Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

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

Margaret Bunyal. Here. Erin Jacobson.

Here.

Gina Medea. Here. Julia Nolan. Here. Scott Reiser.

Here. Angela Rosman.

Here. Rodney Rutherford.

Here. And with the majority of commissioners present, we have a quorum and may conduct business. Next item on the agenda is comments from the audience. This is the portion of the meeting where we hear from the public about items that are not scheduled for public hearing tonight. Tonight's public hearing is about amendments to the critical area ordinance. Do you have any sign-ups so far?

No in-person sign-ups, Mr. Chair.

And if there's anyone interested in addressing the commission, please click the raise hand button online or... I'll also like to see if there's anyone in the audience. And if no one, then we can probably carry on for now. And seeing none, we'll move on to the next item. On the agenda is special presentations. We have none. Next is study session. We have none. And so we are on to the public hearing. So at this point I will open the public hearing for the critical area ordinance amendments Hi staff, would you like to share your presentation?

Thank you, Chair Rutherford. I'll get us kicked off here. This is a familiar topic to y'all. I think this is the fourth time we've visited you to talk about the critical area ordinance update. And we don't have a lot of items in the critical area ordinance update that have changed since our last briefing with you and the draft code we presented. So staff's going to keep it a little high level in our presentation tonight, focus on the things that have changed. The one item I did want to flag for you before I turn it over to Anna and Jen is that we did, right after we published your packet last week, we did receive comments from the Department of Fish and Wildlife. And we wanted to make sure that you saw those. So I actually emailed those to all of you this afternoon. And it includes our initial staff responses. So these are draft comments from the Department of Fish and Wildlife. And then what I emailed you includes draft staff responses about how we might address some of their comments. So Anna and Jen will also talk through that a little bit. But we're still waiting on comments from a couple other state agencies. And the reason I mention that to you all is because as you know, we have a deadline to get this adopted this year. We're gonna be asking you this evening if the commission is comfortable to include in your, any motions you make, an acknowledgement that staff will likely need to continue making some adjustments and minor revisions in the code after your recommendation to address some state agency comments before council adoption. So again, if the council's comfortable with that, we'd ask for that kind of flexibility to make revisions that state agencies might recommend that we feel are appropriate. So we'll get to that at the end, but just wanted to flag that for you before we kick it off. So with that, I will be handing it over to our environmental program coordinator, Anna Heckman, and our senior planner, Jen Ander.

All right, I'm gonna start off the presentation tonight. Looking at our agenda, we're going to start out with the staff presentation. I'll go over 85 first and then hand it over to Anna for Chapter 90 before we have Planning Commission questions, public testimony, and wrapping up with deliberations. I have a few slides, about 85, just wanted to touch on some of the feedback we've gotten either that was presented last time we saw you and also a few new things, taking a look at where we've landed with the proposals and going through anything that might be new or that kind of was removed for various reasons. So looking at the public feedback, here's kind of a list. You can see we got responses and reviews from quite a few different people. Starting out at the top, at the very beginning of this project, we reached out to DNR with the state and they really had a positive outlook on our code, which was a great place to start. We've since received feedback from them after looking at the draft code and that has not changed, which is excellent. Really, the only suggestion they had was making maybe a couple of clear links into the WAC, but other than that, they were very supportive of how we're doing the review. The peer review has always been something that they really see as valuable and just having positive perspective of the direction that it went. We received quite a few comments from the development community, from MBAC specifically. We addressed those in detail in the staff report, so I won't go through each of them specifically, but really it's wanting to look out for the property owners and developers and what you're able to do on your property. So trying to expand those exemptions, either from geotechnical review or from peer review, and seeing if there was any way we could look at natural versus engineered slopes. But the overall tone, even including from staff, is really looking for clarity of requirements. First and foremost, it has to be for public and property safety, but beyond that, we're really wanting to streamline things. I believe since we last met with you, we reached out and worked with one of the city consultants, ASI, and had them look at our code from a geotechnical perspective. We wanted to make sure that it aligned with practice standards, and again, having that safety in mind. There were a couple significant items that they looked at. So one of the key areas that we were exploring for flexibility was playing with the definitions of high and moderate landslide. They agreed with our moderate landslide revision, which I'll get to in a couple of slides. And then for high, we wanted to explore if we could build in more flexibility for... It's not exactly a buffer, but for simplicity's sake, it's that... 50-ish feet that would wrap around areas that are defined as a high, and we were looking to see if we could absorb that into moderate. We received very clear feedback that that would not align with geotechnical practices, that there were several scopes of work, small or big, that could still be very impactful to those slopes in that area. And so they felt fairly firm about that, and looking to them as a subject matter expert, we decided to keep the high landslide definition as it exists. They also were of the mind of building in more exemptions, though. So we were aligned with that. They actually suggested and added a few that we think are great, including maintaining existing utilities, which actually aligns. Just tonight, I heard from one of our utility providers, and that was something they were interested in, too. So that was a great add-on. And then they also had mentioned, and so we've added a geotechnical technician definition. And so that's to make it a little more clear in the code that when geotechnical engineers are out doing work in the field and preparing these reports, oftentimes it will be someone with lots of training, but it's not necessarily a PE, a professional engineer. And so we have that actually defined in the code now that helps that work get done. So taking all of that and the work that we've done, the name of the game really was how can we build in flexibility, right? We've heard a lot about different scopes of work and are we doing too much review or not enough? So on the left, you'll see some of the flexibilities that we included to really reduce the number of geotechnical permits that we're going to need in a year. So that happens in a few ways. The moderate landslide reduction, the definition, we're going to reduce the amount of land that would meet the definition in the city. So less areas on property where they'd even have to touch this chapter building in that new exemption section that you've seen kind of grow and evolve as we've been working on it. And then also the peer review exemptions and making sure that we're not sending projects out for, you know, a secondary peer review when it really we're not getting a lot of benefit out of that. We also added another layer into the options for analysis. So on the right it kind of goes from the simplest to maybe the most significant. While it's not in the code, the top one is a site visit and we do that by city staff. Typically when you're assigned a project or someone wants to do work, we're out on site. And so if we have the ability to determine that Maybe our mapping is showing something that's a little erroneous out there. We have the ability to say, no, you know, 85 does not pertain to this site. We don't need to touch those regulations. We have a new area in the draft code that's the applicability memo. So that's something that would be really simple. It's, you know, maybe a one-pager by a geotechnical company. firm that would basically do an analysis for the dimensions. So that is a smaller touch to be able to see if areas on your property are meeting the definition of a landslide hazard. And if it's not, then the chapter doesn't apply. So we wanted something that was a little bit smaller, smaller in scope, smaller in price, to help folks out. And then we have the geotech investigation and report. Those were in the existing code. They remain in this code with a little bit clarity in the language of when that happens, why that may happen. The investigation is more significant than a memo. It may include a survey, but it's certainly less significant than a report. So we have quite a few different layers where we can kind of cater what is needed depending on the scope and where the project is. So here's where we land for our proposed updates. A little bit different than when we started, but a lot of it is the same. The definitions, like I said, we're just focusing on moderate now. We have the exemptions, the peer review exemptions, and then a little bit on the vegetation requirements. This is a slide that might be familiar, just giving you that last look of the landslide hazard definitions. Where we started out with moderate is just any areas of slope between 15 and 40% that don't meet the more robust definition for high. At the suggestion of one of our consultants, they had mentioned a 10 foot minimum slope height. So that's what's helping reduce the area in the city that actually even meets the definition of a moderate landslide hazard. Here's a little bit more detail on those exemptions. You can see how we've added on the left the existing utilities. So anything on the left, you don't even need to interact with this chapter. So that's brand new. Before, you would have to at least do something related to 85, but we've been able to build out quite a few scope of work that don't need it. And then on the right-hand side, that's still our list for peer review exemption. So it's something that is significant enough that we do need to have an expert take a look at, but we don't need to go so far as having a peer review. And then vegetation requirements, not much has changed since you last saw it, but I did note at the bottom, you'll see that we consolidated the tree requirements and for 85 also some vegetation requirements into 95. So it's a little bit more one-stop shop. That's really a clarity decision. So that if someone is, especially outside of development activity, wanting to do something with a tree on their property, it's very intuitive to go to the tree chapter. So we pulled that language all into 95. That wraps up our somewhat shorter 85. Just wanted to pause here, see if there are any questions before we start diving into 90.

Mr. Medea.

Just a quick question to clarify. On that slide regarding Chapter 85, the permit reviews, you talked about the first thing might be a site visit. Is that standard? And then from that, potential subsequent tasks might be required?

It's fairly standard, yeah. I mean, we do that actually separate from 85 anyway. If you were just getting, let's say, a new single-family permit on a flat lot, we typically go and get eyes on it just to get a feel of the property. So we're looking for a variety of other things as well. But obviously, if there's a question about 85, we would be looking at that.

Anyone else? All right.

All right.

Okay, moving on to the bigger chapter. I'm trying to keep this short and sweet for you because we had a very long event last time. We haven't made any substantial changes since our last meeting, but there are questions and comments that have come in that we'll want to address. So a quick review of updates that we talked about at the last meeting. And if you have any questions about them later on, don't hesitate to ask. But we had a bunch of definitions in Chapter 5 that were added. These are state recommendations and things that have changed with best available science adaptations. We had a bunch of clarity and industry best management practice edits. Some of those were in our exemption code which include the ability to do more restoration without going through permitting especially for private properties being able to remove ivy such things like that. Our trees in critical areas we had some adaptations to that associated with our riparian management zone and we took that and moved it into the tree code. We had some mitigation, vegetation buffer standards, monitoring and maintenance, and pesticide and fertilizer use. All of those have some significant updates that you've seen. We had some edits that Impact the no net loss requirement some of that was in our reasonable use and non-conformance code which Improved some of the mitigation making sure we were getting at minimum a one-to-one when we do vegetation buffer standards for development And then we had some general mitigation changes also one of those being improved opportunities for off-site mitigation when on-site mitigation work isn't going to be feasible or successful and Then our big one is the best available science amendments to improve our stream buffers to continue to build on those and as you guys might recall that has to do with water cleanliness and Wildlife habitat and those are the two main goals that drive the decision-making process and So another quick review, we looked at this last time. It hasn't changed, but we have the state recommendations. And the state, this is through Washington Fish and Wildlife, which they do a lot of the stream buffer management. 100 foot buffer minimum for our non-fish bearing streams and 150 foot is what our site potential tree height was decided to so we would want 200 foot buffers with that ability to drop down to 150 feet. Fish and Wildlife is pretty clear in their recommendations that they don't want impacts inside the buffer and therefore we have to make the buffers larger in order to allow for that 25% impact with vegetation improvements. That's their recommendation. Our existing code is only 66 feet and 133 feet. And I'll talk about our buffers with that regulated buffer, that larger one, as we move forward. So our option that we presented to you last time was to create this like kind of a half buffer, that riparian management zone at 150 feet. And we would create it through all streams and promote tree canopy cover, which intercepts rainfall. So it helps with our stormwater. It helps with runoff. That tree canopy cover cools the roads and the streams and the habitat surrounding. And we would also, with development, not impact where people are able to develop or how much outside of what we already have in regulations, but asking them to develop more habitat friendly. So we talked about lights. sound barriers, bird-friendly things, options like that that are in the code. And then lastly, option two was an option provided before. We haven't recommended that option since our first meeting, and that was kind of the original buffer increase option before Fish and Wildlife, before their recommendations. So we had a lot of questions from you guys. Some of these are newer, some of them we've gone over before, but we've been asked to provide more information on stream types in Kirkland. I'll go over that real quick so that we can have a little bit of a review and also just get a feel for what we're dealing with in our city. We're different than other communities. How many properties are impacted? I think that's a really great question to ask. We pulled some data and I'll provide you guys some of that so that whatever decisions we make, we know who we're impacting in the process. How are neighboring cities approaching the required update? There have been dramatic changes in the last couple months and I'll go over that with you. How would the new riparian management zone requirements for streams apply to new and existing development? That's one we answered last time, but we can still do some clarifications on that. There are some changes in the code from the last time we talked to you that clarify some of that riparian management zone requirements and when it's triggered. And then what is required by state law and what is discretionary? Those are some questions we answered earlier. The big one being best available science and making sure we're implementing it or the intent of it. And then staff responses to public comments. And we haven't received a lot of public comments, but I'll go over that as well. So real quick, I was asked to talk about some of our stream types. And this is something that is in change in the state. We talk about S, F, and N type waters. And so S waters, we have no S type streams in the city of Kirkland. That is waters of the state. If you think about the Cedar River, or even the slough. That's always what I've called it. Those are waters that have 1,000 cubic feet per second coming out of them, so a lot of water, and we don't have any of those. We have F-type streams, which are smaller streams that contain fish habitat. Some cities do separate their streams between salmon and endangered species habitat protection and non-protected species. Fish those are type two and three streams And so we call them type F waters now and the state is in transition and I apologize for any confusion with all of that I have seen it used both both styles in different cities And then we have our N-type waters. Oh, these are more of our fish waters. This is actually Juanita Creek. And then we have another fish stream, much smaller. As you can see with both of those, they are full of invasive species and definitely an urban creek. See how they drop straight down? There's no meandering to them. We have our N-type streams. These are non-fish habitat streams. They might be barred by a natural barrier, not human barriers. So if we have a culvert that is a barrier to a stream, it doesn't change it from a fish habitat to a non-fish habitat. And type streams are separated into perennial streams which retain water all year. They might be very small creeks by the end of August, but they still have water. And we have seasonal streams that dry up and these are ones that people commonly are like, nah, it's a ditch, you know, but they do have water running under normal rainfall conditions. for a lot of the year. Some cities separate out the perennial and seasonal streams with their buffers as well. We have simplified those and that's a picture of a stream that was pulled out of a pipe and restored. So there are opportunities for restoration when people want to invest in it. But that's, no, that is not a Kirkland site, thank you. So getting to who would be impacted. We did a little bit of this discussion before. An interesting point we were able to find out is that we have within 50 feet of our stream. So I did an analysis on how close we were to our streams. And within 50 feet of our streams, we have over 600 homes. So that 50-foot buffer is the minimum buffer that we've had already. So in our current existing buffers, we have 2,417 parcels that are in the buffer areas. Out of all of Kirkland, we have 25,000. So that's, you know, what, 10%? I'm doing math in my head, which is a dangerous thing. Of those parcels, of those 2,400 parcels, we have 1,200 that are significantly impacted. Those are parcels where over 40% of the parcel is covered by a buffer currently, and so buildings are likely in non-conformance at this time. So that's 1,200 people that are impacted by the buffers now that might have impacts to their development in the future. If we were to increase the buffers to what the state recommendation is, 133 feet and 200 feet, we would be adding 1,300 more parcels into that buffer area. So 3,700 plus people would have impacts. And then we would be adding another 1,000 people who are significantly impacted, who will be nonconforming, and when they go to rebuild, will have to make major adjustments. The riparian management zone option that we had put together would also add 1,300 parcels into those buffer areas but those 1,300 parcels would not have development restrictions on them. This would be that tree canopy cover and when they do develop developing environmentally friendly for habitat. So it's a similar amount of properties. The reason why it's the same even though there's different buffers is because there's a little bit of a redistribution of what properties would be impacted. Properties on end streams that are a little higher in our watershed would have more riparian management zone than properties down on the fish bearing streams. so One of the reasons that's important is because canopy cover for stormwater higher in the watershed makes a big difference so that was And then real quick, if we talk about some properties that are higher in the watershed that have non-fish bearing streams, I think we've shown you guys this picture before. In the blue, we have our 50 foot reduced buffer and our 75 foot if we did a buffer increase. And in the green is our 66 foot regulated buffer and the light green would be that increase. And notice the riparian management zone is the same. So if we were to do the riparian management zone, all of the properties there would have to develop smarter, retain trees even outside that buffer. Even across the street, there are small sections where tree retention would be required. And if development were to occur on those properties, we would... Do tree retention according to that development process so similar to retaining a landmark tree or a grove tree We really want to promote it, but it doesn't impact Someone's development potential in the long run So we have properties that are no impact, you know, if the buffers expanded very little part of that house is impacted It's not going to be too big of a deal they're not going to notice a difference we have development parcels where you see the Homes that are in the blue, they're outside of the buffer, but that light green inside the buffer, those ones are going to have to do mitigation if they redevelop. They're gonna have to mitigate and improve the buffer for them to do improvements on their house. We have developments that are right on the edge of the buffer now, on that blue, and when we increase the buffers in that green, those houses are now going to be in non-conformance, and they won't be able to develop closer. They might be able to develop farther, they might be able to develop up, but there is going to be expense associated with their development. And then we will have properties that are already in the buffer and the buffer expands enveloping the whole property and those homes will fall into a reasonable use when it comes to redevelopment. So this is just one neighborhood in Kirkland and we have examples where neighbors are going to have different situations to deal with, which is a communication challenge. So another question you guys had. Can we pause on that?

Yes. Real quick. We sure can. How are you explaining this to people when they have different situations?

Well, currently with our current buffers, so that dark blue and that dark green, we just go through the code and you explain, this is your buffer, your neighbor's buffer, the stream is further away.

Right, but I mean like... How are these people going to know?

Usually people don't know until they come in for a development permit. A lot of people know they have a stream on their property. Some people don't. Some people think that it's a ditch in their backyard and it's not actually a non-fish-bearing stream. So there are some, historically, that's how we would communicate. Your question does lead to something we want to do moving forward is once we are through with this, we're going to continue to improve the webpage and so have that education available. If we do the riparian management zone, for example, we will make sure that that is on our maps so people can see.

And do these folks get any kind of mailer or anything like, hey, you might have known that we were having a public hearing or whatever, but like this was the outcome or do we not

I don't know. Does that freak people out unnecessarily, or is that something that would be... That's a good question. We did do a mailer to everyone within the riparian management zone stating the options of a buffer increase versus a riparian management zone concept. And we heard back from a lot of people verbally, but not a lot of written testimony. Yeah.

Yeah, I was going to mention we've had a chance to do some good education because we have reached every property owner that owns a property within 150 feet of a stream as part of our outreach for this process. So it gave us a chance to get those calls and people say, well, hey, I didn't know or By the way, if I did want to redevelop, what would happen? So we've actually caught quite a few people just by virtue of the outreach we've done for this process. We could certainly look, if we do make big changes, we could look at doing another mailer. It's a pretty common counter question from my years up there on counter of people saying, I know there's something back there. Can you look it up for me and can you help me out?

It just seems like maybe if like they got the mailer saying this is what's going to happen, it might be a nice thing to then let people know like this is actually what happened.

Yeah. Yeah, we can definitely look at that. And then I just wanted to make it clear for this slide that this is if we increase the stream buffers, but that is not the staff recommendation in front of you. But we wanted to give you a little bit of background on what the impact would be if stream buffers to kind of explain the background of why we've developed the RMZ option.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, verbally, because we did read the letters that we got, what was the general feeling of people?

We will get to that. I have a slide for that. Before we get to that, we will answer the question here of what are our neighboring jurisdictions doing? In July and August, I had a table very similar to this that looked very different. In that table, Kirkland's buffers, our current existing buffers, were higher than what all of the other cities' older buffers were, so we were in a better shape. And a lot of these other cities were proposing Minimum buffer increases or smaller buffer increases and I have the on the comment note I had put what the city's updated from for example Redmond they did have a hundred and fifty and a hundred and they updated it to two hundred and one hundred so if you notice a lot of the cities are now putting that 200 foot buffer for their fish bearing streams and their end streams there's a little bit of variability but for the most part they're looking at a hundred feet which is that water cleanliness and Anacortes which is below Kirkland had an appeal early on and that was one driver for them choosing the actual site potential tree height which if you guys recall when we talked about that before it is highly variable it's based on soils and how tall trees can grow in those soils and Kirkland has over 30 different soil I don't even know what to call them. They're just soil areas. So they went with site potential tree height. Shoreline has just, and a lot of these cities are just now at their planning commission. So I spent the last three nights reading planning commission memos for other cities. Shoreline proposed a 200-foot buffer for both their F-streams and N-streams with the thought that if your site potential tree height, according to the maps that WDFW has produced, is smaller, you can use that, but you have to show and prove that that's happening so that it does less impact on their staff. So I wanted to give this to you just to contextualize and frame that at this point, even though we have this 150 foot riparian management zone, we have learned a lot from our last buffer expansion and doing our vegetation buffer standards that both the minimum vegetation buffer standard And our non-conformance sections are sections that all of these other cities have just now put in for part of their adoption. So those 200-foot buffers can be reduced to 150 if they do the minimum vegetation buffer standards, similar to what we have. And yeah, so we have learned a lot. I don't know, our impression as staff is that increasing the buffers isn't going to create change as fast as the riparian management zone concept would. But that is something for you guys to consider. Public testimony and our input. So this is just written input, but I just wanted to give you a quick show that even though we received very few written public comment, it was diverse across the city. We do have a lot from Juanita. We were asked to go to their neighborhood meeting and from Finn Hill, as you can imagine as well.

The previous slide when you were showing the different jurisdictions, I had a conversation with Allison standard and degraded streams. Do we have any streams that link up with the Bellevue streams that were they might have a totally different viewpoint because essentially all urban streams are degraded streams and so once it gets to that city line is Bellevue going to have a lesser standard than what Kirkland is on the other side?

That's a great question. I didn't want to address it in an official manner because No, no, no, that's okay. Primarily because many of these cities are just now going to their planning commission and the data I have isn't necessarily what they're codifying. So there could have been changes last night at the planning commission meeting. There could be changes as they go to council. So I didn't want to address that officially yet. But yeah, there are some, there are many potential exceptions that cities are building in.

Do we comment on their proposals? Is that common? I forget.

We haven't, no. Most of the people in these cities that I communicate with are colleagues and we have shared information and worked together as we started to build build our codes, but at some point in time, each of our cities are very different. So for example, a great example, Bothell, they might bump it up to 200 for their F streams, but Bothell's F streams have wetlands. And so they're like, it doesn't matter, you know, because the wetlands are a priority. And so having a stream buffer isn't going to change what's already happening. You know, there are other cities that, you know, they might have one F stream that is, you know, piped or something to that effect. So there are a lot of differences there. In Kirkland, you know, we have Forbes Creek and Yarrow Bay that are owned. We have a lot of city property surrounding those, so it doesn't impact people. But we also have Juanita Creek, and that F stream is private property owned almost all the way up. And so there's a lot of impact there that differentiates us from some of the other cities. Okay, so public input. With regards to public comments, we did receive another letter from master builders. And this is kind of a summary of what we were hearing Reduce costs for permitting, of course, and we'll do everything we can. There's a lot that needs to happen. You know, third-party reviews still need to occur, but we did change some of the ways we could do mitigation. And then right size monitoring and maintenance requirements. Yes, that's a valid request. We do have a lot of that embedded already in what we... is required is required by the state. So for example, if we have a five-year monitoring requirement, that's not the city, we are doing that based on state recommendations. Limit buffer requirements and expansions. Of course, that's something we heard a lot from the community members. There were concerns over impacts to property values or limiting their opportunity to develop. And that's probably the biggest thing I heard from most property owners that were on streams. And then MBAC discussed, you know, not adopting the site potential tree height as a default metric. Yes, we understand that that would be difficult if we were to allow 30 different buffer standards across the city. And so that's where, when we talk about site potential tree height, why I always talk about it as what we've determined to use across the city, which is that 150 foot. Number. Ways to simplify the code, we're trying, but this code is, it's complex. As we simplify the code, there is also means to not be able to apply it consistently, and so there's a little bit there, one for our planners to be consistent, so we can be consistent over time. But we will improve education and outreach after this update. And then, of course, we have had a couple comments of people not necessarily living on streams, but who are, you know, they want us to invest in a greener Kirkland. Like, let's do think about our environment. And that is something that we've considered, you know, that if we were to increase buffers, is that actually going to increase our environmental protection? And one of the answers we came up with was no, it's going to save 20 properties out of 25,000 or out of, you know, 2,700 already. There's 20 that have not been developed and they haven't been developed for a reason, likely steep slopes associated with streams. So we did receive comments and we forwarded them to you from Washington Fish and Wildlife. From research I've conducted, we have not received comments yet from either of the tribes that we have reached out to, although what I have seen is that comments from the tribes are often reflected in the WDFW comments. And so something to consider. And so they did have some definition edits for us, things to add and things to revise. A lot of these are great. I'm glad that they were able to capture some things that were overlooked in our, you know, that I overlooked, we overlooked in the code. And there are some things that we don't use. So there were definitions that's like, well, that would be great, we can add it. We don't use it in the code yet, but maybe we will in the future. There were clarity edits requested for especially towards mitigation sequencing and no net loss requirements. We have that in the code, but putting it into other areas just to clarify. Easy edits. It doesn't change anything in the intent. It just keeps things clear in different areas. They did have some concerns around our existing code. These aren't changes we made, but they were existing things in our code. One was about our stream buffer reductions, the fact that we allow reductions with the vegetation improvement. So we talk about that quality over quantity. and some concerns about buffer averaging for streams. Buffer averaging is allowed and promoted by Department of Ecology for wetlands, and we carry a lot of that stuff from wetlands just over into streams for consistency and simplification. Doesn't matter, we allow those reductions, we allow those averaging. There was some concern about pipe streams and our setbacks are fairly small. So we have a 10 foot setback on a pipe stream. WDFW promotes us and all cities to increase those buffers. They would love to see 50 feet. So if there's a pipe stream, 50 foot setback so that the stream would be more likely to be daylighted in the future. That's not something we are changing at this time. In the future with research and potential reasoning, we might do that, but we didn't see that as a benefit at this time. And then, of course, as they have requested with many of the other cities, request for the city to use site potential tree height for the buffers, which their site potential tree heights would range from 100 feet all the way up to 230 feet for F streams. So that is not something we're including in our buffer, but if we did buffer increases, we would have it very clear if that is something that comes up. So that is the general overview. I did not want to bore you again with all of the changes, but if you do have questions or if you'd like me to go back to a slide, I'm happy to help.

Any questions?

Commissioner Reiser? If we do vary from what the state requires, are there any repercussions or are they just suggestions?

WDFW is just suggestions. We do, I'm waiting for Department of Commerce and Department of Ecology for their recommendations. I don't see as many of them coming in, or, you know, I don't see as many requests. However, WDFW does parallel what the tribes might ask. And so repercussions might not be state requirements, was but it might be from other people who would like an audit.

Commissioner Rowland.

Just to clarify it sounds like the recommendations have remained or from city planners have remained the same from the past to now correct with the the same buffers but then the increased repairing management zone.

Yeah, yeah, we remain the same on our recommendation. Even there have been changes in the data coming in.

All right. I guess that's it. What's next?

Testimony.

Testimony, yes. All right. I thought we might be coming to that next. All right. So at this point, let's see. If I open it to public testimony and then introduce consent?

Right.

All right. OK. So here I open the spoken testimony portion of this public hearing. And now I will introduce how that will work. In order to hear from as many people as possible tonight, we are allowing any individual wishing to provide comments to speak for a maximum of three minutes. The timer on the lectern will flash a yellow light when 30 seconds remain and a red light when your time is ended. 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 or perspective that is unique to you. In making your comments, we ask that you please direct them to the commission, but this is not a time for give and take with the commission. Obscene, profane, threatening, harassing, or abusive language towards 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 may intimidate or have the effect of excluding others in the community whose views may differ. We'll begin items from the audience with a list of people here in person who have signed up to speak. So when I call your name, please approach the dais to address us. Online audience members may indicate that you wish to speak by clicking the raise hand button in the Zoom meeting now. When it 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 introduce yourself and address the commission. And with that, do we have anyone in person who is signed in to speak?

We do not.

All right. I do see we have an online panelist. Morgan, would you like to go ahead?

Yeah, thank you so much and good evening everyone. Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Perfect. My name is Morgan Kruger and I'm with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and I'm here today to just follow up on some previously submitted comments. I want to emphasize that the decisions made by the Commission today have lasting impacts on the health of Kirkland's waterways and by extension, the survival of our region's iconic salmon. Kirkland lies within a Tier 1 priority habitat area for Chinook salmon. With Chinook populations below 10% of their historic levels, it's more important than ever that Kirkland's policies reflect the best available science to ensure our actions today support the recovery of these species for generations to come. Many of the city's waterways, including Juanita Creek and Forbes Creek, are listed as impaired under the Federal Clean Water Act, meaning they do not meet basic water quality standards under current regulations and city practices. DFW's best real-world science demonstrates that a 100-foot vegetated buffer is the minimum necessary to effectively filter most pollutants before they reach streams. While the city's proposed amendments include vegetation enhancements, the widths currently proposed sum as low as 37.5 feet for non-fish-bearing streams. and 75 feet for fish bearing streams using the buffer averaging remain insufficient to protect water quality functions even if fully vegetated the draft code also allows expansions of up to 500 square feet within buffers and 250 square feet directly adjacent to critical areas With stream buffers already well below the 100-foot minimum in many cases, these allowances would permit impervious surfaces up to the stream's edge. While the draft introduces new tree protections and references low-impact development, the current changes don't address the core issues driving riparian degradation identified in DFW's best field of science. Riparian areas need adequate space, not just filter pollutants, but also to give room for flooding events, support the oxygen and nutrient cycles fish depend on, and provide safe pathways for wildlife movement. We strongly encourage the Commission to incorporate DFW's best available science by adopting, at minimum, the 100-foot buffer for type N streams and expanding riparian widths for type F streams, particularly in areas where riparian functions remain intact. The code could be refined to prioritize protections of these functioning areas, and we would be happy to work with staff on crafting this language. In conclusion, updating standards in alignment with DFW's best available science would ground Kirkland's ordinance in best real science which is a requirement under the growth management act align the city with neighboring jurisdictions and also strengthen long-term ecological resilience thank you so much for your time and attention thank you um is there anyone else online or in the audience who would like to speak

Seeing none, I guess I will go ahead and close the spoken portion of testimony. Yes, Commissioner Reiser.

She was talking so fast, and I know it was to get everything in. What was her recommendation on type F streams?

There were two things that were discussed on type F streams.

Well, she said her minimum recommendation for the type N stream, and I wrote down 100 feet, and then it was type F, but I could not get it.

Yeah, no, that's okay. Yeah, expand widths, yeah.

Okay.

Yep, but there were two things I heard in there. One was, you know, so the site potential tree height, expand widths for those F streams, and then streams that are less degraded to expand in order to protect them.

Thank you. I don't know if the commission would want to invite her back to speak further to clarify, but if you're interested in that, then if that's, I don't know. On one hand, it's like hearing from an expert in the field, so I don't know how that fits in with the nuances of public hearings. The public hearing is open, but the spoken portion is closed. So I don't know how exactly that.

Why I haven't learned by now to just keep your policies and procedures open. If commission doesn't mind giving me just a moment here, I believe by vote of the commission, if you want to reopen public testimony, you can. The public hearing itself is still open.

In the meantime, there was also, I was trying to catch something about some regulation that would allow impervious surface up to the stream. No, I was trying to make sense of that and I'm not sure if you caught what that was pertaining to.

Those comments were put into the written testimony and we did respond to them. Okay. So there are some interpretations that are a little different. For example, the drop to 37.5 feet would be if someone had a reduced buffer and they did buffer averaging. That is something that Planning Commission It's not just you get to do it. You have to have reason if you're going to do a buffer averaging. And our buffer averaging options are often created to create connectivity. So that was one piece of...

Thank you.

Mr. Chair. Yes. So I reviewed your policies and procedures. Speakers are generally limited three minutes unless otherwise authorized by the Chair, and members of the Commission may question a speaker on any matter related to their comments.

Okay. Sounds good. So if there is anyone who on the Commission would like to ask for clarification, I think we... Commissioner Reusser?

Just in the idea more information is better, I would like to know what her, when she did, that was one of the things I was noting. She was talking about impervious service all the way. I would like to just know where she's coming from. And also on the type F streams, I would just like a little bit more clarification.

Sounds good. Morgan, it looks like you may have been promoted back to panelists, if you'd like to provide any clarification, succinctly, of course.

Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much for having me back in. I'll start by answering that first question, kind of talking about the allowances for expansions of impervious surface. So in the current draft, there's a 500 square foot allowance If the expansion is in line with current structures, so if that structure is nonconforming in a buffer, it can still expand 500 square feet within that buffer in alignment with current structures on the property. And then there's also an allowance for further impervious surface expansion within the critical area buffer that is closer to the critical area than the currently established structures.

I don't fully understand, so I don't want to take the Commission's time. I can ask questions outside of this.

And I think that others are probably similarly trying to work through this. I don't think you're the only one.

I would ask staff then to maybe clarify just a little bit, because I saw some head shaking.

Yes. So the sections that were referred to are existing allowances for legally non-conforming structures. And so that's in our existing code. We haven't proposed to change it, but it does allow certain instances or And it's kind of like mitigation sequencing right and and that's usually how these things have happened So we do have options for people if they have a legally non-conforming structure to do minor expansions We do require them to be mitigated and so they don't get to just do that. They do have to mitigate in most cases One for one mitigation and in replanting the vegetated buffer so it There are mitigation requirements that come along with that work. And then we haven't had very many instances of seeing this happen. But when we have staff is generally working with people to say, well, do you need to add the extra bedroom closer to the stream or can you do it on the other side of the house? And we favor focusing any new improvements as far away from the critical area as possible. but you can kind of work your way down if you have a legally non-conforming structure to doing some expansions closer to the critical area. We implemented those non-conforming sections in 2017 when we dramatically increased our stream buffers, recognizing that there were a lot of properties that had Legally constructed homes that by virtue of expanding the buffers significantly in 2017 we were creating well not creating but a lot of those Legally constructed homes were were now non-conforming because they were within the expanded buffers And so we added that non-conforming section in at that time Okay

And while we still have her on the line, I would like to just clarify their position on the type F streams.

Sure. Mork, would you like to address, clarify?

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Definitely. Yeah. So within our best global science, we specify that 100 feet is kind of minimum for pollution filtration. And so a lot of jurisdictions have, you know, let kind of utilize that for their type of end streams. And then jurisdictions have used, as we've seen in that great presentation earlier, a lot of different larger buffers for type F. Under the Growth Management Act, you know, we have to incorporate best available science into our updates. And as a technical advisor for what is the best available science for streams, DFW works with jurisdictions to kind of find that number for folks. We would like to see site potential tree height used for all streams, but we understand that aligning with Festival of Science is a lot more nuanced than just a cut and dry, this is the one number for everyone. Great.

Any further comments, deliberation from other commissioners? I suppose if there's no further comments, would anyone like to make a motion? Are we to that point, I suppose? I guess. Or ask more questions.

I guess I have one more question. Is there something we should be asking about specifically? I feel like we've, this is like what round four of this. So I just want to make sure, like, are we missing something? Is there something you expected us to like talk about more?

No, I want to make sure that you guys understand the science, the best available science, how it applies to the city versus the county or an undeveloped area. who would be impacted by the decisions we're making and how much and and knowing that we're an urban environment our sewer and stormwater are separate so homes all throughout the watershed and water runoff goes into the sewer or into the stormwater lines that gets put into the streams and creeks, the same streams and creeks that property owners are on. And then with fish and wildlife that we do have open and we have properties very close to these fish bearing streams that Juanita Creek is you know, I want to just paint that image and that expanding buffers in there isn't going to make the buildings go away. And so trying to create improvements to meet the intent to the best available science is important. And I don't know if there's one right answer. And so I definitely want to lean on you guys as community members. We still stand by what our recommendation is, but if buffer increases or riparian management zone increase or adaptations or something you feel is important, definitely want to hear.

Commissioner Jacobson?

If we can bring the commenter back, I want to just dig into the question on their recommendation. It seems to be just increase the primarily a question of increasing the buffer. And I'm wondering if that is a general idea or if that is specifically if that's being made as a recommendation, specifically acknowledging the reality in Kirkland that by increasing the buffer, we're not going to be prevented. We're not going to be getting rid of the existing buildings. And we're in all likelihood not going to be preventing very much new building. As I understand the argument from staff is that the riparian management zone will allow building, but on net be better for the environment because we have these additional requirements. So I'd like to see what the commentator's response to that is.

Morgan, would you like to provide some insight on that?

Yeah, definitely. As a state agency, we operate under the GMA's main tenants, one of those being for critical areas, no net loss. So we are not asking anybody to move their homes or change the current use of how they're utilizing their property. It's just to save what's left. So I've worked with a lot of urbanized jurisdictions to specify this in their code, stating if there's impervious surfaces in the area, well, maybe we average the buffer to those areas that are no longer providing any function to the critical area itself anymore. So yeah, just to summarize, no net loss is just of what's currently existing and still functioning on the landscape. And again, I've worked with a lot of jurisdictions to kind of solidify that point in their code.

Commissioner Jacobson. So when I hear the concern around trying to prevent further loss, I mean, as I understand, There is not much more. When staff looked at increasing the buffer width, they said, what, it was 20 additional properties? So have you looked at how much of an impact that would actually be for increasing the buffer, how much benefit that is, given that we're not going to see very much change? Yeah.

I think that staff identified the 20 parcels that had not yet been developed, I think that was. And we're talking about people's backyards where, you know, there might still be a lot of tree canopy that's still at risk of being completely taken out. We're talking about the functioning riparian areas that are across all different zoning designations. If there is no riparian area, let's say in the urban downtown core, obviously there's no function there. And so there's nothing really to protect. But we're just trying to protect what's still intact and what's on the landscape, especially in parcels that aren't fully built out in terms of the impervious surface cover. We're just trying to protect what's left and what is scientifically established as the areas that are worth protecting.

Okay, thank you. I want to go to the staff now. If the question is around that existing tree canopy, existing riparian area, existing natural space that is contributing to water quality, would the buffer be better for that or isn't the idea of the riparian management zone to account for that?

Sorry, my ears weren't working. That was the intent of the riparian management zone. So knowing that most of the properties we have are already in the existing buffers, that additional properties are across what we would call a interruption. So for example, across the street. those properties don't count if you increase the buffers. So by doing this riparian management zone, understanding that water comes from everyone, we would have more tree canopy. We can measure it over time. This is something that we can measure. And so that's another thing that is important is that to see if the changes that we're making are making a difference. We've noticed that we don't get very many development permits per year of people that are within the buffers. We'll get 25 critical area designation requests where the people are going in and figuring out where their critical area is and we'll get like five redevelopment requests and oftentimes those can be additions like what we talked about before. So there's not a lot of redevelopment happening and so by increasing the buffers we as a city we can educate but we can't require changes to occur until redevelopment happens. So for example if we have apartment complexes with manicured grass lawns all the way down to their stream We can't go in and change that. We can require that mitigation when they redevelop. Whereas with the riparian management zone, not only do we have the tree protection in the current buffers, but we can increase that further out than we would with standard buffers. So that's just one of the benefits that we were looking at trying to create while not impacting development potential.

And I want to pile onto that and just say the same thing in a slightly different way. I think that to Morgan's point, increasing the buffer on a property that has a buffer applied to it will increase the amount of canopy protection on that parcel. So there are some properties where we will get more canopy or we will get more buffer protection if we expand the buffers. So there are certain properties that, yes, they would be more protected. The riparian management zone, the way that I kind of think about it is that it enlists more properties in helping us protect our streams. Because it goes, like Anna said, beyond what the buffers are now. It doesn't grant interruptions. So even properties across the street. So it kind of enlists a different group of parcels into helping us improve the habitat for our streams. And so we're not talking about the complete, they're not the same data sets. There's some overlap. but they are a little different. And so, thus, I think our perspective that there might be more than one answer to the question and how the riparian management zone concept was developed.

I think we also have some questions at the far end, being on Nolan first.

Everyone already asked mine.

Oh, okay. All right.

I didn't have a question. It was more of an observation. Hopefully I'll say it correctly. What I like about the riparian management zone is that it provides an opportunity to provide for higher quality versus quantity. Just because if you increase quantity, you aren't necessarily gaining anything environmentally. I would rather see more holistic approach across things because just if you increase buffers okay there's no net loss but what are you gaining with that and so I wholeheartedly I agree with this the staff recommendation about the right RMZ is more important than increasing actual offers mr. Medea

Thanks. So I'm going to try to encapsulate this into a fortune cookie size synopsis of what we've heard, and then I'll ask my question. So first of all, I do appreciate the detailed presentations that we've received over the last several meetings. Definitely helpful, and I learn something new every time. I like that you brought the responses to our questions, particularly in the particularly on the number of parcels impacted and the pie chart on the community input, so kudos for getting that information. I liked as well, I think you guys did a good job trying to expand to the multitude of feedback, not the least of which you know, a lot we heard early on from the development community. I think it did a good job trying to balance some of their concerns. And I do think in some cases we did exert local control and you fully satisfied or partially satisfied some of those concerns. I know they sent a letter today at 3. I don't know. We didn't really get as far into that. But, you know, it's clear to me why the RMZ has been proposed as a preferred alternative. It sounds like most of us from this dais now kind of understand that and are leaning into that as an appropriate direction, because it's less adversely impactful. It was like there was a 2417, of which 1,200 are significantly impacted, and they would be in nonconformance. 1353 if we just followed the state of which a thousand would be significantly impacted and then with RMZ it would add 1326 but have minimal debt restrictions so that's like a win-win in my view for trying to manage these environmental imperatives with developmental need but I think maybe that wasn't fortune cookie but so my question now comes down to Your recommendation seems to be not in alignment with WDFW. So Commissioner Reiser asked a question earlier, which is if this is the recommendation and Council approves it, does it move forward or do we continue to have to try to reconcile our approach with what WDFW is requesting?

I think there's two things that are going to come into play in the next couple weeks as council deliberates. One is we'll have more responses from Department of Commerce and Department of Ecology. Department of Commerce is who finalizes our code. So if this takes through and if council approves it, uh we will submit it and um it's department of commerce that needs to approve it that doesn't change the fact that there might be people or organizations that will um want to hear more or deliberate against and that's okay. We feel that in our community with the amount of development we have, with the amount of properties we have that are already in the buffers, expanding the buffers isn't going to increase to more properties in the sense of improving that potential for buffers. But it will impact the people who are already impacted even more. So that was where we came up with this. It was a little bit outside of the box. Kirkland tends to be a community that thinks outside of the box. And if it works, this will be great for our urban environment.

Sure, Rutherford, could I add something as well? Yeah, I think this is a really difficult question, obviously, right? And I appreciate Morgan's comments as well about protecting ecological interests as well. That's obviously a huge objective in our comprehensive plan, and a lot of our regulations have been crafted around it. I think that the challenge that we're looking at is that The GMA, the Growth Management Act, asks us to balance a lot of different things. It asks us to balance environmental protection with economic development and housing production and forest protection and a lot of other things as well. I think it's our job as a local jurisdiction to try to balance that. Again, in the context of there maybe not being a right answer here, There are arguments to be made for the RMZ and there are arguments to be made for the buffers as well. The one thing I did want to add is that I think playing this out a bit, so say the planning commission recommends the RMZ approach, it's adopted by council. I think our understanding is that there could be an entity, whether it's a tribe or a member of the community, that would appeal that adoption. AND IT WOULD GO TO THE GROWTH MANAGEMENT HEARINGS BOARD AND THEY WOULD WEIGH THE REGULATIONS AND THE INTENT BEHIND THE REGULATIONS AND THE LIKELY EFFECTS OF THE REGULATIONS AGAINST THE GROWTH MANAGEMENT ACT. SO I JUST WANT US TO GO INTO THIS DISCUSSION WITH EYES WIDE OPEN THAT IT IS POSSIBLE THAT WHETHER IT'S BUFFERS, INCREASED BUFFERS OR WHETHER IT'S A NEW RMZ THAT THAT COULD BE APPEALED TO THE GROWTH MANAGEMENT HEARINGS BOARD AND THEY COULD MAKE A DETERMINATION ON THAT. SO I JUST WANT TO MAKE THAT REALLY CLEAR.

COMMISSIONER RICER?

Okay, I have some questions on, at the very beginning, Alison, you said staff may have to make some changes based on state and other jurisdictions. Is it better to wait to make a final decision on this until we come to that? And what kind of changes do you foresee?

Yeah, thanks for the question, Commissioner Racer. So the changes that we had contemplated, and apologies, we just got that document emailed out to you this afternoon. We've been working on it for the last couple days. There's a lot of the comments that we received from Fish and Wildlife that make A whole lot of sense to us so some help clarifying some of our definitions So we've noted in that comment response matrix. We sent you which ones we would intend to Address fully After we talked to you so many of those are definitions there's several areas where they pointed out opportunities to clarify the code update references I think they pointed out some areas where our code might be confusing. We actually think our code is responsive to their comment, but maybe it's just not clear. And so some of our comment responses to them, we didn't feel necessitated further amendments, but our responses to them, which we haven't sent them yet, tell them where in the code we actually addressed that comment. And so those are the types of changes that we were referring to, not necessarily a change to the specific stream buffer. But as Adam mentioned, that option is available to Planning Commission to direct us to make that change if that's what you decide.

I have a question sort of digging into the notion of best available science, because we're always deepening our understanding of what is the best available science. And I'm wondering, have we seen any evidence that anything like the RMZ has been done elsewhere where it would show that it's inferior? Or is there a possibility that we could potentially prove it to be, through this as an experiment, potentially an even better science for communities like ours.

That's a great question. We developed the RMZ concept through both urban forestry and stormwater, best available science. So it's taking what was provided to us by WDFW, which is forestry and soil based and ecological. There's nothing that I disagree with what WDFW provided and all of the recommendations. It is a high-level recommendation intended for everyone to look at. And since we are such an urban environment, and we are balancing so many other urban conflicts, not agriculture, not forestry, using that urban science that is still growing and still, I mean, even just three days ago, there was another research paper that came out that was like, oh, this is interesting. So there's still research going on on how urban environments can help protect ecological values, but it's a little bit different. And that's where this riparian management zone concept came into play.

Any further discussion? Or as we contemplate the possibility of making a motion, I would like to remind everyone of staff's request suggestion to include accommodation or acknowledgment that the commission might allow for staff to continue to evolve based on feedback the recommendation to the council.

We do have an example. You do not have to use it.

I'll motion to approve the draft critical area ordinance updates to zoning codes chapters 5, 85, 90, and 95 as drafted by staff and acknowledge staff may make additional administrative edits or revisions to respond to state agency comments prior to council adoption. That's a mouthful. Second.

All right. Commissioner, well, first, since Nolan made the motion, I'll invite her to speak and then Commissioner Rosman.

Okay. I was actually just hoping we would add something. I don't know if it needs to be in the motion or not, but about following up with impacted homeowners to let them know what's decided. And I don't know if you want that to be part of the motion or just noted.

I think we can just note that. Okay. Thank you.

Any further discussion on the motion?

I JUST HAD ONE FINAL QUESTION TO STAFF ON WHAT ARE AM I CORRECT IN THINKING THAT BY INCREASING THE BUFFER WE'RE NOT GOING TO BE IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF THE WATER COMING FROM THESE PROPERTIES JUST PREVENTING IT FROM GETTING WORSE BY INCREASING THE BUFFER OR IS THERE SOMETHING ELSE WITH THE BUFFERS THAT I'M NOT UNDERSTANDING?

IF WE INCREASE THE BUFFERS, WATER QUALITY WOULD BE ADDRESSED AT THE TIME OF REDEVELOPMENT.

Okay. Thank you.

All right. Seeing no further questions or discussion, I'll go ahead and call for the vote. All those in favor of the motion? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? That appears to have passed unanimously. And with that, I think we've reached the end of the public hearing. And we are on to the next item on the agenda. Thank you for all your work in putting this together and carrying us on this journey through learning about something I think is fairly different from a lot of the things that we look at as a commission. So it's been a lot of learning. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is reading and approval of minutes. There are none this time. Next is administrative reports and planning commission discussion.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. A couple items for the commission tonight. First, just to go over your public meeting for the remainder of the year, because we're already close enough to the end. We do have something on your agenda for your next meeting. That is on November 13th. That will be a public hearing for the annual comprehensive plan amendments. Just to remind the commission, I gave you a very informal kind of bullet point list of what those included this year. They're pretty minor. And commission... authorized us to just bring that straight to hearing. So that will happen on November 13th. We're still working on exact schedule, but I think it is likely you may also start to see some of our code amendments related to our compliance with the design review bill come in front of you before the end of the year. We don't have anything formally scheduled for your December 11th meeting yet, but I do anticipate we'll have an item for you at that meeting. Your second meetings in both November and December are typically canceled because they fall on holiday weeks, but if anyone wants to come to council chambers, let me know. I did want to, on the topic of design review and one other one, I did want to provide the commission with just a little update of a couple items we took to city council this week because they hit council before they hit you. So the first is that design review bill. We have briefed you on this, but it's been a while. This process is going to include pretty extensive code amendments to comply with the state requirements. make sure all our guidelines are clear and objective and it also requires us to change how we do design review so change our process and it's going to change the role of the design review board we went and talked to council about that this week because one of the really big questions is the further we got into this project the more we realized if all the design guidelines are clear and objective and they're codified in the zoning code And they're prescriptive. What is there left for the design review board to review? And staff has identified a kind of limited scope of things that we could kind of carve out for a design review board to review. But The changes to the code also would make it possible to make design review purely administrative. And that's where some cities have gone with their updates. So we really thought it was important to, that's a pretty big policy decision. So we did go visit council and kind of ask them for their take on, do you want us to find a way to continue having a design review board and just update how they are utilized in this process? Or do you want to work towards eliminating the design review board and making design review purely administrative? I think we got pretty clear direction from them that they did want to continue to see a role for the design review board in the process. And so that gives staff kind of one of the big policy guiding points we needed to finish up a draft of that code. And then we anticipate bringing those code amendments to you, including some municipal code amendments forward probably in November or December. So coming soon. The other item, if you'll recall, back to spring-ish time, one of the items on the planning work program this year was an item to activate the station area. And in our final direction from council on that task, they really kind of narrowed that scope to two big things. One of them was working with the city's new economic development manager to really market the station area and try to catalyze it. The other was a kind of smaller, narrowly scoped task to consider the idea of minimum density in the station area as a response to seeing that there is a site that is very appropriate for apartment development at quite a high density. It's being developed as townhomes, and so that sort of raised a flag for council to say, hey, do we want that to happen? So they had asked us to put together a briefing on the idea of minimum density or some options that would Kind of help us think through if we don't want that to happen Might the code need to be changed in a certain way. We took those options to them on Tuesday night We had I think six different options doing something like minimum density with minimum number of units per acre doing something like a minimum far doing something like a minimum height And we also, one of the options was just prohibiting townhomes and detached units. So we got a little bit of, there wasn't a clear consensus direction from them, but I think they did sort of gravitate towards the idea of in the near term, prohibiting townhomes, but maybe looking at that being most appropriate in some but not all of the areas of the station area plan to kind of make sure that the larger sites in the station area that are appropriate for more dense development do kind of wait for that more dense development. So general feedback from them at this point, we're going to start working on how the code might need to be adjusted to make something like that happen. So that will come forward to you once we have the draft code amendments. I would be happy to send you all a link to the memo that we took to council because it kind of walks through the process and the options that we took to them.

wanted to give you all an update happy to answer any questions you might have about it at this time but those two items will be coming to you soon uh chris reiser so um is the property um the old crescent lighting site is it in permit now or is it and anything you do now still would not apply to that property would it

That's correct. So they have design review board approval, and I believe their building permits are submitted. So the complete building permit application vests an application. So the change would not impact that property.

Commissioner Bernal? Oh, all right.

Commissioner Jacobson. I listened in on the discussion and listened to the recording. I think there was also some discussion of any potential further action to incentivize development in the station area. And from listening to it, it sounded like there were conflicting opinions on exactly what and when we would be doing that. So could you give a summary to the extent that there's any consensus on the council on that?

Yeah, great point. There was a discussion about what they might want to direct staff to do in the near term to prevent the issue that's been identified, but that there is an interest longer term in other code adjustments that might be helpful in catalyzing the station area. I don't think we had consensus on the timeline there. There were a couple ideas mentioned by individual council members. One was to, for example, extend the pioneer provision for the new affordable housing requirement in the station area. I don't think we got, like I said, consensus direction on that. So our thought as staff is that we'll probably need to go back and get some more guidance from them on what all that package should include and when exactly it wants to happen. I think the planning work program update at the beginning of next year could be an appropriate time to sort of clear up what do you want the scope to be and when do you want it to happen.

Thank you. I just wanted to make sure that we had that in the planning work program discussion.

Yes. On the design review, one of the the roles that has crossed my mind a few times is I think could potentially be valuable to have design review actually review the design review guidelines and you know rather than focusing on specific projects taking their expertise and helping form what those guidelines are and you know I imagine it wouldn't require a whole lot of meetings per year but you know is it part of like a review process of updating those is that something is that like within the scope of what maybe you've council's considering for the role or would it still be project per project basis

Thus far, the only thing discussed has been still using them for project review. In the past, though, as we've amended and adopted various design guidelines, we have touched base with the Design Review Board and with Planning Commission. The last new set we adopted was for the station area, and so we did talk to them through that process.

And on townhomes, another thing that crossed my mind is also with the... discussed it with the goodwill site or at least i can't remember we discussed this with you know here if i just brought up the idea with uh in discussions with the council they're considering townhomes there but i pose the possibility of co-living townhomes where you could potentially have a lot more co-living units still in a townhome built form but providing a lot more uh flexible small-scale affordable living units so there might be an opportunity there for some flexibility in some areas any further discussion from the Commission the next item on the agenda is comments from the audience Is there anyone who would like to speak, make closing comments? Anyone would like to make comments for three minutes? Seeing none, we have reached the end of our agenda. And this meeting is adjourned.