Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

This meeting of the Kirkland Planning Commission is called to order. Let's start with the roll call.

All right. The next item on our agenda is a little different than normal. We are going to start with Planning Commission Officer Elections.

And after that, we will have comments from the audience. So to start, I don't know if you want to introduce this since I'm having trouble reading my notes here.

Happy to. Thank you, Chair Rutherford. So just to make sure planning commissioners all heard in for purposes of the public too, we have received resignation of the chair position from currently Chair Rutherford. And so That has caused us to call... But he is not resigning from commission. But not resigning from commission. Yes, that's right. So Chair Rutherford is designing his officer position, which is causing us to call an officer election to fill that vacant chair position out of cycle. So typically the commission holds officer elections in May of every year. Given that there's a vacancy at the chair position now, we're going to hold an election to fill that role. And so with that, I would hand it over to the commission to make a nomination for the chair position.

Mr. Aronson? Or Erin Jacobson. I nominate Commissioner Angela Rosman for chair.

I would second that. I would second that.

All right.

We have a motion and a second. Yes. All right.

Comments?

Do we? Let's see. Do we accept it? Or we just take the vote? Or I guess now we ask for comments. It's been a while since I've run one of these things. I haven't been, yeah. Keep it together, right? All right.

Yeah, you can discuss.

Yeah, yeah.

Since her term ends, can we move our, since it's normally in May, can we move our other election up so we don't have three elections?

So, funny story. Council actually extended the expiration, the terms for all expiring boards and commissions to the end of June because they're wanting to, this just happened at their last meeting, basically to give them some more time to figure out how they select folks. Yeah, so now you're stuck with me for a few extra months.

No, that's perfect. I just didn't want to have three actions.

But then we don't have to do it. Yeah, I agree. So this way, I'm happy to stick till May, and then we can get back on track. That was not their reasoning, but it works for us. Yeah.

Any further discussion? All right. I'll call for the vote then. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? And that carries unanimously. And now we have the passing of the gavel.

THANK YOU. YOU'RE WELCOME. AND WITH THAT, THAT MEANS WE NO LONGER HAVE A VICE CHAIR. SO IT HAS BEEN TIME TO NOMINATE FOR THE POSITION OF VICE CHAIR THAT HAS NOW BEEN VACATED BY ME.

I'LL NOMINATE ERIN JACOBSON. I'LL SECOND THAT.

OKAY. ANYONE HAVE ANY COMMENTS, THOUGHTS?

I mean, I'll speak to my motion, I think, given his tenure and experience on the Commission and, you know, his contributions and all of that. I think it makes sense for him to elevate into the role of vice chair, and I appreciate the timing shift to allow him to have the opportunity to receive tutelage and guidance under you as the chair.

That would be my feeling as well. I feel that he is very knowledgeable, very capable, and, you know, I look forward to him serving as vice chair and probably chair in the near future.

All right. All those in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Any opposed? All right. Now we have a new vice chair. Congratulations. I mean, that's the upside of not being up there is we don't have to play musical chairs. And with that, we will now move on to comments from the audience. Is there anyone who would like to speak to anything before we start our meeting?

Audience singular?

Well, no, we get multiple. Liz, did you? Yeah. I don't see a list. You could speak after Liz if you wanted to. You are a constituent. That's right. Junior constituent. Yes.

Ready? Good thing your chair swivels. It'd be a little uncomfortable. So I was not aware that elections would happen before comments, so my comments are related to the election. THEY ARE STILL SOMEWHAT RELEVANT SO I WILL CARRY ON. I DID FIRST WANT TO THANK CHAIR RUTHERFORD AND VICE CHAIR, PREVIOUS CHAIR RUTHERFORD, PREVIOUS VICE CHAIR ROSMAN FOR EXTENDING THEIR SERVICE IN THOSE ROLES IN ORDER TO GET THROUGH THE LITTLE Shortage of leadership we had there for a moment for a interim period so that's much appreciated I do have a question as to whether officers with elected tonight would serve until the regular May election Which it sounds like the answer to that is yes. It wasn't clear in the packet and So I also think that it's Good that we have commissioners who first of all that this will put you guys back on track commission back on a track for LEADERSHIP EVOLUTION, AND IT WILL BE GREAT TO HAVE SENIOR MEMBERS STILL ON THE COMMISSION EVEN WHEN SOME TERM LIMIT OUT. AND I THINK HAVING COMMISSIONER JACOBSON EXPERIENCED AND MENTORED UP IS GREAT, AND ALSO COMMISSIONER MEDEA, THE SAME, IN LINE AS WELL. SO I JUST WANTED TO SAY THANK YOU TO ALL THE COMMISSIONERS FOR THEIR SERVICE, AND I LOOK FORWARD TO THIS YEAR. THANK YOU.

Thanks, Liz. And we specifically did officer elections at the very beginning of the meeting on purpose to try and clear up some of those questions. But I appreciate those comments. Thank you. Would anyone else like to speak?

You don't have to, bud.

All right. With that, we will move on to the study session about the planning and building department overview.

All right. Thank you, Chair Rosman. And congratulations to incoming Vice Chair Jacobson. So tonight, we're going to keep it very casual. That's why we're all sitting on the floor. We did give you a table, but besides that, we'd... I'd like to encourage you to interrupt us. We want to make sure that this is more of a Q&A. And we really just wanted to take the opportunity, given that we don't have any business items for you at this meeting, to take a little bit of a deep dive into some of the functions of our planning and building department beyond the things that you usually see. I think that we've gotten a lot of great Questions from commissioners over the last couple years as we've been working on some of our code amendment projects that at least told me you had a curiosity about kind of some of the other things that go into processing building permits, some of the other things that make up the whole life cycle of getting housing on the ground and things like that. Oh, great, and we have the thing up. Before we jump in, I did want to let you know who's at the table, so I wanted to take a moment and let our staff members that you might not know introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about what they do in the department so that you kind of know who's available for you to ask questions of. So if that's okay, I'll go ahead and hand it over to Angela to introduce herself, and then we'll go down the row. PLEASE. SORRY.

MY NAME IS ANGELA HAUPT. I'M THE PLAN REVIEW SUPERVISOR FOR THE PLANNING AND BUILDING DEPARTMENT. I'M ALSO THE OFFICIAL OR THE CODE ENFORCEMENT OFFICER REPRESENTATIVE ON THE WASHINGTON STATE BUILDING CODE COUNCIL. AND SO, YEAH, THAT'S WHAT I DO.

Hello, my name is Prince Cowan. I'm the administrative services manager in the planning and building department. I've been with the city for several years, and I manage our planning and building administrative team.

I was going to say, you're not that new, right? That sounded newer than...

I was on the committee that interviewed her and decided to select her.

Do you beat Angela, then?

Yes.

Hello, everyone. I have not been here 20 years. I'm pretty new. My name is Jake. I'm a planner with the Planning and Building Department. I've worked here a little over two years. I started as an assistant planner, and then about six months ago was promoted to planner. And I review development permits.

Great. So we've brought a lot of experience. And two years working the counter gives you a ton of experience. So really encourage you to ask questions of the folks that we have with us tonight that Adam and I might not be able to answer for you at your normal meetings, because they definitely see things that we don't. Oh, I have the clicker. Sorry, I'm getting used to the new layout, too. So tonight, we're going to start going over just some of the all of the divisions in the planning and building department. And we want to tell you a little bit more about the things we do that you don't see, because they're super interesting to us. We hope they're interesting to you, but we think they're very important to the community. And then we're going to deep dive into the permit review process, so just kind of help you understand all the steps that go into reviewing construction permits and give you an opportunity to really ask Angela and Jake a lot of questions that you might have. I want to note that Angela knows pretty much everything there is to know about updating the building codes at the state level. We've gotten a lot of questions from the commission about that. And those are questions that Adam and I are certainly not as qualified as Angela to answer. So I encourage you to Get your curiosity satisfied tonight. And then we'll go a little bit more into the timeline. For some of the projects, you do see those code amendment projects. And then give you a status update on where we're at on the currently adopted work program. So like I said, please interrupt us, ask questions as we go, and we will dive into it. Oh, thank you. Sorry, I've got two different screens here. So for the planning and building department, we really have... two major divisions, planning and building, and then our administrative team that serves both planning and building. And so on the planning side of the house, we kind of split into two subdivisions, I guess. Whoa, planning joke. It's a retreat tonight. Folks, get ready for more of that. So we have our long-range planning team, and that's a lot of the senior planners and our environmental program coordinator that you see with me at Planning Commission quite often. And then we have our current planning division, so that's over here. And our planning manager, Don Nelson, oversees all of those folks. So that team is comprised of assistant planners, planners, associate planners, and also some senior planners that do more development review and less of the long-range policy work. And that's quite a large team. I think we've got over 20 planners kind of that fall into those different positions. And our code enforcement team and development review arborist are over there on the current planning side of things. And then we have our administrative team. Again, administrative team serves both planning and building, and Prins is going to talk a little bit more about some of their functions in a bit. And then on the building side of things, we have our building official, Kurt Aldworth, Angela, and her team, our plan review or plans examiners. Thank you. And a lot of permit techs that are doing the intake, all the ins and outs of that. And then our building inspectors, too. So again, how many people in the building division of that?

37. 37?

OK. Yeah, so 15. Quick question. If I were to summarize the difference, the planning side is more zoning code enforcement, and building side is more building code enforcement?

Yeah, great summary. So quite a few folks doing quite a lot of different things. And just to go a little bit more into the function, and I encourage our team up here to interrupt as well if I'm missing things, but I'll keep it a little bit brief unless there's questions. So we do a whole lot of things. I think of things kind of in a cycle. So we start with planning for the growth. That's a lot of the things that you see. We're working on policy, figuring out how we want to grow, where we want to do it. And we do that through the planning framework that the state gives us here in Washington. We do that by then policymaking at the local level. So bringing forward the things that the state kind of sets out for us and making them fit into the Kirkland context. Once we have those policies, we're working on the zoning code and the building code, how things actually get built. And that's when we have things going through the permit process, right? People then using those codes to... improve existing development or build new development and then there's the whole cycle of building the things we have a lot of people out in the field making sure that things are getting built the way they're supposed to and then the whole cycle kind of starts starts over again so we're going to dive into that just a little bit um i'm going to hand it over to adam to talk a little bit more about that planning framework and i know um we got maybe some commissioner questions that are asking about that big picture thing yeah i think i think um

Yeah, all of you are experts in the Growth Management Act and sort of how we interface with state and regional requirements for planning as well. But that's something that I think really makes Washington state very different from other states. And we think about it a lot in our planning work. You know, planning in Washington State is very much bottom-up, just like it is in a lot of states. So local jurisdictions, local governments have a lot of authority and a lot of autonomy in terms of how they plan for themselves, you know, where housing goes and where parks are and how people get around cities and so forth. But there is, you know, unlike in a lot of other states, Washington State does have a lot of state-level requirements. So while planning is very bottom-up in Washington, there are a lot of... bookends for how we do planning, right? And I think you've encountered a lot of those bookends over the last couple of years as we've worked on our comprehensive plan, as we've dealt with myriad state legislation, prescriptive requirements that are coming from the state. But that's just something that, yeah, is really, really important and fundamental to the state of Washington. So we have the Growth Management Act, which maybe I'll talk about on the next slide, which is really sort of the primary land use law in Washington state. It guides cities in terms of doing comprehensive plans. It establishes very, very basic goals, substantive goals for what planning looks like in Washington. And then those requirements sort of get trickled down into regional plans as well. Vision 2050, which is our Puget Sound-wide plan. And then sort of the next tier beyond that are the county-wide planning policies. So the county has a plan for planning for land use here as well. And our local plans, our comprehensive plans, have to be consistent with that. all the countywide planning policies as well. We dealt with that specifically, I think, most when we were talking about our housing element. The last round of countywide planning policies had much more robust and probably aggressive requirements for housing that local cities and local governments had to comply with. So that was something I think we thought a lot as we were going through the comprehensive plan. I think we can go to the next slide. Washington State Growth Management Act, yeah, we talked about this a little bit a second ago, but yeah, very, very different from a lot of other states, requiring cities to plan for growth. A lot of states have planning enabling acts that authorize things like doing comprehensive plans and adopting zoning ordinances. But I think one of the big differences between Washington and other states is that we have very substantive goals that are built into the Growth Management Act, like minimizing urban sprawl and promoting affordable housing and promoting economic development, making sure that there is land for public facilities. That's a conversation that we're having right now about our NERTS facility in South Kirkland protecting forest and agricultural areas, protecting wetlands and streams. Other states, I think, have requirements for cities to do comprehensive plans, but you don't have to. minimize urban sprawl or protect critical areas, that's sort of assumed that you're going to do that. So the substantive requirements, I think, in Washington state are really different. And then, of course, the Growth Management Act says that the regulations that you adopt pursuant to your comprehensive plan have to be consistent with your comprehensive plan as well. You can't adopt regulations that are totally different than what you have in your comp plan. You can't say that your comp plan can't say that you want lots of affordable housing, but have really restrictive regulations concerning housing. And I think that covers the Growth Management Act.

I was going to say, Before Adam was here, Paul came from Florida, and you can never guess, but Florida had growth management before Washington did, and I think Oregon did too. I don't know if Florida does anymore, but that was really surprising to me, so he brought a lot of experience, and we had to be consistent.

Yeah, I think states that have a lot of growth pressures, right, or have historically had a lot of growth pressures are ones who are likely to have more robust growth growth management acts.

Are there other states that, I mean, besides those two, do you know? I mean, over the last 30 plus years?

I think Oregon, I mean, I think Oregon and Washington are sort of the leaders in really robust growth management acts that really promote the minimization of sprawl and doing good things in cities. But, you know, California has strong planning enabling, requiring comprehensive plans with some substantive requirements.

New York is another state that has...

good planning laws as well.

Wisconsin has some.

So there are other states. But I think, yeah, really, Oregon adopted their comprehensive planning law, big land use law in the 1970s. I think it was like 1973 or something like that. So we came quite a bit after that. But I think the GMA was really modeled on the Oregon law.

So a few other things that we work on kind of still at that setting the course or that policymaking level, some of our the functions that we hold within planning that the commission might not see as often. We just wanted to talk about, we talked to you a lot about community outreach and engagement, but that really involves a lot of people in the department besides just sometimes the senior planner that you're seeing sit in front of you. Our administrative team helps us bunch there's a lot of logistics that go into that type of thing we do a lot of interdepartmental coordination and so you might not see folks from the building division a lot but we're talking to them quite often for example today one of my senior planners was talking is looking at parking requirements and implementing state requirements for that well The Americans with Disabilities Act requirements are actually enforced by our building division. So she had to go talk to one of the plans examiners to figure out how are we going to sync these parking revisions and the ADA requirements. And so, yeah.

Yeah, speaking of that, I hadn't really thought about that. But how does that work? Because I feel like an awful lot of the state parking requirements are effectively very little parking requirement, whereas for ADA, it makes a certain amount of sense of there have to be a certain number of disabled spaces because, you know, if you can't walk long distances, it's often very important to be able to park.

Actually, the building codes are based on the provided parking. So if there's no parking provided, there's no accessible spaces required. So it is based on the number provided, and that's one of the things at the state level with legislation that we, with WABA, which is the Washington Association of Building Officials, we're really active with the legislators and stuff. And so when they're doing code language and stuff, making sure that they are doing it safer, provided parking versus required parking, because the building codes don't require any parking.

Thank you.

We also talk to them any time you ask us about energy code. We're going and asking Angela or one of the plans examiners on her team. So there's a lot of coordination that happens. It takes a lot of people to get the information that you see to you. It's not just the folks you see in front of you every day. In addition to working with Planning Commission, the folks in our department support boards and commissions in the city and obviously City Council and so for example for the Houghton Village development plan process last year I think we visited every board and Commission just to get different input from different people kind of holding different subject matter expertise so that's another thing that we do we obviously we do environmental review which we talked to you about a little bit but we have the State Environmental Policy Act responsible official in our department and that guy. And then a lot of the legal noticing, I'll let Prince talk about, because her team does all the hard parts of that for us. But there's just a lot of little things along the way for every project. And obviously, you see us holding public hearings here. There's a lot of prep that goes into that. and then preparing those ordinances for city council, which you don't see as often, the actual ordinance itself, but that's another thing that we coordinate on a lot. Those are legal documents that we work really closely with our city attorney's office on. So just a few other things we kind of do behind the scenes at our desks back there. And next, I'm going to hand it over to Prince to talk a little bit more about how the administrative team supports the planning and building divisions.

All right, I'll give you just a quick overview about our planning and building administrative team. Allison had shown the org chart, and you can see our admin team supports both planning and building, and we have eight staff on our team right now, and we sometimes have additional on-calls or volunteers at peak times to help out, but we have eight regular temporary employees right now. So we have four different specialties that are in our admin team, affectionately known as PB admin, our office specialists, our admin assistants. We have program specialists, which you probably see the most with Jesse Davis and Tyler Gurley, who support our boards and commissions. And then we have our public records folks, which includes records management specialists and public disclosure analysts. And starting off with our office specialists, you do get contacted probably by everybody on our PB admin team, but you do hear from our office specialists often by email or when they're calling. They usually are calling to verify a quorum or see if you need a special meeting date, see who's available. So they reach out fairly often, I think, throughout the year. Of course, they're hoping to get a quick answer back, so we appreciate that very much. They are mainly responsible for all customer experience. So of course our walk-in customers, our phones, which are very busy development services outside of all the public safety and the core development services gets the next highest phone count here at the city, even more than our main line. Um so they're they're responsible for that and also our virtual appointment. So we started that system over coven so folks can still get city services by calling and booking a virtual appointment and it was popular. It has continued to be popular. So we've kept that going and that is every day three to five that we have folks calling in. So they have to help coordinate that and make sure they get connected with with the correct staff.

And then, of course... What sort of questions do people usually call in with?

A lot of them are planning questions. And then, of course, there's questions for the permit tax plan reviewers and then public works engineers. But, you know, do I need a permit for this or that? Or, you know, what kind of fence can I build? What can I build on my property? Just a whole range of questions that they have. And those appointments are set up in 15-minute increments. Sometimes people will get two, so they can try and get in for 30 minutes. But then we encourage them to set an appointment or a pre-submittal meeting. Um, they're also responsible for processing our minutes when our recording secretary since those over and they coordinate with the city clerk's office and King County for having documents recorded with the various prevents.

So I'll just say that as a realtor, I've joined with my clients several times on the phone. I think Jake may have been one of them not too long ago. And so, yeah, you're thorough, you're responsive, you're really helpful, and just thank you.

Good. Glad that's working out. Thank you. We have two administrative assistants and they do a lot of the heavy lifting for our general administrative work. So you may have worked with them if you've ever needed to register for a conference or a webinar or workshop, they handle all of that for our staff plus boards and commissions. ANY TRAVEL EXPENSE REIMBURSEMENTS. IF YOU HAD GONE TO A CONFERENCE AND NEEDED MILEAGE REIMBURSEMENT OR BOUGHT A MEAL WHILE YOU WERE OUT AT A CITY-SPONSORED EVENT, THEN THEY WOULD COORDINATE THAT ALONG WITH ANY SPECIAL PROJECTS. BUT THEY HANDLE THE BULK OF ALL ACCOUNTS PAYABLE, SO PROCESSING ALL OF OUR DEPARTMENT INVOICES, WORKING CLOSELY WITH FINANCE. routing contracts and grants that they work closely with like plans examiners and planners to make sure that is handled properly and then of course processing payroll to make sure we all get paid. We like our admin assistants. So our program specialists, like I said, you know, Tyler and Jesse, and they have a lot of responsibilities that aren't listed on this slide. We like to keep them busy, but some of what they do is, of course, boards and commission support. So all of the work that you are working on, they have had their hands in in some way or another. And that, of course, includes the meeting packets that they have to make sure get processed, coordinating with planners and other staff. to make sure it gets posted on the web and sent out to you and all other interested parties. And then all the timelines that they have to make sure are met for making sure that it gets posted in a timely manner so you guys can access them. and legal notices, they process all of our legal notices, which is a good portion of the work that they do. So for the permits, as well as for all of our open public meetings, they make sure that is done. So we have requirements that they have to be, you know, in the Seattle Times, we post on the web page and push out to email listserv, which has hundreds of people that receive those notices. Um, it's on our cable channel. We have to post it here at City Hall and all the things that they have to make sure are complete for each one that goes out. And then of course they just, uh, our staff support for all of our public meetings and internal meetings as well. And then our next folks are our records management group, and that consists of two separate pieces. There's our records management specialists that are responsible for making sure all of our records, all of our documents, everything that we have, whether it's hard copy or digital copy, is preserved and is accessible so that if ever, of course, staff needs to find a file or any type of document, it's easily accessible. And then also so that it's available for our public disclosure analyst, which is the second part, who she handles all of the public records requests that come into our department. And we get a large number of those that come in every day. And then the records management specialist also backs up the public records requests. so of course police gets a lot of public records requests and even court now is getting uh quite a few but we're like neck and neck with the number of records requests that come in uh for for second place so it's a constant process that they have to stay on top of that is our administrative team on the records No, it's all electronic now. We just finished a large project where we digitized a good part of our building permits. There are still some that are in archives, some of the really old ones that we just don't get a lot of records requests for, but all of the more recent ones since 97 have been digitized. And then for land use, we haven't started truly digitizing everything as far as what's in archives. So we still have paper files there. So if somebody makes a record request, it's old school. We have to go and make a request from our archive company, bring up the paper file, and look for whatever it is they need. And we scan it, and usually through our web portal, we email it out to them that way. But all of the new cases that come in everything is done electronic So it's scanned or electronic copies are downloaded from my building permit comm because Frequently I'm on my building permit and a lot of times plans like a zoning permit You wanted to see what the proposed?

layout of the lots are. And they're not attached. Or if a neighbor is building a remodel or whatever, the plans don't get attached until it's actually been approved. So if I'm the public and I want to see what's going on, how do I do that?

We'll talk about this later. And Margaret, you're familiar with the Kirkland Activity Map. That might have different, which is back up and running, by the way, just for those of you who like it. Yeah, it is. It has been for the last couple weeks, actually, but it's back up and running, and that also has linked files as well, and the linked files in the curriculum activity map might be a little bit different than what's available in MVP. So I would recommend checking that as well. The curriculum activity map, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, is a A cool thing that we launched, a cool website that we launched a couple of years ago that allows people to figure out where permits are in your neighborhood, what is happening in your neighborhood. You can look up any type of permit in your neighborhood. You can zoom in on where you live and see what your neighbors are doing. You can sign up for email alerts, like if you wanted to get an email alert for whenever somebody submits for a new building permit in your neighborhood, you could do that as well. So that's also a good resource if you're trying to find plans. Yeah, for privacy reasons, we don't make that super apparent, but that's also subject to a records request.

Yeah, OK. Yeah, well, we can ask about that.

All right. So we have a couple slides where Angela and Jake are going to dig a little bit more into the actual kind of step-by-step process for permit review. That's kind of our next step in the whole planning and building story here is the permit review process. If Angela doesn't mind me putting her on the spot, I'd love for her to talk just maybe a little bit about kind of who are plans examiners, like what kind of training do they have, and if you could provide maybe any of that information for like our building inspectors, just some of their background I just kind of want to give you an idea of who it is that's doing this work and what expertise they bring to the table. And sorry, I really am putting her on the spot.

Yeah, so for the plans examiners, they're the staff that do the review of the plans. All of our plans examiners are combo reviewers. So they do the architectural, structural, mechanical, and plumbing. And then I also have a senior plans examiner that is electrical only. That's because by state law, in order to be an electrical plans examiner, you actually have to be a journeyman electrician. Same with the electrical inspectors. And so the background on the plans examiners is, I believe it's still nice to have as an architectural or engineering degree. Otherwise, it's a, for the mid to come in at the mid range or the high range. It's, I believe, four to six years of experience as a plans examiner or inspector or similar. So the majority, I guess actually right now I have a number of them that came up actually through Permit Tech. They started as Permit Techs in Redmond is what happened. they were promoted into plans examiners there, and then they came to work here from there, so they came over with the experience. One of them does have an architecture degree, I have an engineering degree. So yeah, there's a number of kind of ways, but for the most part, some sort of construction-ish, background for the inspectors a lot of them come out of the construction industry is basically what they do are inspectors the majority of them are combo which are building and electrical and again by state law the and to be an electrical inspector again you have to at least be a journeyman level electrician and so the majority of them came from construction backgrounds with as electricians and then the other ones that are just building came basically out of construction.

So a ton of expertise that comes to bear there. And before we even get to reviewing the plans, one of the things that I want to make sure get some daylight here is that we have to take the permits in and that actually takes quite a large team here and that involves our permit technicians largely and also we have a planning technician which is kind of a more recent addition to the department in the last few years and so that's a lot of answering phones and helping people at the counter. Prince mentioned how many questions we get about permits. Do I need one? How much is it going to cost? How do I apply for it? And for as many probably seasoned developers that we have that do this kind of thing in multiple jurisdictions every day, we have a lot of people that are applying for a permit for the first time, and our permit technician team has the expertise to help all those people and a lot of really great people skills. So we regularly get, and Adam can explain, Probably back this up even more so than me, but we regularly get emails from people just expressing how grateful they are for our kind of intake team. So they're doing intake and issuance of permits, providing a lot of that frontline customer service, working with the fees. And they also have a lot of certifications and do a lot of ongoing training. And we love to see them promoting up through through the department. So a lot of great expertise and Then I wanted to ask Jake the same question that I just asked Angela about kind of For the planners that we have in the department that are reviewing these building permits for compliance with the zoning code What kind of experience they typically have and what they kind of bring to the table? So if yes Jake could give us a little background there

Yeah, so generally the planners will have at least a bachelor's, usually in urban planning or a very similar named degree. Sometimes they'll also have a master's degrees in the same. It's more common if your bachelor's degree is not in urban planning specifically, then your master's will be. And then obviously we have a range of planners. So it begins at assistant planner and goes all the way to senior planner and your experience just kind of grows from entry level to more senior level. Most of our assistant planners are like fresh out of college with that degree. And then I think most, if not all of our more senior planners have been promoted directly from within. So they're gaining experience at those different levels up to the senior level and beyond.

A couple of years ago, I think it was during the COVID era, unemployment crunch, when it was really hard to get new staff, we created a new classification, the planning technician as well. That is a position that doesn't actually require a bachelor's degree or certainly not a master's degree. It was somebody who could sort of start at the ground level in taking permits on the planning side, helping people understand our zoning code. And it was really a way to sort of broaden brought in the group of folks to draw from for hiring, and that's a position that's worked out really, really well. We have one planning technician right now, and the intent is that while a master's degree or a bachelor's degree is really, really helpful in sort of learning the academic side of planning, there's also a ton of stuff that you can learn just by being on the job, and in some ways that's not necessarily better, but just as good. So that's something that we launched a couple years ago as well to sort of help broaden the really the diversity of people who are working in the department.

And if I could add one thing, personally, I feel like as a planner reviewing for like zoning code compliance, you learn a lot more by actually doing it actually reviewing for compliance than you do in in the specific degrees, because they teach you a lot of theory and more of the long range planning. But I felt at least in my experience, actually reviewing the development permits, you learn 75% of it on the job just as you're reviewing.

How many people in the planning department come from other parts of Washington versus out of state? Because I could see that, you know, City to city, it varies, but state to state, it varies quite a bit. And I'm kind of curious how many people come from Washington versus other areas.

Yeah, Angela might know more about our building folks. On the planning side of things, we've had a mix. I think that, especially at our kind of entry-level positions in the planning division, It kind of varies. We'll have some years where it feels like we've kind of done a half-and-half split. We've gone through phases where we have a lot of recent grads that are looking to move to the area, and so we'll get a lot of out-of-state applicants. So we have hired... um quite a few people from out of state and like Jake mentioned um we're finding that a lot of those kind of on the job skills right we're we're getting them at the ground level and so um it's not um necessary like they didn't have Washington experience but they didn't really need it because we do a lot of training here on the ground at those entry level positions I think for our um Kind of as we climb up the planning hierarchy, I think a lot of those folks tend to have more local or Washington state experience. But we've had out-of-state applicants be really competitive as well. But I think those people have tended to be more local or internal.

And then I don't know what it's like for the plans examiners. The last one that I hired was working as an architect in Florida. And so, yeah, she moved up for this job. And then I think for the most part, the inspectors and the techs and stuff are mostly, I think, fairly local, or at least from this state. And so, yeah, and the rest of the plans examiners are also state. So only one that's kind of out of state lately.

I'll mention, too, we do recruit nationally as well. We post on national planning websites on the planning side, and I think sometimes on the building side as well. Oftentimes, our applicant pools are very, very mixed. Allison's hiring for a senior planner position right now. And we've got people, I think, from all over the country almost. But that said, I think people with a little bit of Washington state planning experience sometimes tend to do a little bit better in the interview process. And I think we tend to, the folks who end up getting hired come from, I think this sort of reminds me of Margaret's question about you know, other states have good comprehensive planning policies. And so I think we tend to get a lot of people from Oregon, California, and Washington for those reasons. They're just familiar with planning programs that are similar to ours, states with strong shoreline management programs, states that have environmental review requirements, states that have really strong comprehensive planning policies. Uh-huh. Uh huh. Yeah, yeah, that's true.

I was just going to add to that and that I'd say since COVID especially, we have done more national recruiting, even though we did before, just as more and more people started to move around, we started making a bigger effort to advertise on more websites so that we started drawing more applicants from just all over.

And then I'll pile on and just say that we do find, mentioning that we get a lot of state applicants, we find that Kirkland has a great reputation in the fields. A lot of folks, as Adam mentioned, I'm in a hiring process right now, and I'm always asking people, why do you want to work for Kirkland? Not just why do you want to be a planner, but why do you want to work for Kirkland? I think people are kind of paying attention to what Kirkland's doing in the region, and people... I hear a lot of, like, I hear great things, or I visited, and I think it's such a great place, and I want to be a part of that. And so maybe we're patting our own backs a little bit here. But it's nice to hear, and I think the commission can take credit for that as well, right? The decisions you're making, people that are paying attention to planning things are watching, and it's drawing great talent to the city of Kirkland for us. It's a fun thing to see. OK, I'll keep going, but please feel free, team and commission, to keep jumping in. And we are going to dig a little bit more into the actual permit process in a second here. But just to kind of complete this little story here, talking about work in the field, Angela gave you a little bit of background on our inspectors and kind of their typical backgrounds. They're in the field pretty much all day. They get here early and start. During COVID, they were here, they're out in the field. So it's a really hardworking team. Other folks that we have out in the field on a regular basis include our development review arborist. And so that is, you've met Anna, who's kind of doing urban forestry business. policy but we also have a development review arborist that's reviewing permits and against our tree retention code so he's out in the field a lot doing inspections and we also have our code enforcement officers so we have three code enforcement officers in the department and they are out in the field in law a lot doing those inspections based on the code enforcement complaints that we receive And our planners also do a fair amount of inspections. And so they're out doing inspections for zoning code compliance or doing kind of existing site condition surveys and things like that. So there's a lot of folks any given day out in the field. Wave if you see us. And last, sorry, I'm getting confused about this one, this one, okay. And then just kind of like the last high level function of the department is this sort of moving forward work and the kind of things that are just ongoing all the time. So Adam's going to talk a little bit about some of the innovative things we do. So we have a smart city strategy plan that was adopted a couple years ago. You know a lot about our sustainability work that we're doing all the time. We also have a pretty big responsibility in the city's adopted diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging roadmap. So the work we're doing is also carrying forward the actions in that. Another strategy plan, so a lot of what we do is also doing kind of actions that are dictated by other strategy plans outside of our department that the city's adopted. The most recent one that we'll be looking at is the Housing, not the housing strategy plan, the homelessness action plan. Okay. I wanted to make sure I got the title right. Um, so that was adopted by council, um, through largely a city manager's office and parks department led effort, um, back in November or December by city council. And there's some actions in that that will relate to our work. Um, Other ongoing work we do, and we're going to talk about this a little bit on the work program, but we have a lot of reporting requirements to different state and regional agencies that take up time. The state's given us a lot of new requirements for reporting on building permit timelines, and we're finding that takes time and effort and resource, and so it's something that we're having to think about even more than we used to in the last few years. We think a lot about process improvements and Adam and Angela and Jake can probably speak a lot more to that. We also have this kind of ongoing stream of permit revisions. We don't just review permits once. A lot of times we're reviewing the revisions. We're reviewing tenant improvements a lot. So it's not always big building permits for new things. There's a lot of little tiny permits For those tenant improvements, little sign changes and things like that, a lot of tree permits come through the department. That's kind of what our APs, our assistant planners, like cut their teeth on, right? It's like a high volume of the work at the AP level.

Yeah, I would say like by far our most common question that APs get at the counter are tree-related questions. I have a tree I want to remove. What's the process? And yeah, they're explaining that to them.

And then obviously that ongoing code enforcement work. So those are kind of just high level, like some of the things that the department does and a lot of things that I didn't mention, but wanted to make sure that those are things that you kind of know are going on. We're always happy to share more about them if the commission's interested in the future. But I think you're going to be really interested in the next couple of slides that, oops, wrong one. Okay, so yeah.

Quick question before we jump into that. Do we tend to monitor how fast we're able to process the tenant improvement permits? Because that's a pretty different kind of permit than a lot of the stuff that we tend to talk about on the Planning Commission. I mean, it can be really directly impactful to small businesses trying to get starting up. So I was just wondering if that's something we track actively.

Yeah, thanks, Aaron. That'll come up a little bit with the permit dashboard, which we'll talk about in a bit. One of the purposes of the permit dashboard is to really track permits in different categories. And I don't know off the top of my head if we have a category that captures all the tenant improvements. I think we do, but it might include other types of permits as well. So that's something that we can check on. But yeah, we get that tenant improvements are super duper important for new businesses especially. So that would be a good thing to focus on.

Awesome, thanks.

All right, so I'm going to hand it over, and Jake and Angela are going to run the show for our next portion, which is more of a deep dive into the permit review process. This is an area where I know I've heard a lot of questions from the commission, so this is a good opportunity. So I'll hand it over to Jake.

All right. Yeah, I'm just going to give you a very general overview of the permit review process. But if you guys have any questions, and you want more detail on any specific piece, please feel free to interrupt me and Angela same thing if there's building perspective that you want to give. because planning is just one piece of the review pie. One, before beginning, I just wanted to caveat this with before someone actually submits a permit for review, oftentimes our front counter staff are already in contact with them, whether that's they're asking questions about what codes are going to apply to me, I'm thinking about doing this. kind of like that first contact. And some development types require pre-submittal conferences. And that is before they can apply for the permit, they basically have their virtual meetings with us where we give them a preliminary review of their project so that they have more confidence kind of going in so that we can avoid unnecessary revisions or things that they need to fix. Yeah, so beginning, they submit via mybuildingpermit.com. It's an electronic submittal. And the first thing we do is completeness review. So this is not reviewing for compliance with zoning code and building code It's pretty much making sure that they have the documents that we need to review So like for planning common things that people are missing there's like an arborist report Oftentimes it's things that planning is sending Rejecting that completeness is they're just missing documents and that's why we encourage people the pre-submittal conferences and the counter conversations so they know what they need and they're not surprised by that.

Angela, do you know some of the common building things that people are usually missing at intake?

At intake? I mean, again, it's documents. It's missing your energy code forms. It's doing the wrong energy code forms. I'm going to say a lot about energy code. It's missing a geotech report. A lot of times it's actually using the wrong codes, the wrong version of the codes. We check a lot to make sure that the plans are reviewable. We do have restrictions on colors that you can use in your plans because it gets confused with the colors that we use to mark them up. And so things like when we do our reviews, fires orange, planning is green. Yeah, green for grass. Yeah, green for plants. Building is blue. I haven't reviewed in a little while. Let's just say I haven't marked up a set of plans. I just put the red stamps on. Blue, and then, or no, Public Works is blue. And then, again, I don't even know what color we are. I'm sorry. But every department has their own colors. And so basically, we do have a restriction that you're not allowed to use those on your plans, except on, say, the front page where you're doing renderings. We make exceptions for plumbing plans because it does make it easier, electrical one-line drawings, things like that. But for the most part, those are a lot of what things get kind of kicked back out for is because we want to make sure that because once it comes in, we're not going to pick it up the next day and start our review. It does get in line. And we want to make sure at the completeness that once we pick it up, we're going to be able to do a complete review, not a partial review and hit a roadblock. Oh, wait, we didn't have this. So we have to kick it out, give it back, and then continue. So we want to make it as streamlined as possible. And so the more thorough we are up front, then the more smoothly the review goes. And in essence, we'll save time in the long run. So that's it.

clarification question When we had like in the database when we say an application has been submitted is that date gonna align when the application?

Has been submitted or when we've deemed it complete That's going to be when it is complete For intake review does not start though until fees are paid so it's submitted the timelines are that it's submitted on my building permit comm and The next day, we, as a jurisdiction, do have a fast turnaround on our completeness. And this is building permit completeness is what I'm kind of speaking to. And so we do next day. The permit techs put together a report of all permits that were submitted the day before. Those are sent out to all of the departments. All of the departments look at them and deem them complete for their requirements. Usually, I believe they're asked to do it by 10 in the morning. Sometimes it's a little longer. I mean, if we get a whole lot of permits in, then the permit techs take the rest of the day to either anything that is deemed complete, they invoice and send the customer that invoice, or if there are items that it's been rejected for, they put together a rejection letter that lists everything that needs to be fixed before it can be submitted again. And so it does that. Um, but so the, the permit isn't officially, well, okay. Yeah. Once they, once it's deemed complete, then they accept the documents and a permits actually created in our system. But the review time does not start until we receive the intake fee. AND THAT'S WHEN THEN THE WORKFLOW IS CREATED AND IT'S THEN ROUTED TO ALL DEPARTMENTS AT THE SAME TIME FOR CONCURRENT REVIEW.

OKAY. THAT'S REALLY HELPFUL CLARIFICATION. AS I UNDERSTAND, I THINK I'VE TALKED WITH ADAM AND ALISON ABOUT THIS BEFORE, BUT AS I UNDERSTAND, THE STATE LAWS AROUND PERMANENT REVIEW TIME, THE REASON FOR MY QUESTION IS THAT THAT STATE LAW STARTS, THE TIMER STARTS WHEN IT'S DEEMED COMPLETE. IS THAT CORRECT?

PERMANENT COMPLETENESS IS REALLY IMPORTANT FOR OTHER REASONS AS WELL. Vesting, yeah. When, what regulations is your permit, does your permit have to adhere to, right? And that state law dictates that that is based on the submittal of a complete building permit as well. Application, complete building permit application. So yeah, the completeness thing is really important.

Do we track, do we track how long it takes for someone to get from an initial submittal to completeness?

Yeah, so that's,

It's deemed, so technically, so for legislation, that shot clock, that completeness is a different completeness than, well, it's a, so we deem it complete for intake, but then there are different things because with that law there is some, some sort of disagreement on whether building permits are included in it because specifically the legislator said no, they aren't. But it's one of those things that we don't start our review until we receive the fees because the reason that we started doing an intake fee up front a number of years ago is during the last big recession, we were reviewing plans and then people were canceling and so we weren't getting paid for our review time. from any of the departments. So that's why that intake fee actually covers the review process. The permit fee covers inspections and other things. The intake is meant to cover the review time. So that's why we take it up front and why it's non refundable if you cancel a permit after the review has been done. And so there's that. And so there is some nuance with what the legislative complete application is. Because technically, I think you have like 28 days or something to deem it as a complete application. So for our purposes, we take it in to create a permit in the system. but we don't start the review until we get the fee. And basically we do kind of say that we need that fee within 30 days or whatever it is. So there might be some nuances that need to be done with that where we may have to change the process where until we actually receive the fee we just that's where that's where I think the permits created but we don't necessarily in the system it's not considered complete until the workflow is started based on when the fee hits and so that's why when we're doing the permit dashboard we've been working with IT and things on what date applies to when that clock starts because we do have to keep track of it and report on it and make it visible and so there's a lot that is going into that

Yeah, thank you. That's very helpful. On the dashboard, I would be, I think we should, it makes sense for us, number one, to focus on complying with state law and the reporting requirements. And number two, that tends to line up, as you said, with our own processes. But would it be possible for us to track that very initial date just for our own purposes? Because from the user perspective, that's still going to have a big impact. And I think that might That might help clarify why when we talk with developers, there's a very different impression. Because of course, the developer, the moment you step in City Hall is when your application has been submitted, clearly.

Right. Our only issue with that is we can't control when the customer decides to pay.

Yeah.

And so it's kind of the same thing why the shot clock stops once we give a revision to a customer. Because if they say you have to issue a permit within six months, okay, we do our review within two weeks and give it to them and then they sit on it for six months. That's out of our control, and so that's kind of where that comes from. So it's something that we could track, but it gives a skewed number because, yeah, some people are very responsive. The majority are they get the invoice, and they will pay it same day or next day, and then it gets routed like the next day. But then there are some people that will seriously just sit on an invoice for literally a month and then pay it, and then again be like, well, where's my permit? And so it is kind of a, yeah, we're trying in the report to not give skewed numbers also, but yeah.

Yeah, I definitely think we should be careful, especially for the top line number, we would want to focus on things that we can defend that this is exactly the process. But also from a policy perspective, if we're not, like you mentioned, like if they don't have a geotech report, then it's not complete. Well, one of the things that I've heard discussed is like, do you want to require a geotech report for ADUs because geotech reports are quite expensive when you're just building an ADU? If we were to change those requirements, then that change wouldn't be captured in this dashboard in terms of speeding up the permits because the geotech report was never included in that timeline. So in a sense, it also wouldn't even give us credit for things that we do.

And we'll check on the dashboard. So we are tracking in the dashboard the time that applications are in applicants' hands, not necessarily during the completeness stage. But when the review is happening, we're tracking how long it takes us to submit the first, to prepare the first set of comments on the application. We're also tracking how long that permit stays in applicants' hands and so forth for every single round of revision. So that's one thing I wanted to mention. to provide a complete picture of how long stuff is taking on both sides. And then the only other thing I was going to mention is that there is a bill circulating through the legislature right now that would have completeness not be based on payment of the fee. So we'll see how far that gets through the legislature. I think we're supportive of that bill, actually.

That part, I think, is getting dropped because of so much confusion on how. It's meant to have an earlier vesting.

In that case, we would have to make things like, okay, we can't deem it complete until after the fee. We can't accept or something. We would have to do something as far as a time because, again, it's a work for free. People cancel. thing and yeah because we're currently the shot clock it basically says that yeah you have to have completeness of this and it has to be deemed complete per your process so as long as our process lists all of the things including the fee that have to be done prior to us being deemed complete then that's in compliance with the state law okay thank you thank you for that long Julia I think it's fine oh okay

So my initial question was exactly the one that Aaron asked, but I kind of have a follow-up. So there's the timing related to the delay of fee payment often, and then there's also a time delay when it's returned to the applicant because the initial submission was incomplete. And you cited Arbor's report as a common missing element. What are opportunities outside of the initial counter conversation or the Zoom calls like that we've done that could ameliorate those likely gaps? And is there a checklist that the

We have very detailed checklist for all types of different permits that list all of the documents and also when you submit on mybuildingpermit.com there are a list of based on the type of permit there are required documents that you can't actually finish your submittal until there is something in them. Unfortunately, some people will put a blank piece of paper in there or something in there that says see something else that's not actually there or they'll load the same thing four times. So, you know, Got it. We are trying to be as accommodating as possible. Yes, but there are definitely checklists that include for all four of the reviewing departments and they get updated and we go through them and stuff.

You can lead the horse to water, okay. And then just more generally, and not for answering today, because we're only in that first part, so we will be here till midnight, guys, and we're not, anyway, I'm just curious, like, in regular cadences, and it sounds like the answer might be yes when you did your overview, you know, how often do we look at our processes or do, like, a SWOT analysis and identify, oh, here's where an improvement could be made? What's that look like?

I mean, I think we kind of are continuously doing that. As far as like with mybuildingpermit.com, the permit tech supervisor and myself are both extremely familiar with the back end. We work with the configurations. We try to make it as smooth to gather information and things like that way. And then I think as far as the routing and stuff like that, I mean, anytime we get feedback, we go through and try to see, you know, what we can fix. I mean, there are times when I get very long and detailed emails from customers as to why what we do is so horrible. And, you know, and I have, I mean, a lot of times, and I'll go through and I'll try to see, and there have been improvements made based on some things where we try to make it a little smoother, things like that. Like, I mean... Fairly recently, when we took permits for heat pumps and AC units on single family, and those used to take two weeks to review, we were able to change that into an over-the-counter permit where it was a next day based on customer feedback and their wants. And it was planning and building. We worked together to figure out how we could do that and things like that. So, I mean, we do... take customer feedback seriously.

Talking about the fees, does Kirkland, do we recoup 100% of the staff costs or are we still subsidizing some of that through taxpayer money?

Yeah, good question. Generally speaking, we're recouping costs. I guess the caveat is that The permit fees are based on a permit of average complexity for a certain permit type. So it's not that every single permit recoups the cost of that particular permit. We don't charge on an hourly basis, for instance. But I think as a whole, generally speaking, we're recouping the cost of the permit work. And I think that might even be a state requirement as well. Yeah. One of the other things we've done is we've eliminated the cost for pre-submittals for certain application types. Like if you're doing a small, like a deck project and you want to do a pre-submittal because maybe there's a wetland in your backyard or something like that, we've waived the fee for pre-submittals to really encourage people to come in, take advantage of the pre-submittal process, get your application right, submit it, and then so that it can be reviewed more expeditiously.

Yes, I had a question of just, you know, the whole completeness review. And I was curious, first of all, how often we just find that things aren't complete. And kind of as a follow-up, too, do we have sort of a histogram, kind of getting back to the, that for most people, when they submit the initial one, that's from their perspective when the clock starts. But I'm curious if we have a sense as to how long, when we do return it, in general it takes. I mean, I'm assuming it's all over the place, because some people go, Yep, I'm right back the next day. And some people never whatsoever. They're just like, you returned it. I give up. I don't need the deck. But I was just curious if we had a histogram-ish, because it would be just very interesting to me to get a sense as to what's going on in people's minds when they're getting returned.

I personally, that would be a permit tech kind of question. And I also don't do completeness I think for the most part, I feel like the majority are deemed complete or they're rejected on minor issues that it is kind of a forgot to load something or need to change a title or something as far as from what I can see.

Yeah.

I think it depends what's missing. Jake mentioned that a lot of times one of the things we might be missing is an arborist report. That takes a while, because especially if people didn't realize and they're having to go out and hire a consultant. Other things, I know that's probably a pretty common counter question. My permit just got rejected. How can I fix it? And sometimes the fix is easy, and we can help them with that. Whoa, well, we need dimensions. It needs to be green, not blue. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and I would say, as an assistant planner, I did work on completeness. When our planning technician is out, then it falls to the assistant planners. For planning, it really is It can range from they're missing really important documents, like you're on a super steep slope and you don't have a geotech report, and they just never had that first contact with us at the counter or a virtual or a pre-submittal conference. And that sets them back a while, because they need to get those documents. Or they're next to a wetland and they had no idea and that changes their whole possibility of what they can do Or it can be as little as hey you didn't scale this She we need it to scale so we can measure the floor area Those are like some of the things that I remember This is one more follow-up is that something we're tracking somewhere just because I can see that if we're regularly seeing like a

An increasing number of things rejected for incompleteness about something, maybe that would trigger an action on our behalf?

So we have notes that kind of stick in our software when we're sending back those completeness things. And I think in addition to that, we have a couple documents on our website where we've tried to log and update. These are common plan review issues we see. And I think we try to, and Prins has helped us a lot with this in her team too, we've tried to really promote, like we have so many ways to help folks early in the process. Our counter's open 8 to 5, except on Wednesdays, 10 to 5, but 10.30 to 5. But, you know, so we have, and we're here, and we do virtual appointments, and we answer phones, and we call people back. So we really try to promote people, like, come talk to us if you're thinking about doing something, because we have a lot of ways to help you before you get to the point where you think you're ready to start the permit process, but you don't have that really important document. And we could have told you that in five minutes at the counter. So tell everyone you know. Come talk to us.

Do you generally find those omissions are from the mom and pop person that thought it was cool to buy a house, tear it down, and rebuild it versus seasoned developers that kind of know what they're doing? Or would that surprise me? I see Allison's face.

My data might be slightly out of date because it's also been a while since I've been up there at the counter.

I would say our frequent flyers, generally, they're pretty good, at least as far as the documents they know, because they know they need to provide these things. But it does sometimes happen that surprises us that, what do you mean you didn't know you needed this? And document that you need for every type of permit. But generally, yeah, the more frequently they come in, the better they are.

And when it comes to like the formatting and the colors and things like that I mean that was something that became a big issue for us I don't know all of a sudden every all the architects decided that everything in color would be really cool and so I mean a lot of things were getting rejected and because it doesn't just makes this hard for us to do everything and So those are things that we can also add notes in my building permit comm so that it's during the submittal process and It has notes that give them a heads up. It has links to our checklists. It has links to the formatting requirements. And so we try to put as much information in that application process to, again, try to as close as possible.

Yeah, and this is jumping a little bit ahead in the presentation as well. But something that we're taking a serious look at this year is the potential AI as well in permit intake. Those are really awesome tools out there. We're really in an early stage of exploring this. Because yeah, the situation that Jake talked about where somebody comes in and submits an application and they're missing a wetland report, yeah, that is a massive problem, right? And even though we're at the counter all the time and we're more than welcoming to people who want to come and talk about stuff, for whatever reason, people just don't come in and talk to us and they submit their application and it doesn't take into account the wetland and they don't have a wetland report. So there are really awesome tools out there that, again, we're in the early stages of exploring that blend together mapping information, GIS information with our permit requirements, right? So that theoretically, you could upload your initial application just from the comfort of your own home, and it could compare your address to our mapped environmental information. And it could say, hey, you have steep slopes in your backyard where you're proposing this project, or there's a wetland nearby. As part of your application submittal, you need to prepare a wetland report and take that into account. or you need to prepare a geotech report. So we're really, again, this year especially, exploring tools like that that will not be launched immediately, but it's something we're really interested in to sort of make the process a little more automated and user-friendly as well so that when people submit their applications, it's good from the get-go. That'd be scary for people.

Kind of on a similar note, is there a way to make it easy to where you could like type in an address or parcel number and find out In addition to what you're zoned as, these are all the other things. You're next to the Cross-Forkland Corridor, and so these are the other aspects. You mentioned the shoreline, but is there an easy way, even before you're into the, okay, I'm trying to submit an application, just what are the things I need to consider?

Yeah, totally, yeah. What can I do with my property, right? That's a question that we get a lot at the counter, and our planners are great at And the plans examiners are great at letting people know what they can do as well. But is there a way to automate that? Again, using mapped information, can I build ADUs on my property? That's a question that we answer probably a billion times every single year. So is there a way where somebody, again, from the comfort of their home could ask that question and get mapped information that would inform the answer? So absolutely, yeah.

And I just want to say I appreciate that Kirkland uses my building permit. Redmond has their own unique system that is, you know, has, yes, it's very special. So I appreciate that Kirkland did not feel the need to recreate a special system for our special city.

We were one of the founding members, so yeah, we helped develop it.

But it's, you know, I appreciate that there is a semi standard permit and I wish everybody used it instead of creating their own. Yeah, I've had lots of those conversations.

Yes.

Oh, can I also ask how many slides we have more? Because I know that we've been talking a lot and We want to let you actually get through.

This is slide 13, and we have 22. OK. So we still have OK. All right.

So once you move past completeness review, and we get payment for the initial intake fees, then it gets routed for review. And it's a very similar type of deal with completeness, where it's routed to the different departments. Depending on the scope of work, those departments are different. During our review for compliance, if there are issues we find, then we compile them in a comment letter. And once all departments are done reviewing it, then we'll send back that comment letter and that has like an itemized list of things that you need to address and fix in order to be compliant. The review timelines vary pretty widely like depending on the permit they've submitted. Like for a new single, we have like a list of goals on our website, a PDF of like permit review time goals. And that range is just depending on the complexity and type of permit. Once we get to approval, so once each department has completed their review, then there are typically holds for most types of permits. Holds are basically like the permit is ready, but you need to satisfy these holds before we can issue it to you. For planning, that is often things like recording documents. Very common, like tree maintenance agreement is a typical one. Or our code requires certain geotechnical documents, like there's a liability one and there's one other one as well that our code requires. And those have to be done before we can give you the permit. Certain types of inspections as well. like for planning, tree fencing inspections have to be done before we issue you the permit. Oftentimes, the permits will let you remove certain trees. But we want to make sure you have the fencing up to protect the ones you're supposed to retain. Once a building has their own hold, sometimes Public Works will have their own holds. We're all reviewing for our own things. Once it is issued, then that's when they can actually Begin construction. Building does the bulk of inspections between start and final. Planning will do a final inspection. And yeah, public works and building will do all sorts of inspections as they're building to make sure it's safe.

Is anyone else cold, by the way? Is it just me? It feels cold. Okay. Okay. Well, there's at least two of us that are cold. All right. That was my question.

And then, yeah, once everyone does their final inspection, then the permit is final.

Yeah.

Any questions on any of those specific pieces?

All right.

So I see we have building planning, public works, and fire. I assume Puget Sound Energy might have some concerns around electrical hookups. I assume that's a completely separate process out of the city's control.

We do electrical. We have our own. 80% of the state is under L&I. Kirkland has its own electrical program. We do our own plans examining and inspection. L&I does not have jurisdiction except for elevators.

Okay.

And that's all taken care of during... So for single family, so like for single family, we don't actually review plumbing, mechanical or electrical. It's all basically out in the field, just inspection. We don't require them to provide us with all of the detailed drawings for that. But for any non-residential and basically IBC structures, then we do do reviews. And like I said, I have one plans examiner that's electrical and almost all of our inspectors right now are combo and do building and electrical.

Okay, thank you.

If you don't require, you know, an exact diagram, how do you price it out?

Our fee for single family? So for new single family, the fees are based on a percentage of the permit fee for mechanical, plumbing, and electrical. And then for single family, if it's... ADDITION OR REMODEL, SO ANYTHING THAT'S NOT NEW, THEN IT'S BASED ON FIXTURE COUNT. AND FOR ELECTRICAL, IT'S BASED ON VALUATION. AND THEN COMMERCIAL OR MULTI-FAMILY, IT'S BASED ON VALUATION OF THE ACTUAL WORK FOR THAT MECHANICAL ELECTRICAL OR PLUMBING.

OK, before we move on, I just want to mention one other thing regarding timing of permits, just because I think it's one that Planning Commission might hear about a lot. And what if you're building the permit and then you change something? So that starts, that would send someone, we built this kind of like Candy Land. And it's because I did it and not someone with better skills than me. So you have your permit issued. You're in the middle of inspections. Either you decide to change something or maybe one of our inspectors out in the field says, hey, that staircase was supposed to be there and not there. we need to look at the plans again. It might be something that impacts only one department. Sometimes it might be something we can approve in the field. But a lot of times, if it's something that impacts other departments, hey, your wall moved. We all have to look at it again. So then you go back to submitting that application with your revisions. And maybe you have submitted what we need to see. Maybe we need to see more things. Like maybe you changed things in a way that we want to look at the geotechnical report again because you added new footings or something like that. So that's another thing just that can add time to the process because it might be a revision that we all have to look at again. It might not be correct the first time. And so just in the process, that's another thing that can add some time. It always helps if it's applicant initiated. They know they want to make the change. They check with us first. We have a chance to review it. And it's a little harder sometimes if we catch it in the field. So just one more thing that can add a little bit of time.

Yeah, and our inspectors are empowered that if they feel comfortable approving the change in the field, they do. If it's something that's structural or something that is really a big change that could change egress, something like that, then they would send them back to us to redo the review. But that review time, you don't go back to the start of the line. It's an expedited review to get to that because we don't want to hold up construction if we don't have to.

All right. Yep, that changed it there. We're going to ask Angela to keep on rolling. I asked Angela to give you all an idea of just kind of, you've asked us about building codes. Those aren't questions that I can really answer. And while the Planning Commission doesn't have oversight onto the building codes, I thought you might be interested to know just a little bit of how those get adopted at the City of Kirkland, how they get updated and changed. I know you've asked us questions about energy codes. So Angela is our in-house expert, and I asked her to give you a little overview of that.

Okay, so the State Building Code Council does have jurisdiction kind of over the creation of the Washington state amendments. All of our codes are based on the international codes that are developed from ICC, the International Code Council. except our energy codes currently. But so the way that works is that there's RCWs that govern what the State Building Code Council is responsible for, what our timelines are, what codes we're responsible for or have purview over. We handle the international building code, residential code, mechanical code, fire code, existing building code, uniform plumbing code, fuel gas code, and then both the residential and commercial energy codes. The way those are developed is those are on a three-year cycle, just like the international code. So every three years they change, and they're adopted two years after the date of the international code. So the next code that we'll be adopting is the 24, and that was supposed to go into effect November 1st of this year, so two years after the 24, so it should go into effect the 24th. in 26 for reasons it's not going to, but, um, I don't need to get into that too bad. Um, but so the way that the, the way that the state code amendments are done is by, um, technical advisory groups. Each different code has its own technical advisory group, and each of those is made up of a group of subject matter experts. Those include architects, engineers, residential builders, commercial builders, manufacturing, and then there are a couple others. I think a couple of them have real estate agents, I think there's an auditor or something on one of them. So it just depends. No, no. So elected officials are on the state building code council, but not on the tag as a subject matter expert. So basically what happens is, just like at the international level, anyone can submit proposals during the submittal window to the codes. And then what happens is the tags take those submittals and basically there are public meetings. Anyone can give input, talk about them, opinions, argue, whatever. And so each of them goes through the process of of going through them, figuring them out, whether they're good, bad, need change, whatever, and then they're voted on by the tag whether they move forward or not. Thank you. And so... So then once those are all done by the tag for each code, then that group of amendments or proposals then goes to the full, well, technically it goes to a subcommittee for each of them. But then from there, it goes to the full council where then the full council looks them over and can kind of pass them on. Those also then, once that happens, They sit through public hearings, and we're required to hold a hearing on each side of the state, even though they're hybrid. You have to have one on the east side, one on the west side. And so we have to hold two public hearings for each code. Most of the time it's combined, at least this time, it's combined in all the codes are combined into one public comment hearing. And that's the last chance once it's kind of the semifinal document for the public to have input on any changes they'd like to see or whatever. And then after it goes through that, then the subcommittees again take any public comments, decide if changes are warranted or anything like that, then the full council votes it as a full package to, it's called adopting it. And so it adopts it. Then those codes have to sit through a legislative cycle because the state legislators have the opportunity to change things if they want to. It's only happened once and it had to do with like log cabin homes or something weird back in the 80s. And so normally it just sits through the legislative cycle. They don't actually make any changes to the code. And then after that, then now it's November 1st of that year, then the code is implemented. And it's automatically implemented statewide. Jurisdictions don't have the opportunity to implement it or not. It is the state code. And it's in place. Seattle's code looks different than ours. Technically, it's because, well, they have an entire department that writes code. And so they are able to, what you're able to do with the codes is at a local jurisdiction level, you cannot change anything having to do with anything residential. So that's the IRC or any multifamily in the IBC. Local jurisdictions do not have the jurisdiction to make changes to it, whether it's to weaken it or make it stronger, without taking that proposal to the State Building Code Council and arguing why their jurisdiction is special. And it has to be approved. And so... Except for Seattle, right? So again... So Seattle's codes are equal. Well, I'm not going to argue their code particularly, but yes. I don't want to distract us too much. Well, no, no. Seattle's code does appear to be completely different and made up. Technically, it does. It's different. It is completely different, and that's why when somebody says, well, Seattle lets us do it, we say that's all nice and good, but we can't do that. But their code technically is considered... Equal. You can do things in a different way, but it's considered to still be equal. And that's, again, they have an entire department that's able to do whatever. If somebody... I don't... Yeah. I can't speak to them all that much.

But I guess the point that it's relevant to Kirkland is that when somebody says, but Seattle... Seattle lets us do it.

We do not have that same ability. The rest of the state... is fairly the same as far as building codes because they are state laws. They are under the WACs. Any state amendment is a WAC that is up there. And again, jurisdictions can make them more restrictive. They cannot weaken the code. And again, with residential, the only thing jurisdictions can do is adopt sprinkler ordinances.

You said residential, including residential multifamily, but What about a mixed-use building that has residential on top of commercial? Would that be deemed commercial, and thus we would have it?

We cannot. We can't change anything that has to do with what's called an R occupancy.

Okay.

In the code, anything that refers to a residential occupancy cannot be changed. And so if it's a mixed-use building, the amendments to the code can mess with, you know, B, M, anything else, but the R occupancies portion of it in the code cannot have local jurisdiction amendments. Okay, thank you. So, yeah, so then, again, it's every three years we go through this whole thing, and then there's also legislative mandates that we... have to put in that are super fun. Off-cycle rules.

What you implement in November is what was decided two years ago?

No, we just, we are finishing up the process. This will be the 24 code. So basically we can't start amending the code until the 24 code is published, which would be December-ish of 23 is when ICC publishes it. And that's when the State Building Code Council can start working with it to amend it. So the one that we are doing in November will be the 24 code, and that work is two years long.

Wow. What happens if something new and really awesome gets introduced?

You've got to wait two years before it's actually executed. I'm really active also on the Technical Code Development Committee for the Washington Association of Building Officials, WABO. We actually attend the hearings at the international level. We We submit a lot of our state amendments. We submit at the international level so that we can get them into the base code and we don't have to do the amendments at the state level. But we also are really big on pushing for pre-adoption of things like there's the 27 code has like new seismic stuff that's going in. And for the 24 code, I believe it's coming in as a pre-adoption of those new sort of things. So because we're so involved at the international level and we, I mean, we do the committees where we vote, do everything. Any of the really big changes, we try to pre-adopt the code before. So there's a lot of 27 stuff that technically hasn't even been officially fully adopted for the 27 because the final hearings on that aren't until April. But we bring those forward, the ones that look like, yeah, they're going through. So yeah, we're really big on pre-adoption of the new things that are coming forward to keep up. Mm-hmm. So yeah, that pretty much I think got it.

All right. Thank you. So this is kind of a little bit of a transition point. We're going to talk about some of the innovation things we've been doing in the department to try to make processes better. And then we're moving into more of a strictly longer range planning stuff. So Adam's going to talk about some of our kind of department innovations. This might be a good time. I was going to let some of our staff go if they have other things to do or if anyone needs a break. Otherwise, we'll keep going. 15.

Are you okay with building leaves? Yes.

Great. I can go through these next couple of slides really quickly. We talked about, actually, a lot of this already. But these are just some examples of some process improvements, especially related to permitting, that we've undertaken over the last couple of years. The first is the Kirkland Activity Map, which we talked about already. But this came from, I think, a couple of different motivations behind this. One was the council was getting a lot of requests from community members who were coming in and saying, hey, a building just popped up in my neighborhood, I never got a notice about it. Or I didn't hear about this development activity in my neighborhood, you should require more noticing for projects. And so in lieu of that, we launched the curriculum activity map, which again, provides people with customizable information about the permit activity in their neighborhoods. The permitting piece of this, I think is sort of indirect, but our planning staff, especially we're getting tons and tons of calls every single day, what is happening down the street for me? This building just popped up. Or they just removed a bunch of trees down the street for me. Or my neighbor is doing something illegal. I don't think he has a permit. That took a ton of time, right? So the planners who were otherwise, you know, reviewing permits were having to spend a lot of time, you know, talking to people in the community about what was happening around them, which is not a bad thing at all. Like, we like talking to the public, but this is an easier way for people to sort of self-serve about what permit activity is happening in their neighborhood so that our planners can then focus on permit review. These are just little snippets from the Permit Dashboard, the long awaited Permit Dashboard. We're getting really, really close. And these are just little pieces of it. I would say don't take any of these numbers as fact right now. We're still doing a lot of testing and compiling of data. But Permit Dashboard, just to remind you, two big functions. One is... From an internal perspective, in the past, it has been really hard for us to figure out where permits are getting log jammed because of all the different departments that review permits, the fire department, the public works department, planning, building, et cetera. So this is a tool that allows us to, A, track how long permit reviews are taking, either from the individual level to permit types. And then also on the public side, When somebody calls and says, how long does a building permit take to process for a new single-family house? Or how long does an electrical permit take to get reviewed? We would be able to cite our target review times, but not actually realistic review times, which, generally speaking, align with our target times, but not always. And so this is sort of the external dashboard will allow people to go on and see, yeah, how long is a... How long is a building permit taking these days? How long is an electrical mixed-use permit taking these days? The chart on the left is number of review cycles per permit. We often get calls from applicants. Our city council members get calls from applicants. You probably get calls from applicants saying, hey, my permit has gone through six rounds of review or seven rounds of review. And so this shows... you know, taking, again, our permits in aggregate, how many review cycles are they going through, so that we can also look at this and say, hey, wow, there's, like, too many permits that are taking three or four rounds of review. What can we do better to get permits through during one round of review? And Angela talked about how we're already trying to address that with redlining permits. Instead of sending permits back for another round of review, we just redline the corrections and issue the permit. So...

Yeah. I would think that, like, median and maybe 90th percentile might be more interesting than, like, assuming this is just a street.

Yeah. We've been having a lot of conversations about median versus average. The median is harder to calculate, but it's... Especially for low numbers. Yeah. It might be a... That's something we definitely want to pursue, because we agree that median is a better metric. But it might be a... happen after we launch the initial dashboard.

Yeah, or maybe use a longer time window, or maybe some of them you need a longer time window, especially for some of the more standardized ones. Other question is, does the person who gets eight reviews, they get a special award?

They get a very frustrating permit experience. That is their reward, you know? And they get some more time with city staff, which is a reward.

If somebody went through eight

Yes, yeah. And just to be really clear, I want to make this ultra clear, but there are absolutely tons of things that we can improve on the city side with the process. And we talked about some of those already. Yes, when you're getting to like eight, I don't even know if we have any instances of eight, well I guess there's one instance of eight. That is, yeah, that's a serious problem. That might also be like a change right in the middle. Usually not something, we're very serious about like not adding new comments in after the first review unless it's like absolutely critical, it's a help and safety issue. So yeah, eight reviews is usually something gone wrong. Yeah, seriously wrong. And then, yeah, we talked about this already, but we've done lots of other things over the years to make the permit process better. We've designated a planner and a plans examiner that are dedicated to public projects so that the private project people can be freed up to do their own permit reviews. We've hired more staff like that planning technician that we talked about that can help applicants on intake on the planning side. We've overstaffed so that we have enough staff. We have sort of a... We have over-hired staff so that we have enough people to deal with the ups and downs of permits. But AI, again, is something that we're really seriously looking at this year because I think we really have seen how it can really make the process better, especially on the applicant side, on the submittal side, answering basic questions about planning issues. So that's something that we're spending a lot of time on this year.

How would AI Actually, I've only used it for creating images. How would it work?

Yeah, so there's a couple of really interesting functions. The one that I was talking about before I think is one of the coolest. You upload your application into the AI software, and it tells you all the things that we talked about, like are you using the right colors? Do you have a wetland nearby? Do you need a wetland study? Do you need a geotech report? Is there a scale on your plans? Is there a site plan that has all the components of it? And then it would spit you back a summary of what you need to do to make your application complete. So even before you are ready to turn into the city, it would tell you what you're missing so that your application could be better upon submittal. There is the other thing that we talked about. What can I do with my property? We get hundreds of questions like that. If AI software could help assist with some of those questions, that would also make it a lot easier for some people. changes to plans, that's like another thing that is really hard for us to catch sometimes. Somebody submits a plan, it's reviewed, and there are some comments, and then we send those comments to the applicant, the applicant then sends a revised plan back, and something really small but significant ends up getting changed, like the building footprint gets moved from this part of the site to the other, that is not something that's always super easy for our staff to catch. So there's AI software as well that allows the software to flag those changes that are kind of hard to catch sometimes but that are consequential. So those are some examples.

production-specific that has built-in parameters to look for?

Well, it doesn't fully exist yet, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's in progress. It's possible.

Yeah, and that's why I like... Yeah, and that's why... Yeah, and that's why I like we're moving. We're very intrigued with the software and the technology, but we want to be really thoughtful about it to make sure that it's something that will serve us well and serve the community well, but also that will function well and not make... you know, mistakes that will then be problems in and of themselves. So we're spending a lot of time, I think, understanding what other cities are doing in AI, talking to a lot of consultants just to see what's out there, and then we'll probably make a decision about do we want to move forward with this or not. Yeah. Anyway, I think that's, yeah, those are my slides.

Okay, so wanted to, now we're kind of moving more into code amendment projects and the planning commission's work. So we've shown you this before, and it's, oh, it's pretty big up there. Okay, so wanted to talk just a little bit about the process for a standard code amendment project, and I really stress the word standard because No two seem to be alike, but we've taken a stab at kind of laying out what's like the typical process for a kind of middle-of-the-road zoning code amendment that doesn't require an extraordinary amount of public outreach. It doesn't require maybe like a ton of really in-depth code work with the Planning Commissioner Council. And and then a lot of these are just steps that we have to do no matter the scope of the project and so When we sat out and tried to answer like how long does it take to amend the zoning code? I think an optimistic standard timeline would be about five months and A lot of that timeline is actually kind of like planning commission only meets two times per month, council only meets two times per month. For both of those meetings, we have lead times on our meeting packets and we have internal timelines, especially for council meetings. Those packets get reviewed by a lot of departments, well, not a lot of departments, but by our city clerk's office, our city attorney's office, our city manager's office. And so those council packets, so they don't get published like that long before the council meeting. Our timeline is like two weeks before the council meeting that we're getting that ready. And so that really kind of stretches the timeline.

Sorry, can I just jump in real fast? Please. So one of the implications of that is that it's really, really hard, although we do it sometimes, to have two consecutive touches at council before adoption. It's just like it's almost impossible with the packet deadlines, right, where we're like, getting feedback from council at the first of two meetings, but the staff report is actually due a week before that, it's almost impossible to accomplish. So I think that is something that tends to elongate schedules as well.

And the other, I would say, big component of just kind of why the timeline gets stretched is sort of an order of operations. there's prerequisites for some of these things. And so we typically start, and I'm just going to kind of go like top to bottom, we typically start internally with a scoping, like an internal scoping process. And that's usually, you know, assigning a project manager who's typically one of the senior planners on the long range team, them getting a sense of the project. Sometimes it's something we're really familiar with. Sometimes we're having to learn about something fairly new to us. And so we want to give people time to familiarize themselves with the topic a lot of times in that initial scoping process We're doing this for a couple projects right now. We're reaching out to other jurisdictions and asking them. What are you doing? We just had two meetings in the last two days with different jurisdictions asking them how they're handling the state parking bill implementation for example and Then we're also talking to our current planners the Jake's so figuring out with them, hey, how is this code working for you right now? If we have to change the code, is there something you're really interested in? Sometimes we're talking to the other departments too. For example, with the critical area ordinance update, we met with our stormwater team in the public works department a lot because some of the changes we were making there impacted them and had implications for our stormwater permits that we get from the state. And so again, that timeline for the internal process is variable, but we want to make sure that when we release that project and bring it into the public eye and start talking to planning commission and council about it, that we have a good idea of some of the limitations and possibilities so that we can give you good guidance to give us good guidance. And so we have kind of cycles that you'll see in that sort of scoping and outreach top line in the green We circle back to current planning and our other internal stakeholders several point at several points throughout the process to make sure that Everyone's on the same page They know what we're doing and we know how this change impacts all our other like reviewing departments and things like that We'll also at the beginning scope our public outreach and and figuring out how big is the code amendment, is this something where the public has influence because that impacts how we outreach to the public versus something that might be a state requirement and we might be talking about more letting folks know what we're doing but not doing engagement where we're asking for like survey data or doing a lot of one-on-one focus groups or open houses. We build in time to actually write the code amendments. Sometimes we don't start that until after we've kind of got an idea of what direction to go from council or planning commission. Other times, if it seems like pretty, if the planning work program task is pretty directive, we might start writing those code amendments earlier. It kind of depends on the project. And If we jump all the way down to purple, this is typically the time that we start talking to planning commission and council. Depending on this policy level of the project, again, this is like a typical, not super complex code amendment project we're laying out here. Sometimes we're talking to planning commission first for like higher policy implication projects. We might be starting with city council to get their initial guidance on how they want to define the realm of possibilities. Um, and this particular kind of timeline that we laid out for you, we were assuming two planning commission meetings, which is typically like a briefing planning commission. Are we headed in the right direction with something and then a planning commission hearing? So that's pretty quick. Like if you think about the code amendments that we've worked on in the last few years, I don't know that there's been a ton of them that you've gotten through in one study session or briefing and then one public hearing. So that's why I say this this timeline might be a little optimistic and same with council in this timeline We factored in a council briefing to familiarize with them with the topic and where we're headed and then a council adoption I think a lot of the projects we've worked on the last few years. It's it's been more council meetings than that sometimes we've gone back to them after the Planning Commission hearing to give them a briefing on, hey, this is what the recommendation is. We're giving you an idea, laying it out for you. And then we go back at a subsequent meeting for actual adoption. And those meetings, like Adam mentioned, they do have to be spaced out. So some of the work periods for our team in between these meetings and the more public-facing points of the project, they have, I would say, varying levels of activity. Sometimes we're back there cranking. We got direction from you. We're working on amending the code to work in what you asked us to do or what council asked us to do. There might be other periods of the project where we're waiting for a meeting. and we might be working on another project. And so a lot of times, our senior planners aren't working on just one planning work program task. They're working on a couple. So their plate's full, and they're kind of alternating their attention, perhaps. I'm skipping around a little bit, but associated with all of our public meetings, we have noticing requirements, particularly for the public hearing. That's two weeks before the public hearing that we have to issue all those legal notices. The little orange boxes, we also have to let the Department of Commerce know what we're doing. So we have to give the Department of Commerce a 60-day notice of our intent to adopt a code amendment. and we have to give them the actual draft code. We can tweak it and refine it after we send it to them, And we can sometimes request expedited review, meaning that we don't have to have like a fully baked version a whole 60 days prior to adoption of it. However, I will note that the last few code amendments we've worked on, the Department of Commerce has been a little less willing to grant us that expedited review. And it used to happen pretty often. So we're having to factor in more time to work through these because we're finding, especially with implementation of some of the state codes and even with our miscellaneous code amendments package last year, they denied our expedited request because they thought that some of the state departments that have the right to review our code amendments and make comments on them saw something in our miscellaneous code amendments package that they wanted to look at. They didn't end up making any comments, but just because they wanted to look at it, our expedited review request was denied. So that's another thing that can stretch, and that's kind of a new variable for us, because it used to be, while we should be planning a full 60 days in ahead, it used to be pretty, like our miscellaneous code amendment package, I've not known that to ever get rejected for expedited review. I think our state departments are being a little more active lately. And then we've got implementation and follow-up tasks that can start while we're still working on the code amendments, but a lot of times those are kind of happening after adoption.

What are just typical follow-up tasks?

Okay, great question. What are the follow-up tasks? So sometimes if we're changing something in the code that might require us to change an application form, that's an example of something because we use that mybuildingpermit.com, that's an electronic form. Because that's a system that we collaborate on with other jurisdictions, we often have to use questions and forms that already exist in the system, or we have to coordinate with all the cities in that group. So that's something we start on early if we're going to have to change something in an application form that people submit online. And Sometimes, like some of the tasks that we might work on, that we have to work on before a code is effective, I'll use the critical area ordinance adoption as an example. We actually have a lot of implementation tasks for that one, and that's why we ask council to do a delayed effective date for it. So it's not actually effective until the end of March because we have to update legal covenants and we have to update our mapping system because the moderate landslide hazard definition changed a little bit. So we have to do mapping updates. There's a lot of legal documents that we have to update. We're having to create new legal documents for the riparian management zone. So basically like a new agreement that people are going to have to sign when they submit permits. And we're doing also a lot of implementation tasks can center around public education. So we're doing a lot of website updates to make sure people know about their riparian management zone because that's a new requirement. And we'll be doing some email blasts and some mailings around that as well. So that one's like a heavy implementation task. There's other ones. The Juanita zoning code amendments are a good example where even though that project took a long time, the implementation of it isn't that heavy. We don't have to create any new covenants. The zoning code is adopted and it's there and it's ready to use. We don't have to change any application forms or anything.

YOU MENTIONED THAT IT WILL LOOK A LITTLE DIFFERENT IF IT IS A HIGHER LEVEL TOPIC THAT COUNCIL WANTS TO TAKE THE FIRST STEP AT. JUST TRYING TO VISUALIZE THAT. RIGHT NOW YOU HAVE IT WHERE ESSENTIALLY WE CAN HAVE SOME AMOUNT OF OVERLAP WHERE THE PLANNING COMMISSION CAN TALK ABOUT IT BEFORE THE COUNCIL TALKS ABOUT IT. BUT IF THE COUNCIL NEEDS TO TALK ABOUT IT FIRST, THEN BOTH THE PLANNING COMMISSION STUDY SESSION AND THE PUBLIC HEARING NEED TO BE BETWEEN THE FIRST COUNCIL BRIEFING AND THE COUNCIL MEETING TO ADOPT, NECESSARILY EXTENDING THAT TIMELINE. AM I RIGHT IN THINKING THAT?

YEAH, I THINK GENERALLY THAT'S THE ORDER OF OPERATIONS.

THANK YOU.

IN THAT CASE, TOO, WE WOULD PROBABLY HAVE AN INITIAL SCOPING SESSION WITH THE CITY COUNCIL AS WELL, PROBABLY. OKAY. THANKS.

SO THE INITIAL SESSION WOULD COME TO COUNCIL FIRST BEFORE PC VERSUS HOW IT'S HAPPENING TODAY WHERE WE USUALLY GET BRIEFED AND THEN WE ASK YOU QUESTIONS, PROVIDE DIRECTION. DID I MISS THAT AT THE BEGINNING?

I think for some projects that have higher kind of policy level decisions in them, we'd be starting with council in some cases. And an example of that, and we'll talk about this a little bit on the work program too, is the housing bonuses on faith-owned properties project. We could do that in at least 10 different ways. Do we go... rezone faith-based properties citywide, which is what Bellevue did. Do we create just a program that's sitting there waiting for people to use? Do we do a pilot program? There's a really wide range of ways we could attack the objective. And so that's a case where we thought makes sense to go to council first and get a sense of what do they want us to explore and then hopefully getting clear direction on do it this way or explore these two options and then coming to planning commission with hey we're working in this realm this is what we're thinking of doing with the code just a comment it is kind of wild to me that we would be

I think the affordable housing on faith-based properties is a major priority. It's just wild to me that we haven't figured out what we want to do when we've already committed to it as of last year. That just seems odd. And as we're getting into the planning work program, I hope we can kind of try and get more solid idea on these projects.

And we're happy to answer questions related to this, but I'd love to kind of start the update of where we've gotten on the adopted work program. So I gave you all a printed copy of the adopted work program, and then I put together a sort of different, oh, I've got to change it on yours too. So I wanted to show you all the projects that we've either completed Up to this point on the 25 to 27 work program or the ones that are in progress. So these are listed chronologically, but the next few slides don't include projects we haven't started yet. Those are on a following slide. So a task that is in progress but has not been finished is the code adjustments for the station area plan. And that was the one that was initiated asking us to look at the possibility of adopting a minimum density in the station area. And so that was one. It was council directed. We have briefed them once because we really needed to know from them, do you want us to do it or do you not? We took them some options, and they gave us some initial direction on that. This one has been delayed just a little bit because the staff member we had working on this project has left the city. So it's been reassigned, but I'm a senior planner down right now, and so... I think staffing capacity has impacted that timeline. Local permit review streamlining, it's kind of ongoing, and we've made a lot of progress in 2025. And so I think we've completed a lot of what we've set out to do this year. Adam can tell me, but I thought I'd turn it green once the permit dashboard is published. So I would say substantially complete. OK.

When the permit dashboard is done. OK.

Okay, but we're getting close. So in terms of, the next few are ones that we've finished this year, so I would say they're running pretty on time. The critical area ordinance, which includes the geohazard regulations, as I mentioned just a second ago, those are not effective yet. We're giving ourselves some time to work on the implementation. The Juanita zoning code amendments were adopted by council at their last meeting of December so those are done and Implementation for that project is pretty much done Next few that were on the work program for last year we adopted the rezone of the Houghton park and ride oh Thank you. Sorry I could use that screen if I could see it. So we also adopted the Houghton Village Development Plan. We are taking council some minor zoning code amendments that just acknowledge the adoption of the development plan in That zone in the zoning code when council adopted the development plan They actually voted to hold the public hearing for those zoning code amendments themselves to expedite the process And it just it just acknowledges what was adopted in the development plan. So no big change there We're taking it for public hearing on February 3rd and asking them to consider adoption that same night. So you won't see that one again substantially complete. We did the middle housing implementation that was adopted in June of 2025. Council just this week adopted the design review guidelines and the kind of process streamlining. So that project did run behind schedule, but it is done as of now. We implemented our impact fee adjustments. Those were the impact fees that are required by the state to be proportional to the size of the unit. So that is complete. The sustainable decision-making matrix, that project is also complete. We did kind of scope that one down a little bit once we started working on it. I don't think we ever anticipated that was always kind of an internal project for us. So no code amendments, no planning commission or council touches. A project that we are working on but is running a little bit behind schedule based on what we adopted last year is the code enforcement policy and procedure updates. That one will run through council because it's just municipal code amendments. But we are working on that and we do have a senior planner helping out on that project a little bit. We adopted the unit lot subdivision implementation. That's task number 14. That was adopted back in June. In September, we adopted the co-living housing bill requirements. And our planner, Martha, that worked on that project is actually presenting at a webinar with MRSC in February and talking to some of our local co-living developers. The last two tasks on this slide are ongoing tasks that we're kind of always doing. So I would say our work on them in 2025 is complete. That's ongoing implementation of the sustainability strategic plan and the urban forest six-year work plan. And task 18, we completed our miscellaneous. Oh, sorry. Thank you. I've only got to do this two more times. Miscellaneous code amendments were adopted last year on time. We just mentioned it, Task 19, the expanding housing opportunities on faith-based properties. We've started work on that. I would say we are... We haven't finished in the timing that we thought we would. I would say one of the reasons that that, like one of the big timing things, is that's also been a little bit of a staffing resource as a couple senior planners have left the city. It's been reassigned. This one's going to stick. So we are working on it. And it looks like we'll probably on that one be starting with council in March for a briefing. But doing a lot of research, kind of working on some scoping options right now, and then talking to a lot of other jurisdictions. The neighborhood plan amendment request process establishment, that's not one that we think is going to require any zoning code amendments. We have started looking at it. We've got a little bit more to go on that one, and we'll be briefing council on that one probably in March. I don't anticipate that one coming through Planning Commission, again, because we don't have any zoning code amendments, but happy to keep you in the loop on where we're headed with that. We adopted our annual comprehensive plan amendments in December. And then the rest of these are projects that are in progress but have not been completed. The stormwater project support, that's a pretty minor one for us, but we did put it on the work program. There's no code amendments associated with it, but it is requiring some time from one of our senior planners, which is why we put it on the work program. Not a huge lift for them. They're mostly supporting our public work staff on a grant-funded project looking at public-private partnerships for regional stormwater facilities. So it's pretty interesting. The Totem Lake Southern Industrial Sub Area Plan, this is an interesting one. So this was adopted on the work program as the first priority in 2026. And this task was scoped, aligned with a new adopted policy in the Totem Lake Business District chapter of the comprehensive plan. And the policy that was adopted really directs a pretty robust sub-area plan for that area of the Totem Lake Business District, such that we would need some consultant funding to kind of do that full scope of research necessary. That budget wasn't available in this last budget adjustment, and so we've kind of changed the scope of that plan. And we are starting some work on some visioning and strategy planning on that right now. We received a grant from the Scan Design Foundation to work with an organization called Blocks Hub that's based in Denmark. And they're like a sustainable cities innovation kind of think tank. And so we've been working with them through that grant funded project on some visioning. We're doing some stakeholder outreach to start to build kind of the first steps of the subarea plan until such a time that we can do the full scope. So making progress on it, but it's kind of going to end up getting split into phases. That's one of the questions we'll have when we do get to the work program update this year is when that subarea plan should be plugged in. Yeah.

I just wanted to note that if I remember correctly, when the Planning Commission adopted this planning work program, this item was actually scoped to be one year. And by the time it came to Council, as I understand, staff looked at that comprehensive plan policy and realized the really extensive requirements. And that led to this two-year timeline. And now without the funding, it looks like it might be a three-year timeline. So I just want that noted because I don't know that I would have said it was as big of a priority if I knew it would be a three-year-long project.

Another piece of the comprehensive plan policy that related to that was the desire for a lot of sort of market study as an initial phase. I think there was some hesitancy on the part of council to unleash residential uses in the district and a desire to really understand how is this district working for the local economy? How important is it to small businesses? How important is it to entrepreneurship in the city? And then only then after really understanding those issues to go in and actually do some And part of that first phase is being addressed by the block sub work as well, where we'll be talking to businesses, understanding who they are, what they're doing, why they like this area, what problems they're having.

And then the other thing of note on that project, it was one of the projects that we used to say we would comply with the HB 1220 affordable housing requirements for households making less than 50% of area median income. As I understand, if we don't do this project or something, something, we will be in violation of state affordable housing requirements. Am I right on that? This is a very high-level question.

It is. So the Juanita Zoning Code amendments help. They get us part of the way there, but we are probably going to need to talk with the state about next steps because of that number, yeah.

Okay. So essentially... This this is one of our options for meeting that requirement.

Yes. Yeah, and that was just for the benefit of the Commission The state requirements that vice chair Jacobson is talking about are those that require us to meet housing capacity targets at different income brackets and because of Kirkland being classified at the state level as a high-cost city for To show housing capacity for units that are at that level of affordability below 80%, it has to be apartments for Kirkland. Townhome capacity isn't considered to be capacity below 80% area median income. It really has to be apartments. And so that is the one area where we were short on housing capacity, zoned housing capacity, was for apartments. And so our ongoing comprehensive plan implementation is needing to look at that.

Does co-housing not count co-housing, I don't know, they aren't units, but does that count into that at all?

Yeah, that's a great question. Adam can jump in. That co-housing bill passed after HB 1220 such that we didn't really factor co-housing in when we did our co-living into our capacity analysis. And then the way that the state bill required us to implement Co-living at least for density purposes is that they're a quarter of a unit. That's right And so we didn't we didn't factor like times four apartment capacity into our capacity analysis I'd be surprised if that's what the state intended, but I I don't I haven't heard anything official on that I think the key concept is that

We have a lot of flexibility, both in our adopted regulations and in the capacity analysis. Like we made a lot of assumptions in the capacity analysis. So I think in a couple of years when we go ahead and check to see how our production has been, we'll be able to make some adjustments. And I would say that the hope is that that allows us to not put too much pressure on any given area. So for instance, if the southern industrial area turns out to be not a great place for a ton of housing density, I think we can find out other places in the city to you know, compensate for that as well. So I think the goal should be to put housing where it should be, right, and where you think it's the right place.

19, the expousing on the religious owned properties. Is there an opportunity since 23 is going to be elongated to kind of look at them in concert, right? So, you know, can we maximize perhaps item 19 even while we're trying to figure out if how and to what degree 23 can come to fruition, if that makes sense?

Yeah, I think that is one way because that is in the capacity analysis as we've traditionally done it and as we did it for the comp plan, we didn't factor in apartments on faith-based owned properties. Traditionally, because they don't tend to turn over, our capacity analysis doesn't model a lot of new growth on them.

I would just note, though, I don't know that there are that many religiously owned properties in Kirkland that we would find suitable for apartments. Many of them are in lower density zones, and at most you're probably talking about a Habitat for Humanity townhome project, which is great and affordable, but would not help us meet the capacity requirements for 50% and below.

No, that's fair. But the degree to which some of those questions that you know are important to ask as we explore that, can those be asked without incurring money? Or no, is that part of the grant? Okay. Because those are important questions and can definitely set the direction when we have more resources and funding to explore.

Just to finish up a couple of the tasks that we're working on. So the next two tasks, the ones with stars in the task, those are projects that are not on the adopted work program, but they are projects that staff has started work on. The reason that we've started work on them is that they are required state implementation tasks that were adopted in the 2025 session that we're required to adopt either by 2027 or in 2027. So while we are in the process of updating the planning work program, especially the parking bill implementation, that one we have this year to do it. So we really wanted to start work on it. We're getting ready to talk to council about it on February 17th to scope it. If we're just doing minimum implementation of the state bill, we think we can move through it pretty quickly. At Planning Commission's recommendation, council's actually adopted those Senate Bill 5184 parking ratios for a couple of the more recent projects for middle housing, for the Juanita rezones. And so there's a chance we're going to ask them, is there an interest in implementing these parking ratios, knowing that they're coming in 11 months? Is there an interest in implementing them sooner? Or at least adopting them with an effective date in January of 2027. But it's work we know we have to do, so we have started it. even though it's not on the officially adopted work program yet because we know we're going to have to do it. Same for lot splitting. I think in the spirit of the unit lot subdivision work that we did last year, it's another option. It doesn't impact density. It impacts how people can kind of divide the underlying ownership of properties. It's another one we have to do. And it's really aligned with that unit lot subdivision. It's kind of just a different way to do something similar. So we've started very initial work on that bill as well. And there was some efficiencies to be gained as we're doing implementation of unit lot subdivisions to start looking at implementing that lot splitting bill. So that would be one that will come in front of Planning Commission for a public hearing. It's one, as we get into the work, we might, because of the kind of straightforward nature of it, we might ask if Planning Commission is interested in us bringing it to you just straight to public hearing to implement the state requirements.

On those, I'm totally fine, obviously check with council, but I'm totally fine with bringing the lot splitting bill to us for a public hearing. Similarly, can we make sure to ask the question to council that an option is basically just state compliance no more, no less, just send it to a public hearing in front of the planning commission? Would that be feasible?

For the parking bill?

Yeah, for parking.

We can ask.

Because I don't see very, I've read the bill, I don't see very much flexibility in it.

We will ask, we're talking, like I said, February 17th, we're taking it to council for first briefing. We actually have penciled it in for basically the same briefing at Planning Commission, February 26th. So we can...

I guess if you don't get direction from council until the 17th, that would be too late to do notice for a public hearing. Right. So, but I mean, that could free us up time to look at something else if we still then have the public hearing at least two weeks after the council meeting.

And then the last project that we're currently working on is we have started the work to update the urban forestry strategic plan update. First council briefing on that is scheduled for March 3rd. It's one that will probably reside primarily at council as it's kind of a policy document, but we do want to come to Planning Commission to get your feedback on that one because you hold a lot of expertise related to that as well. So we will be coming in front of you for that. I do think that project is going to take this full year. We're going to do some... pretty extensive public outreach for it, and then there's a lot of interdepartmental coordination that that plan is gonna look at. And then Lastly, not walking through the whole work program with you tonight, unless you want me to, but this last slide are tasks that are scheduled to be started on the adopted work program. We kind of showed them as starting in the first or second quarter of this year, but that we haven't started yet. So that's the home occupation allowances task. So that was looking at kind of loosening up the restrictions on home-based businesses and also using that project to look at more flexibility for neighborhood commercial uses. We have a planner assigned to it, just we haven't started it yet. probably soon as other workloads kind of clear and as we get that vacant senior planner position filled as well. Middle housing phase two, we have not started that work. That's one that we want to check back with council on as they give us some direction to start updating the planning work program. The 2026 housing pilot project, that was always kind of on the work program as like a reserved item. So it doesn't have anything assigned to it. In my kind of estimation, I feel like the faith-based property project sort of like takes that place, but... Something we can talk about when we come back to you specifically related to the update of the work program. And then lastly, miscellaneous code amendments. This one always kind of floats throughout the year. And so we don't have like a big bucket of miscellaneous code amendments waiting right now, so we haven't started that work. Kind of waiting to see if we have a good enough kind of like grouping, OF NEEDED AMENDMENTS TO MAKE IT A MEANINGFUL PACKAGE OF CODE AMENDMENTS TO RUN THROUGH. SO WE HAVEN'T STARTED IT. WE MIGHT END UP NOT DOING A MISCELLANEOUS CODE PROJECT THIS YEAR. AT THIS POINT I'M JUST KIND OF WAITING TO SEE.

SO LOOKING AT THIS, I DON'T KNOW, I MEAN, I WANT US TO LOOK AT HOME OCCUPATIONAL ALLOWANCES. given that it seems like we definitely need more opportunities for housing that's affordable to people with 50 percent AMI or below, even 80 percent AMI or below. I don't know that we're going to get very much of that through either the middle housing optimization or through the affordable housing on faith-based properties. I doubt we're going to be looking at the scale that's required for that where those properties are owned. I look at the rest of the work program and the only I only see really two items on it that could even potentially address that need, and that would be the Greater Downtown Action Plan and the Totem Lake Regional Center housing adjustments. Would it be feasible to sort of swap the home occupation allowances out and recognize that the pilot project is going to be taken up by the affordable housing and faith-based properties, and maybe we don't have miscellaneous code amendments? And we might have some extra bandwidth from not putting as much planning work into the southern industrial sub area. Would that be feasible, swapping one of those in?

State legislation around the neighborhood scale commercial as well.

Yeah, it's pending. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. We might want to deliberately wait until that bill is settled. Yeah, I don't have to do that twice.

Yeah, I was going to mention that as well. Yeah, two things. One, yeah, there's some state legislation that can definitely impact the housing capacity. And then I'm not sure if Allison mentioned this, but the city council this year did ask if they could be the first ones to touch the planning work program just to provide some guidance to the planning commission. And I think we think that this question of, yeah, to what extent should housing projects be prioritized, whether that's middle housing or whether it's other projects, I THINK WE'LL DEFINITELY COME OUT OF THAT DISCUSSION AS WELL. I THINK WE'RE PLANNING ON GOING TO THE CITY COUNCIL.

MARCH 3RD.

MARCH 3RD, YEAH, ON THAT. SO WE SHOULD HAVE SOME MORE DIRECTION FOR YOU FROM CITY COUNCIL ON, YEAH, I THINK THE HOUSING QUESTIONS.

TWO NOTES ON THAT. THANKS. NUMBER ONE, THE THING THAT I'M I COULD FORESEE CHANGING ALL OF THIS IS WHETHER WE NEED TO DO AN EIS OF SOME KIND. THE TOTEM LAKE SOUTHERN INDUSTRIAL SUB AREA THAT'S COVERED BY THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN SCIS, BUT I COULD EASILY IMAGINE VERSIONS OF THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING ON FAITH-BASED PROPERTIES REQUIRING AN EIS BECAUSE IT WASN'T STUDIED AS PART OF THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN. GIVEN THAT THE FUNDING FOR THE TOTEM LAKE SOUTHERN INDUSTRIAL SUB AREA WORK WAS NOT APPROVED, I'M GUESSING WE'RE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO AFFORD A CONSULTANT FOR AN EIS.

We don't have that budget allocated. I think there's some versions of the faith-based project that would not require any of this, and probably the scope of which was covered in the comp plan work. Something like a pilot program, I think we could look at. I think there's a high probability that that was covered by the analysis that we did for the comp plan. Something like a pilot project where the first project in the door Gets you know, maybe an ability to test out a different set of standards So we when we take it to council we are working on like some different scoping options and then what we want to communicate is the Level of work required for each of those scoping options really ask them what they want to do as a first step on this project Okay, thank you. Yes, some some scopes could require more work.

Yeah, it'd be helpful for us to DISCUSS THAT BEFORE WE FINISH ADOPTING THE PLANNING WORK PROGRAM THIS YEAR. AND THEN ON THE NOTE, THANK YOU FOR BRINGING IT UP, BUT THE COUNCIL WANTS TO TAKE THE FIRST STAB AT IT. I THINK I SAW TODAY WE UPDATED THE PLANNING PUBLIC MEETING CALENDAR. I COULD TALK ABOUT THIS THEN OR NOW. IT JUST SEEMS SO ODD THAT WE'RE DELAYING EVEN STARTING THE PLANNING WORK PROGRAM CONVERSATION, BUT FOR THIS CONVERSATION, SO LATE IN THE YEAR. AND ON THE CURRENT PUBLIC MEETING CALENDAR, Council talks about it first, and then we have one meeting about it, and then the council goes to adoption. On the current public meeting calendar, we don't even talk about it for a second time.

And we could. We wanted to plug some dates in there to give you all in council a heads up, but we could. And while we're pending the adoption of the planning work program, I guess what I would say on that note is we are working on things and everyone's pretty much at capacity right now. So by, for example, that parking bill is one thing that we're doing to keep people busy and keep making forward progress on the things we need to. So I think we are making forward progress while we're waiting for the update of the work program.

Okay, cool. I just worry, you did mention that the home occupation allowances you have, we have capacity to do right now. I don't know, I wouldn't want us to start it if we potentially change direction, especially given the state legislation. Got it. But that then really penalizes us for having delayed this conversation so long. And I will also just note, I find it odd that council has come to that conclusion, and I don't know that they've talked about it in a council meeting. But I think that's all the comments I have on what we discussed.

And that was, wait. We're done.

All right.

So that was all staff had. Just that.

Encore.

One of the things that I've been trying to figure out is if you look at the planning public meeting calendar right now, we do have a few things added. And I appreciate that because two weeks ago, I think we had literally nothing for the planning commission for the entire year. I think one of the things that I think I've realized is that it's often very hard for members of the public to figure out when their voice will be most impactful. Even just looking at what we've already put out, I'm like 90% sure I know when people's voice would be most impactful right now, and I'm on the planning commission. And so I think it would be helpful for, especially with council talking about the planning work program, for one thing to be discussed is can we work on it in detail enough that we can plan out the meetings for the rest of the year with the specific topics? So if we're going to talk about additional affordable housing on specific sites, let's say that ideally for the rest of the year. I think that would go a long way to building trust and making it easier for members of the public to show up. Following everything happening is very difficult if you're not in the know here. You are in the know. Yeah. And so I think that would be an important conversation to have as part of the planning work program update.

You know, at least to the extent possible. I mean, I know that knowing exactly what we're doing in December is probably asking a lot, but I would agree that to the extent that we can say, okay, this is what we'll be discussing a month from now, it at least allows people to say, okay, I'll arrange care for my kids or I'll cancel that whatever.

I mean, I think obviously plans change.

Yeah, obviously plans change and we adapt, but yeah.

But I think it would be helpful for us to have a plan. Yes. Fine to deviate from it, but I think we know enough on the planning commission, on council, city staff know enough to, once we have that scope of a project, to figure out how many meetings we need, when roughly we can have them. And I think that would go a long way to making things more accessible for the public.

I'd agree. Well, as well as just allowing people, I mean, even if they don't attend a meeting, to be able to get their comments in. Since I know that particularly the Finn Hill Neighborhood Alliance has a tendency to be like, here's all of the stuff that's impacting your neighborhood. Please do something two days from now. And I imagine an awful lot of people that is challenging for, especially if they are busy.

To that end, what are the things that are currently blocking us from being able to do that?

Yeah, I think one of the things, and I really appreciate these comments, and I think that it's certainly something staff's willing to work on is kind of scheduling those out further in advance with the grace from the commission that things might change. You know, I think one of the things, and it's an area where I think there's a staff role to be played and then a commission role a little bit, is... I think that staff can do a better job when we lay out those project schedules of saying, okay, we're gonna have three meetings on this project. At the first meeting, we need to get through this item, this item, and this item. At the next meeting, we need to get through these four things, and then we'll have the public hearing. Now, I don't think staff's done a good job of maybe laying out those topics for every project. So I think that's something that we can work on, is kind of telling you, if you want to do it in three meetings, this is what we need to work through at each of those meetings. And then the Planning Commission, in terms of keeping to the schedule, would be trying to hit those topics when we bring them to you. I think that, so I see that as one area where we could probably improve on keeping to a public meeting schedule. There's others, but that's one of the ones I think of some of the things that have stretched a little bit, and it's just been kind of figuring out things as we went. We tried doing things a little differently for some of the code amendments this last year, like with the Juanita ones, developing all the different options. That actually took a lot of staff time. I think we learned some lessons. I don't know if the commission learned some lessons that we could probably do to tweak things TWEAK THE PROCESS A LITTLE BIT. I THINK THE COMMISSION HAS LEARNED A LOT FROM REALLY THE COMPLEXITY OF THE WORK THAT YOU HAVE COMPLETED IN THE LAST FEW YEARS. FROM THE STAFF PERSPECTIVE, I AM VERY OPEN TO KEEPING THIS CONVERSATION GOING WITH THE like actual logistical conversations around some of these projects, because we could have this conversation in a first briefing with you about a project. This is how we think we could get through this project in three meetings commission. Does that seem doable? So happy to kind of explore that concept a bit with you as we start the work.

Yeah. I mean, I would even, I think it would be a helpful exercise to even just try doing it when thinking about the planning work program, being able to say like, Understanding what it means to have different levels of scope for a project, I think, would go a long way to making it a lot more functional. And that's why earlier I said it's wild to me that we have not set the scope of a project that we committed to last year. And we had intended to start it last year. And I think it would be... very helpful and so that then comes to like well when do we just decide the scope and it sounds like council wants to decide the scope on these major projects so it sounds like we'll basically be waiting until council sets the scope on a project before we can really say how long it will take when when those meetings will be am i right in that assumption

Well, I think, yeah, I mean, I think it'll vary, probably. I think there'll probably be some projects that were counseled when they have the first touch, and then others, probably not. I mean, for the religious organization, when I think we set the scope, I think, you know, what we're, right, I mean, a lot of things happen with that project. One is a lot of state legislative mandates, right, and staff turnover and so forth, but I think the primary question is what options to put on the table. Like, I think the scope of it was sort of set, it was like, to make it easier for religious organizations develop, you know, housing on their properties, especially affordable housing, but there's, yeah, many, many, many options, I think, to be, you know, debated as well, so.

Yeah, I mean, I think just a basic, I don't know if we have the scope set if we don't know exactly what we're doing, and we don't know how long it will take. Yeah, yeah. So.

Oh, sorry. Thanks. No, I agree with you. In like 25 years in corporate America, it would make sense to do that, even if it's just so that we don't lose track of it in this mind, eye-numbing chart. But, you know, in your defense and even in our defense, you know, last year with the comprehensive plan and the two cars, even if we had stuff earmarked, that was going to be usurped by the priorities of the time. But I like the recommendation. I think we should try it and go from there. So thank you.

I'm being sort of new to this group and at least half of my meetings have been canceled and I kind of feel like waiting for the staff packet to come out right before a meeting. I'm wondering if there's something more that we could be doing as a group to be more prepared for these subjects so that we're not getting everything kind of cold. having to react at the time i i think that would help move it along some more so make our questions and comments a little bit more educated but i don't know being a newbie what is expected necessarily it's a great question that i

love to keep thinking on too. A couple things that come to mind, one of them is that, Hopefully you all know this but I'll reiterate like happy to meet with any of you individually on any type of basis some of you I talked to before every meeting to kind of go over this is what's coming up at the meeting if Doing something like a monthly check-in with any of you would be helpful and we can do a little bit more of a breakdown Of like hey, this is what we're working on right now. This is where we're at in this project These are probably some of the big questions. We're gonna ask Commission and I'd be happy to do something like that, just to kind of keep the brains rolling. Another thing we could try to do is think about a way to let you know some of the bigger questions that we're tackling on any given project. And maybe there'd be a way to do that in our administrative reports at each meeting, so giving you a little bit more robust of a look ahead. So that's a couple initial thoughts, but would love to hear any others. But really reiterate, happy to meet or talk to any of you offline, too, to just keep you in the know.

A lot of times I have a disconnect between what is mandated from the legislature.

Oh, Mike.

with the legislature, all the different bills that have come forward. I'm not quite sure. As you had pointed out one time, I thought the one was quoted wrong, but they renumber things. And so I never know if I'm looking at the right bill. But just to kind of educate myself and the things that come across your desk that we have, that we're going to be dealing with. Sometimes I don't know what question to ask because I'm not that well versed on a subject. So if there's something... I can do or we can do to become more well versed so we can ask not stupid questions would be helpful and at least take up that time where we're not in actual meetings, public hearings as a planning commission.

Yeah, I'd love to keep thinking about that, because they're all great questions, truly. One immediate thing that comes to mind, and I'll keep thinking on it, is that during the legislative sessions, our government affairs manager does give a legislative session update to council at every meeting. So there's a packet on it that kind of has a bill tracker and a staff memo, and they'll usually kind of hit the hot topics. And then they give a presentation at council as well. It's usually at the very end of the meeting. But they're all recorded. I usually watch them the next morning.

Well, I wonder if maybe you could just email the snippet if you're watching them anyway. You could say, tune into our... YOU KNOW, FOUR AND, YOU KNOW, 15 MINUTES OR SOMETHING.

I DON'T ALWAYS READ THE ENTIRE PACKETS. I TRY TO, BUT SOMETIMES I'M NEVER SURE WHAT'S LEGISLATIVE THINGS CAN BE MUCH BROADER THAN WHAT WE DO THAN LAND USE ISSUES.

There's really awesome webinars as well for things like legislative updates and other planning topics as well. And I think we can, yeah, Ellie and I can strategize on sending those out to you and making you more aware of them in case you're interested in any of them.

And I know the MSRC emails we get every week are very helpful. Great.

Are we nearing the end for now? EVERYBODY IS GOOD FOR THE MOMENT? YEAH, PUBLIC CALENDAR UPDATE. WE HAVE MEETING MINUTES. OH. ALL DONE. YES, READING AND APPROVAL OF MINUTES. WE'VE GOT OCTOBER 23, NOVEMBER 13, AND DECEMBER 11.

ARE WE AT THE TIME WHERE I CAN MAKE A MOTION FOR THAT?

YES.

I MOVE TO ADOPT THE OCTOBER 23, NOVEMBER 13, AND DECEMBER 11 FROM 2025 MEETING MINUTES.

SECOND? I SECOND. ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. Opposed? All right. We have approval of meeting minutes. So now public calendar update.

All right. So we don't have any items on the February 12th agenda. So unless Planning Commission has any requests, we'll be canceling that meeting on February 12th. We'll give it a couple days until we cancel just in case anyone has any ideas that you want to float to us. And then we do have that first briefing on the parking amendment scheduled for February 26th.

Is there any way to make it go straight to public hearing? Or would that need to be, we need to check in with council, is there time? Just since it was brought up and I mean, especially if we're just approving. like what the state has.

Yeah, not knowing what the council direction on that one is going to be yet. We can ask them if they'd be okay with us going straight to public hearing. In that case, I would say, like Vice Chair Jacobson mentioned, we wouldn't have time to do the noticing before we talk before the February 26th meeting. If Planning Commission isn't interested in the briefing, we could... strike that from that February 26th agenda and just wait until we're ready with the public hearing if the council direction is to scope it in such a way that no other briefing is required. I think one of the things in our mind was even though the state is mandating the minimum parking requirements be lowered, it is a pretty big change to meet the state requirements. And so a planning commission briefing, even if we're just doing minimum compliance, is one way to provide the community with more opportunities to learn about it. So that was our thinking on putting it on the schedule.

Well, if it doesn't speed up the process, I don't know that there's any harm in having the conversation.

I would just say that, I mean, I'm just always of the mindset of, do we need to? Like, how can we make things faster? I don't think we'll be able to get counsel to sign off in time because of the notice requirement. I'm fine having a briefing on it, but I would also want to prioritize something else if it comes up. I wouldn't want to block anything for that when we're just talking about complying with state law and we don't really have flexibility on it. SO EVEN IF IT WOULDN'T NECESSARILY PUSH THE PUBLIC HEARING DATE EARLIER, I WOULDN'T WANT TO THEN BLOCK IT.

OKAY. SO IT'S MORE IF THERE WAS SOMETHING TO USURP THE SPOT.

IF WE COULD HAVE THE PUBLIC HEARING, OBVIOUSLY I WOULD WANT IT, BUT I DON'T THINK THAT'S GOING TO BE FEASIBLE BECAUSE STAFF WOULD HAVE TO GET ON THE COUNCIL'S AGENDA FOR THE FIRST FEBRUARY MEETING. THERE'S PROBABLY A REASON WHY THEY'RE ON THE SECOND ONE.

OKAY. WE CAN KEEP THAT IN MIND, BUT I DON'T THINK WE HAVE ANYTHING THAT WOULD BUMP IT. because of where we're at on the other projects.

Basically, we have a lot of stuff in process that just isn't ready for us yet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of transitioning off a lot of the work from last year and into the new projects. So we are in kind of that scoping phase of a lot of our work right now.

Do we have anything else? Okay. Then is there anyone who would like to... give public comment at the end of the meeting. Hunter, you want to? Okay. Come on up, bud. So you have three minutes, and if you could state your name for the record.

Do I have to press the button?

Yes. No, you don't have to press it.

No? No.

So my name's Hunter, and I just wanted to really say after watching this whole meeting, I've never watched one of the meetings before. All I know about them is from what Mama said, so I never actually knew anything about these meetings. So I just want to say thank you. for spending your time to try and help make Kirkland better, all of you. It really warms my heart how everybody dedicates their time to the city we live in, the city of Kirkland that we all live in. I just really want to say thank you.

Good job. And with that, I see no one else. So with that, our meeting is adjourned.