Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I call to order this meeting of the Kirkland Planning Commission. Let's start with a roll call.

Aaron Jacobson.

Here.

Gina Madea.

Here.

Julia Nolan.

Here.

Scott Reiser.

Here.

Angela Rosman. Here. Rodney Rutherford.

Here.

Next item on the agenda is comments from the audience. This is the portion of the meeting when we hear from the public about items that are not scheduled for public hearing, but there are no public hearings tonight, so pretty much anything's on the table, almost. So if you would like to address the commission at this time, then raise your hand. If you're online, you can press the raise hand button to get our attention and come on up. And actually, guess I have to read my script.

But you can make your way up slowly, and I'll get going here. All right. So in order to hear from as many people as possible tonight, we are allowing any individual wishing to provide public provide comments to speak for a maximum of three minutes. The timer on the lectern will flash a yellow light when thirty seconds remain and a red light when your time has ended. To To be fair to all speakers, we will adhere strictly to the three minute limit.

The Commission wants to hear from as many different views and opinions as possible. If you have already heard another speaker state your comment, please consider not repeating the comment and instead provide a comment which or perspective which is unique to you. In making your comments, we ask that you please direct them to the commission, and this but this is not the time for give and take with the commission. Obscene, profane, threatening, harassing, or abusive language toward the commission, city staff, or those in the audience is not allowed. As audience members, please refrain from any demonstrative agreement or disagreement with a speaker such as clapping, cheering, or booing.

These actions are not only disruptive, they also intimidate or may intimidate or have the effect of excluding others in the community whose views may differ. We'll begin items we'll begin items from the audience with a list of people here in person. And if anyone else is interested, then when I call your name, approach the dais to address us. Online audience members may indicate you wish to speak by raising your hand in the Zoom meeting now. And when is your turn to speak, we will admit you into the virtual room as a panelist. Please remain muted until I call your name, and then you may unmute to address the Commission. So Kate Conant.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the Planning Commission. My name is Kate Conant, and I'm a Winnetah resident. Today, you're going to consider the critical areas ordinance update. And part of that applies to stream buffers and water quality. The Planning Commission doubtless hears frequently from developers and residents about burdensome regulation and cost associated with environmental protections.

I am here today to speak for the other side of the issue, the streams of Kirkland and the quality of our water. I volunteered with the Snow King Watershed Council for the last two years. Working with other volunteers, I take monthly water quality readings from two sites on Juanita Creek. I was here with staffer Eve Henriksen when the importance of water quality was recognized by the city council by proclamation in Pollution Prevention Week of September 2024. I also do salmon watcher work on Juanita Creek with Jeff Jensen's group of UW Bothell.

And I wanted to commend the city for its excellent Kirkland Watersheds website, which is really awesome. Stream buffers are a critical element in preserving our streams and water quality. Current issues in our streams have less to do with point source pollution than other issues. The future is one where there's either too much water or too little water. Extreme winter storms cause urban streams to be flashy, and urban flashy streams scour the stream bed and make life difficult for water critters.

Segments of our creek are already also drying out. So with the extreme storms, the impact of our water, our warming environment is also that segments of creeks within Puget Sound are also beginning to dry out. So as you're undoubtedly aware, stream buffers are part of this issue and help buffer extremes of water and help absorb water and release it gradually back into the creek. They're a critical part of the environmental and creek equation and certainly appreciate any support you can give toward that. Thank you.

Thank you, Kate. Is there anyone else who would like to speak to the Planning Commission? I see no panelists or no attendees raising their hand, so no one else in the audience. So I guess we will continue. The next item on the agenda is listed as special presentations. There are none, so we'll move on to the next item, study session. We have two study session items tonight. First, I believe we're having the state legislative session review, rather. And then after this, we'll have the critical areas ordinance update study session number two. So, Steph, go ahead and take it from here.

Great. Thank you, chair Rutherford. So, as promised tonight, we're bringing back, what was a very popular item a couple years ago, sharing with you, the state legislative process and how the city participates in it. With you tonight to present that, we have Diana Hart, our government affairs manager. Then we're going to follow that with a presentation from Lindsey Levine to give you a preview of some of the bills that passed in the last couple sessions that will be coming around the Planning Commission eventually as we work to implement them. So I'll hand it over to Diana.

Good evening Planning Commission. I'm and thank you for the introduction. I'm Diana Hart. I'm the city's government affairs manager. So I will start with sort of an overview of how the legislative here how the legislature works and then how the city participates in that process.

So make sure we're all on the same page. We'll kind of run down some quick facts because I know everyone knows very different levels of information about how the legislature works. So at the super high level, the legislature has 49 legislative districts, each with two representatives and one state senator. After each national sentence census, the state reevaluates district borders to try and ensure that each district roughly represents the same number of residents. After the 2020 census, the legislative districts were updated to each a 157,000 Washingtonians.

So that gives you a sense of how big Washington has grown over that time. It was up from 137,000 in the 2010 census. They'll also change the borders and sometimes add additional districts if it is needed. The legislature is a part time group. They meet for one hundred and five days in odd years and sixty days for even years starting at the January, which is not a lot of time to get a whole lot of things done.

They introduce, discuss, and pass policy matters and budgets in these short windows known as the legislative session. Outside of those windows is known as interim. Nope, you're fine. Often when work groups, stakeholder and policy development occurs, so bills that don't make it through aren't passed into law during session are often workshopped during interim and come back for consideration the following year. The state like Kirkland operates on a biennial budget.

Legislature sets the budget for all state agencies with our op which is their operating budget similar to our general fund. They have a budget for building construction known as their capital budget, which is pretty similar to our CIP, and a budget for the transportation construction known as the transportation budget sort of similar to our TIP. Organizations often try to get local construction projects funded in the capital or transportation budgets. They sometimes get program grant funding through the operating budget, but it's not particularly common. Each of these budgets are adopted in the first session of the biennium and are updated in the second session of the biennium.

So the extra complication in all that is there's big transportation packages that you might hear about every couple of years. They're typically adopted every five to ten years with substantial new revenues and big project lists. We saw this a few sessions ago. And this last session, we saw a mini version where there was just new revenue but no new projects added. Great.

I'm happy to keep talking if that's helpful, but also sometimes talking about this is a little dry. So feel free to interrupt me if you have any clarifying questions on anything I'm saying. Kirkland is fortunate to be represented by three legislative districts. Of those, 49. We're represented by the first, which includes the northern section of Kirkland along with a handful of other North King County and South Snohomish County cities.

It's represented by representative Dewar, chair of the local government committee, and a former Bothell City Council member by Rep Kloba, a former Kirkland City Council member and a current committee vice chair and by senator Stanford who's the ways and means vice chair for the operating budget which means he has a very important role in setting the operating budget for the state. In the 40 Fifth, we 40 Fifth Legislative District includes Central Kirkland, Redmond, Duval, and parts of parts of Redmond and parts of Sammamish. It's represented by representative Goodman, who's chair of the community safety committee, by representative Springer, the house deputy majority leader and former Kirkland city council member and mayor, and by senator Dhingra, the senate deputy majority leader and chair of law and justice. Third District is the that we're represented by is the 40 Eighth, which includes South Kirkland, Bellevue, South Redmond, Medina, Clyde Hill, and the Points communities. It's represented by representative Wallin, chair of the consumer protection and business, and another former Kirkland City Council member and mayor, Rep Salahuddin, house assistant majority whip and current Redmond City Council member, and senator Slatter, a committee vice chair.

So I note all of that in these presentations, mostly just to sort of share how well represented Kirkland is in the legislature. We've got leadership of both chambers. We've got important chairmanships in both chambers. So when we show up and ask our leaders to do things for us, we've got folks in good positions to advocate for things that we need. This is typically in the presentation where I go through how a bill becomes law, which I understand is which, like, I happily nerd out about, but I know not everyone needs the full rundown of all of it.

So these are the three members of the First Legislative District. These are the three members of the 40 Fifth. It also shows the map of the district, and these are the forty eighth, for current members. That takes us to this slide. I'm gonna cruise through this really quickly.

If you really wanna, like, nerd out with me about it, I'm happy to do that, but just this is the, like, mach 10 version of it. So bills are introduced in either the house or the senate. They have to have a committee hearing, where they have a public hearing where the public can come and testify, and then they have an executive session where they vote to move a bill out, sort of the opposite of how the city does executive sessions because government loves complicated lingo that doesn't make sense. Then if a bill has a fiscal component, it has to repeat that public hearing and executive session process in a fiscal committee. Then it goes to rules, which is not a committee about rules but a place where rules bills go to sit until someone pulls them out.

Then they go to the floor where the full chamber votes on it, and then you do the whole process over again in the other chamber. Then it goes to conference if there's any changes that are made between the House and the Senate where the original chamber can either agree or insist on their position and then they talk about it and then magically a new version of the bill comes out in the last five days of session And then they vote on it, and then it goes to the governor. Depending on when the bill is passed in session, so that's how many days the governor has to act on the bill. If it's passed anywhere in the first, like, majority of session, he has about five business days ish to act on it. If it's passed in the last five or so days, he gets, like, twenty days to act on it.

The governor can sign partially veto, fully veto, or allow a bill to go into effect without his signature. So that's how a bill becomes law. I think the more important way is how many ways a bill doesn't become law because every single one of these has a timeline and a deadline that they have to meet or a bill doesn't move forward. So that's how they manage the substantial number of bills that are introduced each year without getting super bogged down in all of the short amount of time they have to deal with it. So that's that super high level process.

Good so far? Okay. This is an example of the twenty twenty four legislative session. I use this as an example because this is pretty similar to what our upcoming twenty twenty six legislative session will look like because it is also a sixty day session. Everything I just ran through all has to happen in these sixty days.

So the legislature sets these dates that they self impose on themselves to hit those sort of it has to get out of committee by this day. It has to get out of fiscal committee by this day to manage the sheer workload that they give themselves. Context, the number of bills that they introduced. In 2023, which was the long session from two years ago, they introduced sixteen thirty four bills and enacted four seventy three. Two of those were vetoed and 22 were partially vetoed.

The remaining eleven fifty nine bills that were not passed were in that long session came back in 2024 for and were eligible for eligible for consideration. The legislature introduced a further 1,192 bills for a total of 2,826 bills eligible for consideration in 2024 and enacted three seventy nine in this sixty day window. All the bills that didn't pass in 2024 were then dead, and they start over entirely fresh with brand new bill numbers in 2025. That is why you'll see sometimes bill numbers repeated over bienniums because they'd run out of numbers pretty quickly if they kept going up every year. In 2025, they introduced nineteen oh five bills and passed four twenty three of which one was partially vetoed and actually I think one was fully vetoed and nine were partially vetoed by the governor.

This year all the bills that didn't pass will be eligible for consideration again. They'll introduce a whole bunch more of new bills. Sometimes they're just sort of slightly updated versions of last year's bills, or they can take what they did last year and continue working from it. So as with all of those rules, there's a whole lot of exceptions. Because most of these rules are self imposed, they can self impose exemptions to all those rules as well.

So you'll hear things like NTIB are necessary to implement the budget. So any bill that is needed to pass the budget can skip all of these processes. Most of the time, that means bills that raise money for them to pass the budget. Sometimes it's bills they need to have the votes to pass the budget. So we call it magic little fairy dust gets sprinkled on bills and they pass through the process.

So that is my really high speed version of how the legislature works. Any questions before we dive into how the city engages? Taking a look at our legislative priorities and how we go about developing them. So Kirkland definitely punches above our weight in engagement and effectiveness for our size in Olympia. We're as successful as we are because the amount of effort that we put in and how intentional we are in how we engage in Olympia.

We're also fortunate in the tenure and skill of our legislators in advocating for our priorities amongst our their peers. Kirkland is unique in how much council and staff engagement we put into our efforts in Olympia but this effort has paid off with being a go to city for legislators to solicit city operation feedback and policy review. Council is the ultimate body that approves the city's legislative agenda and determines the overall strategy for how and when the city gets involved in Olympia. However, as council only meets twice a month, they developed a working group of council known as the legislative work group or LWG that is able to meet more frequently during session. The ledge work group plays a large role in the city's success in Olympia because session is such a fast paced environment.

A smaller group is able to be nimble, more involved, and recommend actions that are in alignment with council's legislative agenda, which we'll get to next. The ledge work group is made up of three council members. This past session, we had mayor Curtis and council members Sweet and Black with staff support from our city manager, myself, the, city manager's office special project coordinator, and our contract lobbyists. Everyone that supports and serves on alleged work group does so as policy generalists. We get to know a little bit about a lot of things, but heavily rely on the city's subject matter experts, or in this case, we refer to them as as advisers because oftentimes we're asking them to weigh on things that they might know a little bit more than we do about, but they may not always be truly policy experts on every aspect.

Again, those 1,900 bills the legislature introduced last year, some of them are a little lightly affiliated with the work that we do, but it's important for us to be aware of things that might impact the city. So our subject matter advisers provide insight and feedback on every major piece of legislation that our staff team identify as having a potential impact to the city. As legislation changes throughout the year, this ends up being more than a thousand reviews by staff, a session to ensure the work group is fully informed and how best to support and advocate for the interests of the city. With the information we gleaned from our adviser, staff advisers, community feedback, regional feedback, and priorities of members on Olympia, the alleged work group meets weekly to recommend when and how we testify, share specific policy feedback with members, and negotiate amendments on policy all throughout session. So, how does council decide what is on our legislative agenda each year?

This annual agenda is truly a year round process and we've kick started the agenda development for the 2026 session earlier this summer. The development phase for the upcoming session starts as soon as the previous session is done. The Ledge Workgroup meets to debrief our successes and discuss opportunities for improvement and identify upcoming known priorities for the legislature. More intentional development starts with our government relations team meeting with council members individually to discuss their priorities and putting a call out to city departments and staff for ideas or flags for consideration in the summer. Which I think is that.

Yeah. Staff collects all the feedback received over the summer into a pre draft to a review by and recommendation by the work group to the full council. Capital projects are identified through the capital improvement plan process, which is under identifying what's underfunded, unfunded, or checks priority boxes for legislators. The formal draft priorities are taken to council for discussion and review in the fall And then we have the typical council approval discussion and approval process from here with the agenda approved via resolution. Then the work group lobbyists and staff meet each with each member of our delegation to share our priorities and discuss the upcoming session.

Not much later, session starts, we run through session, and then we repeat the whole process over again. So quickly taking a look at what was on our legislative agenda this last year. Our agenda starts with these general principles, and we they look pretty similar year over year. We start with a sort of overall framing that this we support legislation that promotes the council's goals, plans, policies, and initiatives that we've already adopted. And so this gives staff some framework of supporting and advocating for initiatives that the city's already committed ourselves to doing.

I'm also seeing flag for the 1% property tax cap lift and ensuring mandates are funded and then identifying some of the key citywide plans and policies for for awareness by our legislators. Then we get into sort of the meat of our priorities. So these are the issues in which councils identified that the city should be take a leading effort and be really engaged in either legislation development, stakeholdering, or ensuring that Kirkland's perspective is advocated for throughout the legislative process. First one is on funding and policy tools to increase access to housing and explain the construction and preservation of moderate income, low income, and supportive housing supply and essential supporting infrastructure such as parks, transportation services, and school capacity. We also have a flag in here for real estate excise tax increment flexibility, which we were successful in securing this past year.

So we can now use REIT one and two increments at the local level consistently and have a little bit more ability to use that for affordable housing moving forward, which is a big win for giving us this tool or giving a tool we have some more flexibility for uses down in the future. Second one on here is around addressing the behavioral health treatment crisis. Third is on preserving and expanding policy and funding tools for a safe and reliable transportation system. The big flag on here is including revenue sharing with local governments. And then the last one on this slide is legislation to implement the noise enforcement pilot that has been ongoing in Kirkland for the last couple of years.

Then we also had funding for the NPDS compliant transportation projects.

I can go

in the weeds with anyone who's interested on that one, but basically there's a ecology permit that's going to make our transportation projects more expensive to improve the water quality goals of our region. And then third one on this list is extending the producer responsibility for glass packaging and paper. This is EPR or the Recycling Reform Act. This build was passed this last session, so another big win on this list. And then the last was creating flexibilities for local jurisdictions to align policies in our jails with national guidelines related to the selection of gender of the officer performing body searches.

This has to do with transgender individuals in our jails and updating our outdated state law to come into compliance with national standards. And then we had our three capital our three budget requests. Both of our capital requests on this list were funded. So we received just over half a million dollars for, the partnership with the school district at the Kamaikan Middle School Gym expansion and for improvements to the Peter Kirk pool. So that's our legislative agenda. Happy to answer any questions about our process or what was on our agenda this last year. And that concludes my presentation.

Any questions or comments from commissioners?

Okay. Thanks.

Yeah. Alright. Thank you.

Just a minute for transition here and then we'll hand it over to Lindsey to dive into some specific legislation that you all are probably pretty interested in.

Alright. Good evening commissioners. My name is Lindsey Levine. I'm a senior planner in the planning and building department and I'm here to review the recent legislative session as it relates to planning and building and as a reminder staff is not requesting any direction from the planning commission tonight about this topic but of course there is time for questions and discussion at the end. And I'll be really brief with my background and I know commissioner media will appreciate my little graphic here from schoolhouse rock so the legislator convened for session this year from January through April and since the legislator operates on biennial cycles this is the first session of the twenty twenty five to twenty twenty six session also be discussing some bills from the twenty twenty three to twenty twenty four session later on And the sessions focus on budget and legislation that covers a huge variety of policy areas that touch nearly all aspects of the city and many areas that are also beyond the scope of city governance.

This year almost 2,000 bills were introduced and over 400 passed both chambers and were signed into law. So during the session before any bills are signed into law any that are relevant to the city's agenda city related or flag for review the bills are assigned to subject matter advisors to review and evaluate potential impacts to the city bills related to planning and building are reviewed by staff members and the department and staff makes the recommendation on what the city's position should be on these given bills then the city's legislative work group discusses and finalizes position recommendations for council approval and council can agree or change the recommendations. Now I'll get into the bills I'm going to go through some of the bills that were described in the packet and I'm only going to focus on bills relevant to the planning and building department and I'll skip the ones where implementation have been completed like middle housing code amendments and I'm generally going to skip bills that will be addressed through the twenty twenty five miscellaneous code amendments package to focus on bills that require significant staff time or where implementation has not started yet. And I'm doing a slightly different order than was in the packet.

I'm gonna focus on, those with closest implementation deadlines first and then go further out from there. So first we have house bill twelve seventeen. It has the longest title I've ever seen so we'll just call this the tenant protections bill. This sets a limit on rent increases, establishes new notice requirements for rent increases, and additional tenant protections. The bill is effective as of May, but code amendments are not needed as part of implementation.

The department aims to work on educating the public both tenants and landlords about these new regulations as part of our work on the homelessness action plan as it's one of the actions and this is currently in the process going through council right now Next, house bill twelve ninety three streamlining development regulations. This bill set standards for streamlined local design review, requires that the city only apply clear and objective regulations to the exterior design of new development, and requires that the design review process not include more than one public meeting. This bill probably sounds really familiar because, there was a briefing at Planning Commission I believe it was January about implementation and the city has hired a consultant to review the current design review process and provide some options on how to amend this to be in compliance and to look at any necessary code amendments. Staff does acknowledge that we are a bit behind on this the work is ongoing but staff will return to you with a briefing ahead of any public hearing we're really taking the time to make sure we get this right even though we are a bit late in implementation in the interim an applicant could request a review process that is compliant with this bill but we have not been approached about this topic so far.

Okay house bill fourteen ninety four concerning the property tax exemptions for new and rehabilitated multi unit dwellings in urban centers. So this bill amends the MFT program, as it comes to reporting household qualifications and clarify some definitions. The finance department at the city is currently working on an MFT study and any work that, our department might be doing needs to wait until that study is complete. Next house bill nineteen ninety eight concerning co living housing. For this bill I'm really not going to go into much detail because I know you just recently had a briefing on this but the bill requires cities to allow co living housing on any lot that could develop six or more multifamily units and sets restrictions on the review process and development standards for this type of housing The implementation deadlines at the end of this year and that hearing has been scheduled for the planning commission meeting in late August.

Next senate bill fifty one eighty four concerning minimum parking requirements. I know this bill has come up in conversations on other projects so it's really great that this is already on your radar. This bill establishes limits on parking requirements for residential uses and prohibits minimum parking requirements for specific type of uses like affordable housing, senior housing, childcare facilities, residences under 1,200 square feet, commercial spaces under 3,000 square feet, and more. And there are certain exceptions such as no restrictions on ADA parking spaces. And the implementation deadline is early twenty twenty seven and we do anticipate that this will take significant amount of staff time to implement so this will need to be added to the planning work program most likely during your next update Next house bill ten ninety six increasing housing options through lot splitting.

This bill requires cities to allow an administrative review process for a lot split which can be combined with a current review of a residential building permit for a new single unit housing or for middle housing. Some of the other requirements are that the review needs to be based on clear and objective development standards and that a pre decision public hearing cannot be a requirement. Implementation has not started for the July 2027 deadlines the Planning Commission and Council consider this during the next work program update senate bill 5,509 concerning the sighting of child care centers and actually believe this topic came up in discussion during the comp plan specifically the human services element so very timely that it's now a bill so SB 5,509 requires cities to allow child care centers out right as permitted use in all zones except industrial, light industrial, and open space zones. Cities can impose some restrictions on the permit such as pickup and drop off areas. And this bill needs to be implemented by July 2027, and we believe that zoning code amendments to implement this are pretty minor and could be included as a future part of the miscellaneous code amendments package.

But if the commissioners feel that this should be escalated to its own project, welcome to discuss that. Next, house bill fourteen ninety one promoting transit oriented development. So this bill is a pretty significant change. It establishes standards for increased density allowances, affordability requirements MFTEs limits on minimum residential parking requirements and SEPA exemptions for residential and mixed use development within station areas. This bill defines station areas properties that are fully or partially within point two five miles of a rail or bus rapid transit stop, and this includes those that are designated as such in a transportation plan.

So in Kirkland, that applies to the Northeast 80 Fifth Street station area and a good amount of Totem Lake as areas of the sound transit future bus rapid transit stations as well as future King County Metro k line station areas. Staff anticipates that this will take a lot of effort to implement so the Planning Commission should consider this to the work program during a future update but note that the implementation deadline is not until 2029 so there is some time and also note that a small piece of this is already in progress through the current miscellaneous code amendments package and that is the CEPA exemption piece. And finally, House Bill eleven eighty three concerning building code development regulation reform. This bill has several new requirements related to the building code and no work is needed on our end for those because the city adopts the state building code and that covers the building aspects of this bill. The planning aspects of this bill however include that cities may not require off street parking as a condition for permitting affordable housing.

Also, cities cannot impose size requirements on affordable housing for low or very low income households. We do anticipate that this will take quite a bit of staff time to implement, but the deadline is not until 2030 so we don't really need to think about adding this to the work program just yet. And that is all for my presentation. Any questions or discussion is welcome.

Yes. On House Bill eleven eighty three, do you know what just the size I mean, sounds like there are, in fact, some size requirements where you couldn't say, like, yes, you can make an affordable housing place that's 10 square feet or something. And I was just curious what the, you know, if you know off the top of the head what the, I guess, size or, I forget, the specified size requirements, I guess, thresholds are.

My apologies. I don't know the exact size off the top of but my I do recall that it more so had to do with you couldn't require it to be a certain, like, larger square larger than I'm just throwing out a number, like 1,200 square feet, for example. And there are also some exceptions related to unit configurations, I believe.

Commissioner Jacobsen. Thank you. I have

a few questions on a number of different bills. We'll start with $12.17, the rent control bill. This is a you mentioned that planning and building staff would be working on this for public engagement. Are we expecting that to be the long range planning team, or is that more the rest of the planning and building department? Basically, I'm asking would it take time on our planning work program?

Right. So this the implementation for this bill is kind of interesting because it's coming out of partially the homelessness action plan in terms of our work which is in process and yeah we're still figuring out what the implementation would look like we may want to ask counsel for feedback on how they would like this engagement to be done. We could we could do something like send mailers, which wouldn't take too much staff time, but we also want to understand perhaps if they want us to be out there tabling or doing something that does take more staff time but if this were to be something that does take more staff time I do anticipate it would be the long range group but Allison if you have any other comments on that feel free to jump in.

Yeah, don't think anything additional. Lindsay covered it. We're waiting to hear a little more, but I think depending on the scope we do have more resources that we could bring to bear and I expect it to be a collaboration with other departments as well.

Okay. Thank you. I would make I would hope that we if that does end up impacting the long range planning team, would hope that would be part of the planning work program discussions. For the Lot Splitting Bill ten ninety six, my thought is question is can we just fold that into the middle housing optimization project that's already on our planning work program?

That's a really interesting idea that could make a lot of sense. I would say that when we bring you the planning work program update, the commission could direct us to, like, include it in the task description for that optimization item.

Okay. Thank you. And then fourteen ninety one, the TOD bill. Two questions. One, do we have a sense, just like back of the napkin math, of whether we're good to go for the existing or very soon to access BRT stops in the 80 Fifth Street Stationery and Totem Lake?

I can start with that one. At least for the station area there are some parts that are point two five miles around that station that are actually not the higher density zoning that this bill requires. There are really small chunks that are low density residential, so we would definitely have to go in there related to the the 80 Fifth Street station area. I don't recall about Totem Lake. Do you know, Allison?

Totem Lake is probably pretty pretty close, but there are those pockets that Lindsay mentioned since during the Station Area Plan we planning commission and council ultimately did not rezone any existing low density parcels. So those are the pockets that we'll have to update here most likely. And I would just it's it's interesting to note. I think this bill is one example of where the city's engagement really helped us out because the bill talks in standards of minimum FARs, floor area ratios, but the city was pretty active in making sure that the bill also gave cities a pathway to show we had the appropriate density with other equivalent metrics to acknowledge all the work that we did in the station area. So that's fun fact to me.

I don't know if it is to any of you, but

Cool. Thank you. And then the second question is the K Line or really any other future bus rapid transit stop or bus rapid transit lines. If I remember correctly, the k line is not scheduled to open until after this implementation deadline. So what would the implementation deadline for those potential station areas be if those stops open after this deadline? Would we get, like, a year from when they open, or would we have to plan ahead? So let's say those stops open December 11. Would we just need 12/11/2029? Would we need to make sure that we're with the zoning is good on 12/11/2029, or would we have more time to plan?

I'll just kick it off. In my understanding of this bill, applies not only to stations that are open, it applies to those that are also designated as you know bus rapid or rail in a transportation plan so that means that yeah the k line would not have to be operating by 12/11/2029 for us to look at the zoning in those areas, of the station areas.

Okay. That's interesting. I'm sure there's a lot of very particular legal language that we'll want to look into because I think there are a bunch of other planned rapid ride lines at different stages of the planning. I think it would be useful to know when what is the cutoff for when that counts towards the STRAINT TOD bill.

My recollection is when they're under construction is when it's triggered. But, like, to your point of making sure you make sure you get that language right.

Cool. Thank you. And I think that was all the questions that I had.

And just one more last point to Commissioner Jacobson's comment. I think that, especially since implementation isn't imminent, but it's soon and we do expect this to take us quite a bit of time, I think that staff could do some additional research and bring some clarity when we bring you the next planning work program update in case it is something that you might be looking to recommend

on

the work program within the next horizon, which is twenty six to '28.

Commissioner Madea?

Thank you. And like Commissioner Jacobson, I have a few questions on several of the bills. So Tessa, thank you for getting me started. So on December streamlining development regulations, I am trying to recall, but I know when we were first talking about this, there had been some concern expressed about how to comply with the one hearing, especially if it's like a multi phased site or things like that. You're shaking your head, so that's good. And Commissioner Reisor, don't know if you recall that either, but have we gotten any further clarity on how to fine tune that?

Yeah. I can hop in and take that one. We're we're still working on it and I will say one of the one of the reasons it's taking us a little longer than we originally thought is the code amendments are proving to be a little more complex than we originally thought as we look at all of our design guidelines and then existing design standards and making sure they're all clear and objective. So it's proven to be quite a heavy lift in terms of the code amendments go. And what it's also likely going to do is sort of change the scope of what the design review board reviews because traditionally, the design review board has reviewed compliance or adherence to guidelines precisely because they are not necessarily clear and objective.

So if a lot of our guidelines change to standards, meaning that they're clear and objective, they're really it's something that staff can review. There's not necessarily something for the design review board to review. And so we're still working out kind of where to draw that line and what type of design flexibility is okay to have as a guideline, meaning that there's some flex in it and that would fall to more of a design review board type review. But it will probably be things that are a little more finer detail and a little bit later in the process than bulk and massing standards or the big bulk and massing standards, which are, I think, going to turn out to be design standards.

Thank you. And then regarding 1491, the transit oriented development, this probably sounds like an obvious question, but, you know, when we talk about significant zoning amendments, like, you give an example of something like what that might look like as we're approaching that work?

I think some of the largest amendments are going to be around floor area ratio and what's allowed because there there are many areas particularly around the the K line that definitely are not even close to what the allowances are so that is a big one also related to parking requirements and let's see affordability requirements as well because right now affordable housing requirements in the city are limited to just very specific areas, and this will be a much larger area that that will apply to.

Then everybody's favorite topic, 5,184 parking requirements. So as we approach that work, too, I know we hear it from folks in the audience, and when I talk to people, they're concerned, too, about, like, the push out impact of cars then parking on arterials and what that does to the safety for pedestrians and line of sight of other cars. Is that part of what we're going to try to mitigate as we ease into that new parking requirement process or or non minimum parking requirement process?

I would say it's a little too early to tell at this point we haven't really dug into this bill like super deeply yet since, yeah, it's not even on the work program yet, but feel free to chime in Allison if you have any thoughts.

Put a pin in that.

Yeah, Lindsay's right. We haven't really we've talked about it a little bit on specific projects, but we haven't started digging in to implementation of the bill yet. It's kind of going to need to be on the work program for next year, and I do foresee that it will be in collaboration with our transportation division to see what mitigations might be allowed through the bill, if any, and what might be possible to implement or consider or at least set up a program to consider or explore in the future. But I do think that it's good folks are starting to think about it now because it's possible when we get to the work program update that we might have a better idea of what we could include and and sort of memorialize that in the task description. So that's a great comment.

We'll start thinking on it.

And then one last one, and I'll yield to anyone else who has some questions. On 1494, the finance options, MFTs, etcetera, I know that a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of researching what that might look like is in the hands of finance. But do we have an ETA on when they might have an update for us? And would that update maybe include additional funding options besides MFDs due to the concern that that yields with deferred revenue and value adjustments and stuff? Sorry, that was a loaded question.

Great question. I actually do not know the answer, but we can circle back to you all on that one in terms of timeline and if the scope includes developing any options or alternatives.

Thank you.

All right. Anyone else for comments?

While you noodle I was able to pull the bill the $11.83 and so the cities and counties may not require affordable housing units for low income or very low income households regardless of the unit mix and size of the project to exceed 400 square feet for a studio, 550 square feet for a one bedroom, 750 square feet for a two bedroom, and 1,000 square feet for a three bedroom unit. If the average unit size in the project is smaller than the size requirements in this section, the city must allow the affordable housing units to be of a comparable size as the market rate units.

All right. Any further questions, comments? No? All right. Thank you very much.

Alright. Are we on to the next study session topic? Which is the critical areas ordinance update study session number two.

Alright. We're gonna take a moment here and just do our musical chairs. But while they're getting to their places, this is gonna be your second study session on this. So tonight, we're doing a deep dive into some of the options for stream buffers that we're developing and then also some questions to ask you about geohazards areas. So what I'd wanna make sure you know is we are asking you for for some direction tonight.

We don't necessarily need specific decisions or you to pick your favorite option, but we are looking to understand where the commission's leaning on some of the options we're presenting to you so that staff has a good understanding of which options to consider developing out as we begin drafting code amendments, and if there's any options that the commission isn't interested in because then we might dedicate less time to that. So looking to make sure we're on the right track and that we kind of continue on that right track per your direction tonight. And then I think we might have one more study session scheduled with you before we come back for public hearing. So no draft code tonight, but a lot of information and some questions for you. So for your presentation tonight, we have Anna Heckman, our environmental program coordinator, and Jen Ander, one of our senior planners, and I will hand it over to them.

All right. Good evening. Let's get started. We've got a lot to go over, and I'm hoping to be able to simplify some concepts so that we can make some good educated decisions here. So tonight's agenda well, Allison just went over it. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. Skip that slide. First thing we're going to do is go over some of the questions that we received both from Planning Commission here and as well as counsel. These there was a lot of data that resulted from these questions, very easy to get lost in the weeds.

And so hopefully what we're providing here is a consolidation that will help you guys assist with some decision making. But one of the things we're not doing is we're not doing any sort of like trend analyses of what has happened over the last decade, changes over time, other details like that, because that's a lot more statistics, and I don't think you guys want to sit here and listen to me talk about it all. Maybe some of you will. So real quick, one of the questions that came up, Council asked really how much of Kirkland are these critical areas impacting anyway? Surprisingly, a lot.

When we take the accumulation of all of our critical areas, and that includes a lot of Chapter 85, you know, 65% of our city is covered in different types of critical areas. You know, as far as parcels go, you know, about the same for the number of parcels that have one or more critical areas on them. It doesn't necessarily mean it impacts the development regulations, but it's something that has to be considered, and it's on our maps. I looked at this one with our high and medium landslide areas combined, that's 88% of the parcels in Kirkland. That's a ton, yeah.

But as you guys will see, that's not all of them require regulation and management. We'll also focus a little bit more on the stream buffers, and just to keep it in perspective of, you know, over 25,000 parcels in the city, We're talking less than 2,000 are on our streams with buffers at this time, so about 7%. And I'm going to hand it over to Jen real quick to finish up some of the stuff because she's so much more knowledgeable about permitting than I am.

Just done more. That's fine. Okay. So taking a look, these are like Anna said, these are questions that came up from Planning Commission when we saw you guys last and City Council. So the number of permits that we're processing per year. For 90, you can see we have 26 listed there, a little background of what that number is. A lot of them are determinations and fewer are permits that are actually a Chapter 90 review of a full project. That can be because a determination is required to really identify if the critical area is on the property, and then sometimes people choose not to proceed based on that finding. And significant impacted permits, less than two. So that's our reasonable uses, things that go to a hearing examiner under a 2A review.

So not a whole lot of those. 85 is a little bit more similar. Part of that is because of how our code is written. If you do work within a high landslide, you're required to do peer review. So you start seeing those significant permits that require peer review are pretty close to the 44.

And our moderate, the code is it states that we shall normally require peer review. So it does have a little bit of leeway for some of that judgment call, but that's why that those two numbers are much more similar for '85. And to give you a little bit of context, what does this mean as far as the full year of permitting? We ran some data on new residential permits, so single family and multifamily. And those came in for this timeframe, which we're looking at 2022 to 2024 pretty much throughout this entire presentation.

So new residential, about 300 permits per year. That's not even taking into account commercial, office space, tree permits, other things that do touch critical areas, but it kind of helps start give you an idea of, well, how many permits this per year? Looking at costs, so at the top we have 90 broken into the three different review sections, right? We have our determination that happens before the permit, project review during development review, and then monitoring and maintenance. Each of those, as a reminder, require peer review with a consultant.

And a common theme is a lot of these costs and timelines can really vary. It depends on your scope and your property and what you're requiring. But you can see that the peer reviews are pretty steady, even broken into large projects like our reasonable use or residential projects like single family. Where it can vary widely is the monitoring and maintenance and that's because that includes things like mitigation, vegetated buffer standards and that can vary based on the amount of square footage. As you can imagine, there might be one cost and timeline if you vegetating 100 square feet versus 1,000 square feet.

So you can see a bigger variety there. 85 is our simple little chapter and has one process and they tend to be around 4,000. I had actually looked at other years as well and it holds pretty steady for cost. One of the other questions that came back that was really great is getting a better understanding of what the average permit timeline is. And since these can vary so widely, we had to be thoughtful of, well, how can we actually present this in a way that's meaningful?

So actually, one of our associate planners, Colin Carter, came up with some research on this. So what you're looking at are three single family permits that were all done by the same applicant. So we have a bit of consistency there. The one that has no critical areas came in at about five months, and that's from the initial application all the way through final approval from the city. The geohazard at four months. There's other examples that are five. It doesn't always come in a little bit less, but they tend to be consistent because that review runs concurrently. And as expected, if you are triggering 90, that's going be a longer process. So that one came in at about fourteen months. It includes that whole determination permit that typically happens beforehand.

So you're really looking at two permits with this. Some other things to also consider are this is not just critical area review, right? This is also the time it takes for the building department to look at it and fire and public works and all that good stuff and the time that it spends with the applicant. And that can vary a lot, how long it takes them to respond to comments. So I will stop and pause there just to see are there any questions about kind of our data research in response to questions before I go into the potential updates for '85?

Commissioner Jacobson?

On the monitoring per year cost, is that a cost that the property owner pays every year for X amount of years?

Yeah. So depending on the scope of work, it runs from three to ten years. We see a lot of five year. It's a three, five or ten, yeah. And they will have they'll have a cost for doing those annual reports. So I think in there it said maybe 2,000 and so that would be for each year. So let's say if it's five, then it's that times five or times 10.

Okay. That stuck out to me as, like, for a residential project, it could be a very large number if you look at the full, that three- five- to ten year window. That's it. Thanks.

All right. Looks like we can hurry on.

All right. Keep on keeping on. Okay. I'm going to quickly go through some of the items that we identified or really all of the items we identified for '85 in your staff report. I just want to highlight the top four.

So these are areas where we are specifically looking for guidance on whether you would like staff to continue pursuing these and include them in the update or not. The last one is a bit of an FYI because you'll see some of that in the draft code language. So starting with landslide hazard definitions, you'll see a common theme. We're really looking for tools to be able to simplify the process and also reduce peer review where we can. So one item that came up from one of the consultants was looking at our moderate landslide hazard definition.

So right now it's anything between fifteen percent and forty percent grade that's not constituted as a high regardless of the height. So that could mean that you have a little area in your backyard that's maybe two feet high, but it does technically meet that and then you start triggering 85 standards. So we would want to or could look into seeing if there could be a threshold for that, a slope height, a minimum slope height, and then we wouldn't be triggering quite so many reviews for some of those projects that really pose low to no risk. Similar thought process, we could look into actual exemptions similar to what you see in '90s, so things that are outright exempt, typically smaller projects, fences, deck additions, things like that. In looking at some of the data of what we have, again, with that same time period, there were 85 peer reviews for geotech.

Three of those would be one of these smaller projects. So we're, again, looking at additions, fences, retaining walls. So three of them occurred within a moderate land slide and then 25 and a high. This also makes sense like I was saying because a high land slide, it automatically triggers that peer review. The moderate is what gives us a little bit more leeway.

Moving on, structural setbacks. This is something that we could look at because a high landslide is basically defined as area that meets the criteria but then it's also you could think of it almost like a buffer around that high landslide area. So it's equal to the height of the slope or 50 feet, whichever is greater. And for setbacks, the idea would be maybe a structural setback, let's say, off of the top of the slope. And if it's deemed that that could be reasonably built and it's still safe, maybe that's a possibility to be exempt from peer review.

You would still submit your geotech report, but you don't necessarily go through the peer review process. Or reduced requirements in your geotech report. We've heard that not all jurisdictions have the steep slope analysis like Kirkland does. It's not necessarily something we're proposing to remove, but are there times and scope of work where that's maybe not necessarily beneficial? The last of the ideas of what we're looking for guidance on, vegetative requirements.

One thing you will see is we're going to work on some clarity and code. We need to make a little bit better connection of tree removal not being permitted within this critical area. It points to a couple different chapters, so we're going to do a little bit of cleanup there. But unlike 90, we don't have supplemental tree planting requirements for 85, so that's something we could consider as well. It probably wouldn't be on the magnitude of 90, especially as Anna said, how prevalent landslide hazards are.

But that root system and that tree canopy is really important, so this is something we could explore. So the last of the items are the protective easements. This is something you're going to see language in there. We've heard a lot of feedback from staff, applicants kind of across the board wanting a little bit more clarity on our protective easements. Who's responsible for proposing those?

You can see some of the language from our code. It's the city may require. So it's not required all the time, but there's also what is the parameter of when it is appropriate and making sure that the applicant geotech is including that, is it getting peer reviewed. And this is a protective easement similar to others that we have, so no tree removal, no pruning, native species, things like that. And before I kind of stop and see if there's any questions on 85, here's an update on our public feedback.

So since we last chatted, the state is still supporting our potential code updates and feels that Kirkland's doing a good job with 85. Some other themes that really align almost across the board between, again, staff, homeowners, developers, looking at those thresholds for those smaller projects, how can we simplify and clarify while maintaining good protection of these slopes but not casting such a wide net when it's not necessary? So before we go over to Anna to dive into 90, just kind of wanted to put this slide up again and a reminder of those four areas. Is there anything any of those that maybe you would not want us to pursue? Do they all look great?

Is there one that seems like more of a priority to you over another? Or questions?

Commissioner Nolan?

Yes. I have

a question on tree removal, and this partially comes from I have a house that is very much in a landless side area and is also very heavily forested and has had to have trees removed because they have been very close to the house and very in danger of toppling over. But I just wanted to check that for tree removal that it would be allowed in cases of, say, like a hazard or a danger tree, even potentially again with a replanting requirement. Because clearly, again, being in a landslide area, know that you want as much vegetation there as possible. But I just wanted to check that that would be a provision since I can see that being a problem otherwise.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that that would be in the intent. And it would also align with how we function with 90 and that's actually where it points you as far as the tree removal. So snagging those trees, keeping

the root system. Trees in critical areas already takes that into account. Yeah. Safety first, always.

All right. Any other commissioners, comments, questions? No? Commissioner Reisser?

Okay. One of the concerns I have is exactly what you said where, hey, maybe you have a not steep slope, but then all of a sudden you have a two foot drop in one area and that triggers that seems like, okay, there should be something that doesn't totally knock the builder or the homeowner when that situation is triggered, even though they may be in an area where it's thought of, oh, yeah. This is a concern area.

I can you clarify a little bit what the question is? Because I agree with you.

Yeah. But No. I would just hate to see that something like that triggers a huge expense.

Oh, yes. Yeah. Agreed. And I think that's it was a nice perspective from the subject matter experts as well, right? We we live in a land of being experts on permitting, but not necessarily geotechnical engineers. So to hear that when we reached out to them, it's a similar thought process and the fact that they really have brought that to our attention and had added it specifically in. Because, you know, the main goal of '85 really is that public health and safety, right, which varies a little bit from '90. So that's what we would be looking at is what are those that wouldn't pose a risk, and then we're not putting undue processing costs on the permits. Did I get it what you were asking?

Yeah. Well, it's more of a concern than a ask that

Yeah.

We are really looking seriously in, like, what is triggering and what is just, oh, that's a, you know, it's a part of someone's yard.

Yeah. Yeah. I think also, again, with some of that feedback, if if these are all areas that you wish for us to pursue, it'll it'll be interesting to do a deeper dive in that. Some of the feedback has been that creating those thresholds can be difficult because it is so nuanced. So we would want to do our best to be able to capture as many of those types of projects as possible.

Commissioner Madea?

Thank you. Overall, I'd like the deep analysis into ways where you can be more flexible and stuff. Obviously, that's critical and, you know, mission accomplished. My my question has to do, there was a letter, one of the things that was asked for, and I don't know if this is in your purview, right, is is more accurate maintenance of the GIS and mapping data, because that could go a long way towards someone's even initial permit application and stuff. Who owns that and is that possible?

Ali, do we have insights on that?

Sure. So thanks for the question. So the city the city maintains a publicly available GIS or interactive web browser, and on it we do show our medium and high landslide hazards. We also show streams and wetlands. For streams and wetlands at least, it is that data comes from a variety of sources and and the same for geohazards. So one of them is actual studies that have been done. So for the geohazards, we did a bunch of lidar mapping or UW did rather when we update last updated the geohazard chapter in 2017.

Yeah.

And so that's that's what most of our map shows. And that's one of the reasons we do a case by case study because that was high level. It picked up certain things that aren't actual geohazards, but the LiDAR mapping shows a big change in grade from some in some cases, like a retaining wall. And so that's why we look at all of them to actually verify does this exist on-site or not. There is potential to do another update to that map, but especially for geohazards, it'd be very difficult to do it in a super detailed manner.

An update would probably be another citywide LIDAR mapping, and we're gonna run into similar kind of potential for air in the data. And so we'll continue to check case by case. Streams and wetlands, we can get a little more accurate because they're a little more specific. There's a couple big citywide studies that have been completed to build the base of that map, and then we update it every time we get one of these determinations done and surveys. And so if someone moves forward with permitting, they also have to, like, survey the edge of the wetland. And so many of those in our publicly available mapping system are actually pretty accurate, but it happens on a case by case basis that we update continually.

Alright. I don't see any further comments or questions.

Alright. Here we go. I promise not to have any more words in the rest of this, but I the question is often asked what is required and what is recommended. And this is one of the sections from the state that talks just about how gray that area is. We are required to preserve the existing functions and values of our critical areas.

And today we're talking about riparian management zones, which are streams, their habitat and the buffers around them. We have to make sure our regulations do not have a net loss of those functions, and that is the main requirement. How we go about that Oh, the other one is we have to acknowledge and identify how the best available science might work within our city. Whether we choose to abide by the best available science provided or not is up to us. There are many ways to solve the problems.

And as you can imagine, Kirkland is a very different city than Yakima or Moses Lake or Puyallup, and so we all have different everyone in the state has to deal with this kind of on their own. In our region, and we'll get to this a little later, I think this discussion we're having now might be setting a standard for other cities around us. It seems like all of us in the groups that I'm talking with, everyone is kind of trying to figure out how everyone else is going to deal with this best available science. So I am bringing you a whole lot of work with the hope that we might be able to set a standard and make what works for us. So to tackle this, I put together a decision matrix.

And figuring out what questions to ask is probably the hardest part when you're trying to create a solution. So the first part was, you know, do we even need to do anything? You know, I mean, what if we're just amazing and everything is great? We probably wouldn't have to do anything. And so some of these questions that, you know, kind of go with the state requirements is, you know, first off, do our streams meet the current standards and requirements for habitat and water quality? So went into that question. We'll deal with that. Do we meet the state's recommended best available science? And we'll go into that next. And then lastly, in this first section, you know, are our regulations consistent with other neighboring urban jurisdictions?

You know, and so going into question number one, we have almost 80 miles of streams in Kirkland. One of the things we need to do and you were asking about maps the lower map is the map that we currently have, which shows piped and unpiped streams in our city. It doesn't show the above map is a King County example, which shows fish and nonfish stream habitat. And one of the things that has changed in recent years is the difference between identifying if a stream has fish in it, like we have physically seen it, to if it has the capacity to have fish in it. Does it have the habitat for fish in the future?

And one of the things that occurs with that is that thought of, say we have a culvert that is impassable and we fix that culvert, we've then opened up stream habitat above and is that habitat able to support fish? And so we're switching the conversation from whether we have a priority species that we're working towards retaining or if it's habitat for that priority species. And so just so you guys are aware, I sometimes throw that in there. We have to include anadromous fisheries, which is salmon, as well as many other species of fish that move up and down our waterways. And we have to talk more about waters of the state.

We have that referenced once and we'll emphasize that a little more. So with our stream types, F type are fish potential streams, N type are nonfish. And I'm simplifying that, and we are trying to simplify that in the code so we don't have six different types of streams and six different habitat buffers. We're just doing F and N. That's not a big change.

But if you notice, as we work through this, our N streams, we have a lot more N streams than F streams in our city. So think two thirds to one third. So when we're doing regulations and buffer increases, just kind of thinking about that of how much it may or may not impact. So when we talk about do we even, you know, do we have water quality? Well, we have a great water quality program here in Kirkland, and we actually have won awards for the work that's been done with our surface water group.

And one of the things they do is they measure and they create a water quality index. And if you look on the top there, that is actually from the dashboard that they've created. And you can see there are a lot of streams that have green on them that look like they are of low concern and moderate concern, and we don't really have any high concern streams. And that, off the top of our head, you know, that sounds great, you know, look at how good we're doing. But in each one of those, it's a combination of a bunch of different measurements, and some of them don't meet the requirements.

So for this example, this is up out of, you know, the O'odeni area and, you know, the nitrogen levels in this measurement taken at the one period of time were not to standard. So there's a lot of variability. And when we go and look at other groups measure the same water so King County does measurements, the State does measurements, And when we look at this map on the left where it shows a whole bunch of red, that is the State Department of Ecology map for streams that do basically have low water quality. They are on what's called the three zero three list. We have not been required to regulate, but as you can see in Kirkland, we do have a lot of waters that don't meet the water quality standards for the state.

Their measurements are a little different than what we take, and they might be measuring them at a different time. But nonetheless, the state is aware that our streams are not as golden as we might think we are. That's pretty normal for an urban environment, you know. So it's not you know, it's not like a shameful thing, but it does say that there is room for us to make improvements. And if we choose not to make improvements and water quality continues to go down, that could negatively impact us in the sense that we might have to do some regulation to do water quality improvements.

And you guys all have seen when we have to close our beaches because of fecal coliform, E. Coli, you know, that's all it's not just Kirkland. It's the whole region contributing to Lake Washington, but we are a part of it. On the other side of things when we're talking about habitat, the map on the right is the habitat map that our surface water department just put together. It took them about four years working with volunteers.

This is a pretty phenomenal map, actually, because they measured a whole bunch of metrics that basically are there to create habitat for salmon and other species. But if you look at it as well, we do even though we have some great green colored streams, you know, you look at Forbes Creek, you look at O'odenie that has a whole lot of canopy cover and natural area and that riparian management zone is large, those streams actually have great habitat values. And then you go into, you know, and granted, I just took a small section, but the more built environment of Juanita Creek there and stuff, we have sections that are very poor habitat, you know, and room to grow. We'll just put it that way. Those measurements take a long time to change.

Just, you know, it took four years to take those measurements. We might not measure those again for a decade. And if you think about the changes we might make in the code, it will take a while to show up in the future. You know, even a habitat restoration project takes it can take a decade for it to create the shade in the environment that is being requested, you know, that we want to be providing for our streams. So this isn't the most savvy picture, but I really wanted to show that and it's not necessarily just development.

It's population density, you know. And we just made decisions to increase our population density, you know, required or not. But that density increase has an impact on habitat. And we just want to make sure that we're creating that balance. And I believe that if we continue at the standard norm, we kind of have a balance, but given that we are increasing in population, we will be increasing density.

We want to promote that. We might need to be thinking about changes to kind of keep that balance in line, and there's a lot of opportunity to do that. So question one, that was a no. Question two, not really, you know? So going on or going on to question two with the best available science, do we meet it?

Well, the state provides and this is Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife there's pretty solid evidence that a 100 foot buffer is what is needed to clean water. So if you're dumping pollutants at the top of the hill, you need a 100 foot buffer before that water hits the stream to really be able to pull out most of those pollutants. Now, as you can imagine, that would be, you know, a great thing to do if we can do a 100 foot buffer. There are other ways we can clean water. There are other ways we can make the water appropriate before it falls into our stream and habitat.

But that is the best available science, 100 foot buffer. They also have for riparian habitat, so we're thinking, you know, all the animals that we're supporting, the birds that are migrating through our area. What WDFW calls they want a width that is equal to the site potential tree height. And the site potential tree height, to simplify, is you want to have the average what a tree would be at 200 years old. So for example, in our area, based on the maps and I'm stating that very, very clearly that based on the maps, if we were not an urban environment, all of those little amoebas depict different soil types, and that would be assuming that those soil types haven't been damaged.

We'll step back. We're in an urban environment. There is not a lick atopsoil on those soil types anymore. But based on that map, if you clicked on any one of those areas, it would give you the type of tree that would be there in two hundred years if we didn't have an urban environment and how tall it could potentially be. And this is all forestry based data.

So for us, that would range one person in one little square could be 96, and another person in another square could be two thirty We're not going to do that. That creates too much variation, too little it's very hard to justify. So I went through and looked at other tree data, other tree maximum data, and found that if in the Kirkland area with the riparian zones and the species that are typical of our riparian zones, the average height would be one hundred and fifty feet. So that would be what I would recommend as our riparian management zone buffer if we choose to use that. And just to kind of clarify, when we talk about oh, we're going to transition here into our into what our zones our buffers are compared to other cities.

And I just wanted to send I like this picture just because once you see the eye of the Seahawk, you never unsee it. But so what we're going to do is we're going to talk about hopefully, you guys have seen this before. I showed it at our last meeting, and we talked about wetlands and the blue buffer, and we're going to talk about stream real quick with the green line. So you can see the green line of the stream in the top of the picture. Our interior buffer, which is what we called our standard reduced buffer, is the edge of that green shaded area and then we have our structural setback of 10 feet, and then we have the structure there.

The actual regulated buffer so we call this an F stream, so that would be at 100 feet and then the 10 foot setback. The regulated buffer alternative, which is where if you don't build inside it, you don't have to do mitigation, so that's just something that we want to be paying attention to. If this building was be outside of that regulated buffer at 133 feet and then add that 10 foot setback, then the mitigation for what was damaged in the buffer would not be required. We still have some other standards we require to set up, but just so you guys have that thought in mind as we compare with other cities. So I messed up on this one because the top everything above Kirkland are cities that have completed their buffer standards or critical area ordinances, or they're at least in the proposal stage and shared with us.

And then everything below are cities that have yet to either propose that I've been able to find or submit. And I did have a mistake in our packet because I thought Seattle had already proposed and were retaining their 100 foot riparian management zones. Was not confirmed when I asked today. So if you put us in perspective, we were leading the pack. We were just like with Woodinville, you know, 140 foot buffers with that and then we could build in 25% And our end streams were at 66 foot, and you could build in to 50 feet.

So if you compare that to the best available science, the end streams that we have now don't meet the water quality standards, and our F streams don't quite meet the site potential tree height standards for habitat and F stream habitat because of the salmon. Keep circling that around because habitat versus water quality. So those are just some things to consider. Oh, and also to take a look at how some of the cities basically just adopted it. Just one, two, we're just doing it.

No fights or no having to discuss why we're making the choices we are. So moving into okay, so let's talk about what we might need to do with some regulatory, either buffer increases or changes. Wanted to look at, you know, if we increase the buffers, is that going to even make a difference in protecting undamaged areas? You know, are we going to actually find stuff to be able to protect that hasn't already been developed on? We want to look at if these increases impact, you know, what kind of how are they going to impact homeowners, how many homeowners, and how will that change permitting.

And then with the exemptions that we already have in place, such as, you know, like an interrupted buffer, like a road interrupting the buffer or something like that, you know, would increasing the buffers even make a difference? Or is it just going be something that we have to go through the process and it doesn't change anything? So first thing we looked at was, you know, how do you figure out whether increasing the buffer is going to retain, you know, untouched area? We're in urban environment. There's not a lot of it out there.

I looked at two different things. One was I looked at what tree canopy cover looked like around the stream. So at 50 foot, our tree canopy cover averaged across the city. So this is from the most pristine, beautiful places that we have in the city to that ditch next to the road that is technically a stream, you know. So averaged it together, the tree canopy cover is about 70% when we were in that 50 foot buffer, and then the next 50 feet out, it decreased to 56%, and then the next 50 feet out, that 150 foot, it decreased down to 46%.

All of those meet our canopy coverage goals when you average it together, but if you think about how much canopy we have in our pristine areas, that shows how little we have probably in a lot of the other areas, because some of our forested pristine areas are 100% plus.

To clarify, the percentages map to the 50 foot band.

Yep, each band.

They aren't in aggregate of the entire?

Nope, it's just the band. Just yeah, yeah, I made sure to separate that out. The other part to look at was how many undeveloped parcels we had. So if we're expanding buffers, we're going to be impacting and hopefully protecting some of those undeveloped parcels, right? There's not a lot of undeveloped parcels left in the city in the riparian management zone.

So that 50 foot buffer, 22 parcels. It's highly likely, and of some of the ones I saw, those are parcels that haven't been developed for a reason, that they are pretty much within the whole buffer and there's not a lot of room and they would have to go for a reasonable use exemption. A 100 foot buffer, only 18 more added on, and at a 150 foot buffer there were six parcels that we were able to find that have yet to be developed in the city of Kirkland. So the answer to that is I don't think we're going to be able to protect a lot, you know, if we increase those buffers and have development regulations and development restrictions. Next question.

So how buffer impacts how would a stream buffer increase impact the parcels that are already developed? Private property parcels in the N and F regulated streams, you know, we have 2,000. We talk about significant impacts. Those are parcels that have at least 40% of the property that's impacted by the buffer. And 40% was picked because when we talk about lot coverage and floor area ratios, you know, 50% of that property is it 50%?

Correct me if I'm wrong 50% is, you know, what you're allowed to do. So we figured if 40% of the property is encumbered by a critical area, that's going to impact how you're able to develop. That was a lot of numbers thrown around, sorry. So when you look at the buffer increases, you you can see the number of parcels impacted. So if we increased all of our end buffers to 100 feet, and that's, you know, from about 66 to 100 feet, there are 300 parcels that would then be impacted.

And then if you increased the F buffer parcels from that 133 feet to 150, we impact another 100 parcels that would have greater impacts on their property. And I pulled a couple pictures of what this looks like, and it's looking different on the screen, but if you look on the left hand side is an N stream with the buffer increases from, you know, in the two blue sections from 50 to 66 is what are currently existing, and the seventy five and one hundred foot would be what an expansion would look like for water quality. And you can see how that impacts some of the parcels surrounding and what it looks like relative to some of the parcels we have in the city. The right hand side is an F stream buffer, and the F stream had, as you can see, there's a parcel running through the middle, And this does have a good connectivity to or a good relationship with why we need to have a parcel looked at individually, is that the map itself can give someone a good generalization of what they need to be thinking about, but it doesn't create the actual line, you know, to be building off of.

And that parcel in the middle is the NGPA, you know, that is protected for the stream, and it looks like this development was built around it. And by expanding the buffers, especially on that left side, you'd be expanding the buffers into the private property parcels that originally were created to be at the edge of that original buffer. So just things to consider when we go back to who's been impacted, it's a high probability a lot of these, you know, 100 properties are exactly this, where they might have had some small impacts before, but now it's crossing into their property more. So that is that's kind of a good stopping point because those are the questions we, you know, had gone through and answered. And the next step I provided a couple options that we can do.

And unfortunately, not having the guidance or someone else who has taken the wheel to do something different, we might want to be thinking outside of the box if we're thinking different. You know, the easy steps are to increase stuff, but then that impacts a lot of people, it impacts a lot of it might not actually solve the problems that we're trying to solve, which is that water quality and that habitat priority wildlife habitat. We also have the we want to be able to make sure that we're creating solutions that accommodate our housing goals, you know, so that balancing again. And we also want to think about what is an individual impact versus a community impact, because when development occurs and degradation occurs associated with that, or when we allow that to happen. For example, if we streamline a process to skip over some steps that are like our consultant.

Our consultant picks up mistakes that occur quite often. That was something that when we had gone through review, looking at the review process, it's like they're not just checking off boxes of what's been submitted, they're actually correcting things that have been missed and or overlooked. So if we skip those things, the cost to the individual can become a cost to the community as a whole in order for us to maintain that standard state of no net loss, however that happens. So just some things to think about and also to know that on the side we are creating other processes to try to streamline the code to simplify and to standardize it outside of this issue that we need to manage with the stream buffer. So here are some options.

And I added a little bit more into it than what was in the packet, just one line. But we could technically say, We're not going to do any changes, and we're going to maintain our current buffers and we're going to simplify. That is going to be hard to defend to the State. I know that WDFW will not accept that because we are less than what everyone else has so far promoted. But we do have a lot of alternative improvements that we require.

The vegetation buffer standard that we require on properties to enhance their riparian management zone, enhance that stream buffer even if they're not having to mitigate. We have some things in place that will help us with that. If, for example, we went downhill on our water quality and the state decided that they were going to regulate us, that might become an issue. You know, it might be, you know, you guys aren't balancing as much as, you know, you need to be. So we could do the no change in what I would call our current buffers for development, but then we could add a riparian management zone, which would say and this fits right into the code where when we say in the code, if you're within 120 feet of a stream, you need to start this process to see if you are in a critical area.

We can say exactly that and say, if you're within 100 feet or if within 150 feet of a stream, you're within that stream riparian management zone. And so here are some things that we're going to require for development. Low impact development options for water quality, we already have those in place and we implement them, and in some cases they're implemented because they're more economic than other options. We have the table, and I provided the table during our wetland discussion of what I would call I think I have it here. Oh, no.

Oh, yeah, that's it. I call it pollution reduction. You know, so within that buffer and there's a table that measures to minimize impacts to wetlands and associated buffers. We could increase that to that stream riparian management zone. I'm going to go back on this. And we could do that at 100 feet with the purpose of water quality as our goal, or we could do it at 150 feet. We could do it for N streams and F streams, or we could separate it out. That's not going to change too much when it comes to process. It's just a matter of we want to identify what the goal is for each set of stream. We could increase all our buffer widths.

This option two, I floated by the state, and they were a little bit nervous about it because it was an option to try to simplify that if we increased our end stream buffers to 100 feet with a 75 foot reduction, Basically what that means is for building, you're going from 50 foot from the stream to 75 feet, so there's a loss of 25 feet there. We could actually potentially reduce I don't recommend it but for the purposes of simplification, reduce the upstream buffers. It's not going to make a huge change in our you know, we're going from 133 feet to 100 feet. And I don't know I don't recommend that because it's a red flag for people who don't understand the whole process, but it would be a way to simplify. And then we have option three, which is just to do what everybody else so far has seemed to do.

I don't know how well it's working for them or how it's going to float, but we could increase our stream N buffers to 100 feet and our F buffers to 150 feet with that, you know, 25% reduction. So hopefully this isn't too crazy, but there are other options in between. If you guys are thinking of things like, you know, other ways to meet those goals, I am happy to hear about them. And I took a lot of time to find these photos to really show noise pollution abatement, light pollution abatement, how to, you know, maintain, you know, your soil on your site. And I just want you to notice that trees are in just about every picture.

So that's about we can talk about public input in a bit, but to keep it short, it's in progress. We are starting to gain some public input. We have a lot of staff feedback. And with the State, they will reserve their official comments until after we start providing stuff, but I'm definitely in communication with them. So with that, I would love to hear from each of you kind of your thoughts, where you would want to push on one side or the other, and questions you have.

Vice Chair Rosman?

So before thoughts, just a question. Has do you have any sense from counsel? Like, is there any counsel direction at this point on this stuff before we start, you know, going down one direction?

Counsel, we will be meeting with counsel next week, different individuals, to talk about this on its own. From everything I'm understanding and hearing is whether it incorporates this or whether this is a side note, we want to make sure that we're trying to streamline the process. We want to try to figure out ways to decrease costs or at least be more clear upfront with people understanding what the costs are. So, you know, if we go back to that slide of the development I'm just going to keep going back here. You know, the costs of mitigation, when we think about how expensive that might be, we want to balance that with how much that building was able to put on the property with that impact into the critical area.

So, yeah, it's just something it's something to be being upfront and or not being upfront, being more clear, because I think I don't think there's any I think that's just what we want to try to continue to do.

So yeah, no, don't have

And then a secondary comment to that. What are the impacts on like buffer averaging? So, like like, is there a lot of that flexibility within the 100, 150? And, like, how does that actually impact, like, what we're trying to do?

Currently, we have a lot of flexibility in buffer averaging. We would want to build that in with that 25% decrease to make sure that we are still trying to meet those minimum standards. So there are with the best available science and the guidance from the state, there are limits to buffer averaging so that you're not building right up on the stream in one part and then creating a large bubble on the other side. So there are some limits to that, but we will that is something that we'll be addressing. I did not want to create more confusion with more variability on that.

So I had a question just on, I guess, preexisting structures just based on not this map, but one of the other ones you showed. It looked like some of the expanding, particularly the buffer zone from, say, like 66 feet or 100 feet to 150 feet, would, in many cases, start taking over people's backyards and potentially, in certain cases, even take over their house. So I was, I guess, trying to figure out how that would work for things that have already been built out.

Yeah, that's a good question. I'll use this, the upper picture as an example here where, you know, the buffer technically is at 50 feet, but as you can see, there's lawn that goes quite a bit into that. And this was a project that was built before 1990, before we had those standards. In this case, if the buffer was increased and it went through, say, that first apartment building, they could remodel, they can maintain, they can do all of those things. But when it comes to redevelopment, they would have to comply with standards.

And so that can impact and that's why we were looking at that significant impact versus general impact, was to see, you know, how many homes, you know, when it comes to redevelopment, might have to be looking at the exemption process. This is a good example on this map. I didn't really go over it, but in yellow the box in yellow are, you know, homes that would have limited impacts. They're still in that 25% buffer. They could still develop on that front edge.

That red one would have gone from it. It it would was go into what we could call a limited my brain just stopped. Yeah, limited buffer waiver. And then the ones in black there, they were already in the buffer and already had limited buffer exemption exemptions. Right.

And so increasing the buffer actually doesn't change what is restricted on them. They were already restricted to begin with. So that was just kind of a good example. And then you look down further down, most of those properties aren't going to see an impact, you know, in their you know, that's likely just part of their backyard in the first place.

And if I could add just a little bit more context to that. In 2017, when we last did a major update to the critical areas ordinance, we did expand the buffers pretty significantly. And by doing so, we did render a lot of existing structures as legally, because they were legal when they were established, but legally nonconforming. So at the time, we also added a pretty some pretty significant exemptions or allowances for even expanding a legally nonconforming structure in a buffer. The type of structures that have the most flexibility are detached dwelling units.

For commercial or multifamily units, they don't have nearly the the same amount of flexibility, but the code already has quite a few exceptions or ways that a detached dwelling unit could could, like Anna said, repair and maintain, but even expand in some cases. The code favors doing things like expanding on the non stream side of the house. Right? Getting further away even if you're still technically building in a buffer. It allows things like utilizing the same footprint but adding a second story to maybe a one story home.

So there's quite a few ways that someone could sort of improve their detached dwelling unit even if it is in a buffer. And thus far in the process, we're not proposing to get rid of any of those, so they would apply if anything is expanded through this process.

Any other comments, questions? No? Carrie?

No no comments or questions. Any any thoughts rather than direction since we will be talking to counsel and it sounds like that is something you guys would like to hear about? Any initial thoughts or opinions that you guys have on one direction or another?

Vice President Rasman?

I guess I have a hard time seeing how we have much of an option outside of option three. Like, you know, sometimes I feel like we've got more different options. But it's hard to see that, like, we will both, like, meet the state requirements and make things more clear if we go with any other option. Unless I'm missing something, it it doesn't seem like Yeah. We have anything really else laid out that that looks like makes

sense at this point. Okay.

And I think I'm in Commissioner Rosman's brain because if we are hoping to streamline the process, reduce the costs and provide better clarity and achieve these environment goals. It does seem that Option three would achieve that. Do I have that right? Believe

Option three would yes, and I believe that would be a simple change, and we would continue with action as usual, just with the expanded buffer. Any other thoughts?

Okay. Could could I perhaps ask a sort of prompting question to the commission? Because so we had an initial staff recommendation for something in the one b to one c realm, feeling like with really the depth of research that we've done that we are building a case to perhaps present the state with an alternative that seems to be supported by the best available science. Now, we'll only do that if that's where we get directed by by Planning Commission and Council. I am a little curious to understand maybe the source of what doesn't feel as streamlined about the options or if there's questions specifically about the standards that might be applied within a riparian management zone.

I just want to make sure that we're answering questions that might be specific to to the addition of the riparian management zone area.

Well, since you brought up the riparian management zone area, that's the one I have least clarity on. And I know you don't want me in stereo. Apparently, you Can you explain that further? Because I think that's the part I'm clear I'm least clear on, and I would want to make sure we're not, you know, kicking ourselves off.

Missing something.

Yeah. No, that's we can

I can kind of talk? The intent on establishing or this option of a riparian management zone would be to identify that any property I don't have control here, so I can't go back on my slides that any property that's within that 150 foot buffer and I'll find an example of so let's take a look at the right hand side, the f stream with the very large blue section. So what we would say is that outer edge is any property that has that, that's the riparian management zone. So if you're choosing to develop in that area, we would ask that the development takes into account those low impact development, you know, that we require water treatment on-site and we require the what I call the pollutant management, which would be like no light pollution, decrease your noise pollution by putting your HVAC on the opposite side, things that we require within those critical areas, but just with the development. But it doesn't restrict the capacity to develop on the site itself.

So, for example, if we're looking at people wanting to put in two other units on their property to increase density, they still have that same building capacity they do today. They just need to do it in a environmental manner. And so it could cost more, I don't know, but it wouldn't trigger those buffer requirements that we were talking about. You know, you wouldn't have that trigger if you stayed outside the original lines. So that's where I was trying to separate, was you still have space, but we need to develop smarter in those ways.

And perhaps just to add, you know, the the buffer itself is very restrictive. It's no development. It has to be restored with vegetated to vegetative planting standards. And we don't allow any activity in the buffer even after the property is developed, so we require recording of a native growth protection easement over the buffer. And we require people to install a split rail fence.

So it doesn't prevent critters from passing to and fro, but it is really intended to tell people this this is a buffer area and there shouldn't be activity going on inside of it. And so that's really restrictive. The riparian management area that could potentially be added on to the buffer, like Anna said, far less restrictive but still protected in a way through some specialized, maybe, standards as to how things get built.

We're in a unique position here being in an urban environment and being one of the leads ahead of others.

Thank you. Yeah, I would agree. I think the challenge for us is, especially urban environment from a state perspective, is not only apartment buildings. It's all the single family homes that we have. So all of Kirkland is urban by that definition, if I'm understanding you.

Correct. If you think about King County and their urban growth area, you know, UGA has about the same amount of stream miles as we do, and that's like 7% of all the streams they're managing for. So if you think all the way out to Snoqualmie, all the way up the Cedar River, yeah, we are an urban area. There is nothing not urban about us.

So then I guess to jump to the end, I I guess I would be fine. I'm fine with the direction that commissioner Rosman is suggesting. I'm also open to continuing to look at, I think it was one c, the option with the riparian management zone. Given that we are entirely urban and it's not really a question of preserving what is still undisturbed but repairing what has been disturbed, I think something flexible that still allows for people to actually repair what's been disturbed would be a good idea. So I'm fine with moving those two options forward, if that helps.

Thank you. That's all I got. Yeah. Thanks for listening about streams today. We'll come back with vegetation next time.

Alright. Well, that brings us to the end of our study session then, I believe. Next on the item on the agenda is public hearings. There are none. Then, reading and approval of minutes. I don't see any. So, then, administrative reports and Planning Commission discussion.

Alright. Thank you, mister chair. Just a quick calendar update. We are canceling your August 14 meeting.

Hello, yay.

Thank you. Summer break.

So you had one kind of small public hearing on your August 14 agenda, one kind of small one on the August 28. So after consulting with Chair Rutherford and Vice Chair Rosman, we're combining those onto your August 28 meeting. So no meeting on the fourteenth. On August 28, you'll have a public hearing on the co living housing amendments and the miscellaneous code amendments. And then that gets us through August, so I'll end there.

Sounds good. Any discussion items from commissioners? No? All right. We are on to the last section of comments from the audience. If there's anyone either online, I see there's zero attendees on the Zoom call, and we now have an empty audience in the room. So I think we're done. So that is the end of the agenda, and we are adjourned.