Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Alright. It is 06:33, and I call the 05/18/2026 workshop 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 in person and through an online meeting platform. Should an individual planning commissioner become unexpectedly disconnected from the virtual platform, please rejoin the meeting at your first opportunity. The record will reflect your attendance. Please mute your phone when not speaking or your laptop. Will the clerk please call roll?

Commissioner Gregory? Here. Commissioner Perez

here.

Commissioner Rahim Lou

here.

And commissioner Hempstead and commissioner Arneson and commissioner Barger are absent.

Would you like us to make a motion to excuse them? Or

Yes. That should be on your script, Tina.

Sorry. Okay. If there are any commissioners absence, I will say this. Thank you. I'll entertain a motion to excuse commissioners Barger,

Artisan, and Hempstead.

Is there a second?

Yeah. Second.

You're gonna first it. Alright. It's been moved by me, commissioner Gregor, and seconded by commissioner Perez to excuse the absences of the commissioners. Is there any discussion? May we have a roll call vote on the motion, please?

Commissioner Gregory?

Yes.

Commissioner Perez?

Yes.

Commissioner Rahamu?

Yes. That passed. So Will the staff in attendance please introduce yourself?

Anthony Moai, planning director. Matt Litsky, planning.

Alright. I'll now lead Okay. Good evening, and welcome to the May 18 Kennewick Planning Commission workshop meeting. The workshop item on the agenda is, comprehensive plan, periodic update, and critical areas ordinances update. Will the staff proceed with the presentation for the central areas ordinance update?

Thanks, vice chair Gregory. Tonight, we have with us Claire Hoffman with Para Metrics. She has been working on our critical areas code update as part of our comprehensive plan period periodic update. She has a presentation tonight, and we'll be providing that to you. So I'll turn the time over to Claire.

Thank you Matt. Good evening commissioners. Okay. Can you see my screen alright?

Yes.

Yes.

Great. Okay. So, my name like I said, my name is Claire Hoffman. I am working with the city to update the critical areas code, and this is part of the comprehensive plan growth management act update. Just a brief agenda of what we're gonna go through, the project team, and an overview of the state requirements around it.

And then I'm going to step through the critical areas code and different pieces and describe to you what the proposed changes are, and then we'll have next steps and some time for questions at the end. So as mentioned earlier, this update to the critical areas code is part of the overall comprehensive plan update, and, we are working for makers and Burke. I believe that you've already met them through the comprehensive plan update. Parametrics also has another minor role in updating the utilities component of that comprehensive plan. So what is this all about?

This this critical areas code is a part of your local code. And the through the growth management act, they recommend that the critical areas code is updated alongside of comprehensive plan. And the purpose of it, so there's a couple guidelines that go along with that. And one of them, the goal of it is to designate and protect critical areas, allow for no knot loss of functions and values, give consideration to anadromous fish, which is consideration to salmon, also to support connected viable connected, populations over a long the in the data data that

seeing

It's as defined as something that's peer reviewed, in so, and based on standard methods, logical conclusions, quantitative analysis, and reliable references. So sort of standard science based practices for quality work, quality science. And something else I mentioned is functions and values. And these are the the services or ecosystem services or things that, critical areas do to support your community. So things like water quality protection.

For example, if there's a a stream that has, trees or shrubs or, some vegetation along the side of it, that can that vegetation can prevent pollutants, chemicals, or fertilizer or oil or that sort of thing from contaminating the water. Also, fish and wildlife habitat. So, Zentel Canyon, for example, you walk in there, you'll see more birds and and more animals in that area. Flood storage. So if there's a big rain event, their water has some place to go in, into those green spaces.

Also, groundwater recharge, and protection of drinking water. So your drinking water is in the aquifer below. Also helps with erosion control. If there's different kinds of shrubs or vegetation that and there's a big windstorm, it helps pandemic. To with so we do with pandemic.

Purpose of critical areas is to protect public from threats to human safety and to protect public and private property from natural hazard, and that's generally thinking about things like erosion or landslides, that

kind

of thing. Also protect the environment, enhance the state and city's quality of life. We all like to have these natural areas around us. They they make things look a little nicer, maybe also provide cooling for the city, and preserve these environmentally sensitive areas, such species and habitats for the longer term. So jumping into the code, most of your your critical areas code is in chapters eighteen fifty eight through eighteen sixty three, and it has some general provisions, which are kinda like the how to, what how to apply these critical areas codes, and it has a bunch of definitions and that sort of thing.

And then these wetlands, critical aquifer recharge areas, frequently flooded areas, geologically hazardous areas, and then fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas. These are the the five types of critical areas that are required by the state to protect. I don't have any changes to the frequently flooded area, so I'm gonna skip over that, when when we're going through these slides. So the general provisions, as I said, they're sort of the guidelines to how to apply the code. Some fairly minor changes to this section.

Mostly, there's a we updated definitions to match either state code or, we removed definitions that were not in the code, and we also added some definitions that of words that were not defined in the code. We also did some minor changes to the definition of best available science. We made some clarifications about mitigation sequencing. So mitigation sequencing is the order in which you kinda step through mitigation. And so that means to try and avoid an impact to an area, then you try and reduce that impact, impact.

And And then then the third choice is to fix it. So try and mitigate for it. So replace it somewhere else. We also updated references to old maps. It's been a lot of, I think, ten or so years, fifteen years since the the code was updated, so it was relying on PDF maps.

And so it just changed those citations to reference the city's online GIS maps. And then there's just a couple minor kinda code updates updates or editing, really. So the first section in the code is eighteen fifty nine, and that is regarding wetlands. In this section, we, the code had some delineation information. So a wetland delineation is the boundary of a wetland.

You there's a a process that you use to determine where a wetland is. We limited the wetland delineation duration to five years, and that's a standard practice throughout the whole country and recommendation from the corps sorry, the US Army Corps of Engineers who regulate wetlands. And the reason for this is that the boundaries of wetlands do change over time primarily from changes in the water regime. So either there's development that changes where water goes or just gradually over time, an area can dry out or some areas can get more wet. And so a wetland delineation is standard practice to be considered only for five years.

We also added some flexibility around wetland buffers. So buffer is the area around a wetland that provides protection to that wetland. And we didn't change any of the buffers themselves, but we we made some clarification to the table. So hopefully, the table's with the we the or protection to the work wetland, and so that buffer ends. So if, for example, if a wetland buffer is, a 100 feet and but at 50 feet, it hits a a big road, there's no buffer after that road because it doesn't help anything, and it just made it clear.

This is our standard practice in, in the field, but it just wasn't in your coat. So we just made it more clear that this can happen. We also added something called buffer averaging. And what that means is that if a development is proposed and they can make the buffer smaller one area by making it bigger in other areas. So sort of thinking about the buffer if you squeeze it like a balloon.

If you squeeze a balloon in one area, it gets smaller, but it also gets bigger in another area. So that's kinda what it is. It just allows a little bit more flexibility for developers to to to, move their development around a little bit. The next and then the next, area is something called critical aquifer recharge

slide,

next next And then wells where the when when it rains or that's where the water filters through the soil and gets into that aquifer and fills it up again. So these areas are called critical aquifer recharge areas, and they can be more susceptible to contamination because the oil and that sort of thing can more easily get into the groundwater in these critical aquifer recharge areas. And then if you look at the picture on the right on the right, it shows a well, and the wells act a little bit like a straw. And so those areas around wells are also a little bit more susceptible to contamination. And it's quite difficult to and almost impossible actually to clean an aquifer once it's contaminated.

So you really don't wanna get it contaminated. So that's why these areas are protected. And I just have said these are aquifers that are used for drinking water in particular. So this map shows the city and the kind of big blue swath in the middle that's kind of a rectangular area that goes from the bridge to the Southwest. That is your existing critical aquifer recharge area, and the the drinking water wells for the city are kinda are near the Columbia there.

And so that area is already protected under your current code. We are proposing to add three more areas. Those are the blue circles on the map. These are areas where there's wells of that serve 15 or more connections, and we're also proposing to add these areas as critical aquifer recharge areas. And it just adds just a little bit more protection than you already have in the city and protection primarily for commercial and or industrial processes that can be harmful potentially harmful to or high risk to the aquifer.

We made a couple fairly minor changes to the prohibitions adding mining and chemical manufacturing to the prohibitions for these particular areas. And those are this only applies to those areas in blue. Next, we have geologically hazardous areas, and we didn't have a really a lot of changes to these, but I did wanna define what they are. These are areas that are susceptible to erosion or sliding or earthquake or the other kinda geologic event, and they can be not suited well suited for development. Like, just think about a steep slope, for example, and maybe isn't the best place to build a house because it it's more easy easier to fall fall down, excuse me, or slide.

And so this is already in your existing code, but you have erosion hazard areas, landslide hazard areas, seismic and extreme slope hazard areas. And, again, pretty minor changes to this section. Nothing particularly substantial. And then the last area that you have as a critical area are called fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas. And there's a couple of different buckets within this group, but the ones that you are most important are streams, not including the Columbia River.

The Columbia River is regulated under the shoreline management act, and we are not updating that at all. So no changes to around the Columbia River regulations. So streams and then also something called priority habitat and primarily within the city that is regarding shrub steppe habitat. So on this figure, you can see the yellowish orange area, and these are areas that have been mapped as potentially shrub steppe habitat. And that doesn't mean there's, you know, a prohibition or anything like that.

It's just that this area should be investigated a little bit more to determine if that habitat is there. And so the changes that are proposed for fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas are one is the state has changed how they categorize streams. There's actually no substantial change here. It's just a change in the name. So they and this change has been in the works for many years at the state level.

So it used to be types one through five, and now they've changed it to type s through n. And what those letters stand for, a type s is a shoreline of the state, so the Columbia River for you guys. Type f, those are streams that are known to be used by fish or could potentially be used by fish. And then type n, and there's two different types types of type n, but that those are just types of streams that don't have fish. And they they really can't cut fish for either they dry out or they just it's they're too steep or something some other reason.

So similar to so that's one change. We didn't change the buffers at all for streams. Those are exactly the same as they were in your old code. We also added a method to reduce stream buffers exactly the same as we did for the wetland buffers. So the same as wetland buffers, those stream buffers will end at paved surfaces, so they'll that buffer will not cross a road and does not include the road or a parking lot.

Also, we added the option of buffer averaging. So, again, if the buffer developer can reduce a buffer in one area and then it gets a little bigger in another area, that's called buffer averaging. And then we also added a requirement for habitat assessment within areas of shrub step habitat or or potential shrubs step habitat. Alright. So next steps, we're right here today on May 18 at the the workshop, and then there'll be a SEPA evaluation as the SEPA for the critical areas code update will be part of the comprehensive plan SIPA, so combined together.

There'll be July, August, planning commission make a recommendation of the city council, and then August, September, city council review meetings. And then, hopefully, by the end of September, our city council will be able to update the critical or sorry. Adopt the critical areas update. Alright. So that's the end of my presentation. I'm going to stop sharing, and then I'll just open it up for questions.

This is commissioner Gregory. Just one question on the I'm gonna butcher it. Delinations to five years on that eighteen fifty nine wetlands. Can you kind of explain? So is it gonna no longer they have to keep that area after five years? Or

can Yeah. So Yeah. So wetland delineation is when somebody like myself would go out in the field and say you know, use look at where the vegetation is and where this the water is, and you look at the soil, and you say, this is where the wetland area is. And you wouldn't have somebody come out and somebody wouldn't have somebody come out and do that unless there's a development proposed. And so when they that delineation is done, so I'd say, today, I did a wetland delineation.

It would last for five years. And if if some if there was development proposed within that five years, they could use that delineation. But if they took, for whatever reason, some property was sold or something like that, in another five years, that delineation would have to be redone. They'd have to figure out where that boundary was because it could have changed within that five years. Does that help?

Yes. So boundaries don't go away after years down the line once it's been developed as a it'll still stay?

After five years, it's yeah. It it could potentially change after five years. Just, like, kinda like it expires. You could think about it expiring.

Okay. I guess I kinda trick question you because I developed a wetland, and it doesn't seem like it has that much anymore. And the whole area is developed, and and so a builder can't come back in and say, oh, we wanna put a few houses right there now.

Oh, like it so are you can you explain can you you repeat that? Make sure I'm calling.

If you already had a wetland in the middle of a development Mhmm. Then ten years down the line, can the developer come in and say, it's not really a wetland anymore. I wanna put some houses there.

The developer would have to get another wetland delineation to just determine if it's a wetland or not.

Perfect. Thank you.

Yeah. Mhmm.

Yeah. Good evening. So a question for you. I know on the page that you're having the critical act for recharge areas, you're talking about, like, prohibited uses. Is there current prohibited uses for those areas, the current one? Because I see that you have three circles that you those are the the ones that you are recommending for them to be added. Correct?

Yeah. So, currently, those three circles, there aren't. It's not part of a critical aquifer or recharge area. The other areas already have, like, the bigger blue rectangular area already has prohibitions. And let me just let me slip to what I can read those to you so you can get a flavor of what what those are.

Does he, like, mining, chemical manufacturing?

Yeah. That kind of stuff. Let me just go to the code. Yeah. Like, there's rules about structural underground storage tanks and hazardous material. There's some rules about above ground storage tanks, lack of of hazardous materials. There's some guidance around vehicle repair and servicing that is not prohibited, but there's sort of, like, practices how to prevent leakage of chemicals into the groundwater.

And That would include, like, oil tanks underneath the ground.

Yeah. I mean, there there might already be oil tanks, so it's not gonna say you have to take dig that up, but there's gonna be no allowances for new ones. And there'll be guidance for for those existing storage tanks.

Okay. Yeah. Alright. Thank you.

Yeah.

Have any other questions for Claire?

No. It's a great presentation. Thank you.

Great. Thank you.

Alright. Is that concluded? Or

That does. Thank you, Claire.

Alright. Let me know if you have any follow-up questions. I'd be happy to respond. So have a good evening, everyone.

Thank you. Thanks. You have a blessed evening. Bye. Okay. City council actions, updates, reports, or comments, or discussions of commissions and staff. Do you have anything?

We do not have any action updates

at this time. On. I was at it.

I don't think that we had any planning items.

Down on Columbia Drive.

Did we get anything?

Oh, did we not report

from that? Reported that to us.

Okay. Yeah. So the

She voted no.

Yeah. The Columbia Drive. Okay. So the the change in the code for nonconforming uses was adopted by the council. So what that allows is nonconforming uses in the UMU zone, to expand beyond 25% subject and then they're subject to the the UMU design standards when they expand. So they're very limited. There's really limited opportunity to do that. But

but it's still allowed. Yeah. I think they've seen businesses.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Existing ones that are nonconforming.

Not new ones. So

Yeah. Not It's perfect. Yeah. You can't bring in new ones on the lots that haven't had So I guess uses already.

Yeah. So I guess my question is, obviously, you know, we're concerned about, you know, opening up the floodgates for other business to come in and prevent that. So do you think this was kind of a good resolution for that? Or it'll still

Well, it was definitely a compromise. Right? A compromise. Just kind of blowing the doors wide open, this will allow those that are being success those that have that are successful can expand. When we looked at where they could expand to, there's limitations on the expansion. You can expand beyond 25%, but you can expand across a road or an alley or, like, canal right of way or any other type of right of way. So it really limits you. So when you look at the map and where they can go, there's really a lot of limitations. I don't there are very few that can expand beyond you know, they could double in size. I I should say there's very few that can do that.

Which I think that was kind of the purpose. Right? To at least help them with their business, stay in business, grow a little bit, but at the same time, not make up yeah.

Yeah. Not invite all these Other other uses that you're trying to phase out into the area. Yeah. Okay.

Good job doing that. Thank you.

Thanks.

Are there any reports, comments, or discussions of commissioners and staff? No? No. Nope. Wow. That's quick. The workshop meeting is concluded at 07:02PM. Thank you.