pause there and see if there's any reactions or thoughts on those big picture ideas so far.

Think Thank we're you.

All right. Wrapping up a few map specific areas and zooming into kind of some different neighborhoods and commercial areas of Kennewick. And Bob kind of worked with me on putting some of these together. So feel free to chime in Bob. I just wanted to note a couple of areas of interest.

This is by no means we have nothing definite proposed here and we might be missing some areas of the city's fault but we probably pull out a few areas. First was the Clearwater Corridor which is what your major commercial strips. Although it is heavily commercial with a lot of kind of automobile oriented uses. You do have multiple schools, grocery stores, and fairly high quality transit running through the corridor. So it might be worth kind of a focused look on where there is vacant land or low value land could be redeveloped.

And also looking at the character of the existing street network and is it comfortable for people to walk and bike? Is it attractive to developers? Do they see public investments in the area to help trigger new value in their own properties? So it seemed like we did tour it when we were in town last year as well and just of struck out to us as a possible area to look at with a little bit more special focus as opposed to a citywide framework. So that's a quick view of what that looks like on Google Earth.

Down the Southeast part of the city, this is in kind of proximity to Yolks Fresh Markets and Canyon View Elementary School. This is one of those areas that is has a a kind of a of larger lots or kind of legacy rural lots that are still on septic. But it is close by and there could be more advantage taken of those important assets with the food access in the elementary school. Just kind of struck us as an example of one area to look at. Maybe some focus look at allow a little bit higher density maybe around immediately next to the arterial streets.

But again this is a built out residential neighborhood for the most parts. So if there are any changes that would happen here under this plan or if no changes were happening under the comp plan, you'd see incremental changes. Regardless, might see some middle housing here coming over the future. Down the Southridge area along the especially along the Bob Olson Parkway corridor. We've we've there's a large portion of this area is already entitled or platted with kind of subdivisions and housing growth already planned in certain parcels.

But there's still a large area that doesn't have any firm plans for the property owners yet. Looking at the map, we would also suggest maybe looking at more closely how the commercial zoning and the higher density residential zoning coordinates between the parkway and the freeway. An option maybe would be to put the commercial a little bit you could expand the commercial a little bit for example for encouraging some options for grocery store to relocate and provide some options for other types of businesses to locate. And maybe look at flip flopping the densities that for example the yellow and the orange to encourage more denser housing along the parkway where you're probably going to have future transit access in a way from the environmental concerns of the freeway.

I'm curious is that if you go back that red area there, is that commercial or the Yes. Okay. And is that existing or is that proposed?

Given it's mostly vacant land we're looking at, it would all be basically proposed.

Okay, cool. Just to clarify, it has existing commercial zoning and land use designation, there's just no development proposal yet.

Is it possible to go back to the map earlier before that? I guess I had a question. For example, that one I understand where you have the yokes and I live right near the area and a couple of weeks ago we had some rezoning for that. What would I guess from low to medium high density residential look like in an established neighborhood? Obviously, we have HOAs there, would that kind of the changes on that would be kind of the there's a couple pockets of houses there that are kind of stand out. Those are the ones that you would think about doing that or just in general that area?

Yes, we haven't zoomed into a parcel by parcel analysis yet. I think that's something we'd work with staff on it, because I'm sure they have a little bit more intimate local knowledge of the area too. But yes, we will look at carefully at what's realistic, what's worth doing.

Scott, maybe go to the next slide that shows a So closer there's just as Scott noted, there's some larger parcels there that have some potential to get more units within walking distance. Even though you've got single family around there, you could have town homes. You could have garden apartments close by on some of those properties. So that's just something to think about as you're growing and you have this need to provide more housing in the community. Those would be just some considerations.

You definitely see it obviously because we have the yokes there. I'm just trying to visualize what could that look like, right, when we look at what the other cities have, where they have mixed commercial in the front with we have those three baseball parks there and I know on the weekends and just busy, could some of those lots give an opportunity to put something that would attract since you have all those parking lots of people coming on the weekend, the lots nearby there, can those turn into those bigger lots into like mixed use and so I guess I'm just trying to envision what that could look like.

Yeah, and that might be contingent upon us on the consultant side is I think as we get a little bit more concrete in these ideas, we'll certainly we can bring examples, we can bring some visuals to kind of help the committee understand what the implications might be. Ultimately, it's property owner choice. The city can make all the regulatory changes as it wants, but there are changes here or elsewhere. Property owners would need to kind of review their options and take advantage of the options that they want to.

Correct. Obviously with bringing higher density, there's going to be the purpose of bringing so many more people there that they really want to be there's going to be the need for mixing it up for commercial use and Yes. Mixed

All right, thank you. In a kind of a more mixed area, this is near Tri Tech, kind of the Northwest corner of the city, East of the mall near Lawrence Scott Park. You can see on the map, it's kind of a patchwork of designations today. I believe some of these areas are also on septic. But just given the proximity to the future Vista Field developments, the job access at the mall.

It just struck out to me as something interesting and it might be worth looking at. So if there's anything more coordinated that can happen in this area as far as housing, but also potentially infrastructure improvements and helping people have access to the park and whatnot. So we just want to highlight that as an interesting site kind of Northwest Kennewick. With that, I also want to mention, we're looking at some of these larger neighborhoods that have a lot of history and some complex conditions. And sometimes a useful tool to look at those things in more detail is a sub area plan or a neighborhood plan.

So kind of what's done that before with the bridge to bridge river to rail plan. It has going to is going to be starting to look at that on the public side but looking at kind of the coordination of the civic campus, our city hall, and the schools and some other public facilities are located And I can help maybe over the next five to ten years look at things in a coordinated fashion in a more detailed way than we can at the comprehensive plan level. Another asset that would help too or maybe could be part of that process as well is formally or ally mapping neighborhood names. Not every city names neighborhoods, but some neighborhoods needs. It's kind of a fun exercise to figure out where there's consensus or where people draw boundaries.

And that can help just people build identity with their neighborhoods and a little more of civic pride and ownership as well. Just some food for thoughts. And I'll just quickly wrap up with a couple of other miscellaneous grab bag land use policy ideas that we're noodling on. One would be to prohibit new single family developments in your highest density residential zone, RH and that the purpose of that would be to preserve that land that's already pretty across the city for for workforce and affordable housing that's that's highly needed. And how this would work and and how it's been done in other cities is that if you have an existing single family home in that area, you would still be allowed to remodel or expand it.

So, that's just food for fun on how to try to encourage more efficient land use. Housing focus are kind of the theme of the presentation so far. You know, mixed multi family and mixed use developments in areas we have amenities. And then looking more broadly at available land or vacant land, looking at policies to encourage property owners to do something with vacant land such as financial incentives. We also know industrial growth and job growth is important to Kennewick and the city's already been proactively increasing its utility capacity especially on the south end of the city.

So, however, there's not really a policy in place in the plan right now that encourages that. Maybe just connect that to current practice would be helpful. We got a lot of public feedback interest in making sure that we don't forget about downtown. And some ideas there could be preserving providing public spaces in downtown and other commercial districts to help make sure people feel welcome. And there's interesting things going on and the reason to visit.

Another aspect as well is that the city owns a lot of land through its street network. And so there might be a policy talking about how to use streets and leverage the city streets to create more safer and attractive and interesting environments, especially in your commercial districts and also connecting this to the transportation element which we'll get into more details on the need for safety enhancements and whatnot. So that's a lot today. You all have the slideshow in your packet. We're happy to take other comments now or in writing later. But if there's nothing else, I think we'll turn it over to the climate team.

Well, thanks so much, Scott. My name is Gretchen Muller. I'm a director at Cascadia Consulting Group. And I served as the project manager for our Tri Cities Regional Climate Element, which we'll talk about in just a couple minutes. I'm also joined by Katherine Allison who's here with us from Cascadia who's the project manager for the Kennewick Climate Element.

And I'm also joined by Lucy Harrington who supported the greenhouse gas inventory for the Tri Cities Regional Climate Element. With that, we're gonna go ahead and dive right in here. Just a quick reminder, you've seen this graphic before that where the climate element is part of the comprehensive plan, it's one of the seven elements that'll be captured in the comprehensive plan update. Great, so this slide really captures that the where climate element is now a state requirement as of 2023 and when the legislature amended Washington's Growth Management Act, the GMA through House Bill 11.81. And the resulting GMA requirements, newly tasked cities and counties to integrate both climate resilience and for cities over 6,000 residents, the greenhouse gas emission reduction policies into the comprehensive plan update.

So on the climate resilience sub element side of things, it integrates goals and policies that address climate preparedness, response and recovery. And with the greenhouse gas emissions reduction sub element, the goals and policies focus on reducing emissions and vehicle miles traveled.

Next slide please.

And in 2025, so just last year, the city of Kennewick partnered with four other jurisdictions to develop a Tri Cities regional climate element. And this effort included the cities of Kennewick, Richland, West Richland, Pascoe, and Benton County. And it included robust technical analysis which we'll get into in a few slides here. Not the robustness of the technical analysis but the essence of what was covered there and what we've gleaned from those technical analysis as well as regional to meet the requirements of House Bill eleven eighty one. And this regional effort that we'll speak to in reference was supported by the Benton Franklin Council of Governments.

The jurisdictions met biweekly for over a year to collaborate on the regional element and some of the data and some of the information that we gleaned from that effort that we'll be speaking on behalf of. And just as another quick kind of snapshot into that work, this collaborative effort allowed the participating jurisdictions to share resources, identify strategies to address the regional climate hazards that your region is facing as well as to reduce emissions again on that regional scale. And it's on the VFCogs website if you all would like to take a look at that. And it really is serving as a resource for then each of participating jurisdictions in that Tri Cities effort to adapt the regional plan to fit local context. And with that we can go ahead to the next slide please.

So how are we moving from the regional plan to create Kennewick's climate element? So the Tri Cities regional climate element provided a really solid foundation for us to draw key pieces into and pull from as part of the development of Urals Kennewick climate element. And our goal for the climate element that Katherine will be diving into in just a couple minutes here is really to create actionable policies that reflect Kennewick's needs, priorities, as well as the city's capacity really with that eye of implementability. While also addressing key climate hazards with policies that align with that regional climate element. And so what seeing here is all of these various different pieces.

We're seeing ingredients that really go into the development of climate elements. And Catherine will be speaking to each of these briefly in the upcoming slides here. And just also really thought it was important to highlight that as part of the Tri Cities regional climate elements it also included in addition to that technical analysis included a survey, it included a series of public meetings, staff workshops as well as a public government. And we have lot of to do regional government. Plan development.

With we that we can go ahead to the next slide please. And here's a slide that really pulls out those two sub elements, both the emissions reduction sub element which includes emissions reductions measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as vehicle miles traveled. And on the left side of your screen, the resilience of element includes adaptation measures to improve community resilience to climate impacts. And then really across the board and in alignment with the Growth Management Act, climate element also seeks to support overburdened communities that may be experiencing the worst and first consequences of climate change. Here's a slide that dives a little more deeply into the resilience sub element and those minimum requirements as written in that House Bill eleven eighty one.

So we've got three minimum requirements for the climate resilience sub element And commerce, who's the department that is managing these climate elements, requires that Kennewick develop climate resilience goals and policies that meet these three requirements. So the first one here on the screen, addressing natural hazards created or aggregated by climate change. The second is identifying, protecting and enhancing natural areas to foster identifying, protecting and enhancing community resilience to climate impacts. And to meet the minimum requirements, commerce recommends developing at least one climate resilience goal and supportive policy for each of the climate hazards that you're seeing on the screen and within each of these 11 those are all listed here on the screen as well, the priority sectors. And the next slide is a deeper dive into the greenhouse gas emissions reduction sub element and the minimum requirements as part of that House Bill eleven eighty one as well.

And so you'll see here that the objective of this sub element is to measure, reduce and to eliminate local greenhouse gas emissions and per capita VMT. And the goals and policies really need to work towards a greenhouse gas emission reduction target of net zero by 2050. And the guidance also stipulates that goals and policies address at a minimum greenhouse gas emissions related to transportation, related to buildings and energy as well as the zoning development sectors. Any questions on the requirements or what the climate element captures before I turn it over to Catherine for some of the key findings that she's found through the work that we've been doing so far?

I don't think so.

Okay, we'll keep going then. With that I'll go ahead and turn it over to Katherine. Thanks very much.

Awesome, good evening everyone. Yeah, so as Gretchen mentioned I'm just gonna walk us through all the different pieces that we developed during the Tri Cities regional climate element. Scott, if you can skip to the next slide so we can see all of those pieces. As we worked on the Tri Cities regional plan, we were looking kind of at two levels. So we're looking at the regional impacts of the climate hazards and greenhouse gas emissions regionally, knowing that this is a really interconnected area and experience are often shared throughout different cities.

But we were also working with each of the five partners to identify anything specific to their city or county that we wanted to make sure we are addressing. And so the next few slides we'll kind of talk about both pieces as relevant to what was maybe a regional finding or what was kind of like specific finding. And as we're moving towards the full draft of the kind of a climate we're pulling out all of those pieces that are specific to Kennewick. So if you can go to the next slide here, we'll start at the beginning here with our policy audit. This was done at one of the first steps in the climate element process.

It helps us to understand what goals, policies, plans that are related to climate resilience and greenhouse gas emissions already exist either at the city level, at the county level, at the regional level that we can strengthen and build off of. It also helps us identify where there are some gaps that we can focus new climate element policies on. So this was we're So, we're to to do that. That. Maybe having programs or policies that we could use as models for other jurisdictions in the region.

And so alongside drafting the regional policies for the Tri C's climate element, we drafted specific policies for Kennewick jurisdictions. And so on this slide I just wanted to highlight a few of the findings specific to Kennewick that we're able to lean on and make sure we're addressing in our Kennewick climate element. So some of those trends, so things are already happening in policies in Kennewick are aimed at protecting critical areas, shorelines, endangered species, supported worker training programs, and redeveloping the downtown area. Some gaps that we're looking to fill are around water management, especially during drought and increasing energy efficiency in housing and buildings. Go to the next slide.

Awesome. Gretchen already mentioned some of the community and stakeholder engagement that we did during this process and so I'm just going to highlight a few more findings. There was a lot that we did so I'll try to be brief, but one of the first things we did was conduct a regional survey. And so the findings we conducted are at a or that we found were at regional scale. And people in that survey shared their experiences related to extreme weather events and how they had maybe financial impacts.

They had to change their hobbies or activities or experience physical health impacts. People shared concern for weather impacts including wildfire, wildfire smoke, increased temperatures, and extreme heat, as well as drought and wind events. And they also shared support for different resilience strategies, including increasing shade and tree canopy to keep things cooler, having more natural areas for flood control, as well as more access to

we're

with with with team Kennewick clinic staff, Matt and Anthony, they joined to those biweekly meetings. We talked at least for an hour every other week during the whole process. And those were really important checkpoint where we were discussing findings, getting their feedback and input on different pieces, and really a chance to foster collaboration among the jurisdictions. The next piece was our climate policy advisory team. This is a requirement of the Department of Commerce to have an advisory committee informing and walking alongside climate element development process.

And so the regional climate policy team was a group of about 30 interdisciplinary representatives from across the region. The project team helped identify those members and they were professionals in different fields related to climate, greenhouse gas emissions, etcetera. We had a lot of representatives from different tribal nations, local and state agencies, special districts, community groups, farms. And in Kennewick, we had a representative from the port as well as the irrigation district. And so they were really integral providing feedback throughout the process.

We had two rounds of public meetings at the beginning and towards the end to get some input on at the beginning, similar to the survey, what were people experiencing, what are they concerned about, what can we try to address. And in those meetings, residents in Kennewick recommended actions on storm water management, including xeriscaping and planting native and climate compatible trees. They also shared ideas around improving building energy efficiency, increasing housing density. And then the September, we were able to share the draft of the full regional climate element and people were able to provide some input on that. It also was in the middle of our public period that we held for a month at the end of the process before making a final version that was then published on the BFCOG website.

And then we also presented the regional plan to the Kennewick City Council on September 9. That group was really interested in water conservation strategies, especially how to deal with tree canopy and water shortages. They also showed their support for meeting the state's minimum requirements related to this work and finding ways to make the climate element make sense for the city. So as we are revising policies and goals, we are carefully tracking the minimum requirements looking for opportunities for alignment and streamlining and still meeting those city goals. Go to the next slide please.

So as another part of the process, the state requires the identification of key climate hazards that are affecting an area. So these four were selected after extensive research and conversations with And we're working on on on

the the we're

the the

And

extreme precipitation, and drought. And these are the foundation for policies in the climate resilience sub element that we're making sure policies are addressing. Another step that we did was a tree canopy assessment. And this was to see how tree coverage has changed since '23. And the findings were that 10% of the city is covered by an urban tree canopy.

And this is important because trees are a great provider of shade. They can help lower temperatures, provide better air quality, enhance soil stability, and that was something that residents in both the survey and public meetings expressed support of. And this graphic is showing what tree canopy looks like currently. I guess 2023 was the last available data for this. So on the left is showing what tree canopy was in 2023, and on the right is showing the change since 2011.

So you'll see the darker orange and brown is kind of where there's been more decreased entry fee coverage versus the darker green and lighter green are where there's been an increase. So overall there's been a decrease of 1% in the city, but you can see by that graph or that figure on the right that there's some variability in how that tree coverage has shifted. Go to

the next

slide. The vulnerability vulnerability assessment follows both the tree canopy assessment and the key climate hazards where we look at how those hazards are impacting the people and infrastructure in the city. And so just a few findings from that related to Kennewick, some wild land urban interface areas in Zentil Canyon and Blackberry Canyon, concerns around flooding due to summer drought followed by heavy precipitation can increase flooding in wetlands channels and other low lying areas. And then extreme heat concerns particularly particularly around riparian areas and those ecological functions that can be highly vulnerable to extreme heat. And then our next last few slides here on this section, moving away from our climate resilience sub element into our greenhouse gas emissions sub element, we conducted greenhouse gas inventory, the findings of which are represented on this pie chart here.

I'm just going to call out that the largest source next looking at So, be the waste for 9% of emissions. And finally the last step on the journey is the vehicle miles traveled study. As Gretchen mentioned, it's a requirement to be reducing what going to what And then a can the to can to extent already off to a good start. And I will pause there before moving forward if there's any questions on any of these technical pieces that I just kind of zoomed through.

I have a quick question. Yeah. It says that the number one a Do we ever consider the chemtrails that go across our skies to then that. Do climate stuff? And

So you're asking, like, the emissions from from airplanes, are they considered in this assessment?

I'm talking about the chemtrails that they spray across our skies nonstop all day and all night. Are they ever considered? They're banned in many states, and I just would like it on the question. That's I

ir

time.

Just for information.

Yeah. No, I appreciate the comment. We will note it down.

Catherine, for the regional element, we did look at the airport though, didn't we?

I will have to defer to Lucy on that on the airport question.

Thanks. Yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm Lucy. I helped lead the greenhouse gas inventory. And for this analysis, we did not include aviation as a key source. It was something that we decided to exclude in the scoping of the project. So it's not included in this inventory. Thank you.

Are there any other questions on these pieces? The next part I'll dive into is our draft goals and policies. Alright, so the first one I wanted to share of our draft goals and policies is this overarching climate element goal. And this is a goal that's over both sub elements. And so all of the following goals and policies kind of support this overarching goal which is to integrate climate resilience and greenhouse gas emission reduction into planning, resource allocation and overall strategy to ensure compliance with state guidelines and meaningful alignment with current and future priorities.

Some of the themes that we have of policies under this goal are to grow staff skills and experience to be able to implement climate on the policies, implement policies in alignment with defensible science, and contribute of

about

the

climate resilience sub element. So, This goal is to ensure policies and development regulations result in land use patterns and built environments that support resilience to extreme weather and climate And impact of the pandemic have that the So, think good point. So we don't want to share full language yet. But you can refer to the regional climate element that we're using as a model for a lot these policies if you want to see the language that we used for project. So in the water resources and ecosystems, the goal is to protect the viability of Kennewick's water resources and systems by promoting resilience to extreme weather and climate related hazards while balancing regional water needs and ecosystem health.

Some of the themes for this goal are to promote water storage and conservation practices in commercial, industrial, and residential uses, and to protect ecosystems from extreme heat, drought, and wildfire. Our fourth goal is in support economic development, cultural resources, and food systems to ensure that Kennewick's economy, cultural resources, and cultural traditions are resilient to extreme weather and climate related impacts. Policy themes in this goal expand entry level job opportunities and low emission industries and to grow coordination with tribal governments to increase climate resilience and adaptation. Our fifth goal in this section is at the health, well-being, and emergency management. So the goal is to protect community health and well-being and enhance emergency preparedness, response and recovery from the impacts of climate related hazards focusing resources on the people and places most at risk to these hazards.

So to support this goal, the policies are to utilize updated data including floodplain maps to guide development code updates, support the expansion of programs that provide cooling and warming centers and other emergency shelter, and to expand public outreach education on emergency preparedness. Alright, these next few are the goals and policies for the greenhouse gas emissions reduction sub element. So, the other two ones So, make we're

able to

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materials, and provide resources and support for increasing building energy efficiency. Next is for transportation zoning, development, and land use. This goal is to promote transportation and land use patterns such as dense mixed use and multimodal development that support reductions in emissions and the vehicle miles traveled. It mean to reduce regional VMT by at least 5% below 2022 levels by 2050. So to reach that goal, the policies are to use mixed use land use, integrate housing, transit and amenities, reduce commute times with higher density, increase pedestrian and bike transportation, and consider converting city vehicles to low emission vehicles when feasible.

And our last goal is on waste management. The goal is to ensure that Kennewick residents and businesses can reduce, reuse, and recycle waste materials sustainably. And the themes for these policies are ways to reduce waste and expand recycling programs and explore opportunities for regional collaboration on waste management. And with that, I'll move us onwards. We'd love to have a discussion.

I know it's late, but we'd love to hear from you all if there are any major gaps in the goals or policy themes, if there's anything you feel is important that's not addressed. But also welcome those other questions or clarifications that you have on the policies or anything else that we've talked about for the climate element.

Have one more. I'm a landscaper in the city and the recycling is mostly blown all over the Tri Cities instead of brought to recycling facilities. And along with that, I'm at the dump all the time. And all of those recycle things come right into the dump and get pushed back in one corner. And then throughout the day, they get pushed in with all the other trash.

So if we're gonna actually have you know, I recycled everything I had for years until I saw that firsthand. If we're gonna push these implications point. That's a point. A recycling it. They're just pushing it in with the rest of the trash. So that should be stated in this also that, you know, actually follow through.

Yeah, thank you for that comment.

This discussion is that based off of your presentation right now or is it going to be something a little bit more back?

We can start with just the climate element piece. And if you have questions on what Scott and Bob presented, we can also circle back to that.

Your team is very thorough. I thank you for all your hard work.

It was a really great question. Think that's I question. Concerns that we can make sure we're addressing in this climate element.

I just have like a question for rest of commissioners and staff and thank you for your time and discussion. I just feel that, time is 09:20. Are we going to continue? Will it be possible to have time to review what they have presented and, have discussion, so that we give proper care to the subject on a follow-up meeting.

I think it's appropriate that they presented tonight. If you have comments and things tonight, you can share those. Definitely take time to review the presentation, rewatch the presentation, and then you can offer comments back to staff. We will have another workshop in the future. It will be on housing, but time permitting, there'd be time to give feedback either at that time or at the end of the next planning commission meeting if I'm trying to go off the, well I guess March 2 is So, the next but you can give that comment, your comments to Steve and I or excuse me, Matt and I and we'll forward those on to the consultants for consideration and and then try to get responses back to your answers.

If Matt and I can handle them, we'll respond to your questions or your comments. Otherwise we'll get to the consulting team and they can help us respond in that way. And then at the March 2 meeting at the end of the housing presentation if you were wanting to go back on something we can discuss that as well. Okay. Thank you.

Alright. Well, think I that concludes the consultant team's presentation tonight. We look forward to talking with you and working with you all more over the next few months.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for having us tonight. Really appreciate your time. Thank you.

Reports, comments, discussions of commissioners and staff, are there any reports and comments that you would like to discuss at 09:30?

No, I just want to thank you everybody for being here late. I guess sometimes we come into the meetings like, man, that was short and I think this one was a pretty packed schedule. That was good. Thank you.