Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Calling to order the regular meeting of the Planning Commission this Thursday, 02/13/2025. Do we want to do roll call?

Brian, can I just check? Did you call video production? Or do you want me to?

Yes. No. They're good.

Okay. Good. Okay. Ria Heiser? Here. Aaron Jacobson?

Here.

Gina Medea? Here. Scott Racer?

Here.

Justin Robbins?

Here.

Angela Rosman? Here. Rodney Rutherford?

Here. Thanks.

Okay. It looks like we are all here. So I'm going to start the meeting at this point and we start with comments items from the audience which are general the next item on our agenda is items items from the audience this is the portion of the meeting where we hear from the public about items that are not scheduled for public hearing. Each speaker will have three minutes to provide your comments. The timer on the dais will flash a yellow light when you are nearing the end of your time and a red light when the time has lapsed.

In making your comments, we ask that you please direct them to the Commission, but this is not a time for a give and take with the commission. Obscene, profane, threatening, or harassing or abusive language towards the commission, city staff, or those in the audience are not allowed. As audience members, please refrain from any demonstrative agreement or disagreement with the speaker, such as clapping, cheering or booing. These actions are not only disruptive, they may also intimidate or have the effect of excluding others in the community whose views may differ. We'll begin with items from the audience with the list of people here in person that have signed up to speak.

When I call your name, please approach the dais to address us. Virtual audience members may indicate you wish to speak by raising sorry about that. Virtual audience members, if you're here, may indicate you wish to speak by raising your hand in the Zoom meeting now. When it is your turn to speak, we will admit you into the virtual room as a panelist. When I call your name, you may unmute and address the Commission. Thank you. So items from the audience. I have Jack Stout. Hello, Jack.

Well, thank you for being here and all the hard work you do as a volunteer in the city for many years. I appreciate all the hard work you do. I'm here as a member of the Kirkland Senior Council. I'm actually the chair of the housing committee this year. And I just want to perhaps remind you and I think you've already heard about this many times perhaps that we really advocate for universal design in housing.

Universal design is often thought of something just for those of us that are 80 and more like myself, but it really isn't. It's for anyone who needs accessibility. That can be someone who's just come down from the slopes and now has a broken ankle and needs to get around the house a little bit. It can also be, as I've discovered working with people with disabilities in my career, that moms with babies and sacks over their shoulders like a little more room to get around especially in bathrooms and so on. So universal design opens spaces, makes them more accessible, make things like wall switches and door handles more easy to use.

And AARP has a great program for that. I brought along just a single page document from an AARP document. You can read at your leisure, talks a little bit about it. The interesting thing there is it's written in 2017 forecast how many seniors there's going to be about this time. It's an increasing number as you may know.

We're actually in the peak year of the boom with 12,000 people a day becoming 65. So we are a population that needs some accessibility and that includes things like better housing, housing with single levels or ramp access, things like that. And we've been working with Adam and he's been very receptive to hearing about universal design. So I just again want to say that we encourage you to think about that as you're looking at planning for the housing in the future. There's about 33% of our population designated seniors in the city of Kirkland now.

Give us another ten years, that might be 40%. So we'll all be applauding you ten years from now for all the good work you do. Thank you.

Thank you, Jack. Do we have anyone? I do not see any hands raised online. Okay. So we will move to our study our special presentation, which is none So then we will move to our study session.

Staff, do

you want

to start that?

Yes. Thank you, Vice Chair Heiser, and good evening, Planning Commissioners. Before we jump into the work program as that's getting pulled up, I just wanted to take a quick moment to introduce you to one of our newer staff members you haven't had a chance to meet. We have Anna Heckman back in the audience. So Anna Heckman has taken the reins from Katie Hogan in our environmental program coordinator position.

You're gonna be seeing Anna soon this year as she works on the critical area ordinance updates. So face to a name, you're going to start hearing from Anna, and we're very happy to have her on board. With that said, I'm going to hop into the Planning Work Program. This should be familiar to you because you were just here in council chambers with City Council at Joint Study Session last last week, and so this is a continuation of that discussion. I'm gonna give just a little bit of an overview of kind of how we got to the the draft planning work program that's in your packet tonight, and then we'll open up the discussions.

So with that, I will jump right in. So we did start the Work Program Update a little differently this year than we have in past years, and that was for a couple different reasons. One was just in acknowledgment of the huge amount of work that you all and council did on the comprehensive plan, the community interest in it, and then also just we thought it would be most helpful to meet with council early in the process to kind of align your priorities and then for counsel to give you kind of any guidance about what they were looking to see in the final work program since they do adopt it. At the study session last week, we heard general consensus, very strong consensus, I would say, around a few things that they wanted to see and you wanted to see prioritized on the work program that was activating the station area, really prioritizing those tasks that are going to help enable housing production or review permit timelines, and then a focus on some of those kind of, I would say, like lower hanging fruits on the planting tree. I'm gonna try to avoid any more analogies tonight.

So focusing really on completing what we've started working what we've already already started working on and then focusing on a lot of the state legislation that we're actually required to get implemented that year or this year. So you'll see those prioritized in the draft work program. Quick reminder we went over this last week, so I won't read you this list again but just wanted to acknowledge the good work that Planning Commission completed last year and Council adopted, so several big tasks that are off the Work Program since they are now complete. And now getting into the tasks that you'll see on the draft 25 to 27 planning work program. So the first kind of bucket of tasks we wanted to walk through, and I won't go into detail on all of these, is just simply projects that we've already started work on, and so these are proposed or recommended to be carried forward from the currently adopted 24 to 26 work program.

So we've got a couple strategic plans or or implementation plans that we're just constantly working on. That's the sustainability strategic plan and the urban forestry work plan. We're still working on code enforcement policy updates. The Houghton Park And Ride zoning and Houghton Village development plan, those are getting pretty close to completion. You've had a briefing already this year on state housing legislation implementation.

That's primarily HB eleven ten for middle housing and a few others. We're actually coming back to you with that one at your next meeting. You're getting a briefing tonight on our work to implement SB 5,290, which is talking about permit review timelines and consolidation and reporting. There's a couple several other state legislation implementation projects on this list that are carried forward that we're hoping to finish early this year. And then the usual kind of packet of miscellaneous code amendments that we bring to you annually, we've already started working on some of those, and then we did just start working on an update to our geohazard regulations.

Regulations. So we're recommending that all of those stay on the work program, that we can finish what we started there. The next bucket of projects that you'll see on the draft planning work program, these are new, so they weren't on the 24 to six Work Program, but they are recommended to be added to this next one. These are all projects to implement required state legislation. So the first two I do want to note.

These didn't make it into your packet, but they are on a copy that I printed for you, which is at your seat. Chair Rutherford, I emailed you a copy, and we are recommending that you go ahead and add those tonight. So the first one is implementing a requirement that cities allow unit lot subdivisions. The second is a bill that requires us to allow co living or what we've called residential suites more broadly throughout the city and with less kind of standards than we currently have for them, so enabling that housing typology a little more throughout the city. We have until the end of the year for that one, so a little more time than some of the other housing legislation.

And then the other two new ones on the work program would be a Critical Area Ordinance update. We are required by the state to update that this year to make it compatible with Best Available Science. And then we do kind of have just a placeholder for any other legislation that might come up that we need to implement this year. So trying to kind of maintain a little bit of flex in our staffing resources so that we can be responsive if anything else comes up out of this legislative session. The next sort of category of work program tasks, these are on the draft in your packet.

They're not necessarily must dos, but we are recommending them based on input from Planning Commission and Council. And we talked about, I think, just about all of these last week, so I won't go over all of them in detail again, but I'll grab a couple. Again, activating the Station Area Plan, that was seemed to be a very high priority for the commissioners that spoke last week in council, carrying forward or continuing the work on the Michaels and Goodwill community initiated amendment requests, so those now have adopted supportive policies in the comprehensive plan, but actual zoning code amendments is the next step. We have spoken with the neighborhood associations and plan to continue our work on putting in place a process for neighborhoods or anyone in a neighborhood to request amendments to their neighborhood plan, and those are chapters within the comprehensive plan. So we have proposed continuing to work on that and getting a process established for that by the end of the year.

We are recommending a housing strategic plan update in this work program time frame, and I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that in a few slides here. The next phase of middle housing is a proposed project, the sub area plan for the southern industrial area of Totem Lake. So that was another one that has a supportive policy adopted in the comp plan but requires a sub area plan to get to zoning code amendments. And that was one of the of the tasks that is associated with adding capacity that we think is required to help us comply with h b twelve twenty. We've got universal design regulations as a proposed task, and that was per request from the senior council.

The letter from them was in your packet from last week. And then we've also you'll notice that in 2026 and 2027, we've proposed these kind of, right now, what are general pilot projects. We did that because at the study session last week, we heard quite a bit of interest from some commissioners and council members about pilot projects and trying kind of innovative ideas in maybe more focused areas of town, trying out different ideas with maybe that are kind of short term allowances, but we didn't define those with with either group last week. We think it's an interesting idea, and so our thought with including those on the draft work program right now is sort of reserving the staffing resource and the space on your kind of three year calendar to look at pilot projects, thinking that over the course of our conversations with you this year as we work through some of that phase one housing compliance and other tasks that those pilot projects may sort of we might sort of start defining ideas we wanna try somewhere, and a pilot project might become something that we can define by the end of this year.

So our idea was to sort of reserve time on the Work Program for a pilot project that would would still need to be defined, but we can maybe work on that as as you work on other tasks throughout the year. There are also some projects on the Work Program that aren't necessarily they aren't started yet, but there are carryover projects from the 2426 Work Program, and they're listed here. I'm I'm not gonna go into them. Many of these, through the conversation that you had with City Council last week, seemed like were either mentioned specifically as ones that could be deprioritized or they weren't mentioned at all, in which case we kind of assumed they might be candidates for sort of moving them out a little further in the time frame on the work program. So those are shown with asterisks on this list.

We're happy to answer questions if you have have them about any of these specific projects. There's a couple projects that you'll see on the Work Program that show up just about every year, so they're really annual projects. So those are miscellaneous code amendments, cleanup items, clarifying items, and the annual comprehensive plan amendments. Annual comprehensive plan amendments, we we do these every year to update our CIP, our Capital Improvement Plan, and then sometimes there might be other amendments. So if we acquired a park and need to change the land use designation of a property to park, that's a pretty common one we pick up in annual comprehensive plan amendments with the neighborhood plan amendment request process.

If someone requests a change to their neighborhood plan, if we review it and Council wants to see that happen at your recommendation, the Annual Comprehensive Plan Amendment offers a process through which we could actually update that Neighborhood Plan. There's a we usually have community initiated amendment requests on the work program every year, so we do kind of a phase one review in one year and then a more deep in-depth review the next year, so it's a two year review cycle, and then we accept applications every other year. We actually didn't receive applications this year, and so we won't be looking at any community initiated amendment requests for the next two years since we didn't receive any. So those are not on the work program for '25 or '26. We have one Planning Planning Commissioner Commissioner proposed task that was received by staff ahead of the packet.

So more detail is in your packet, and I would defer to Commissioner Jacobson if he wants to describe that either now or later.

I would ask if the chair wants me to describe it now or later.

Would it be okay if we go through the rest of the slides? We can do that. Okay.

Almost finished here. So here's just the slide. I gave you a preview of this earlier. Just a quick note on strategic plans, because these were some tasks on the draft work program, but one new task, the housing strategy plan update, is a new proposed task on this work program. The sustainability and urban forestry strategic plan updates have been on the work program, so they were on the adopted 2426 work program.

We've kept them on this '25 to '27 draft work program. I think we got kind of mixed feedback on the priority of the strategic plans from Planning Commission and Council last week, and so we wanted to share just a little bit more detail about staff's thoughts on those and why we kind of proposed them in this draft work program where we did. The first is simply that all of these are really interrelated topics, and they also happen to be three topics that we know the Kirkland community cares about a lot. So from a staff perspective, it makes a lot of sense to kind of sync up our work on them to make sure that they take each other into account and are coordinated with each other. But we also think it makes a lot of sense for the community to have these issues in front of them at the same time, and we think there's some efficiency both for staff and the community's time as people engage around the topic.

So what we would probably do, as we've laid it out now, is each of these tasks would have different project managers within our staff team, but we might combine some of the community engagement and outreach to make the best use of our community members' time. We also hope that that might provide for a richer engagement experience too. All of them are really in need of updates in the near term, we think. The Sustainability Master Plan talks about kind of doing a refresh at the five year mark, which is this year or last year. It was adopted in 'nineteen or 'twenty.

So it's kind of in need of a refresh. It probably wouldn't be a huge overhaul, but there are some policy updates we made in the comprehensive plan that we wanna make sure are carried through into that the sustainability master plan. The Urban Forestry Strategic Management Plan was last adopted in 2013, so that one really is in need of an update. And on that note, we kind of have Anna Heckman in the audience here, so it doesn't most of our senior planners working on the majority of the projects on the long range work plan, they're working on more planning oriented, more zoning and comp plan oriented projects. We have a dedicated staff made member in our environmental program coordinator to do this urban forestry strategic management plan update.

So which is to say that putting putting this earlier on the work program isn't really pushing any more planning or zoning related topics further down on the work program because it has a dedicated staff member. And then lastly, the housing strategy plan. As you all know well, the housing element of the comprehensive plan got got quite an update. There's a lot of policies that are different. We have a lot of state legislation that is really causing us to look at housing in-depth, and so we think that a housing strategy plan update is a good idea.

It gives us a chance to really continue the conversation with the community and engage in them more around action and implementation tasks, so sort of taking that next step deeper into a level of detail beyond policy and talking about prioritizing what we do on housing for the next several years. And so we think the strategy plan update would be a good opportunity to do that. So that was that was why just what led us to putting those three strategic plans on the work program, hopefully starting work next year and at the same time. Still open to conversation, but just wanted to explain our thinking on that. This is pretty much my last slide.

Just wanted to give you an idea of of how long projects take. So we've gotten the question from a couple commissioners. We ask ourselves that question a lot. So we actually have this kind of, like, example timeline, and this is for a fairly straightforward zoning code amendment with, I would say, like, the minimum amount of outreach we would typically do. So this is, like, not our most intensive.

This is I would I I would say this is less than, like, the housing zoning code amendments we're looking at now. This is a pretty simple project, and I'm not gonna read every line, but between sort of our scoping, figuring out what we need to change in the code, actually writing the code, making sure that we're touching base both with our internal stakeholders, so our current planning team and other development review departments that use the code, Do outreach to them to make sure, is this usable? Does this work? When you're explaining it to someone at the counter. Doing touches with the community, so going to those neighborhood association meetings, outreaching to other people that might not be involved in neighborhood associations for any given project.

Are there kind of a certain group of stakeholders we wanna make sure to talk to? Doing the environmental review, which is required for any time we change the zoning code, getting our legal notices out, getting the code amendments to the state for review, which we do have to do every time we update the zoning code or the comp plan, holding study sessions with you all and counsel, holding the public hearing, and then implementation or follow-up tasks. So sometimes when we change the code, we have to change our permitting software and how that's set up and things like that. We have to train staff to make sure everyone's using the new code consistently, which is all to say we kind of think the minimum timeline for even even a simple zoning code project usually takes, like, five to six months. So just wanted to give you an idea of when you're looking at the work program and you see the sort of work, how many quarters it's gonna take us projected, that's something that we consider.

Sometimes that doesn't mean we're working with you on it for that full amount you see on the work program, but it means we are kind of working internally. Oftentimes, our staff might be working on more than one project, so the timelines sort of reflect we might not be working 100% of someone's time on this project for all four quarters of the year, but we do think, given the balance of everything we're working on, this is probably how long it will take. So I just wanted to take a moment and kind of walk through how we think about that generalized time frame that you see on the work program. And with that, if Planning Commission reaches a recommendation on the Planning Work Program tonight, our next step would be taking it to counsel for adoption. So we'll see how the how the conversation goes and what the commission is ready for.

And with that, just have a few questions for you to consider if they help with your discussion, and we're available for any questions, comments, discussion.

Okay. I guess I'll open it up. I think that Commissioner Jacobson, did you want to speak on your affordable neighborhood pilot?

Sure. I can do that first, then we can go back to everyone. So essentially, I've been thinking about this idea where during the comprehensive plan, we received a lot of feedback that people think that affordable housing in particular is really important. And I was already thinking about we need to prioritize affordable housing, and that may mean rules, specifically giving more allowances for projects that are more deeply affordable. As then we had the discussion in the joint meeting where we need to be able to move faster and then come back to things if they're not working.

And so my thought process was this pilot project where we provide incentives is how it would look to planners. We provide incentives for providing more affordable housing as well as other desired community services. The I in terms of area, I'm a little open to adjusting that based on the scope because I think it's really important to start getting in the habit of doing things like this. And so if there is less bandwidth, I would prefer to reduce the scope of this project, to allow us to do it this year rather than hold the scope constant or or have a larger scope to it, and thus maybe push it to 26 or 27.

Anything on it, so I apologize. Would this when you say an affordable neighborhood, would this be anywhere in Kirkland? Or is it a specific site? Or is it could it be included in the station area if a developer wanted it to?

I think I think with a pilot project, we should limit this limit the geographic scope. So I don't think we should have a pilot project citywide. I think it makes sense to have a smaller planning area that's more cohesive so we don't need to worry about one thing happening on the the sun of the city and affecting something else somewhere else. The in terms of the question of the stationary, I think that's possible. But I think the stationary is there are specific aspects of the conversation with the station area that I think it would be more productive if if we have the tasks for activating the station area separate from this pilot project.

I would be I think there's opportunities for doing a pilot project in the regional growth centers or the neighborhood centers or the neighborhood residential areas. Those would all look different. And if you in the paragraph that I wrote up, it's essentially we'll do more in the in the areas that are already denser. And that because that's where most of the opportunity is. I quite liked the what I think Commissioner Rosman said of the idea of putting out an RFP and seeing what property property owners can actually do right now. And so that's also part of why I want to be kind of open to letting people come to us just and tell us where the where the biggest opportunity is. And then that would allow us to figure out, okay. This is where the pilot project is going to be.

Commissioner Medea?

Thank you. I really like the idea of a pilot project. I think it's essentially it is consistent with the charge that we've been given, right? We have a plan now. And I think we're hoping to get down to specific tasks and details with through the lens and goal of achieving housing, like in this decade or next two years. But also what it does is it allows us to test and learn so that we can transport what worked and tweak what didn't for any future execution. So I in support of that. When we get to the point to make it official, I favor it. So thank you for your thoughts and proposal.

Okay. We'll go to Commissioner Rosman, and then I'll go to you, Chair Rutherford.

So I had a question for Allison. We don't have any cars this year. How often do we not have any cars?

That's good question. It kind of predates my time in this chair. So we've had, I think, at least a couple in the past several cycles. Right.

Was going to say I feel like there's always been at least a couple. And so I don't know. To me, it's kind of concerning that we don't have any unless maybe it's not as abnormal as I think. But I feel like we usually have at least a couple, and I just wanted to get a handle on if my memory was right or not.

Yeah. No, I don't think your memory is wrong, and so kind of have, though some of them have kind of stretched out, so, like, the Michaels car wasn't really submitted in the last cycle. It was submitted in the cycle prior, and then council decided to defer it to the neighborhood plan update since we were planning on doing an in-depth update of the Waneta Neighborhood Plan. So and we did talk to a few people just anecdotally over the course of the comprehensive plan, talked to a few people that expressed an interest in potentially submitting a CAR for this cycle that just didn't come to fruition, and so I think people were kind of poking around, but we did not get actual submittals.

Yeah, just to add to that too, I think some big big factors for not getting CARs this round were the comp plan, right, which absorbed a huge amount of energy in the community and also the expectation that with HB eleven ten implementation and implementation of other housing bills that there will be additional density in our residential neighborhoods. So I think that that probably diverted some of the CARs that we normally would have gotten.

Chair Rutherford? Do you wish to speak?

Yes. Yeah. I, just to follow on to commissioner Rosman's question. Trying to lower my hand there there. Yes.

I agree with Adam's observation, and I actually had a neighbor come up to me and and ask about the possibility of of how, you know, how they would go about re rezoning their their their land. And I pointed out h b eleven ten and some of the other changes that are coming into place, and, you know, that caused them to think, maybe it's not really worth the time to to go through the whole CAR process. So I imagine that that and it's probably a much more efficient way of of handling it rather than than the one offs of of CARs. As for pilot projects, you know, this is something I've been really interested in. I I would like to remind us all that, you know, pilot projects are are intended to be more of a a strategy through which any of these plans might exercise pilot projects or any of these, you know, working work items might end up exercising the pilot program.

For the particular pilot program that was proposed by commissioner Jacobson, one of the I I don't wanna get too deep into the the details of this at this point, but one possibility for pilot programs in general might be to invite neighborhood associations just to, you know, make them aware of, like, we're considering a pilot. Are there any areas in in your neighborhood where a pilot might actually like, where this pilot might make sense? And then we could have the benefit of having the sponsorship of the neighborhood association and and in carving you know, in in identifying where and being more engaged in how that could take shape. One question I had for staff was about are there parts of the example project timeline that might be reduced for pilot project development? I think that's one of the things that we're really hoping to be able to realize.

We could we could explore that, Chair Rutherford, but I think it would take some I think we'd need

some

very specific input from Planning Commission or council about what you'd want to see reduced because, I mean, engagement is a big variable in that timeline, but we want to make sure people, you know, like what you just mentioned involving the neighborhoods, That takes time, so we can explore it, but I don't know that we could decrease it by that much as I'm sitting here thinking about it. We could maybe grab some weeks here and there.

Yeah. Okay. Alright. That's something that I think, you know, it would be useful to to dig into some more. On the future let's see, the future one of the work future work program items that stood out to me, the home occupation allowances, which I believe is in reference to home based businesses, I imagine that should be adjusted based on some of the concepts we that were being explored in the comprehensive plan.

I can't read the exact terminology we used, but about the concept of neighborhood oriented commercial or, you know, the house scale of neighborhood oriented businesses. And so I would hope that the scope would be adjusted to to be aligned with with what was defined in the comprehensive plan. My last point is, you on know, the point of housing production, I know that we've talked about maybe we don't deal with parking for now, but I would like to remind us all that maybe this is an a a spot where we end up taking a more focused look at parking. Because I remember a couple of years ago, Mike Stagner of a a regional coalition for housing, we asked him what is the greatest impediment to the production of affordable housing in our community, and he his answer was parking requirements. I'm sure that a few of us remember that quite quite clearly.

So while we might not look into parking requirements specifically, I expect I anticipate that the question will arise for some of the other topics that we will be digging into. That's all that I have on my list right now. Thank you.

Okay. Commissioner Rasman?

Just on that comment on parking, I just want to make sure everyone's aware that there is a bill in this in the Senate right now that's on the floor calendar that let's maybe table are we going to talk about parking or not? Because I feel like there's at least maybe fiftyfifty that the state's going to take care of it for us, and then we don't have to put it on our planning work program. So I would almost say, let's hold off and see what happens there, because if we see that one pass, I don't know that it's worth our time to talk about it at the city level.

Okay. Commissioner Jacobson.

Thank you. I think it might be helpful for us to focus on, first, what we want to do this year in the planning work program, kind of to commissioner Rousman's point. There's a lot of state legislation that could affect the planning work program if we're thinking about 2026, 2027. And so if you don't mind, I I have some specific ideas on some of the items for 2025. I wanted to ask staff about the Michaels and goodwill cars on the planning work program on the draft that we have.

They are scheduled to go through the end of this year. When I looked and I got an email the other day for the planning public meeting calendar update that we've that we're we're scheduled now to deal with, the Michaels and Goodwill Community Amendment requests, in a number of meetings and even a council meeting. Could you give some context on that if we're thinking about going faster than what's on the planning work program already?

Yeah. And if I understand, you're kind of asking what would it take to sort of shorten that timeline?

Yeah.

Okay. So right now, the way that we're scoping that project, we are kind of aiming for sort of fall quarter adoption. We've added that extra quarter of work to recognize likely implementation and also just to give us a bit of buffer. In terms of what it would take to shorten it, right now we are scoping at least two rounds of community engagement, and that involves things like going to neighborhood associations, reaching out to stakeholders that we talk to through the Juanita plan update process, sending out some postcards to make sure that nearby neighbors are aware of the work that's going on. We have public notice signs that are already up from the comp plan that we'll reuse for this, and then we are also looking at doing some outreach to the schools that are nearby some of these sites.

And then there's some internal outreach as well. We've gotten a lot of questions around the Michaels site, for example, like the nearby parks and how that all fits in, so doing some internal outreach to parks and transportation to make sure that we're kind of covering all our bases as we work on these code amendments. So that's sort of the outreach scope kind of two rounds, so talking to those folks to make sure people know we're working on this and how they can be engaged in the process and then making sure that we go out to all the same folks again to let them know when we're getting ready for the public hearing where people can come and provide testimony. So kind of two big pushes on outreach. And then in terms of our work with you, what we're looking at is an initial briefing to help us kind of scope the project.

For example, on the Goodwill site, what we'll be asking is, are you wanting us to just look at the Goodwill site or the whole BC 1 zone, which covers most of the North Juanita neighborhood center? So that's a question. So we wanna make sure you know what we're working on generally before we have the draft code to make sure that we're covering everything you want us to. So that would be a first briefing, a second briefing to review the draft code, a public hearing to gather testimony, and for you to deliberate before recommendation to counsel. There is a counsel briefing in the schedule as well to make sure they kind of know what's going on and are making sure that we're also capturing everything they're expecting us to cover in this.

So that that was a lot, but that's what the scope of the project so to shorten it, it would involve sort of removing one or more of those components. It depends a little bit, I would say, commission on how much you wanna be in involved in that draft code. Like, we could take out one of your one of your briefings. It just sorta depends where you're at on it.

I would be interested given that and, yes, there was opposition to these projects in the comprehensive plan. There was also support. And the conclusion of the comprehensive plan was that neighborhood centers where both of these are located are exactly where we want housing. And the maximum amount of housing that was requested in the community amendment request was what we used to say that we're going to comply with HB twelve twenty. Given all of that, I would be interested in moving these in streamlining, engagement, and moving these projects forward.

We said we're going to do it, so let's get it done. And so I I would be hopeful of obviously, as much as possible, but if there could be, like, adoption early summer. I don't know how realistic that is, but, it just seems kind of ridiculous to me that we're having this conversation of, are we gonna do this? Do we want to do this when we already decided that.

Okay. I would chime in there and say that the Totem Lake area that we're talking about is not a neighborhood center, so I would be in favor of having enough community engagement there.

So the sorry. I'm talking specifically about the Goodwill and Michaels community amendment requests, not which are neighborhood centers. The Totem Lake Southern Industrial sub area is in entirely, I believe, within the regional growth center boundaries. That's a separate conversation. Right now, I just want to focus on the Michaels and goodwill.

I'm I would be more leaning towards having community engagement there. That's my two cents on that. Commissioner Medea, did you have anything to say?

Thank you. I was just wondering, specifically with regard to those two car requests, like, what's that first domino that needs to fall? Will we get enough clarity about what that might look like, what shape it might take so that the community engagement is meaningful? Like how do we get off the starting block there, even if we can't condense the time line with all the steps that you just outlined for Ali? Like, what's the big first heft?

Yeah, so the first step is really getting in front of you for a first briefing, which we are planning for your first meeting March right now. So that would include us kind of outlining, hey, this is what we're this is what we're looking at just to make it clear to you and the community. These are all the components of the code we're looking at updating in relation to these up zones and then asking you a couple scoping And so we've already started working on it to make sure that we understand what all might need to be changed in order to zone for the full request so that we can give you a good idea of what would need to be adjusted.

And then if I may?

Sure. Ahead.

That being an area of focus, I'm also like so we still have this task to figure out how we're going to get this, right? So a big consensus was activate the stationary plan. And what I am still struggling with is understanding exactly what that means, like I have a new year's resolution to get healthier. What is that like what specific actions am I taking? What incremental progress do I want to see?

How do I measure that success is very different, right, than just saying, I want to be healthier. So I'd like to know what we mean when we say activate the stationary plan so that we can time scope and resource scope it appropriately and just execute. I'm just I mean, we have the plan now. Had a lot of community input and blood, sweat and tears up here to get to a plan. Now we've got execute. Like, we owe it to our people and ourselves to start seeing some progress. What do we mean by activate stationary plan? Okay, I'm going

If I just jump in really quickly and respond to that, Commissioner Medea. But there is a council retreat happening on February 28, and one of the items on that agenda for that retreat will be what does the council mean by activating the stationary plan, and we'll be talking about the two big pieces of that, one of which is what does the city council foresee on the regulatory side, easing affordable housing requirements, changing the boundaries of the station area, doing things like that, increasing development allowances, etcetera. That's one piece of it. The other piece of it is more on the economic development side, so how might the city program that area, have temporary events, attract businesses to the area as well. So we are hoping for some more direction from council after that retreat.

I think maybe revisiting the affordable housing requirements there too might be a good idea, so I'm gonna put that there. Commissioner Jacobson, actually, sorry, just one sec. After Commissioner Jacobson, I think we should go through these like in order of like maybe one, are there any new projects? And then we'll go through any projects that could be deprioritized, and then do we have any changes of order?

That way we oh, thank you very much.

Okay, so we'll go to Commissioner Jacobson is said to go to Chair Rutherford, please.

Right. Am I a person?

Yep. You're the first

in. Yep. Okay. Alright. Okay. Thank you. And because this, has to do especially with the stationary plan, I what I would be especially interested to hear from council, rather than, like, the specific actions that they think that we should do. But I'd be really interested to hear what do they understand as being a measure of success. How you know, what what are the things that would would they would what's the result that they would like to see that they would call success? And then based on that, we can together with staff and with counsel, but, you know, then we can drive forward and figure out what are the actions that we should take in order to realize that.

It's fine for them to to suggest also, you know, what are some potential actions, but I think, ultimately, it's it's up to us to to recommend what those actions should be in order to achieve the definition of success that's defined by by council. That would be, I think, especially useful. Thank you. That's all.

Commissioner Jacobson?

Thanks. I'll talk only on the activity in the station area so that we can get to the questions. And not wanting to start the this big long conversation on what do we do for activating the station area just yet given that counsel is going going to be talking about it at the end of the month. One idea that I have been thinking about is and kind of building off of comments that I believe Commissioner Reiser said in the joint meeting. There was an option at a point in the stationary plan discussion to allow for more housing, and I believe that was alternative three out of the, like, five or six that the city did.

What would it take? Could it could we do more faster by saying we're just going to limit ourselves to the scope of what was studied in Alternative three? And given that we already had the conversation about the station area and in the comprehensive plan discussions, basically, everyone said we want more housing in the station area. I think that's a real opportunity for getting a good amount of housing with that's already aligned with all the community engagement that we've done so far. And I I think that would be a way to limit the scope of the project without letting it run what run out of our control and become a huge cage fight about a bunch of different issues.

And so I would hope that that could be put before council. To that end, I would kind of hope that we could I don't know that I'm comfortable making a final final recommendation as a planning commission on this planning work program if we don't know what council wants to do with activating the station area because that's a big whether it's whether we're talking about what what, Chair, Heiser said or this other idea that I'm saying or there was a letter sent to us in, like, April from a develop from some developers of a list of things that we could do. I wanna know what that is before saying this is how much time we're gonna allocate for it.

Okay. So with that said, does anyone have any additional new projects that they want to be considered for the planning work program? Commissioner Rosman?

I don't know if this is specifically a new project as much as, like, when we're talking about pilots and, you know, RFP, etcetera. You know, I would like us to maybe leave a little bit of space to be flexible. If somebody came forward and said, you know, I own this piece. I really want to turn it into something cool. I want to be able to act quickly. So not so much another piece on here, but I'd love to leave some space that, like, if we have a potential for a really great project coming forward, let's, like, show up so that they can get moving on it.

That's a good point. Commissioner Jacobson?

So I'll start out with the affordable neighborhoods pilot project. We've already talked about it. I also think that there's an opportunity for a very small project that I would call middle housing phase 1.5, dealing with some minor technical issues that do we're not not changing the amount of housing that we allow. But an example is there's an issue where developers are currently building one attached ADU and one detached ADU, but the attached ADU is essentially detached. It's just attached by a very small amount of material just because we have a limit on the total size of all accessory structures.

So in all practicality, we're having two detached ADUs, but through a code, we're making them have this unnecessary attachment. And so something like that. I had originally also included in this idea reducing or allowing subdivisions so that you don't need to have a mini HOA for every cottage development. But as I understand, 100 compliance with SB 5,058 will do that. So this I would call it middle housing 1.5.

It's like a really small project that I don't think will be too controversial, but I think could make a difference in just making our code simpler and make more sense. And then for 2025, I would also hope that when we do I would hope that we could get started on the TotalMakes Southern Industrial sub area plan. The policy does call for, multiple phases. And the the comprehensive plan policy specifically says that a phase a phase one, I believe, should include or, should include some sort of economic study. I would like that Phase one to also include, some zoning changes for the portion of the original Parmac request that is outside of the housing incentive overlay.

That's a much smaller area that I think we can handle. And that would allow us to move some housing forward while still getting to the rest of the sub area next year. Then I would I actually, it seems to have fallen off, but the downtown action plan, I would change that to a greater downtown action plan. I think that framework would let us talk about some of the bigger issues in the station area, but also talk about housing affordability in downtown. Downtown Kirkland is one of the most expensive neighborhoods we have, and it is and I think it's really important for us to be talking about housing affordability there.

And then I believe that's all for new ideas.

Okay. Does anyone does anyone else have any new ideas?

Nope.

Okay. Let's move on to any projects that can be deprioritized or removed from this work program. Commissioner Riser?

I would just like to ask staff a couple of questions on the urban forestry. Seem to I mean, because it's so high up there, you seem to think it's really important. I want to hear a little bit more about that because, you know, for us, how you know, we worked on the tree code how much different is this than the tree code?

Sure. Anna can let me know how well I answered this question tomorrow. So I would say that the urban forestry strategic plan is much more than the tree code. Right? It's not just regulating trees as it's associated with development. It's really promoting our whole urban forest in Kirkland. So what programs can we run to promote more urban forest here, to increase our canopy cover? How can we help our community members plant more trees on their properties? How can how can we get more trees planted in parks and publicly owned spaces? So I would say it's much bigger.

It could involve things like we have this tree code, but we've noticed that we might not be we have a survivability issue with trees we require to be planted with development. Right? So how can we promote better survival rates of the trees that are planted? How can we kind of follow-up on some of the tree code requirements? So there's we have a lot of different ideas about how we can improve the health of our urban forest in Kirkland, and it's much more than the tree code.

Involves a lot of programs. The strategic plan also can guide and prioritize some of the work that our parks and our public works department do. So there's a lot of different divisions throughout the city that work on trees generally. So it's really doing a health assessment of what have we accomplished in the last ten years and really what do we want to prioritize moving forward So it's quite a bit more. Then just to I think maybe a better way of explaining what I did in a very long fashion earlier is that Anna kind of has her own work program, and so that's why it's a little bit easier to for us to deploy her more quickly on the strategic plan relative to the rest of the of the work program and since we have finished with the tree code now.

So now we have time that we didn't have the last few years to pick up something that's urban forest related besides the tree code, and we're quite excited about that opportunity.

Can I just ask a follow-up question? So do you look at this as something that you're saying Anna is already working on it, so is something that's not really taking up a lot of staff time?

We think it will take we're not working on it yet, but we do think it will take some staff time because we want to do community engagement around this and quite a bit, and then also a lot of internal engagement with our other departments as well. So we do think it will take up quite a bit of staff time when we get to it.

Commissioner Medea?

Forgive me, but are we now talking about what we might want to deprioritize? Okay, then look at that timing. That was fabulous. So a couple of thoughts. And this might be with novice regard to the things that are inexorably linked, which was kind of one of your slides, right?

But I think about the housing strategy plan and whether things like universal design, sustainability can be part of that, right, when we so just kind of bundled in there, perhaps. And then from a deprioritization perspective, you've got to convince me otherwise that short term rentals should be a high priority. I don't believe that is. Sign code and electrification would be my votes for deprioritization.

Sorry, just to interject really quickly about short term rentals. And again, here to take direction from the Planning Commission. Think the one thing I wanted to mention regarding short term rentals is that that would be a joint project with the Finance and Administration Department and the Planning and Building Department. The finance and administration department is already starting to work on that. There's two pieces to that short term rental work.

One is if we want to adjust any of our existing short term rental regulations in terms of how long you can rent your property out, whether you can rent multi family properties out for short term rentals, that's the piece that we would probably work on. The other piece is requiring short term rental platforms to give us data so that we can do a better job enforcing short term rentals because they're really, really difficult. The regulations are really difficult to enforce on right now. We basically have to camp out in front of somebody's house for many, many days to verify that they're being used for short term rentals, which is not something that we're really able to do. So that's the piece of it that the finance department is working on, and we're gonna have to be a little bit involved with that as well.

So there is the potential to sort of break them in half, and we'll spend a little bit of time helping finance with their part of the project, and then push the other piece off.

Follow-up question, if I may, and again, this speaks to my naivete in this arena, but the economic folks. Like, obviously, there's a potential city benefit to the taxes and such that come with short term rentals. Like, whatever we do, I don't want to throw the baby out with bathwater. Like, what's the balance with all that stuff? So you're nodding your head, I'm encouraged, but okay.

We definitely see that, and we hear from a lot of people that short term rentals help pay for their mortgages, right? So we're absolutely supportive of that perspective.

I'm gonna go to Commissioner Rutherford first. Sorry, Chair Rutherford.

Yeah. Thanks. As I was listening to Alison talk about the forestry strategic plan, I was thinking there it seems like a lot of items that maybe wouldn't need to involve planning commission except maybe towards the end where there's, like, maybe a few touch points that might concern planning commission. Is that is that a reasonable understanding that that the the Planning Commission involvement with treat with forestry strategic plan would likely be fairly minimal?

Yeah. That's a that's a great question, Chair. I I think it could be. Right? I think these are generally things Planning Commission has been interested in, but there isn't it would be adopted likely through a resolution, and so it would ultimately be a Council decision. It wouldn't involve code changes in and of itself, so the Planning touch on it could be light.

The commission touch. Great. Thank you.

Okay. Commissioner, sorry. Let's go Jacobson and then commissioner Rasmus.

Sure. In terms of projects to be deprioritized or removed, I agree with the idea that we should fold stuff into the more things into the housing strategy plan. The way that I've kind of been conceptualizing it is the housing strategy plan right now is kind of how much housing do we want, where do we want it. I think the conversation around universal design, around sustainability, that's that gets into what are the aspects that we want those homes to have. And I think it makes sense to have that as part of a comprehensive conversation where we're not just talking about how much housing we want, but we we're talking about what that housing actually looks like because there are trade offs in all of that.

And I think it's important that we balance those trade offs at the same time. However, I do while I understand that the idea is the idea of doing the housing strategy plan update in 2026 would let it align with with some other plan updates. I would rather the housing strategy plan be based be informed by the conclusion of the transit strategy, which will be happening in 2026 rather than happening as parallel silos that don't really talk to each other during 2026. So I would want I would want the housing strategy plan to be in 2027, not 2026. I'm fine with not with leaving the urban forestry strategic plan in 2026.

I that's fine. But moving the sustainability strategic plan along with the housing strategic plan, I think, make sense. Then not quite deprioritized or removed the n the NPAR process. When I was on CAN, it sounded like we had the process kind of all thought out and now it sounds a little different. And so I'm I'm just curious what that's changed compared to a year ago when there was the conversation with Cannes and what's the process in Envision to look like? And also how does that take a year? Are we expecting that to be a project that takes a lot of time throughout for the entire year? Or is that like a small amount of time for the entire year?

I it's more of the latter, a small amount of time for the rest of the year. We do want to make sure that we go talk to those kind of neighborhood stakeholders again as we finalize the process. The timing on this one in terms of showing it in all quarters for this year is more fitting it around other projects to make sure that we have the process established and in place by the end of the year.

Okay. And then is the process going to be as I understand, the community the car request is in, like, an ordinance or something somewhere, is in actual city law that we have to follow. Am I correct on that, or am I thinking it's more less than that?

The car process itself isn't. It's the the process of taking rezone requests and how we process those is is codified in our zoning code. We think that the the, as we've called it, the NPAR process, the Neighborhood Plan Amendment Request process, could be established administratively.

Okay. That's what I was hoping, also because I would hope that we get it we get the end part process. I actually am fine with getting it, and I like the idea of getting it done this year so that we can use it for the next planning work program update starting at the end of this year or beginning of next year, and we can just learn as we go. And if we get feedback that the end part process needs to change, then we can change it. Let's see. I think I had some other things. The parking pilot project, I'm open to removing that so that the actual parking policy can move forward. Sorry. My notes are not organized in at new deprioritized. They're organized by year, so I need to go through it.

Oh, and I think we should this the area where I think the the affordable neighborhoods pilot project can fit is by removing the affordable housing incentives, increased inclusionary standards, and essentially replacing that. With that, I've oh, k 2044 update implementation, in 2027. I would rather that if something is coming from the if we are realizing we have something that we wanna do that's coming from the policies from the comprehensive plan update, that if it's small enough to fit in the miscellaneous code or the miscellaneous code amendments, then we do it through that process. If it's bigger than that and we feel like it should be its own work item, I would rather deal with that as its own work item and have it stand on its own rather than automatically assuming that we're going to be doing it. And the vehicle electrification infrastructure, I would also fold that into the housing strategy plan update as part of the whole sustainability conversation as part of that.

And I believe that's everything from my list for removal or deprioritization.

Commissioner Rosman?

So back to the, you know, urban forestry question of, like, how much involvement does Planning Commission have, I feel like there are a couple of other items on this list that kind of feel similar the geohazard regulations update, the SEPA categorical thresholds since that's adopting amendments to state allowed expansions, etcetera. And I wonder if some of those could be looped in with a miscellaneous code amendment update each year. So things that Planning Commission wants to have a say on, but maybe we don't need a whole meeting for. Maybe we can just you know, put four or five things into one meeting, and maybe it's a little longer, but instead of giving them their own space, kind of putting all the miscellaneous stuff together. So, you know, most of these things, they have to happen, so we can't take them off the list, but maybe we can be intentional about how we talk about them so that we're making the best use of our time.

I'm going to go ahead and speak real quick. In terms I don't have any new projects. I look at the planning work program. If you look at it holistically, one of the things that we all were in agreement on in our meeting with the City Council a week and a half ago is that housing needs to happen now. And one thing that we've really pretty unanimously decided is that local permit review streamlining needs to be a real priority.

If you look at this list, it doesn't help us do that. So if we're on the forefront of adopting every new House bill and State bill as quickly as possible, it doesn't give our planners a lot of time to keep up. And I know we have turnover, and I do have concerns over that. So maybe we aren't I may not be the authority on what should be prioritized in terms of how much code change it's going to be and how confusing it's going to be for our planning staff to take it on. But there's my concern is I've built here for fifteen years, and for the past ten, any time I hear the word sustainability, I think that's going to increase the cost of building housing, and it's going to add to the timeline because everyone's going to be trying to figure out how to interpret what code is new.

So if we're constantly changing code, I don't know how we get a chance to catch up. There are jurisdictions that still are on 2016 code, and that's okay. If we need to say, you know, we need a minute to get through the code we have, we're trying to really get the housing built that we need built, it's a conversation that I think has to happen because we can talk about all the new code we want to do because it's exciting to start new projects, but I want the staff to be able to be comfortable with the code so that things can go more quickly. In terms of things I think we can remove or deprioritize or remove, I think the inclusionary zoning, the increased inclusionary zoning for single family and middle missing missing middle housing I think that that's simply going to add confusion with code, and it's going to add confusion with builders, and I think it's going to add a lot to the cost. So if we're talking about having inclusionary zoning for one house, that may be the amount of profit that a builder has on that house.

And I don't want to be on the forefront of that. I think we've done a lot of being on the forefront of affordable housing nationwide, and I don't think we've had enough housing to show for it frankly. So I don't think we need to push the envelope there. Another thing that I would say is important to me not deprioritizing this, would prioritize it, is the school capacity. We're going to see a lot more need in our area because we are going to be allowing for six units per acre by law.

At some point, we've already seen a lot more cottages and a lot more density, and we're very dense. We're the third most dense in the state. So I think finding new land that we might work it's not our school district. It's like Washington School District. But we need to work with them to be to prioritize that.

I would love to see that this year because, you know, finding the land that you would do an assemblage to maybe build a school at some point, it's a very long process. I think we can definitely deprioritize or remove the portion of that that says we're going to work on having housing on those plots, I don't think that that's a pilot program we need to be looking at right now. But I do think we need to make sure that we have enough school capacity for our kids to have a desk. So I think that's got to start now. If we're doing all this density, we've got to start looking at how we're working with the school district to make sure everyone can have a place to go to school.

50 eight, I have concerns over how that is the fee simple ownership of the land under a condoed plat. Can you put that maybe I'll ask staff to put that more simply because a third version of how we do cottages and townhomes. So if you could explain fifty two fifty eight in layman's terms.

Okay, yeah. It's always a difficult thing to do. Basically, you're right. Under current practice and current law, if you are building a cottage project or a townhouse project, for instance, in our lower density districts like duplexes and triplexes, you have to condoize the project to sell off those houses individually, and so basically you create a homeowner's association, everybody really owns the land, right? It's a little bit cumbersome.

You have to hire an attorney to do it. People want to own their own land under their houses, so there's some disincentive to build middle housing because of the allowances that we currently have that require an HOA and condoization. So what the unit lot subdivision does, which is now a state law, we have to implement it, is it allows the creation of what we call a parent lot, which is like the overall site where you're building, say, your cottages. That parent lot, the big lot, has to adhere to all the zoning regulations for the district, but what the unit lot subdivision does is it allows you to chop up that property into really small parcels, the individual parcels of which don't necessarily conform to the overall zoning requirements in terms of setbacks, right? So you can have a bunch of, say, duplex units in a single family neighborhood.

The overall parent lot, the bigger lot that those units are on have to adhere to setback requirements, for instance, but each unit can be on its own plot of land that is subdivided, basically. So it gives people a way to allow the land under their small units that might be right up against each other. It's an option for developers. We're not gonna make anybody do it. It just gives you a way to, instead of condoizing your middle housing development, you can really subdivide it.

So the reason we do the condo, even though it's cumbersome with an HOA, because we have to pay the attorneys like $10,000 and trust me, we don't like to do it either because there's a lot of different hands involved. There's escrow, there's the condo attorneys that make $10 for doing the docs or $8, it's quicker. So if we have a situation where we have this third option I'm sorry, it's quicker to get permits. We've even had twenty months where we had to wait for a condo situation on that, which was frustrating. But I have concerns if we are offering this other option.

Is that going to help the timelines of this housing being built? Because in our experience, the HOA situation has never been a hindrance for people buying, and it hasn't been an issue for anyone buying. And you can still buy cash, you can still mortgage it. It's not an issue. And most people just do the condo route because you can get through that, you should be able to get through that within a year instead of two, two and a half to get a subdivision done.

Yeah, thanks for that. It's good to hear that. I'm happy to hear that actually, that it's not, yeah, you it's not a big disincentive. We hear different things from different developers, so again, I would emphasize that it's not a required process, right, when we create union lot subdivisions. I think the other thing I'd mention, just more in direct response to your concern, Vice Chair Heiser, is that one of the options that will be in front of you as we bring unit lot subdivisions is a more administrative process for unit lot subdivisions, right, so that you don't have to go through the entire short plat process.

Short plat process right now is a little bit cumbersome in that it includes a, for instance, a public comment period, right, and oftentimes the public comments that we get on shortplats are not necessarily relevant to shortplats. They're relevant, they're related to not liking development on this particular property in the first place. They don't often relate to things like adequate infrastructure or implementation of the tree code or things like that. So there is the possibility of when we move forward with a lot of subdivisions that we could create a much more streamlined process that is more administrative in nature that might not involve a lot of public input.

Okay.

Okay, does anyone okay. Commissioner Jacobson?

Sorry, I did have it in my notes. I did want to second commissioner Medea's comment around short term rental policy. That's one where I that's another one where I think that can be part of the housing strategy plan update, at least for the planning part of it. I understand that there's there it's not just the planning staff that are working on it. And then I also wanted to second commissioner Rosman's comments of to the extent that we can fold things into the miscellaneous code amendment process, especially when it's pretty basic stuff like the CBIK categorical thresholds, I think that makes sense.

Commissioner Rosman?

I'm just gonna call you out, and I would love to hear something from Commissioner Ramans on his thoughts on the planning work program and what you think might be good to deprioritize or prioritize.

Well, I think that housing is important. And any way that we can speed that up is important. As far as deprioritizing, I don't really have any any comments around that at this time.

Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Robbins. And are we through the deprioritization or removing? Okay. So do we I guess we kind of went through this already, but the changes of the priority order.

Did they keep track

of it?

Did anyone keep track of our Yes. Oh, thank God. Okay.

Allison does. Do we have any further comments on changing around any order?

Question from staff, if I may. Sure. Go ahead, please. I I think question is if if you kind of work through and scooch things around tonight or if you want staff to take it back to our desks, sort of rearrange the draft the draft work program based on the conversation tonight and then bring it back to you for a recommendation.

I think that that's a good Commissioner Rosman?

Are we feeling like we need to see this again then before it goes to Council? I don't know that I feel like we need to see it. I think we kind of have figured out what we want to focus on. I don't know. Again, we're talking about what can we deprioritize because we have a lot on this agenda, and I would rather just get into doing the work rather than talking about doing the work. So if we could finish this today, I would prefer it. I don't know how everyone else is feeling, but those are my thoughts.

Commissioner Eisner?

I trust staff. They heard what we were saying. I don't think we need to see it again. I mean, some of the I mean, I agree. I think they will condense and combine some of the smaller miscellaneous because that's kind of what I'm hearing. I'm hearing that we really want eighty fifth to be high priority, especially after that's the one thing that I would love to know. When you meet with City Council, I would like a briefing on that to come back. But getting this order again, I think we've beaten it. That's my kind of two bits.

Okay. Commissioner Jacobson?

I'm going to disagree. I think there's we've given some contradictory direction, especially when it comes to what we want to do this year. I'd also like to see the I know we had the sample engage the sample policy adoption schedule, but I'd like to see it for especially stuff like the Michaels and Goodwill car and the eighty fifth activating the 80 Fifth Street station area, stuff that we're doing this year. It just seems ridiculous to me that we wouldn't have an idea of what we're gonna do and when we're gonna do it. And yet, we're gonna commit to doing it this year.

This is and and I recognize this is the first time I've been part of a planning work program conversation. But I would be hopeful that in the future, we could have more concrete ideas of how of the schedule of things because that would also make it easier for the planning commission to give feedback on is this taking too long, is this not taking too long, is there actually opportunity for being faster on this, or is there not. So I I would like it to come back to us so we can see especially how, staff, you reconcile all the priorities that we've said we want to do this year, I have a feeling we may have some strong opinions on what would come back to us.

Commissioner Medea?

And I have a clarifying question I'm almost embarrassed to ask. So the sequence of these planning work items, are those by definition in priority order? Is that because when you look at 2025, all the red, with the exception of a couple, have already started in the first quarter or go through the balance of the year. So are these in priority order? Because if not, I would say put them in priority order. These just seem random, even though they're numbered.

So I would say they're mostly they're in priority order or kind of laid out sequentially, right? I would say that there's a little bit of variation because one of the one of the things that we consider, you'll notice some of the project manager slots are still to be determined, and so I would say that sometimes it's not exactly line by line by line perfectly chronologically because we might have a task that better fitted to one staff member over another, so we're trying to match up the right people with the right projects, so there's a little bit of variability. But, yeah, we're trying to list them as close as we can to priority order in the list, So with that kind of helps respect to

that, yeah. Then when you come back, like, might we see stationary plan or the other things higher up, still while reconciling some of those staff and other resource challenges that you might need to work with? Because I don't look at this and say, Yep, it's clear. Station area. That's the focus, right?

Yeah, we can definitely do that. Based on what we understand, make sure that it's as close to what we've heard with our reconciliation of the comments we've heard tonight.

Do we need to do a vote? Yes, Commissioner Osmond.

So to your note, this is, I think, my fifth time through this, and I would say that this is pretty like how detailed we generally get with the planning work program. If we can take twenty more minutes and maybe put these in priority order, I don't know that do we really need a back and forth, or can we get close enough and then we can always adjust as needed? But again, we do so much planning of planning, and I would really like to get to the doing of the things that if we're saying getting housing done this year is a priority, then let's get to it, even if we have to stay here a little longer tonight. Commissioner Jacobsen again.

Thank you. I appreciate that, but I would note that there are a number of things, like I would call out that Michaels and Goodwill Carr, where we have some contradictory comments between myself and Chair Heiser. I would like to like, if we're if we're going to say we're not going to touch this again, I would like us to make a decision on that. But I also recognize that it will probably take staff some time to figure out what that looks like. Now if that means that we can get the Michaels and Goodwill cars done sooner by having this conversation longer, I'm I welcome that. But if this is the last time that we talk about the planning work program for this update and we end up talking about Michaels and goodwill through the end of this year or even potentially into next year, if things get out of hand, that is exactly what I'm trying to avoid.

Okay. How do we want to move forward here? Do we need to come to a vote? Or

At this point, I think staff needs clear direction if that takes a vote yes on whether you want to work through it tonight or you want us to bring it back or you don't want to see it. I've heard those three options put on the table, so I would appreciate

a vote on that. Okay. I motion to say the first option again there.

So we could work through it tonight Yes. As a first Okay. Think if we worked through it tonight, what I'd ask is staff would need some flexibility to work out just the timing pieces, which are guidance. They're not exact. They're by quarters, but we could get things in priority order, and then we could go back to our desk and just plug in the timing before we take it to counsel.

So we could do that tonight. The second option would be we take what we've heard tonight. I might ask the Commission a couple clarifying questions, and we would go and we would redraft this and bring it back to a future meeting. The third option would be we go we take what we've heard tonight, we go back, and then we take it to council without bringing it back to the Planning Commission. I will say that we've we have the practice of the chair and vice chair coming with us when we present it to counsel, just to be able to reflect any specific sort of discussion that the the commission had.

Okay. In that case, I'm gonna motion to,

Point of order. I don't think I I don't remember that or if I remember correctly, the chair cannot make a motion.

That's not correct.

Okay.

Okay. Thank

you. Thank you, Commissioner Reiser. I motion that we work through this planning work program tonight.

I'll second that so we can talk about it.

Do we need any further discussion? Do we want to get a vote?

I'd like to talk about it tonight.

So just to clarify, does this mean that we are voting on option one?

Yes. Okay. Yes, we

would discuss for maybe an extra twenty minutes, hopefully, and kind of get a good order. Anyone else? Commissioner Medea?

And just to clarify, if we work through it tonight, then the next step would be to share with counsel, and it still might undergo some additional finessing? Is that correct, Allison?

We can do it either way. The way I stated that option would be that we work through it tonight, and then we do prepare a draft for Council without bringing it back to the Planning Commission.

Chair Rutherford, do you have anything? Do we

Is this working? I'm not sure if it is right now. I We can't see

it, but we can hear you.

That's odd.

Oh, we can see you now. Oh, we can hear you, though.

This is odd. Okay. I'm apparently, I'm in safe driving mode, and I can speak in one screen. You can see me in the other, so I'm not sure what the deal is. I had the Wi Fi cut out here, so I'm in the midst of trying to restore that. I don't I I don't have any further input. I will just try to, stay tuned in as much as possible, while I'm, trying to get a more stable connection. But please proceed.

Great. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Yes. Commissioner Jacobson.

I would just ask that if we are going to sort it out tonight, we get into details on there were a lot of things where only one of us spoke, in favor or against something. That would be some on some of them, I think that's what we need to talk about for the rest for the twenty or thirty minutes that you were suggesting. And that's my concern that we can't do that tonight.

Do we need to, bring So

I'm urging a no on this motion.

Is there there a motion on the table? So do we are we going to call the vote here? All in favor?

Aye. All

opposed?

Nay. No.

Okay. So we will be working through that through this now.

Okay. And I will say, you're not held to your motion, so if we work through

it and you say

If we start working on it, Commission, and people end up wanting to see the full worked out Excel spreadsheet again, we can do that. Do have something that I think might help us. Give me a moment here, and I'll share it up on the screen.

Commissioner Riser?

I just Allison, I want to ask you and staff, are we doing something here that you find uncomfortable? Would you prefer taking it back and presenting it to us again? Because we really didn't ask.

I think we'll let you know if we feel uncomfortable or feel like we don't have clear direction, so I'm interested to see how the next twenty minutes unfold, and if I feel like we don't have the clarity from at least a majority of Planning Commission on anything, we'll either ask those questions or ask for more time.

Okay, Perfect.

Thank you for asking. Alright. So, Commissioners, I have all of the projects that are on the draft work program here on the screen for you as long as I can navigate this mouse. So we've got 25, 26, 27 projects. These are listed in the order for each year that they are on the paper that you have in front of you, and so perhaps I could take a few liberties just to get us started.

I'm seeing some nods, so I'm hearing activating the station area plan, moving that up top. This is going get a little messy, but I'll be able to make sense of it later, I promise. I also heard I think one of the first things I could ask clarification on is Commissioner Jacobson has proposed an affordable neighborhoods pilot project that is not on this list. Would you like it added onto this list?

I do not. I think that needs to be I think pilot programs need to be saved for another time when we've got our permits streamlined.

Need to

Can we it can we add it right now, and then we can juggle things and put it all on here and then decide where it lands or doesn't? Guess for my brain, having it all listed and then, you know, my thought is maybe we can take all the things we know that are either lumped together as, like, miscellaneous or whatever and put those at the bottom and then put the things at the top we know are at the top and then work out the rest in the middle. I think permits are probably up at the top on the left, and then things like urban forestry and SEPA and stuff can kind of be put in their own, like, miscellaneous category. Just, you know, as much as we can scooch stuff out of the way, it might be easier to figure out what we're, like, really needing to talk about.

Oh, sorry. Commissioner Fraser.

I would like to see that the two cars, goodwill and Michaels, be towards the top.

Commissioner Jacobson.

What is the scope of the permit streamlining item? When I look at it as currently drafted, it's just saying complying with new state law. It sounds to me like some of my fellow commissioners are thinking that there's more to it than that. And I worry about saying that just complying with State law is a high priority item when we're thinking it's a high priority item because we're going get more out of it.

If it's the only thing keeping housing from being built as quickly as possible, I think we really need to focus on it. That would be my 2¢ on that being a builder, but

Yeah. It relates to the, actually, the presentation that we're gonna give a little bit later on 05/1990. There's two pieces of it. One is simply just straight up complying with state law. The other is implementing our permit dashboard, which assists with 05/1990, but it's a bigger project that's not required by 05/1990. We're doing it because we feel like it will help us streamline permits more effectively and identify logjams and give applicants more information.

Do we need to add that to the do we need to add the dashboard to that sentence then, or no?

Isn't that on there already?

I think it's in it, in the description.

It might

be in the description.

Yeah, I think it's in there already. Yep.

Dashboard. Yeah. Okay.

Commissioner Jacobson.

So if I'm then to understand it correctly, this project is terms of speeding things up at state compliance and building a dashboard. I'm fine. And with that being a high priority, I just think that high priority items should do a lot, that doesn't beyond it having to comply with it to comply with state law, that doesn't seem like something we would prioritize highly.

Commissioner Rosman? I mean, I'd like to expand that item. I think you're right that that's, like, baseline, and I would like to, you know, Adam, you're talking about, like, identifying pain points in the permit process, and maybe what we have here is enough for a placeholder. But when we're talking permitting, I'd like to talk a lot more than just, like, let's show how long it's taking to get permits, but let's show that, but then also let's make a plan for how do we cut 30% off the timeline and then go from there. So I don't know if we need to really update the, like, label, but I would like, when we talk permits, that we actually talk how do we do more than track the slowness?

Yeah, and I think, again, I just would encourage you to keep in mind that there are a lot of other projects on the list, including in 2025, that would streamline permits. I probably sound like a broken record, but I always talk about the geohazards regulations updates, which I know there's the potential to scrunch that up a little bit, but that is a pain point right now that we know about for the permitting process, the peer review of geotechnical reports. So if you were to work on that in 2025, that would be a really significant way to make permits more streamlined, and the dashboard might help illustrate that that's a problem more numerically than we have right now. So there are a lot