Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

You could all roll, please.

Margaret Bunyal. Here. Erin Jacobson.

Here.

Gina Medea. Here. Julia Nolan. Here. Scott Reiser. Here. Angela Rosman. Here. Rodney Rutherford, absent.

So it is time for items from the audience. If anyone has anything to say this evening before we get started. Either doesn't look like online or in person. I think if we could get started with the first staff report. And hello, I am chairing tonight. Rodney is not here.

Great. Thanks, Acting Chair Rosman. Yeah, so the first item to that is just an update on the housing dashboard. This is something that we launched a couple years ago to make our efforts surrounding housing policy a little more transparent to the community and to help us make better policy decisions around housing as well. And with that, I will hand it over to our Senior Planner, Scott Guder, for the presentation.

Oh, thank you for...

Hold up. Liz, did you want to... Okay.

Great. Good. So this is a long overdue update to the housing dashboard. This was originally managed by another person that was at the city for several years, but I'd left the city and we needed to find somebody to start updating it. I just happened to be the bad person. So I have worked for several months here just trying to figure out what was being put under this housing dashboard and how it was being updated. I gave you a brief overview of some key data points that we use here. Generally, they come from reporting requirements to the Office of Financial Management for population estimates and then our coordination with King County and and the affordable housing that we're tracking with arch as well as some some King County Assessor information this dashboard also contains some some kind of legacy data that's coming from COMING FROM ESRI AND SOME OF THE INFORMATION THAT THEY WERE PULLING FROM THE CENSUS DATA, BUT IT HAS, YOU KNOW, THAT'S STILL PROBABLY SOME STUFF THAT WE'LL NEED TO WORK ON UPDATING IF WE WANT TO CONTINUE TO SHOWCASE THAT INFORMATION IN THE FUTURE. Really what you're seeing here is what we've been able to gather up to certain reporting periods. These range in between 2024 to 2025 based on when the information comes into the city. So some of the information is again being tracked by ARCH, some of the information we're scrubbing from the King County Assessors, and some of this information is coming from us as well as we're tracking permits that are being finaled in our city. Starting on the left side, you see just a general total number of units that we have in the city as of end of 2024. Probably a couple of features that most people would look at is the housing supply by our major housing development projects. This is actually probably the one feature that actually gets updated the most or should be updated the most. permits that are running through the running through the city that might be let me see if I can actually get a that are in review or being issued or have been identified as regulated affordable housing so you'll see information on specific properties that we have here where we can track existing permits that are in review that might have a total number of units, a affordable housing requirement that it's projected to supply some additional affordable housing. The dashboard also collects larger pieces of information related to a neighborhood, how many units that are in the neighborhood, what type of units there are, how many total affordable housing units that we have in the city or in this particular neighborhood, and it just kind of gives you a sense of performance level. We've updated this affordable housing target to start reflecting the new housing, our new affordable housing targets out to 2044. This is really interesting that it's showcasing this, but I guess it must, it does. Yeah, I'll expand it here. I gotta cram, that looks crazy. So this is just kind of showing where our affordable housing targets are. This is just tracking our regulated affordable housing. And you can see that we've been tracking this since 2019, which actually is the first First, that's the first year that we start tracking under the new housing targets that are allocated to the city of Kirkland. I imagine this is going to be updated in the coming years to kind of reflect a little bit more granularity. The granular detail that the county wants to track us, track our affordable housing targets based on income segments. So this is just more of a global kind of, this is what we're regulating. We're not telling you at what income levels are each of these units in. Some of them are below 50% into 30% AMI, and some of them are all the way up to 100% AMI. So we'll start probably thinking about tracking that a little bit differently. This is probably the most, the middle housing permits that we are tracking is probably the one that seems to get the most attention on this dashboard because it really was tracking how well our new codes are working since their enactment in 2020. You can kind of see that there is indeed a lot more middle housing permits that we have been permitting since the adoption of our rules in 2020. So this is just kind of showing you what this data can kind of show us related to the performance level. This too will probably be updated because now we have many more types of middle housing typologies that we're going to be allowing. So we're going to try to start tracking that a little bit more with a lot more refinement. And that. The rest of this is kind of showing, you know, percent of housing. And this is just really broad brush. What is single family? What is multifamily? The way this kind of works is everything that has been identified as single family or single family with a necessary dwelling unit goes into the single family bucket. Everything else is going into the multifamily bucket. So that it does include our... our middle housing, so it's not really tracking that per se. We're working on seeing if we can tease out that a little bit more in our housing data, but this gives you kind of a broad brush of how each of our neighborhoods are working. We might want to think about even looking at other areas where we've directed a lot of housing policies, like maybe tracking our urban growth centers in the same manner, maybe our neighborhood centers where we've talked about we have housing and land use policies around that. And then finally, these are just you know, big numbers that we're throwing out which just reflects all the same information that's being tracked in these other tables. The last feature here is the total housing permits issued. This is reflecting information every year back to 2017. And this profile right here will change. as you maybe i can toggle this as we permit i don't know if i'm i can't see it here i think it's a screen anyway um this this shows you how um in 20 in the in the uh permit uh the the years that we've We've been tracking permits finaled, sorry, from April 2024 to April 2025. This shows you the kind of mix of housing that's been permitted. And that's what that's kind of showing. And there's a toggle on a different, I'm assuming this is what we're seeing here is we're seeing something that is being shrunk down and I'm not able to see the toggle, but there should be a toggle back down here on the bottom, and you can track what type of permits are actually being finaled in any given year since 2017. And so that's kind of interesting to see. What are we actually permitting in any given year? That's pretty much the tour of this. If you have any questions or have any suggestions as to what you would like to maybe see in an update to the housing dashboard, that'd be great.

Commissioner Reiser.

I just had a question on the numbers right below your map where it says 22, 1K single family, 21, 8K multifamily. What are those numbers representing?

So again, that's the kind of, in our housing trends, this is looking at Total number of single family, again, in the bucket of single family homes plus anything that's also an ADU.

Is that existing or what you're predicting? That's existing. Okay.

These are existing. So these numbers right here all add up to that 43.9K, which is actually this total right here across the side. And then any numbers that you're seeing inside of our housing units, LET'S SAY IN THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING TARGETS, IN OUR AFFORDABLE HOUSING PAGE RIGHT HERE AND ALSO IN THE EXISTING HOUSING SUPPLY PERCENT BY NEIGHBORHOOD ALSO REFLECT THAT TOTAL OF THIS 1600 AFFORDABLE HOUSING UNITS THAT WE HAVE IN OUR CITY RIGHT NOW THAT ARE REGULATED. AND IT WOULD BREAK DOWN THOSE BY NEIGHBORHOOD AT THAT POINT, LIKE WHICH NEIGHBORHOOD IS ACTUALLY SUPPLYING THE AFFORDABLE HOUSING. So, yeah.

Commissioner Buñuel?

I think we had already chatted about this earlier. You know, I used to do the amassing the permit data for the population estimates every year, and I was always amazed at the number of demos that happen in Kirkland. And so I'm a little bit... kind of wondering about that 718 units. Does that include demos? And I'm not sure if it's such a big number anymore, but between 1988 and when I left in 2005, there were hundreds of demo permits every year that would significantly lower the number of units added to Kirkland. And I think it's important that the public sees And I'm always curious as to how many demos are happening out there.

Yeah, so the totals that are reflected here are the net new units, right? But getting into that refined kind of information, like how many units were demolished in a given year and what type of unit was being demolished in a given year. would be really important information to track. We do track that. We do actually, at least the highest level, we track it. As you're well aware, we give permit information over to the Office of Financial Management, right? And so we track that information. We would just need to tease out a little bit more from understanding what, what was being demolished at the end at a given point, and we can pull that information out. Yeah.

Can we make a note to have you come back and share that with us when you have it? Yeah. Because I think that's a really good question.

Yeah. It would definitely start, we'd start tracking, you know, a little bit. I think we're going to track a lot more detail. King County has already asked us to start tracking a lot more information for their tracking purposes as well.

Net new housing per year would be a really interesting one. COMMISSIONER MEDEA?

THANK YOU. AND SORT OF SIMILAR TO THAT, IS THERE A WAY TO TRACK, LIKE, IN WHICH INSTANCES SOMETHING UNDERWENT A LOT SPLIT OR, YOU KNOW, A LOT OF SUBDIVISION AND THEN NEW HOUSING WAS PUT ON IT, EVEN IF THE FIRST STEP WAS DEMOING, SO WE CAN SORT OF SEE HOW SOME OF THESE NEW HOUSING POLICIES ARE IMPACTING NET NEW MIDDLE HOUSING OR OTHER TYPES OF UNITS?

WE CAN DEFINITELY TRACK DIFFERENT PERMIT TYPOLOGIES, RIGHT? SO WE CAN TRACK, YOU KNOW, SUBDIVISIONS AND UNILAND SUBDIVISIONS AND SUCH. SO WE CAN TRACK THAT. THE WAY WE WOULD HAVE THE WAY I'M WORKING WITH THE I.T. DEPARTMENT TO TRACK THE MORE REFINED DATA IS TO ACTUALLY JUST TRACK IT AT THE PERMIT level like any new building permit that comes in we start identifying is what is this co-living is this is this middle housing is it attached detached stacked how many affordable housing units are being proposed what ami levels are they proposing it at um we can even try i even have a box that i'm trying to track right now to see you know you know, any particular program that might, that might, we want to track on like our pre-approved ADU plans. So anything that we have pre-approved is that, is that a program that's actually performing and we can start tracking that over time. So there's, there's some interesting things that we can start teasing out at a level, at a permit level, and we can track more, uh, as they're moving through our permit system, that we might be able to get a little more real-time data. Because this stuff is just only put in the system at a quarterly and yearly level.

Somebody has to manually put it in at this point?

Yeah, I had to spend the last three months trying to figure out, well, what did our previous...

know manager do where were they getting this information and how were they sorting the information and so it took a it took a while to to crack the code but okay yeah commissioner nolan so just as far as things that might be interesting and i know these may not be possible so feel free to ignore me if they're not but um you know i'm always curious when we look at some of these numbers is how we as to how we compare to neighboring communities you know is do we have Substantially more single family percentage wise than say like waffle does substantially less So I mean to the extent that that's possible and again, I know that likely enough is not that would be really interesting And I'm also always a little curious to that, you know, we talk a lot about affordability But it would be really interesting to say okay. Well if we are seeing things bought, sold? What are purchase prices or prices per square foot? If we're talking about rentals, what are rentals? Just because, again, that I think it just helps steer the conversation. Again, I don't know how hard it would be to get any of this data. So if it is incredibly cumbersome, I don't think it's necessary. But I am curious.

Well, some of the information we've already collected in our housing inventory analysis, especially the comparisons with other cities, like actual rentals versus owners, and that level of information I think that we would need to partner with, like the University of Washington is tracking some of that work already, and they do an annual report, but we can refine some of that data down to Kirkland if we can. We can start working a little bit more in cooperation with the University of Washington. I know they just came, they have a new housing future center that they just opened up, which might be, you know, it's kind of the Turner Center for Washington. So they'll be, I don't know exactly what kind of partnerships we're going to have with them, but I've reached out to them already and expressed interest that we could partner them.

Thank you. I, one of the things that I've liked about this dashboard is actually breaking down my neighborhood. And it made me realize that I think six out of the 13 or 14 neighborhoods, depending on how you count it, are majority multifamily. And I also want to add to the chorus of the interest in tracking demolition permits. When I records requested the city's permitting database before I joined the Planning Commission, and I looked at it, I think in the same time span that we granted, like three or 4000 units, We granted permits for 3,000 or 4,000 units. We granted demo permits for at least 600 or something. So it's not a massive difference, but it is a sizable chunk. And it would be useful to track it. And I know how difficult it is to parse that database. So I appreciate all the work that you've done and that you will be doing. That said, if we could track... In particular, number of bedrooms. There's definitely interest in the public in terms of making sure that we're building units for families, as well as the amount of commercial square feet and the amount of residential square feet. Residential square feet, bedrooms, those end up being proxies for the same thing, but commercial square feet for sure. Even on the council, there's been concern expressed that we're losing our commercial areas, so it would be good to be tracking that.

Thank you and thank you for putting all the work into this like I know it's a lot and I know we just asked for a whole lot more but I think it's important when we're talking about like long-term planning actually knowing what's going on rather than just basing stuff on vibes so.

Yeah, this is something that also the state wants us to do, and county is asking us to track this data as well. So we will definitely be updating this on a more regular basis. Even if it was just this dashboard we would be updating, we're going to be updating it on a much more timely basis.

Thank you. And it appears that our next thing is the public hearing. That I will.

Yeah.

Do you have any?

No, just, yeah, I just want to hand it off to Tony Levitt, our senior planner. Yeah, this is a public hearing on basically the regulatory side of the design review reform that is being triggered by state legislation. So this has been a really major effort, right? We've had many, many years of design review board review in the city, and this is an attempt to keep the good parts of what we have with that design review process, but conform to the state requirements that Tony will describe in more detail.

With that, I will open the public hearing and also note that in our agenda, it says SB 1293, and it's actually HB 1293, not that it's really important, but for anyone who feels the need to go look up the actual code or law.

Okay, great. Thank you. Okay.

And we have John Regala, our planning supervisor as well, I should have introduced.

One second here. Okay, so tonight's agenda. We're going to start with the staff presentation. Then we'll go into planning commission questions. Feel free, as I'm doing my presentation, if you have questions along the way, feel free to ask me. We'll go into the public testimony, and then at the conclusion, we will do a deliberation for the planning commission. So again, yes, this is based off of House Bill 1293. The RCW that is related to that is RCW 36.70A630, requires that the city apply only clear and objective regulations to the exterior design of new development, that the design review process be conducted concurrently with the review of the permit, and that the decision process for project permits And that the design review process does not include more than one public meeting. So during my last briefing with you back in November, we did talk a little bit about the proposed process. So the council decided to have a to hold the amendments for the Chapter 142, which Chapter 142 deals with the design review process. I'll go over that a little bit more here later. And then for your review is the Chapter 92 amendments, the miscellaneous code amendments, and then also design guideline amendments. So the Chapter 142 edits that the Council did consider at their November 18th meeting, they held a public hearing to consider these changes. And again, that was focused on the design process. And amendments that were considered included the establishment of the administrative design review process. It's actually more of a change to the administrative design review process and the establishment of different application types, basically ADR1 and ADR2 applications. They also, based on some comments that they had received from Planning Commission, they expanded the public noticing of that process to include residents within 300 feet instead of adjoining residents. Additionally, part of that process, they established the design review process that would be reviewed by staff. That includes minor variations like required yards, height in the MSC2 zone, floor plates and building separations in the TL1A and 1B, some articulation standard reductions and Chapter 57 stationary plates. PLAN STANDARDS. THESE WERE BASICALLY TAKEN FROM THE EXISTING CHAPTER 142. AND THEN, FINALLY, THEY ESTABLISHED A NEW ALTERNATIVE COMPLIANCE PROCESS, WHICH WOULD BE REVIEWED BY THE DESIGN REVIEW BOARD. AND WE WENT OVER THAT A LITTLE BIT LAST TIME, BUT THAT'S BASICALLY WHERE THE APPLICANT IS PROPOSING SOMETHING, SOME UNIQUE DESIGN OR SOMETHING ELSE THAT DOES NOT COMPLY WITH OUR DESIGN REGULATIONS, BUT IT GIVES THEM AN AVENUE to propose something that would be consistent with our design guidelines, and that would be reviewed by the design review board. Now that would be an optional process that they would be going through, and we would also limit that to one meeting. So as part of this process, staff's approach with the project was to convert the existing design guidelines into regulations. By ensuring that the intent and outcome of the guidelines were retained, we reviewed existing zoning code regulations to see if guidelines were already being addressed by those regulations. If they were not, we added or modified existing regulations to address those. We tried to limit the new, substantive design regulations and look to give applicants options as they look to design projects. And finally, the new process will keep the guidelines in place. As I mentioned, they will be used by the decision maker as part of the design modification and alternative compliance processes. We showed this slide last time, but I thought I'd bring it back. So this is just an example of how we took guidelines for pedestrian-oriented spaces, and we made edits to the existing design regulations to establish a new requirement. And so this is, again, kind of an example. You see kind of a new, this was reflected in the packet there in the new Chapter 92, a new exhibit to kind of really show what we're trying to get with these pedestrian-oriented plazas. So it's very obvious to an applicant what we're looking for on those. So I'm going to go over some of the kind of main sections of Chapter 92 that we're making changes to. First is we're going to show the pedestrian-oriented saw design requirements for this project. In this case, we found that the existing glazing requirements, which is 75% between two and eight feet, was too much. We had our consultant framework kind of work with us and looked at how other cities had approached this and they felt that the glazing requirement was a little too much. But what we did do is, so we lowered the requirement to 60% and also made that, have to include they could include artwork as a treatment option. So it just kind of gives a little bit more flexibility to the design of those those pedestrian oriented facades. All right. I did want to add, so I did, and you will notice there are some edits that need to still be made within Chapter 92. There are some references to figures that may be off a little bit. We did, after we had sent out the packet on Friday, we did look at this and talked a little bit about giving the applicants, well, first of all, I'm sorry, There should have been a crossing out or facing a public park in the CBD. All of our public parks are surrounded by either a pedestrian-oriented street or a major pedestrian sidewalk. So that sentence was not needed. So we took that out. And then also we added a alternate design treatment option. So if the applicant wanted to propose something else, in that that meets the design guidelines they would have that ability to. So that's one of the changes we're proposing with that. So as far as modulation is concerned, we're looking at So what we wanted to do is look at, first of all, a lot of our zones, especially like our CBD zone, have zone-specific requirements already for modulation. And so in those cases, we are not requiring any additional And we're also in this, for example, the CBD 1A and 1B, they also have some multiple form requirements already that we've carried over into the new chapter 92. So you've got those situations. And so again, we require less or no modulation when they've already got step back or set back requirements in that particular zone. In zones where we have no specific zone-specific standards, we give the applicant the flexibility to select from a list of options. And also, again, there are some district-specific requirements that we have also carried over from the existing Chapter 92. The first option, and I apologize too, this was something, these two graphics ended up somehow getting merged together. So this is a little bit better clarification. So this is the first option for an applicant. is for buildings subject to modulation standards, and they're over three stories, and the building needs to be tall enough to accommodate a required upper-level setback. The idea is that, for example, if you have a 60-foot right-of-way, your building could potentially go up to 60 foot. This was something that framework had looked at and had actually looked at some existing conditions within the city and really saw that this is something that we've seen a lot where buildings, it's again a relationship between the street width and the building height. So this is one option they have. So for example, if you had a building that was 60 foot, I'm sorry, on a 60 foot right away, you could go up to 60 feet in height at the property line before you needed to step back. Again, the zoning regulations would dictate how tall that building could be. But this is a case, for example, if they had a building height that was over 60 feet, this is an option that they have. Option two allows a project to create a visual interest with change in roof lines of all facades of the building adjoining a street or public park. These figures show the options that would be available under this option. Option three utilizes upper story vertical modulation to break up the building into smaller forms. It gives the applicants the flexibility to adjust the size of modulation as long as the area is met. For example, if you had a modulation requirement of 30 by 10, that would be 300 square feet, so they could play around with that. They could shrink it down to like a five foot modulation and then widen the width of the So there's the ability to do that. Option four is an existing upper story setback that we have in the existing code. It just requires a 10-foot setback from the ground floor facade. Again, in current Chapter 92. Option 5 is an upper story setback. What required this, all stories above the third floor must be stepped back an average of 10 feet from the ground floor street facade of the building and a minimum of 5 feet. Also, they would have, it would be based on, I'm sorry, this is also based on Some zoning regulations we have in some existing zones like the CBD and BCX. However, these are a lot smaller than what would be, not a lot smaller, but they're smaller than what would be required in those zones. One additional thing we're doing is in CBD 1A and 1B, the current design guidelines allow a building to cantilever over the sidewalk if the city requires dedication or easement for sidewalk improvements. This regulation codifies this guidance to allow the planning official to approve this. So this would, again, go from DRB to planning. This is just some examples. So what we've done now is we've got the modulation, which are your big kind of movements of the building. And then articulation are really the smaller elements. In the existing code, we call human scale elements. So these are things like horizontal definition on the ground floor, the addition of bay windows, balconies along the facades, covered entries, and window designs. So these are some of the options that they have to choose from to kind of address those facades. Attachment two of the packet includes some miscellaneous code amendments that are needed to reflect the design review process change. This includes multiple references to the DRB that need to be changed to planning official, and there's also some references of guidelines that need to be changed to regulations. Additionally, there are some amendments to convert existing guidelines to regulations and the edit we did find to allow a setback flexibility for properties impacted by easement restrictions in the station area. This would be considered under the design modification section. That would be examples. Example would be like if they had a utility easement that impacted the design of the project. Whoops. Is there? Okay. Let's see. So as far as edits to the design guidelines, those are included as attachments three through six in your packet. Amendments, these guidelines include revisions to the introduction section and all the guidelines to reflect the changes in the design review process. All those talk about the design review board using those as part of their review during the design review process. which is obviously changing. In the design guidelines for pedestrian-rewarding business districts and Totem Lake business district as well, each design element has been updated to include an intent statement instead of an issue statement, a discussion of the elements and the guideline. The design guidelines for the Yarrow Bay business district have been updated to include intent statement. And finally, the Northeast 85th Street subarea do not need those edits because they have an intent statement and design guideline structure. That was actually kind of the basis for all of our other guidelines. We're using that one because it was the most recent one and it was kind of fit within what our consultant was looking, had seen in other cities. As far as, so one of the major edits that staff is recommending is the repeal of the design guidelines for residential development. These design guidelines have been, the guidelines only apply to the existing Rose Hill Business District 8 and Market Street corridor zones, 1 through 4 zones. The planned area 5C was rezoned as part of the stationary work, so that is no longer a zone where it's applicable. These guidelines were originally adopted in 1997 and are intended to be used for attached or stacked dwelling unit uses. Many of these specific guidelines have now been adopted as either design or development regulations within the existing zoning code. The RH8 and MS1 through 4 zones are also subject to the design guidelines for pedestrian-oriented business districts. So any design modifications or alternative compliance requests would be reviewed for compliance with those guidelines. So as far as next steps, so we talked about this a little bit earlier. So any comments or feedback you have for staff, we'll do public testimony. Close the public hearing and then deliberation. As far as next steps in the process, once we have a recommendation, we will be taking that to the council. Our plan is to take that to council in January of next year. And that concludes my presentation.

So questions before we get to public comment and deliberation. No questions? Then I think we can open the public hearing for public comment. Do we have a... Liz Hunt? Come on up. I mean...

Um, good evening commission and staff folks. Uh, I just Liz Hunt from Kirkland Kirkland resident. Um, I'm just going to make one overarching comment on these changes and that is that they're First of all, it was a ton of work to go through all of this and come up with regulations instead of guidelines, so I absolutely respect that work. My comment is more of a general comment, and that is that the state has tasked us with being less arbitrary, less subjective by providing these clear and objective guidelines for design. I see that on the one hand. On the other hand, I see a number of design decisions being shifted from the design review board to the planning department. And there, instead of being out in the open and objective, you now have decisions being made opaquely behind closed doors and potentially subjectively, or at least arbitrary. So I'm not, I just see a difference there and some lack of consistency in that approach. So thank you.

With that, I think I will close the public hearing and move on to deliberation. And I do just want to say to that comment, I don't think we have control over that, that that really has been a state-directed piece of moving this stuff from design review board to staff. So for anyone else who is listening also, I just, yeah, go ahead.

I WILL ADD THAT AS PART OF THE COUNCIL'S DECISION OR REVIEW OF CHAPTER 142, SO CURRENTLY ANY PROJECT THAT GOES THROUGH OUR DESIGN REVIEW BOARD IS NOTICED AND PEOPLE ARE ALLOWED TO PROVIDE PUBLIC COMMENT. So those same type of projects will now be under what we call our ADR1 application and there will be a similar public noticing process and additionally the expansion to more residents around the subject property. So there will still be a noticing process. It's kind of similar to what we do for our other zoning permits where we take in public comments and then we review those and consider those as part of our final decision.

Okay, thank you. Commissioner Medea.

Thank you. In response to the testimony that Ms. Hunt provided, I will share with you that I initially, before I saw the depth and detail in this set of options, et cetera, was afraid of how this would manifest. But I'm encouraged with that level of detail and the sheer number of options that are made available to the applicant. So I'm hoping that when things do get executed, we can be proud of what that looks like. And to the gentleman's point, right, if there is in some cases going to be an opportunity for that one public comment, I would imagine if there was lingering concerns about whether things were made opaquely or out of compliance with these options that we'd have that opportunity to hear those. But I do want to applaud you on the turnaround of this work. Again, I was afraid, but much more reassured at this point. I do have one question, if you'll indulge me. And of course, I can't remember where it was. It had something to do with the mandatory weather covering and then the additional space for the sidewalk. Like, is that just like standard stuff that we do? Or is there any instance where we expect that that's going to actually make development difficult because it was just not that space.

Yeah, so the right-of-way improvement stuff is typically dictated by the public works departments and based on your location of the property, the type of frontage it's on, that kind of thing. The weather protection is also something. There's a little bit of discussion in the design regulations, but then also there's within the existing I think it's 105 talks about weather covering requirements and things like that. Commissioner Jacobson.

Thank you. I just want to clarify. So the staff is asking for a recommendation on basically all of the attachments. Try to formulate a motion.

Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. OK. Let's see if I get this right. I move that we recommend the proposed amendments to KZC Chapter 92, the proposed miscellaneous KZC amendments, the proposed design guidelines for pedestrian-oriented business districts, the proposed design guidelines for the Chatham Lake Business District, the proposed design guidelines for the Yarrow Bay Business District, the proposed design guidelines for the Northeast 85th Street Station sub-area plan, and the proposed changes to the design guidelines for residential development.

I'll second it. Commissioner Jacobson?

I'll just say that I appreciate the work that staff have done. I remember when we were having discussions of clear and objective is not exactly clear and objective. And I appreciate how much work it takes to translate our definitely not clear and objective requirements into clear and objective requirements. And so on that, I see this as a net positive and an improvement, especially on delivering certainty for both developers and the community. But I am a little disappointed that The city has not chosen to use this as an opportunity to make further reforms. And with this, the city will still be making our buildings, in my view, less aesthetically pleasing if you talk with normal people, more expensive to build, more expensive to live in with higher utility bills, and ultimately just worse for the city. Nonetheless, I'll be supporting this because I think it is still a net positive.

Commissioner Nolan?

I'll agree to that I'm supporting it because I think it's a net positive. I will say that going through all of the different guidelines for the different areas, I was amazed at how incredibly complicated it is and how different it can often be between, say, Totem Lake and downtown. And so I'll kind of second Commissioner Jacobson's opinion that this is still very complicated and a little Byzantine, and it would be probably nice at some point in the future if we could get even greater confirmation and uniformity across the city. With that said, I still see this as a huge step in the right direction. Sorry.

Commissioner Medea?

Thank you. I'll be supporting it. I do have a question though with how we monitor success or opportunities to improve and tweak along the way. Is that part of our process?

So one thing that the council did request is that regarding the design review board, they want us to check back, come back in a year and provide an update on how often the design review board has been used and to look and see if any changes may be needed there. And then I think There's, I know of some other House bills or Senate, you know, state bills that may impact some of the design review stuff. So we'll probably be consistently looking at that and making tweaks to things. The other piece, too, is we're going to look to kind of streamline our design guidelines and see if we can consolidate those so we don't have multiple documents. That is a next piece that we're looking at, too.

I guess I will comment that seconding a lot of what was just said, but also reminding ourselves that with this specifically tonight, this is kind of like the baseline middle housing stuff where this really has been directed by the state. So while I agree it is definitely a good step in the right direction as far as clear and objective, it's still very long, but ultimately what was done here was... We have to make sure that it's done properly. But otherwise, this has been state directed. So there's, I think, less feedback and adjustment than a lot of the things that we see. With that, are we ready to vote? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? All right. That passes and we're done with the public hearing.

Thank you.

And then it looks like we have reading and approval of minutes. May 7th, August 28th, and September 25th. Commissioner Jacobson.

I move that we approve the minutes for May 7th, August 28th, and September 25th, 2025.

Second all in favor aye calendar update Yes, thanks acting chair start with calendar update and then talk Yeah, I thought we could yeah we could we could start with the calendar update Acting chair Rosamond and then I'm just talk a little bit about upcoming officer elections if that sounds good so Well, first of all, I wanted to mention that at the last council meeting, there were many, many planning and building items that were adopted by council. It was a really, really heavy meeting. So it's still so tired from the meeting, I can't even talk about it. But the big items from planning and building were the adoption of the critical area ordinance, which the commission worked really hard on. So thank you for that. And then the Juanita CARs as well. The council adopted a version of those that I think reflected a lot of the input that, not all the input, but a lot of the input that the planning commission put into the code in terms of waivers, at least temporary waivers from high-performing building standards, flexibility in terms of affordable housing requirements. They slightly expanded your approach with commercial uses, but generally kept most of it, I would say. Building height increases as well were in the package of amendments that were adopted. Kudos to the Planning Commission. I know that you folks worked really hard on that code, but that was adopted on Tuesday night by City Council as well.

And then the City Council... Adam, on that too, I just want to... I was there until far too late. But I would say the biggest things were basically sunsetting as far as the exemption for inclusionary zoning and... Oh, my God. What was the...

High performing building standards.

High performing building standards with a sunset at the end of 2029. The thought process there was that if we remove them, we can't put them back. So by putting them to the end of 2029, Councilmember Tim Chisholm actually asked that it be discussed again prior to that. I don't think that actually made it into the specific vote, but the idea is that by putting it to the end of 2029, they can look at it again without losing the ability to have those requirements, because once you take them away permanently, you can't put them back. And then I'd say the one other big thing was that they put a retail requirement back on, what is that?

98th. 98th.

um when we had suggested just uh yes i was like wow yes it was too late it was a long meeting but i would say those were probably the the biggest things there were some other minor amendments but i'd say those were the the biggest ones there um and oh a requirement that if a townhome development goes first, there is a $2 million bond basically saying that the front part of the project has to go just to allow for flexibility of starting with townhomes but not ending up with townhomes and then 20 years of just like a big empty front area. I think those were and then otherwise really little stuff.

Yeah, that's right. The only other thing I'll mention, oh.

Can I ask that $2 million bond, what does it cover? Say they default and you have to use that bond, what does it buy?

Yeah, so it was really made by the council distinct from the affordable housing requirements. So that provision went through a couple iterations actually as individual council members were introducing amendments. It originally started as a provision that would allow the city to build an equivalent amount of affordable housing that would otherwise have been provided as part of that mixed use project.

But I think after... That would have been like $20 million or something.

Exactly, yeah. So that would have been a huge amount of money. So I think it became a little more distinct than that. It became more of just a penalty to really encourage the developer, if they're starting with townhouses, to finish up with mixed-use development by a certain time, or else they would have to forfeit that $2 million.

I ask because... Totem Lake. I've seen so many property owners and so many proposals from that property from the early 90s to when it actually was built, and you just don't know what the market's going to do or who the property owner is going to be by 2029. I was a little disappointed in some of that, but

Yeah, well, I think that was the intent of the regulations. As Acting Chair Rosamond mentioned, most of the incentives will go away at 2029 so that, yeah, if there is a new owner by then and or market conditions shift, we'll at least revert back to sort of the standard zoning for the area. The only other thing I wanted to mention for the meeting on Tuesday night is that the City Council also adopted is not something that the Planning Commission really worked on directly, but adopted the development plan for Houghton Village, which is a city-owned property where the old PCC was that calls for a mixed-use project there with a lot of open space and new connections to the CKC and so forth. So that was a good achievement also. In terms of the calendar, the calendar is actually looking fairly light. There's no more meetings in December for the Planning Commission. So we have two meetings in January, January 8 and January 22. I don't think there's anything currently scheduled for those meetings. I think we were anticipating that there would be an officer election, possibly that first meeting in January, if that's the interest of the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission rules and procedures say that the chair and the vice chair and any other officers deemed warranted by the Planning Commission shall be elected by a majority vote of the Planning Commission at the first regular meeting each May. and may be reelected. So we're in a slightly different cycle here, subject to interest of Chair Rutherford and Vice Chair Rosman to continue serving as chair and vice chair. I think in the past they've expressed interest in not continuing to be chair and vice chair indefinitely, at least until May, although that is completely up to them. So I think our proposal would be to continue have an officer election, possibly that first meeting of January, if that's the interest of the Planning Commission.

And I term out at the end of month, so I will not be anything through May. Yeah, just to be clear. But I know that we've had quite a bit of new commissioners on the board in the last couple of years and Rodney and I really just kind of stepped up to kind of keep things smooth as we had a lot of new faces here. I'm happy to help in any support role as desired. I know it is a lot to step into the chair and vice chair role so depending on how folks are feeling, I'm happy to continue to help through the end of my term so that we have time to bring somebody new without throwing them into the fire all by themselves. But I think we can, yeah, we're not doing anything tonight, but the goal was to at least have a little bit of a conversation tonight so that we expect it's coming. Commissioner Jacobs.

Thank you. I am interested in serving. I would very much appreciate if you would stay on as chair so that if I am elected, I would have time to transition and get up to speed.

Commissioner Medea?

I would be interested in serving alongside Mr. Jacobson if either of those combinations came to pass.

I think no matter what, like, By May. It's going to have to be, or by April, really. And I don't know, Adam, can we do like an end of March election or something that supersedes the May? Just because I know we're in such a weird spot and it would be nice to get back on like normal track.

Yeah, I think there's the rules and procedures I think are silent, but I mean, it seems to me that, you know, obviously if a chair or vice chair doesn't wish to continue serving, you have an election to reappoint a chair, to appoint a new chair and vice chair. So I think that would be accommodated within the rules of procedures. I think the planning commission could decide when the next logical places time is for the terms to start.

Yeah. Cause you know, if, um, there is some interest in like a transition period. Like it would be nice to not have a transition and then two months and then like, it seems like it could be agreed upon, you know, past when I'm around, um, like an agreement to say, okay, the elections are happening, you know, in March or whatever. And then we don't do them again until the next May so that it doesn't have to happen over and over again.

Yeah, I think that seems consistent with the rules of procedure.

Just so we're fully aware and I'm not heaping on extra elections for folks. Any other thoughts? Would we have a meeting just for that in January or...

Yeah, unclear. I think Allison is out of the office for a little bit. So I think we will be sitting down over the next couple of weeks and figuring out if there are any items that we could sort of front load for January. But it's possible, yes. if we definitely want to have elections first meeting in January, which is totally fine that we would have a meeting just about those. And there might be other special presentations or special reports that we could bring to Planning Commission as well just to make the time well spent. So we can do some more brainstorming about that just so we're not having a meeting solely for officer elections.

Well, and I think it would be nice if we had one or two minor things, just because while the calendar is light for January and potentially February, I know there's a whole bunch of stuff that's going to come next. And just because it's light now does not mean that we're not going to regret taking advantage of that time.

Yeah, that's right. And we're already starting work on some projects that are already on the work program, like the program for religious properties, right? Allowing for incentivizing affordable housing on religiously owned properties. That's something that might be ready to bring an update on in January. So Allison and I will sit down and try to figure out some items.

Any other thoughts right now? Commissioner Boniel?

Okay. This may be, I've been in discussions, I guess, with David Wolbrecht, but I love the activity map on the webpage, and it's been at a commission, I understand, because of technical difficulties, and I don't know if it's the same technical one for the housing dashboard, but... I know, I was gonna tell you this, I know Liz uses it also. And is there any chance it's coming back? When I hear chainsaws in my neighborhood, I can't look up to see who's doing this when they're not supposed to. And I really, I used it a lot. And when I would get questions when I'm with my neighborhood group too.

Yeah. Thanks, Commissioner Bonilla. I appreciate that you look at that map, and I appreciate that it's a resource to other folks in the community. There are probably only two that do. No. I think there's actually quite a few people that look at it. As a matter of fact, I use it as well. So yeah, unfortunately, that one is operated by a contractor, a consultant. So it's different than the housing dashboard in that it's not administered by us. And I know our IT department is working really, really hard to get that back online.

Okay, so it has a future.

Oh, absolutely, yeah. No, we're actively working on fixing the bug that's messing it up.

Then I won't nag you or David any more.

No, it's okay, yeah. We went back online, too, though.

Commissioner Jacobson?

I JUST WANTED TO ADD A PLUS ONE TO THAT COMMENT. THE ACTIVITY MAP IS THE MAIN WAY TO GET ACCESS TO WHAT PERMITS ARE BEING ISSUED FOR HOUSING WITHOUT HAVING TO GO THROUGH THE WHOLE PROCESS OF MAKING A PUBLIC RECORDS REQUEST AND KNOWING THAT YOU EVEN CAN MAKE A RECORDS REQUEST OF THE ENTIRE DATABASE. SO IT WOULD BE GREAT TO HAVE THAT BACK AND WORKING AGAIN. GREAT. THANKS.

COMMISSIONER RICER?

I WAS JUST WONDERING ON THE WANITA, DID THE MICHAEL SITE GO THROUGH ALSO?

YES. THAT WAS THE 98th AND 116th.

Okay.

But yes, basically all the sunsetting and all the other things was...

Applied to both.

Applied to both. Oh, and they would have to put in the...

Trail.

Yeah. And all of that was also like they were very much in conversation with the owners of the different sites to figure out what would potentially work for them. So now we just wait and see if either of them decide to move forward or not. All right. Comments from the audience? Any other? Nope. All right. Then I adjourn this meeting of the Planning Commission.