Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, it is now 6.33 and the meeting will come to order. Welcome to the August 3rd, 2026 Kennewick Planning Commission Workshop. And we will not be able to do a roll call because we do not have a... We can do the roll call. You want to do a roll call? Okay.

We can do the roll call.

We will still do the roll call. Will the clerk please do the roll call?

Yes, and so Vice Chair Gregory?

Here.

Commissioner Arnson?

Here.

Commissioner Barger?

Here.

Commissioner Rahimlu is not in attendance, and Commissioner Press is not in attendance, and Chair Hempstead has given prior notice that he would not be able to attend the meeting today.

Okay, so we will not do a motion to excuse Mr. Hempstead, even though he provided advance notification of his absence. But being as how we don't have a quorum, we will move on to workshop. Okay.

Okay.

Oh, yes. Let's do the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. You should be winging it. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

You're hard to keep up with.

Okay.

Will staff in attendance please introduce yourselves?

Anthony Mawai, Community Planning Director.

Matt, let's get community planning.

I'm going to wing it here. Are we going to start the workshop then?

Sure. Okay. Tonight we have a 2026 comprehensive plan workshop. This is in preparation for a public hearing that will occur in two weeks time on the 17th. Tonight we have with us the consulting team that's been assisting with the development of the comprehensive plan and update to that. Scott Bonjoukian with Makers is the lead, and so he's been the project manager on this. And I'll let Scott go ahead and introduce himself and introduce the team that's with him tonight.

Great. Thanks, Anthony. Scott Bonjoukian, project manager and lead on the land use side of things with comprehensive plan updates. I'm joined by a handful of my colleagues tonight. And they're all here to answer any technical questions you may have. We cover a range of expertise. So maybe we'll just really briefly, if you just want to say your names and who you're with, we can start with Laurel.

Sure. Laurel Hicks with Scott at Makers.

And let's see, Catherine and Andrea.

Hi, Catherine Allison, associate with Cascadia Consulting Group.

Hi, everyone. Andrea with Cascadia Consulting Group.

And Jonathan. Oh, looks like you're still muted.

Story of my life today. Hi, everybody.

Jonathan Dunham with Transbook Group. Great. All right. Remind me, so we have a presentation that I'll be going through. Is that going to be shared on the city side or should I share my screen on my side? Scott, why don't you go ahead and share that? All righty. I have to get my windows arranged here.

Bear with me one moment.

Okay.

Oh, looks like I have to request permission to share. Okay, I got it. Thank you. Okay, so we've got about 30 or so minute presentation here from me, and then I'll pause at a few points if there's any questions on sections. Then again, we have some of the consultant team members here to answer questions. But goal tonight is to give you an update on the comprehensive plan project status, go over a really high-level review of what public engagement has informed the plan to date, A kind of a cliff notes version of each element in the plan, giving you kind of an overview of what's in those. A summary of the housing action plan, which is a separate but related effort that's also being adopted by the city alongside the comprehensive plan in the near term, along with proposed zoning updates that come out of both of those. And next steps, including, as Anthony mentioned, the public hearing in a couple of weeks. So with that, let's see here. I'm joined by most of the consultant team tonight. If we can't answer questions that come up tonight, we will endeavor to get back to the planning commission and staff as soon as possible within the next few days. And as I mentioned, we have a few consulting members who are not with us tonight, so we might have to punt some questions to them if we can't answer right away. So for the project schedule, we are getting towards the end of a two-year process. We have done continuous public engagements in a variety of forms over the last couple of years, and we've had a few different stages of drafting and researching the comprehensive plan, the housing action plan, At the same time, we've also been working with city staff on updating your critical areas ordinance, which we will just touch on very briefly tonight. That relates to environmental protection and such as steep slopes and wetlands and wildlife habitat and things like that.

And that has to be updated periodically as well.

I think we've shared this slide with the Planning Commission before, but just as a reminder, we're working within a state law framework to update comprehensive plans. Kennewick joins a lot of other central Washington jurisdictions in needing to make its periodic update by the end of this year. And so that's just kind of a quick overview of what's going on at the state level. Kennewick is also expected to accommodate certain amounts of growth, and those growth projections are updated about every 10 years. That's one of the key factors that we're working with. Overall, Kennewick's expected to see fairly healthy increases in population and jobs over the next 20 years. And these numbers are handed down partly by the state, and then the Benton County and the cities within it work together to formulate kind of the city by city split of how things come out. You can see some of the, just to summarize some of the numbers here, by 2046 Kennewick is projected to reach a population of 108,000 and needing to, but to accommodate that population expected to have an increase of over 12,000 new housing units. And then expecting to grow by about 12,000 jobs to about 60,000 jobs total by 2046. So those are fairly significant gains. And they are notable because they imply we need to make sure Kennewick has the right amount of land and the right infrastructure and services that continue serving its population and its businesses. So the plan incorporates these projections not only into the land use and housing elements, but also thinking about infrastructure planning, such as for transportation and utilities and public safety. Since this is a plan for the people of Kennewick, we've made a point to engage with the Kennewick community from the start. We think we've done a pretty good job of that. We've had a variety of surveys and input opportunities, working with city staff to get the word out in a variety of newsletters. And we've gotten some feedback across a pretty wide swath of the community, including key stakeholders and special interest groups at a variety of public agencies and industry sectors and whatnot. Our last major public event was back in May when we presented the first draft of the plans before you tonight. One of the larger public engagement opportunities we hosted was in the second half of 2025 where we collected about 800 responses to an online visioning survey. That was a very helpful and informative part of our early work. And we did a variety of stakeholder organization interviews with a lot of, you'll see a lot of public agencies here that the city of Kennewick works with, but also some private sector interests as well. After the visioning survey, I want to point out that we noted that we hadn't quite reached a full representative sample of the Kennewick community. So working with city staff and some of the housing stakeholders, we distributed a special housing questionnaire and that yielded about 60 additional responses from folks kind of representing lower income households and the renter community. The overall results didn't change the direction we're going in. There was some reinforcement in these results for the visiting survey that was answered by about 800 folks. But we weren't surprised to see some emphasis on affordability and cost of living come out of this as well. Because housing has been an emphasis at the state level and there's been a lot of state level legislative changes, we convened a housing work group to work through some of the more detailed conversations and policy updates that are needed on the housing side. And this group met three times with city staff and us and our colleagues over at Burke Consulting. And there were a lot of conversations about the housing elements policies and also some of the detailed housing action plan strategies as they were developed fairly much in parallel. And as I mentioned earlier, we wrapped up most of the public engagement with an open house back on May 7th. We had fairly light attendance, but nonetheless, we had some good feedback and detailed conversations on a variety of aspects of the plan. As for what's actually in the plan, again, this isn't news to the Planning Commission, but just a quick reminder of the constellation of seven elements we're working with tonight. The land use and housing elements, if you're curious in comparing to the old plan, land use and housing probably have the biggest changes since the previous plan was adopted a decade ago. Again, driven by a lot of state level changes, but also just changes in the economy and the way Housing affordability has evolved over the last few years. And of course the climate element is also brand new. So the next few minutes I'll have a slide or two for each of these elements to help orient you to what are some fairly sizable draft documents that we're looking at. In your packet, you have two files for the comprehensive plan. Volume one is the body of the plan that has the goals and policies and the primary maps that make up the plan. And it also has a little bit of key background information that is interesting or informative or has some historical information that helps inform what the goals and policies are all about. It also has a separate introduction chapter and kind of like a vision statement that was updated as part of this process. Volume two has all of the more extensive background information and other detailed inventories and a variety of reports and analyses that are not only required, but some are just very helpful to provide Kennewick background information and help him make informed decision making down the road. So the land use element is the first in order in the plan and we often consider it a core element of the plan because it directly affects how people living and working in Kennewick experience the shape of the city and the services and amenities it has to offer over the long term. And it also directly relates to the work of the community and economic development department and the variety of other city departments on a day-to-day basis. So it ensures, number one, an adequate land supply for future housing and job growth. And there's a variety of other kind of policy levers and decisions that we made as a team, including things like supporting a variety of housing types across neighborhoods, strengthening your existing commercial centers in industrial areas, also integrating some scattershot environmental protection and parks and open space policies that were in different parts of the plan that were brought under one roof here at the land use element. There's also a separate series of goals and policies related to efficient governance, and that relates to things like permitting, property rights, and other things like annexation to make sure all those processes happen in a fair and predictable way. A key part of the land use element is the future land use map, or what we like to call the FLUM for short. In general, a FLUM is a color-coded map like what Kennewick is using today, and it basically sorts into different categories what types of human activities are happening or should happen on each parcel level, but also when you look at it at this scale, kind of at the citywide neighborhood by neighborhood level as well. In a lot of cases, a lot of parts of Kennewick have already been built out and established, so the flum isn't necessarily proposing changes, but will just kind of reflect the reality of what's on the ground. But in other places, like on the edge of the city or maybe some older neighborhoods or commercial districts that are primed for potential change over the next 20 years, the future land use map can have an impact in shaping what those areas look like as they build new or redevelop over time. The FLUM is a policy tool at this stage, and it directly impacts the zoning map, which will often look very similar but have some more detailed implications for what property owners can do with their properties over the long term. The FLUM and the zoning map need to match, and so the city staff are currently working on a zoning map update that will be adopted in the near future as well. So this is the older version of the map. And this is the draft proposed map. And if I switch back and forth a couple of times between the old map and the new map, you might catch a couple of the bigger changes. One is that the medium and high density residential designations were combined into one, which is the darker brown color here. And we did that because they, in reality, they've been resulting in pretty similar development patterns with kind of smaller lots for single family or some multifamily apartment complexes. We changed the mixed use designation from purple to orange, and also we changed the industrial designation from gray to purple, which are a bit more standard colors that jurisdictions across Washington state use for those types of areas. For all of the detailed changes, we also have this map available that identifies each of the change areas more specifically with key numbers. And we also color coded, added another layer of color coding that indicates where changes are proposed in intensity. And the way we think about intensity is that it's basically the size and type of buildings or the potential jobs and population density that can happen in an area. and the impacts of possible land uses that occur. So we categorize them as either a decrease, an increase, or a neutral change in intensity. And scattered throughout the neighborhood, you'll see especially areas that are kind of outlined in green and also have an underlying brownish color. Those are areas that we thought were suitable for changing from lower density residential to the medium to high designation, typically because they were near commercial districts or other public amenities like parks and schools or all three of those things. And they seem like they might have some older properties that could be primed for redevelopments over the long term. But overall, most of the changes you'll see in the map are more administrative. We made a lot of updates or corrections to reflect what's currently on the ground, especially for things like parks, schools, cemeteries, utility properties, fire stations, things like that. They're kind of little one-off changes that made the map a little bit more current and up-to-date. One particular note is that there's a couple of new policies for Southridge, which is one of the areas of the city that has yet to be fully developed. We provided some examples and ideas in the plan that don't have to be directly implemented by future property owners and developers, but they provide a little bit of encouragement and promotion of a certain style of developments that we would call a neighborhood center or a suburban shopping area. We had a specific example from this. You can see a couple of images from Scottsdale, Arizona, of an area that was on the outlying parts of the city where they kind of created a bit of a main street character, but it still has a variety of transportation options and it's easy to park and shop as well. It has a little bit of housing scattered in. So again, this is just kind of a visionary idea and doesn't have to be met 100% as the plan lays it out, but we think it could be possible and make an interesting new place to hang out and to live and work in Kennewick. I mentioned the critical areas ordinance is also being updated at the same time. There are basically some minor updates being incorporated to add what's known as best available science or the latest research and academic knowledge for protecting and managing critical areas. There's a few clarifications added to make things easier to administer and also updates and adapts the rating systems for streams, wetlands and buffers consistent with new state level guidance. We will have a full draft of that available, I believe, at the upcoming public hearing later in August. I've mentioned a few times the population and job growth numbers. Again, one of the things that inform that was a land capacity analysis that has been started more than a year ago and has been iteratively tweaked as we fine tune the methodology. Overall, what this analysis tells us is that Kennewick has adequate housing capacity overall for the full number of new residents and households expected to see over the next 20 years. But an interesting twist is that there's a lack of capacity for the lowest income residents earning below 80 percent of the area median income, which is a standard measure to reflect housing. a variety of different income levels across the state. And it's not uncommon for cities across Washington to have that deficit for those lower income levels. That's one of the reasons we're in the housing affordability crisis statewide. So there are some code updates proposed to address that. And basically it results in encouraging or allowing make it easier to develop multifamily housing in more spots around the city, either in the places where it's currently allowed or expanding where that multifamily housing can be built. So after the updates, we believe Kennewick will be able to meet its full capacity obligations. The second element for housing is kind of a companion to the land use elements. It establishes a comprehensive strategy to increase housing supply, diversity, and affordability. And it has a lot of emphasis on minimizing zoning and other regulatory barriers, some specific policies that... So there are some policies that kind of address the overall general markets for housing, but also because affordable housing for kind of what's more vulnerable or... marginalized residents is a concern, there's a little bit more policy direction on helping those households out as well. In many cases, that requires Kennewick not going alone, but working with other housing providers, such as the private markets, the Kennewick Housing Authority, other nonprofit agencies that specialize and do that work day to day. That is to say, it's not all on Kennewick's shoulders, but there's some good ideas in here on how to streamline things and make those situations better. The housing elements is kind of an overall 20-year vision. This is all supported by the housing action plan, which is more of a kind of a five-year action plan or vision, which includes more detailed actions and recommendations. So they work really well together, but the housing action plan provides the most specificity on items that kind of what can consider doing in the near term. I'm kind of repeating myself a little bit here. This is a detailed breakdown of those different area median income levels projected for Kennewick to accommodate in the future. I'm not sure if you can see my mouse, but you can see on the bottom of the blue row on the bottom left, there's that 12,626 household targets that's projected that Kennewick needs to grow over the next 20 years. You saw that earlier in the slideshow. So this breaks it down by the different income levels. And you can see that in the surplus or deficit column, it has plenty of capacity for the moderate density housing and low density housing that serves moderate and high income households, but has that deficit and zoned capacity for the lowest income households. So as far as the more detailed items, OK, I see a note. You can see my mouse. Thank you. So I've talked about this more generally, but where can Kennewick address that deficit for over 2,400 multifamily homes? Key opportunities looking at a built-out city are little bits of remaining vacant land like Southridge, but there's some other parcels around the city that could be looked at. There's a lot of rural-sized lots from where Kennewick is. annexed uh many years ago uh properties that used to be in the county and so they had more uh larger lots which are typical there but now they're in the city limits so those are opportunities to to think about how they work with urban infrastructure and also underutilized commercial land commercial land obviously is important for commercial use and providing businesses and services to kind of weaken also the larger kind of agricultural region. But there are opportunities for maybe mixed use or properties that just aren't suitable for businesses could be looked at for rezoning. So again, that is all to say that land supply and what Kennewick does with the zoning code is not a silver bullet and it alone does not guarantee affordable housing. It doesn't guarantee that developers will choose to build in certain places or in certain types of buildings, but the more flexibility that can be unlocked, the more options that developers and property owners can have to meet the city's housing needs together. So some of the detailed ideas that we are working with city staff on are concurrent with the comprehensive plan adoption this year, being adopted by city council projected for this September, is to allow multifamily use in the commercial auto row and business park zones, which represents some small parts of Kennewick. Do not require mixed use development in commercial zones with height limits lower than 85 feet, which is just a handful of zones in Kennewick. And do not require mixed use for co-living housing. Co-living housing is a kind of a dormitory or small suites style housing that is not too common in Kennewick. But you have seen a couple of examples in the Tri-Cities, for example, of hotels or motels being converted to housing. And those are often dubbed co-living housing. Removing the maximum density limits and just allowing your building heights and setbacks and landscaping requirements and other factors to control for building form. Reducing parking requirements, which is a new under the mandate at the state level that will be implemented in 2027. And also clarifying regulations for kind of more specialized housing, especially for supporting folks who are transitioning out of homelessness. There's a lot of a lot of need for that type of new housing, not only in the Tri-Cities area, but statewide as well. So there's some new state law trying to reduce the hurdles to getting that type of housing in place. A longer list here, there's a variety of other housing action plan strategies are related to zoning, but also other things outside of zoning, such as you can see the chart on the right side here that kind of categorizes them and regulatory strategies, which is mostly zoning, programmatic strategies, which has to do more with where the city allocates its staff and funding resources. citywide planning strategies and also funding strategies, such as looking at either city funding or working with other jurisdictions to get more funding for housing that needs to be subsidized. So there's a variety of things on here. I won't go into detail, but happy to come back and answer questions. But the list here is fairly typical of the kind of toolkit of options that cities like Kennewick across the state have available at their disposal. In the Housing Action Plan, we've proposed some priorities for what could be looked at first in the near term versus things that might be more difficult or more expensive that could be looked at longer term as Kennewick assesses its options. The third element, economic developments, is a strategy document looking at improving Kennewick's long-term economic well-being and the quality of life for its residents and businesses, and provides a lot of policy direction for maintaining, expanding, and attracting economic activity across Kennewick. Let's see here, I don't have a lot of details to say for that one. The climate elements is the new element of the plan. The objectives of the elements are to prepare Kennewick for current climate hazards, such as extreme heat, drought, wildfire, and to reduce the impacts of hazards from those events and how to adapt the city and its residents and its infrastructure and its buildings to future changes in climate and extreme weather. And I will say Kennewick did not adopt this alone. Kennewick worked with other jurisdictions in the Tri-Cities region to adopt a regional climate element, and that was basically borrowed and adapted to Kennewick's specific local conditions as well. So there's a lot of alignment here with the counties and the other cities in the region. The Transportation Elements identifies transportation projects, programs, policies to guide the developments and maintenance and improvement of the transportation system. It has a, it includes a- Oh, is it on YouTube? I'll subscribe right now. Yeah. Was that a question?

Commissioner Arntzen, it looks like you're not muted. Thank you.

Okay, all good. The Transportation Plan comes with a lot of technical analysis done by our colleagues at the Transpo Group, who also worked separately on the Transportation Systems Plan that's being updated at the same time as a more detailed look. Kind of like the Housing Action Plan, the Transportation Systems Plan looks at more detailed policies and projects to improve how people get around Kennewick. So there's a lot of information available there in the goals and policies, but also in the appendices if you're interested in transportation issues. Some of the key maps here that you'll see in there, eventually I won't go into the details, but it includes maps like the roadway functional classification, which kind of designates arterials and collector streets and local neighborhood streets to kind of emphasize the priorities for where traffic should flow. There's a map for the city's planned bicycle network, which envisions a pretty significant expansion of on-street and off-street routes for bicycling around the city, including overlapping with the separate pathways and trail system proposed in conjunction with the irrigation districts. And similarly, the planned pedestrian network has a lot of proposals for improving sidewalks and pathways and whatnot in every part of the city. The capital facilities element addresses utilities owned by the city of Kennewick, including water and some irrigation systems, sewer and stone water, parks and recreation, police and fire. And although the city of Kennewick doesn't run the school system, it also has information on Kennewick's public schools. The key point of this element is to align land use planning with planning for these capital facilities because capital facilities are Very important, the quality of life and public safety, but they're also very expensive. And sometimes they can be difficult to locate or renovate, or sometimes they require some complex partnerships with other jurisdictions. So there's a lot of policies there and how all those pieces should work together. And it emphasizes coordinated planning across the city. And last but not least, the utilities elements addresses utilities owned and operated by other outside public agencies and private companies, such as electricity, telecommunications, and natural gas, and goes into details on responsible planning, cost efficiency, and also the aesthetics of utility infrastructure, since it can affect the way neighborhoods look and are shaped. And there's also a couple of special goals and policies on solid waste reduction, which is kind of linked to the climate element as well and trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. All right, so wrapping up the schedule again, looking forward to some feedback from the Planning Commission tonight, and hopefully we can answer your questions. And then we will go forward with, I believe we have August 17th on the books for the public hearing in a couple of weeks as well. And then City Council is anticipated to do their review and adoption by the end of September. Um, so that's maybe I'll stop sharing screen for a moment and we can go back if needed, but, um, yeah, so I think we can happy to take questions from here.

Uh, commissioner Gregory here. I was trying to find my questions. Um, when you're coming up with these plans on telling landlords, their notices for rent increase. I wasn't understanding it properly. It says longer notices. And so what does that pertain to?

Yeah, let me, I think I, let me find the housing slide. Yeah. So that, um, that comes out of the housing action plan and basically The idea, if I can summarize it, is a tenant protection ordinance, which can address a number of issues. One of the issues is the cities have an option to require landlords provide a certain amount of land. days notice for rent increase. So I think the standard typically in the market is 30 days, but city governments have the authority to require 45 days, 60 days, 90 days, or whatever they think is appropriate. Especially if it's a larger increase, the idea is that gives tenants longer time to prepare, or maybe if they decide they need to move, it gives them more options if they have more notice is kind of the general idea there.

Well, my thing about it is that I don't see how it's up to the city to tell owners on the amount of time that they have to. Like I have rentals and I give them six months and some people think that's not enough time. And so I wonder what guideline are we going? I don't want to cross lines to where we dictate is what I'm trying to get at. More of a suggestion or is this going to be like a law or a rule?

It's not going to be implemented just because the housing action plan is adopted. Basically this provides the city, you know, just a heads up that this is an option. If you want to get it, it's an option, kind of a menu of options basically. And then if the city council wants to go with it, then city council would ultimately work with staff and figure out what the, the best timeline is if they want. Yeah.

Perfect. That's what I was getting at. And then, um, I'm one that really fights all the climate stuff. And I wonder if we have peer reviews for these things that come up because I don't agree with our state and our legislation on the things they've came up with. So when you have all this information in there, I haven't been able to find any peer review studies that you take your information on. Do you have any of that that you can forward to us or?

Yeah, absolutely. I believe this is Catherine with Cascadia and we developed the climate element. Sorry for just jumping right in. In both volume one and volume two, I believe there should be references associated with each of the figures that we're pointing to. And a lot of the data we pull from is downscaled data developed in part by the University of Washington's climate impacts group. And the data that they use is all from different peer-reviewed studies and multi-year processes and evaluations of the climate impacts. So within our references, if it's not directly to a peer-reviewed study, the source that we are referencing is dependent upon that peer-reviewed work.

Okay, and I didn't catch the beginning of it. Where is it? Where can you find that?

It should be the reference section.

Oh, the reference. Okay. Yeah, I didn't understand that word. Okay. Thank you so much.

Commissioner Barger here. So if I understood it right, too, in this comp plan, it talked about the city's addressing it, too. So... I mean, I agree with Commissioner Gregory, but at the same time, if the state was doing such a great job on a state level, I understand the city level is different, but I guess I just don't see the direction. I mean, are we going to have more taxes on it that go literally nowhere that come from the city side? Because we're already paying enough taxes on the state side, too. So how is the city supposed to help the state with, you know, like maybe the gases, you know, help? I think there was a part where it said to help the state with some of the measurements. Did I understand that correctly? Or did I just totally not see that part?

I can hop in real quick, I guess. So the state established legislation requiring cities and counties to plan for to include a climate element within their comprehensive plan that climate element has to address greenhouse gas reduction and also climate resiliency um and so there's not like a a tax or a fee or anything per se that's being implemented with this work that we've done um we've just established goals and policies that kind of help meet those state requirements it doesn't prohibit I mean it doesn't limit cities abilities to do things like that but that's not something that we're proposing and it's not something that we expect to be enacted here or elsewhere in the region so the this the work that was the bulk of the work that was done on this was done in conjunction with Benton County, Richland, Pasco, West Richland, and really culminated, I guess, almost a year ago at its completion. And I think that was, we know that the areas, they're sensitive to this topic, and so we wanted to make sure that we weren't, we were meeting the requirements of the law while also tailoring it to in our community, so we've done the best that we can to try to achieve that.

I don't know if that addresses your question. It does. Thank you, Anthony. And I just have one more question on the parking requirements. I know that we had talked about it before where there would be a reduction of having to require so many parking spots per unit. But I guess I'm trying to think of the long-term outcome of that, of people just parking on the street, parking in front of other people's houses. I mean, I know from experience if my neighbor wants to park in front of my house, there's nothing I can do about it. Unfortunately, he can't because I just have too many vehicles. But you know what I mean, like other people. I have some cars for sale if anybody is interested. But I mean for other people across the city that, you know, let's say let's say like one of our previous meetings off of Highland Drive, but Olympia 45th and those people that were concerned with the zoning change and how that might affect them. You know, if there's any discussion on what could happen or is there anything that might say, you know, They reduced the parking restrictions for code-wise, but you just can't be parking in front of other people's houses, I guess, is what I was...

I can jump in if you want, Anthony. Sure. I mean, I could address it, too, I think, pretty easily.

Okay. Well, I'll cue up Jonathan, too, because of our transportation side. I kind of think of parking requirements as just kind of two prongs. One is the government mandates to have a minimum amount of parking spaces, and there's the private market developments requirements. The requirements are like a lot of times banks and financiers have their own parking requirements, but also developers want to provide parking to make their properties viable and marketable. So even if the government mandates kind of go down, there's still going to be probably the private market. Well, in most cases, I would say we'll probably still provide enough parking, especially in a community like Kennewick, where people expect to be able to drive around and park their boats and their four wheelers and whatnot. But that said, probably in some areas you might start to see issues over time and that the city would have to come up with some strategies on how to manage on-street parking better or have other alternatives to deal with that.

Yeah, I guess just to piggyback off of Scott, the requirement is that cities not be allowed to require a specified amount. It doesn't limit the developer for providing what they believe is necessary, uh, for their development to be successful. But that said, I think from a, from a trend standpoint and Kennewick, at least, I don't think we'll have that issue on the commercial side for the most part, or I could see it being an issue is on the residential side. Um, And we're seeing some of that. I had conversations last week with a code enforcement officer about people that are complaining about a specific multifamily development that was an infill project and there's not enough parking that was provided. And that was at the standard that we have currently in place. And now that standard is going to be reduced. They can provide more if they want, but they don't have to. And in the instances where they choose not to, then that's where the conflict occurs, right? And so we're not likely going to be able to pass an ordinance that says you can't park in the public right-of-way unless it's in front of your own dwelling. I doubt that that's going to pass. I don't know if that's even legal. But there are provisions in that bill that are being worked into the code that allow the city to conduct a parking study in specific areas where we believe that this may be an issue. And after conducting that study, we submit that to the state for approval, and they can waive the requirement, or not waive the requirement, but allow us to require more parking within specified areas after those studies are completed.

Thanks, guys. I know it's kind of a silly question. It just made me think of... Back in the days when I did repossessions, I did it for 22 years, and I never really saw it in Kennewick. Some in Richland, definitely in Pasco. And I would actually get calls. I'd pick up a car in front of somebody's house because I would spot it two blocks from their apartment. It's not unusual for people to have their cars like that, but they were thankful, and I'd give them my card, and then I'd start getting calls, hey, are you looking for another car? Because it was somebody else's part. So I just... looking at the map, I could see where it might become an issue and kind of like, but I don't know. Thank you anyway.

I think we're, I think we're seeing, I am anticipating having to potentially do parking studies in certain areas of the city just based on what we're seeing now and until the time that, um, you know, mode like people's preferences on transportation modes change. Um, Just in that one particular neighborhood that I mentioned already, there are a few more infill lots in that area, and there's opportunity to add some middle housing in addition to larger multifamily projects, and I can see that becoming an issue there.

So Commissioner Gregory here, I love the discussion because it's reality of what's going on. And so you, Anthony, said that it's going to kind of be a new requirement. But if I'm building the home and I want it to have three parking spots and I have the land, you're not going to say no. It's just a requirement just to.

Correct. The state is telling the city you can't make them put in more than this. But if they want to, if you want to, you can put in as many as you want.

I love it. Thank you.

Any other questions or thoughts?

No, it was great. Thank you. You did really well on all the studies and stuff. I appreciate you all.

Commissioner Arneson, do you have any comments or questions?

I do not. Thank you.

All right.

All right. Well, if nothing else, we'll look forward to being back in two weeks. I'll be there in person for the public hearing and see what other comments come in. Of course, staff are always available as well, and they can pass on any other. If you think of something later, they can pass on and get in touch with us as well.

All right. Thank you, Scott and team. Thank you all.

Thank you.

So I go back to this script.

Yeah, the next meeting will be a public hearing. We'll take public comment.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And if you do come up with any other comments or questions between now and then, you can still bring that up next time. This was just kind of an opportunity to kind of work through things, work through any concerns you might have. Yeah, there's a lot.

We'll also be able to help next time as well. That don't say much to our public. Is there anything like advertisement of anything to help get people here?

We're advertising, yeah. We're going through our normal advertisement, but we're doing what? Four? Three? Three extra days instead of... The typical is a Sunday that's 15 days before the hearing date.

Okay.

We're advertising the Sunday before that and the Sunday after that as well.

How do you guys advertise? I've seen some LinkedIn...

In the newspaper, in the legal section, is where our public notices are required to go, and so we're advertising there.

And it's on our website. Yeah. And then through...

I noticed that part where he was talking about they didn't have the turnout. The turnout was light.

890-some.

Yeah. I mean, it's something where I think everybody should be.

Oh, for the public here. Oh, I was doing the survey.

Yeah, the open house. No, the survey results. I was surprised we got that many.

Oh.

Yeah, if you don't count staff, there's about 20. The orchard?

Yeah.

No, you're right. The orchard had been zoned agriculture, and we phased out that zoning, and so it was rezoned from agriculture to, I think, residential-suburban.

And then they just wanted to change it.

To residential low. Low. Yeah.

And it just seemed like people had no clue. But you look at it and you're like, wait a minute, that was done. More than a couple years before that. Yeah. You know, you would think if you were buying a house and you, you know, like for me, if I was buying a house, I'm going to look at research and everything around the house and

It's tough to get people interested and come out. It is. If they're not directly affected. If it's a subdivision in your backyard, then yes, that's where they come out.

An LRA across the street. If you can't see the connection to yourself personally. People just don't make the time to come out for that reason.

I wanted to know more about what's going on. I saw the opportunity online.

Yeah. So the email that went out for fireworks, I don't watch emails too much. I'm too busy for emails. But it was very helpful. Can you do something like that? Anybody that had a water bill was getting, this is our guideline for fireworks. You can only line them at this time. And I actually read it.

We did use the utility billing for the survey that went out. Oh, you did?

So you're doing it again for the 17th?

For the open hearing. The public hearing.

Oh, you have to do it so much time in advance?

I don't know if there's another bill that will run between now and 17th.

Oh, it's only on the bill. I got like four emails. I got four emails about fireworks. I was shocked.

Yeah, using the emails. The list of emails from... I mean, that's something that

I mean, I actually saw it. I was like, whoa, what's this?

But we did. But that list was the list that we used to send out the original survey.

Yeah.

And the second survey. Well, not the second survey, but the original survey.

And we didn't get very many.

And notification for the open house. And we got 20. 20. Right.

And I couldn't make it.

The survey, we got a lot of the survey.

But the open house itself. Not so much.

No, I was at the Grange Hall. I just got to get on there more often.

So being how I had to wing it, I skipped over and I apologize for not asking Mr. Maui to introduce the panelists. I finally saw it. That's okay. All that hard work that Brandy did. Are we, do you think we're done discussion? Do you have anything else? Or Mr. Arnoldson, do you have anything?

Well, I just wanted to apologize for my untimely unmute earlier. I'm joining remotely here from family vacation in Eastern Oregon and was interrupted for a minute there. So sorry for interrupting the meeting.

It gave us a giggle.

I just, uh, I, it's been so many weeks since I've made it cause we've had some canceled meetings and I just had a baby girl and so I haven't been able to make the last couple. So I really wanted to make sure we made this one, even though I wasn't here in town. So.

Yeah. Congrats. And thanks for the effort of making it tonight.

Thanks very much. Yep. And I was listening in and all, all sounds good. Okay.

Okay, are there any reports, comments, or discussions of the commissioners? We just did that. How about any updates?

No updates other than there's a new planning commissioner. The vacancy is on the agenda to be filled tomorrow night with council. Or I'm sorry, not tomorrow night. In three weeks, two weeks. Yeah, on the 18th.

When you say to be filled, does that mean like the interviews? We already took applicants to interviews, that sort of thing, or is that process just starting?

Correct. The council interview committee has already selected a replacement or someone to fill that position. And so the council has to confirm and appoint them, and that will happen on the 18th. It's scheduled to happen on the 18th. Awesome. Correct. Yeah, so if you're planning on going to National Night Out tomorrow, that's been canceled due to the air quality. Bummer. Okay. 17th, we'll be back with the public hearing for comp plan update. And a rezone, yeah. There's another item on that night as well.

Perfect.

We will probably do the rezone first.

Okay.

So they don't have to sit through all of the comp plan.

Yes, I agree.

We have a captive audience. We have people here, just like Mark said, so I guess we can.

Maybe we do it first.

We could do the comp plan first and then they all have to sit through it.

Oh, you know what? It's not that easy.

But. I think the way we have the schedule, we have the rezone going first.

That's good. All right. There is no further business on tonight's agenda. It is now 728, and the meeting is concluded.