City Council - Regular Meeting

Okay, well it is Tuesday July 21st at 6 p.m. And I will call this City Council regular meeting to order I

First item on our agenda, while the mayor is absent today, and Councilmember Hsu should be attending online with us. And he is there, great. And for all who are able, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I'll read our land acknowledgement. We, the city of Lacey, are on the ancestral land of the tribal people of the Treaty of Medicine Creek, including the Nisqually Indian Tribe and the Squaxin Island Tribe. We acknowledge and remember those tribal people not recognized today who were absorbed or relocated into other tribes for survival. And with that, I would request a motion to approve our agenda and consent agenda items.

Move to approve the agenda and consent agenda as published.

Second. It has been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion about tonight's agenda or consent agenda items? Seeing none, all in favor of said motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Seeing none, that motion passes unanimously and we have an agenda. The first item on our agenda tonight is public comment. And it looks like we have two written public comments, which will be added to the record. And it looks like we have one person coming to council chambers to make comment tonight, Carol Collaren. If you would just come to the podium, state your name and the city that you live in, and you'll have about three minutes.

Thank you. My name is Carol Colloran and I live in Lakewood, up the road a bit. So thank you for allowing me to speak to you tonight and for the council and Deputy Mayor Miller, thank you. I'm here to speak about an issue about the Lacey Community Night Market. It is a huge success but as a result has caused serious parking problems. I'm an owner of Lazy Downs Plaza, which you might know is Kitty Corner from the Night Market venue. The market is so successful, but without adequate parking. So attendees are using all the parking spaces at Lacey Downs, and our tenants' customers cannot find parking. Our tenants are losing money. Lacey is promoting one type of business, the small businesses that are at the night market, while costing money for other businesses. We have attempted to inform the vehicles driving in with signage and verbal interactions to let them know parking at Lacey Downs is for customers only. But some people are very abusive and we have had to call the police twice and have impounded a car once. We and our wonderful tenants have worked hard to make Lacey Downs attractive and welcoming for the community, but now the situation with the night market is potentially ruining that image. The night market website politely asks people to not park on private property, but due to the size of Lacey Downs, people do not think of it as private property. and they have said that to me verbally when I have been talking with them. The Office of Community Development has provided two signs saying no night parking, but that has not been enough. The verbal abuse has been escalating with each night market, so we are having to hire security, and we'll be blocking off some entrances. This situation is impacting our tenants negatively as they will have to pay for the signage and the security for future night markets. And some potential customers might be confused by the situation and just drive away. We have emailed and met with the Director of Community and Economic Development, Vanessa Dolby, and Jason Huang, the promoter of the night market. But still there is only talk and two signs. Potential solutions. The night market website could specifically say, do not park in Lacey Downs parking area. The city could, should, be hiring the security for Lacey Downs to inform people to find other parking. Lacey Downs, the tenants and owners did not ask for the night market to be located at the depot and were not consulted nor informed pre-market. The city did not plan appropriately in our opinion. There could be, should be a shuttle from St. Martin's where people have permission to park. because for a lot of people it's too far for them to consider walking. Lacy Downs needs at least eight signs, not two, for all entrances to inform the drivers. I just am presenting you you may have no know some of this situation, but we're hoping that you can help the People that would be implementing plans to help the situation that you would put your weight behind a solution Thanks so much.

Thank you for your comments Is there anyone else wishing to address this council tonight I Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to our next agenda item, which is our advisory board reappointment of Mr. Andrew Shin to our Lodging Tax Advisory Committee. So as chair of that committee, I've been on that board with Andrew Shin for a couple of years. He is a pretty instrumental part of that board. He does a really great job. Comes to a lot of our meetings. I think he's only missed maybe one or two. I think he's an asset to the committee. He has a real head for numbers. He's very pragmatic in his approach to the work that we try to get done on that committee. and it looks like he's up for reappointment. So if somebody would like to provide a motion for said reappointment, I would entertain that now.

I would move to reappoint Andrew Shin to the Lodging Tax Advisory Committee.

Second.

It has been moved and seconded. Is there any comments or questions about this reappointment? Okay, seeing none, all in favor of said motion, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Are there any opposed? Seeing none, that motion passes unanimously, and we will get out to Mr. Chin and let him know that he's been reappointed. Next agenda item is our resolution number 1184, which is our 2027 Six-Year Transportation Improvement Program, and tonight presenting we have Chris. STOLBERG, OUR TRANSPORTATION ENGINEER.

GOOD EVENING, COUNCIL. I'M PRESENTING ON THE TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM, BASICALLY WHAT IS IT AND WHAT ARE THE UPDATES FOR THIS YEAR. Next slide. Do I have control of the slides or is that? Oh, all right, there we go. Okay, so what is the TIP? So it's a near term planning document for capital transportation projects. So the primary purpose, OF THE TIP IS TO TRACK PROJECTS THAT ARE RECEIVING FEDERAL OR STATE GRANTS AND PROJECTS THAT ARE REGIONALLY SIGNIFICANT. SO THIS COMES FROM A FEDERAL REQUIREMENT THAT ALL STATES AND METROPOLITAN PLANNING ORGANIZATIONS Create and create transportation improvement programs and update them their requirement is to update them every four years But in the state law we it requires cities to update theirs annually So it Yeah, and all the projects that are that are on the tip have to be consistent with our transportation comp plan So there are three main types of projects. Well, projects that go on the TIP fall into at least one of three categories. So a lot of the projects that are on there are in more than one category. But it's for projects that are receiving state or federal grants that have not yet been obligated. YOU KNOW, ONCE WE RECEIVE THE FEDERAL FUNDS AND THAT, YOU KNOW, THAT THEY HAVE BEEN OBLIGATED, THAT PROJECT CAN GO OFF THE TIP. AND ALSO PROJECTS THAT WE ARE COLLECTING TRAFFIC MITIGATION FEES FOR THAT HAVEN'T YET BEEN CONSTRUCTED. SO, YOU KNOW, AN EXAMPLE WOULD BE MARVIN ROAD. WE'VE BEEN COLLECTING TRAFFIC MITIGATION FEES. that for a while and we have constructed segments of it but we do still have you know missing segments that we're working on and then also projects that are regionally significant so like Britain Parkway phase two where we where we're going to be widening Britain Parkway in the section that currently just has two lanes So let's see. Um. Actually, I'm gonna go back so so not all transportation projects go on this list. It's for capital projects and You know our like our annual overlay projects a sidewalk maintenance projects those don't go on here and then projects that are fully funded by the city like YOU KNOW, WE HAVE A PROJECT TO DO FOURTH AVENUE BETWEEN COLLEGE STREET AND GOLF CLUB ROAD. THAT'S BEING FULLY FUNDED BY THE CITY. AND IT'S NOT REALLY REGIONALLY SIGNIFICANT BECAUSE IT'S NOT, YOU KNOW, THE TRAFFIC IMPACTS WILL BE VERY LOCALIZED FOR THAT PROJECT. LIKE I KIND OF TALKED ABOUT EARLIER, THIS IS FOR THE CITY OF LACY'S TIP AND THEN TRPC AND WASHINGTON STATE ALSO HAVE THEIR OWN TIPS. SO OUR TIP FEEDS INTO THE TRPC's TIP along with all the other local jurisdictions and then TRPC takes the regionally significant projects and projects that are receiving grant funding and creates their own TIP which then gets sent to the state and the state creates the state TIP or STIP out of out of all of the regional tips along with county tips and tribal tips. All right, so for this year's update, so part of our update process is having a public hearing. So the Planning Commission held a public hearing on June 10th. We didn't receive any public comments. and the Planning Commission unanimously recommended approval of the TIP. So for, and for this year, so we, the only real update is on College Street phase three, and that's because we are, we've applied for a couple of grants for it that we're hoping to get, so we, Yeah, so we have that included in the TIP mostly because it's better to put those in up front because if we don't include it in the update and then we have to go back and add it later, it's a longer process with the state to get that added to the TIP. And then also along with updating the TIP, we also, we update our traffic mitigation fee list. And for this year, we're increasing the cost by 3%, which is, and that comes from the engineering news record construction cost index. So the year over year inflation and that cost index was 3%. So we're updating those project costs by 3%. And then, yeah, so this is this year's TIP, which, yeah, as I talked about, the only real update is to the College Street Corridor Phase 3 project in anticipation of that grant. Any questions?

When would you estimate to find out about the grant process and if they're approved or not?

Um, later this year, we, uh, we did hear back about one of the grants that we did not receive. Um, but we are, um, it was in the highly, I think highly recommended categories. So I think that automatically will put us in the running for the, for next year's round of grants for that, that program.

Yes.

Yes, does this, does our TIP include multimodal priorities? Are those integrated into it?

There are, the projects that are on there all include multimodal elements, so sidewalk improvements, bike lanes, enhanced crossings, but I don't think that there are, there aren't any projects that are, you know, focused exclusively on making multimodal, you know, improvements.

It doesn't say that specifically, but they're just included. Yeah. Okay.

Thank you. So somewhere in here it said that the College Street extension is still somewhere in the process. I saw it in here earlier today. The College Street extension that goes to 15. We are done with that, right? Are there some extra elements that we need to know about?

Um, no, it's the projects. Yeah, that project's pretty much done. There's like a few, um, punch list items that they're working on, but it's, yeah. Okay. Otherwise that projects.

Um, there was one other thing I noticed and I was reading through, there is a, these little sheets, a six year transportation improvement program. If you can see that, can you make sense of this sheet for me?

So yeah, that's that's what goes those sheets are what go to wash dot and that We basically like provide kind of essential information about the project and Yeah, it appears like they have milestones on them right so it goes from Environmental type total length utility improvement and then it gets into resolution amendment adopted in hearing So so this this is something that we can kind of use to track along Yeah, and yeah, and we update Yeah, those get updated every year to along with with this process It's you know, mostly it's kind of I ADJUSTING DATES BASED ON WHEN WE THINK WE'LL ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO GET THE PROJECT FUNDED.

I WOULD MOVE TO APPROVE RESOLUTION 1184, THE 2027 SIX YEAR TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM.

Second. It's been moved and seconded to approve this resolution. Is there any further discussion on this one before we vote?

I just have one thing to add in clarification. You asked a question about College Street Extension still being on It's on our traffic mitigation, so even though it's completed, we can still, for a period of time, collect traffic mitigation from private development projects that would have trips that impact that, so it's until we collect the full collection. And then with the tables, the... the forms for each project that you asked about. It's also a standardized form that is universal with Washington Department of Transportation to identify our funding sources, our projects, estimated costs, so when we put those in for grant funding, it's a consistent form that we utilize, that DOT also utilize for all jurisdictions.

Yeah, it looked like it was, it was pretty, you know, the layout was pretty simple. I was just, it was my first time seeing it. And so I thought, okay, this is kind of a cool little tracking form. Um, I, I hadn't seen it before, so I was just kind of like, okay, so will we get an update of this form in the future?

Every, every year when we update the six year transportation improvement program, those forms will be updated, uh, um, respectively. Um, and of course we have the, the overall table list that has a high information of the project. And estimated cost but these go break down those costs into what are they anticipated funding source? How much is going to be through a traffic mitigation that's collected locally how much is city funds?

how much is state or federal funds and then the the When do we close the loop on the mitigation that we're able to collect on a completed project?

Typically, it's we review that every year Typically, we identify every project a certain percentage of the total project cost that would be funded through traffic mitigation It's once that value is whole So usually somewhere between, depending on the project, 30% to 35% to 40% of the total project cost. But sometimes when you look at it after several years, if it's fully completed, we will take that off the list even though we haven't fully collected. But it just gives that opportunity to see if we get to collect any additional funds over the next year or two. Because our improvement may inspire someone else to improve? True, yep. Because if you build infrastructure, it can also help facilitate private development as well.

Okay. Well, it's been moved and seconded to adopt this resolution. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Is there any opposed? Seeing none, that motion unanimously passes. Thank you for your comments and your presentation. I am going to just take a quick detour from our agenda. to give some people an opportunity to speak real quick. It looks like we have the Women's Dignity School Community Culture Gathering, Ibrahim Dembele. the executive director, and we always like to make sure that everybody gets an opportunity to speak who comes into this council, who wants to address this council. So please go ahead.

Hello, everyone. My name is Ibrahim Dambele. I go by Ba. It's an honor to be here with my mom. She only speaks French, so I'm going to speak on her behalf. So we would love to invite the community and everybody on this council to join us on August 8th. from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Hamtamer Park right here. So we were honored to receive a grant to be able to put together a West African event to celebrate our culture and heritage right here in the South Sound. We're right here in this city that my mom has an opportunity to call home and privilege to call home. So we're just happy to invite everybody. So we have a flyer that this is my first time doing this. I don't know if I should give it to one person then. Thank you so much. Y'all been invited. We're going to have food. My mom is cooking, so you don't want to be missing her food. She's going to be making chicken kebab, beef kebab, and peanut butter sauce. So it will be good. And we're going to have live drumming. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

OK. And let's go ahead and get back to our agenda items. Next item on our agenda is Ordinance Number 1704, the Infill Residential Development Regulation and Lacey Municipal Code Amendments to Child Care Centers and a few other items. And tonight we have Hans Shepard and Jennifer Adams.

Well, good evening Deputy Mayor and Council Members. It's great to be here as always. Again, my name is Jennifer Adams and I'm the housing coordinator here at the city. Tonight's staff is presenting ordinance number 1704, which combines several state required amendments to the Lacey Municipal Code into a single ordinance package. The ordinance implements recent changes to state law affecting residential infill development, accessory dwelling units, parking regulations, childcare centers, and existing building conversions. So these amendments are presented together as one consolidated ordinance, mainly due to their overlapping and related nature. Okay. Consistent with the City Council adopted Community and Economic Development Work Program for this year, 2026, the Planning Commission has conducted an extensive review of all docket items and unanimously recommended draft amendments move forward to City Council for your consideration and approval. Although each docket item addresses a different state mandate, together they ensure the city's development regulations remain consistent and compliant with recently adopted state laws. So tonight my portion will focus on the residential infill development and accessory dwelling unit updates. And then following my portion of the presentation, Hans will come up and provide an overview of the remaining code amendments. So this slide just simply summarizes the eight primary state legislative mandates addressed through this ordinance number 1704. Because council received a detailed briefing on these bills during the June work session, I'm just going to take a few moments and focus on how the ordinance implements both the middle housing and the accessory dwelling unit requirements. All right, so this will be docket item 05 pertaining to the middle housing. So House Bill 1110 identifies several middle housing types and requires cities to formally accommodate six housing types. The ordinance before you this evening includes duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhouses, cottage housing, and stacked flats. While several of these housing types were already permitted within LACI, the legislation establishes new statewide requirements governing where they must be allowed, the minimum residential capacity, and then how they are regulated. So the proposed ordinance responds by establishing a new infill residential development chapter to be cited as LMC 1652. that incorporates these requirements. This also provides flexibility in site design and housing configuration and includes the affordability provisions established under state law. This is all while maintaining the city's existing zoning and development standards wherever possible. And then moving on to Docket 04, accessory dwelling units. The second component of the new proposed infill residential development chapter also implements House Bill 1337. This bill established new statewide requirements for accessory dwelling units. The bill established minimum standards that cities are now required to incorporate into their local regulations, including such things as the number of ADUs that are permitted, the maximum size, and then some other development standards as well. So again, rather than creating separate code chapters for both the middle housing and the accessory dwelling unit provisions, staff took the approach of consolidating both sets of these state requirements into this one single infill residential development chapter. We do believe that this provides one coordinated framework for administering residential infill and then again, maintaining consistency with the city's existing development and also design review standards. So that really concludes my short portion this evening. So I'll invite Hans up and he'll take you through the rest of the ordinance. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, counsel. And I will note that Jennifer and Vanessa and I will all be available at the end of this for any questions that you may have. But with that, I will jump into the next section of slides here. AND THESE ARE A LITTLE BIT OUT OF ORDER AS FAR AS OUR DOCKET NUMBERS ARE CONSIDERED. BUT THIS IS HOW WE TACKLED THEM. SO THIS IS HOW WE'RE GOING TO PRESENT THEM TO YOU GUYS. SO MY NAME IS HANS SHEPHERD. I'M A LONG RANGE PLANNER HERE AT CITY. AND DOCKET NUMBER TWO HAS TO DO WITH CHILD CARE CENTERS. SO THIS IS AGAIN ONE OF THE AREAS THAT WE WERE REQUIRED TO UPDATE AS PART OF STATE LEVEL REQUIREMENTS. The bills that relate to this really require that child care centers are now a permitted use within all zones within the city. The caveat there being our light industrial zone, we're allowed to create a conditional use pathway for child care centers within that zone. But all other ones are now essentially child care centers are permitted as an outright use. One thing I do want to actually take a step outside of kind of the docket here really quick and talk about one of the things we are also carrying forward as part of this ordinance and something that we took to you guys as part of the work session is a clarification on the mini storage within both of our woodland district and our general commercial district. This was a request from our current planning staff. SINCE WE'RE CRACKING OPEN ALL THESE CHAPTERS AS PART OF THE CHILDCARE CENTER, IT WAS AN OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE THOSE CLARIFICATIONS AS WELL. THAT IS REFLECTED IN THE ORDINANCE AND THAT WAS ALSO SOMETHING THAT WE BROUGHT TO YOU GUYS AS PART OF THE WORK SESSION IN JUNE. JUST WANTED TO CALL THAT OUT. Moving into docket number three is our parking updates. There's a range of parking related subjects that are really covered here. But really what this does is it sets new maximum minimums. And what I mean by that is it caps how many parking stalls we're allowed to require in different instances depending on what the type of use is. And we have a table that goes through this. It does not cap the amount that a developer is allowed to build, but it caps the amount that we're allowed to dictate as part of that process. So often what we end up seeing in practice is that developers are gonna come in and build the appropriate number of parking stalls based on whatever it is that they're looking to construct. So I don't really see this in practice impacting a whole lot of what we do on the day to day but it does update our parking section of our code a little bit. It also has call outs for different types of uses where we're not allowed to provide any or require any parking. Again, that is us requiring it versus a developer opting to provide that parking based on that allowed use. And then docket number eight is conversion of buildings. So this actually, a couple different bills spoke to this, but it touches a range of different topics from facade modulation, upper level setbacks, to density requirements, and then housing units permitted in different kind of commercial areas. It was a little bit of a catch all, a couple different bills speak to this. This largely landed in our, early in our code. IN THE GENERAL PROVISION SECTION BECAUSE IT DOES AGAIN SPEAK TO A LOT OF DIFFERENT AREAS OF OUR ZONING AND DEVELOPMENT REGULATIONS. BUT THIS IS AGAIN IN YOUR PACKET. Here is a slide that really runs through all the different code chapters that are touched based on all the different bills and provisions and updates that we've done. Starting from Title 11 that goes into conditional uses and permits and then Title 14 is building and construction chapter. Both design review and impact fees were touched in that chapter. And then the bulk of the work actually landed in Title 16, our zoning chapter. And nearly all of our zoning chapters were actually touched by one bill or another. So you're going to see slight changes and updates throughout. So that's largely why your packet is so long. But as far as actual changes that took place, it was a few definitions or words here or there that did, as a result, impact the entire chapter. With that, we did want to provide a little bit of a timeline as far as where we started with each one of these projects leading up to where we are today. So back in March of 2026 is actually the first time that we formalized this process with you guys as part of a work session and a meeting. That's when we really adopted the CED work program where all of these items were identified. THAT SAID, OUR PLANNING COMMISSION HAS BEEN WORKING ON THIS SINCE NOVEMBER OF LAST YEAR ALL THE WAY UP THROUGH JUNE OF THIS YEAR WHEN THEY PROVIDED THE RECOMMENDATION ON THESE TOPICS. WE HELD A PUBLIC HEARING IN MAY ON BOTH OF THESE TOPICS, THE ONES THAT JENNIFER, I SHOULD SAY, COVERED AND THEN THE ONES THAT I COVERED AS WELL. THE FIRST PUBLIC HEARING ON MAY 13TH FOR ACCESSORY DWELLING UNITS AND MIDDLE HOUSING AND THEN MAY 27TH FOR DAY CARE PARKING UPDATES, CONVERSIONS OF EXISTING BUILDINGS AND THEN Following both of those public hearings Planning Commission gave a formal recommendation For these codes to be carried forward to you guys not for additional review and then on in June was when we Met as part of the work session to review all of these topics in their entirety So with that we'd be happy to answer any questions in a motion Let's do a motion

Move to adopt ordinance 1704, amending the Lacey Municipal Code consistent with state required amendments related to parking, daycare centers, conversions of existing buildings, and infill residential developments.

Second.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. Let's have questions and discussion. Council Member Greenside.

Can you go back to the parking for a second, Hans? Yep. So under the new guidelines from the state, we can't require more than one parking spot per single family home, correct?

That's correct.

What was the number before? Because if I recall correctly, at least like in Horizon Point, I don't know if you were involved in that, but I know you were, Rick. They required four parking spots for every home. built in Horizon Point? Two driveways, two streets? Two driveways, two garages.

I think the standard was two off-street parking spaces had to be made available, thinking of two-car garage, but also you had a driveway apron, a 20-foot setback that would allow two additional, but that wasn't necessary. A four-car requirement was minimum two off-street.

It was a two-car requirement, okay.

Yeah. So the way our code was written before this draft language was set up is that we had basically a minimum recommendation and a maximum cap and then a list of different uses that came down the side. So for single family style developments, residential developments, our recommended minimum was two before this. So that would be dropping down to one in this situation.

Okay, and just kind of one other question on it. On this whole thing, whether we were to pass this or not, this is state, the state's already passed this, correct? So this is going into effect whether we pass it or we don't in the city.

In large part, yes. The one caveat being the mini storage that I did want to call out separately. That was something that was asked by planning.

But the rest of this, the state's already done, and basically there's really no reason for us to be taking action on it other than the state requires us to, like so many other things that make zero sense.

As of June of this year, we are preempted by the state on all the topics that we're talking about.

Thank you. I just wanted that to clarify that.

Council members Turner please When it comes to infilling can you help me understand is the ordinance allow for infilling across the city including high-income areas And this is where I might invite Jennifer to come on back up Hi Jennifer

Hi again. I think that's a really fair question. So with the middle housing particularly, the bills read such that cities need to allow these in all zones that are zoned predominantly for residential use. For the City of Lacey, the zones you can anticipate that being primarily will be our low density residential, our moderate density residential, and then our Lacey historical neighborhood. So I'm not sure if maybe that answers your question in part.

I think so.

Yeah, it's based off of zoning classification versus income levels. So it would be universal across those zoning classifications in the city.

Okay, thank you.

So I know that we are having to take action on something that's already, you know, state mandated. And we've crossed this bridge before and we, you know, we still are required to do it. Thank you for the staff report. There was a lot of links and a lot of pages. It was, you know, not exactly the easiest read, but...

I'm just going to just quickly. So I'm going to abstain from this vote. Same reason I've abstained many other times in the past. I think it's ludicrous and actually I think it's. somewhat insulting to local councils that we have to take action on something that we actually have no say in. Whether we vote yes or no is irrelevant. We were elected by the people to make decisions. This is not decision-making. This is just nothing more than rubber stamping something the state's already done that they've required us to do. I appreciate all the work that goes into it, but for that reason, I will be abstaining from this vote.

Okay. Thank you. So I did have a question, though. So for residents under 1,200 square feet, I understand what you're saying. It's highly unlikely that a developer is going to build something, not put a driveway or a parking stall or two. But let's say in the event that somebody's building something, it's less than 1,200 square feet, and they don't complete the project. Somebody else maybe steps in and decides, I don't want to put a driveway in. I don't have the funds to complete this or whatever the case may be. Then we're just kind of stuck with... this property that doesn't kind of fit the neighborhood because it's there's, there's a front porch, but everything else is grass, right? I know that's, that's silly and it's, it's small, but that, that is my question. So if, if, if somebody built something and they don't complete it and, or for whatever reason, it doesn't have, um, parking on site, we're just kind of stuck with it.

Yeah, so based on the state mandated language, that would be a scenario that would be possible. Whether or not that's likely to happen is another case, but based on what's before you in the ordinance and what the state mandated bill includes as far as language, that is a scenario that could be an outcome of this.

Okay. And I haven't seen it. I have seen incompleted projects, but I haven't seen anybody just, you know, I'm going to build this 1,200-square-foot home, and I'm not going to put a parking space anywhere on the site. So it's highly unlikely I understand that, but I just wanted to make sure that I was clear on what this was saying. Okay. Any other comments or questions from the council? Council Member Turner, you want to? I want to make sure that we are all super clear before we vote. So if you want to use some clarification.

I want to make sure I completely understand this. The ordinance now says that we're not requiring as many parking spots. So does that translate into more affordable housing? Because it seems like the more parking spots you have, let's say they cost $30,000 each or whatever, then that gets folded into the rent that people have to pay, whether they have a car or not. So I'm just trying to work that through in my head. So does this mean more affordable housing because you don't have as many parking spots?

I can... Respond to part of that. So again, this is coming down from the state level, but within the bills that the state puts out, there is kind of a general intent statement section to those bills. And some of the motivation behind the reduction in parking requirements does link back to increased affordability of housing. Okay. So there is a connection there.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay, looks like Council Member Hsu has a question or comment.

Yeah, this is a question mostly about how decreasing the amount of parking required for housing and smaller commercial spaces could potentially affect the, I guess, our ordinances or zoning for say commercial parking lots that would be used for other things. And I know that this isn't necessarily attached to this one, but I would love to have some more information about how we currently deal with those types of parking lots. And if there's any future like, I guess, discussions around how these parking updates will affect the demand for those types of spaces.

Vanessa, do you want to respond to that one? I can take a stab at it. So the ordinances before you will not affect any existing development. It would be the choice of that property owner to make changes and come in for permits. And in theory, if their parking lot exceeded the requirements that our code has, they could maybe add commercial permits. Development and use up some of that surface parking space if they wanted to but anything that exists out there will not be Impacted by the adoption of this ordinance.

It would just be new development I Just one last thing I remember an ordinance that we put forward And in that ordinance we I think made for electrical vehicle chargers So is this gonna this is gonna affect commercial level as well, right? and or

So nothing in what we're looking at today specifically speaks to electric vehicle charging stations. That is something that we currently have in our code and we are working to implement. But nothing here is going to impact any of that language specific to electric vehicle charging.

Yeah, and I saw that in there, that the electrical portion isn't in there. However, we did make an ordinance requiring developers to do, I think it was 5%. electrical and maybe we can bring that to a work session and kind of take a second look at that and see if we're still in line with because of the reduced amount of stalls that we may potentially have in future development and see if we're if that 5% is still in line. I remember at the time we were considering 10%. But at that time, we were thinking, you know, that 10%, the cost that it's going to cost the developers to do that 10% was something that we just weren't comfortable with doing to developers. And so we reduced it to 5%. But I think if it's okay, City Manager, we could put that on a future work session just so that we can bring that back and take a look and see what that 5% is going to do now.

And I can address... high level what you're talking about there is uh requirements within the international building code as it relates to providing electrical vehicle charging stations and surface parking lots and then ev ready stalls those provisions are still in place and we will implement them pursuant to the building code which as i think you all are familiar kind of comes from the state as well and we don't have a lot of flexibility on how those are implemented either Beyond what's required by the building code, my understanding is our local zoning regulations related to parking do not require e-vehicle charging stations that are in excess of what the International Building Code requires today.

Okay, thank you. Is there any other comments or questions from the council? Okay, seeing none, we do have a motion and a second to adopt Ordinance 1704. All in favor, please say aye. Aye.

Aye.

Are there any opposed? Seeing none, one abstention. One, two, three, four, five yeses. That motion passes. And thank you so much for your presentation tonight.

Thank you.

Okay. Next item on our agenda is the city manager's report. Do you have anything?

I have no report tonight. Other than I just want to highlight the invitation that Council received for the West African Cultural Event as one of those new events that are designed by the Council's policy that established the Cultural Event Grant Program. So it's nice to see that that is being used fruitfully to create these other events within our community that can bring some cultural values.

Is this something that came out of our $300,000?

This is a separate account that was... a, uh, A grant fund that the council decided to implement that allows up to a maximum $5,000 award for certain events capped at a total allotment for the year of $25,000. So this is one of the opportunities that was seized out of that program that the council enacted. Great. I think that would make them the first person.

For any of those, if they aren't able to come, could we make sure that if we do grants for people that we get notified or something like that?

We will have a list of the scheduled events, and we'll get that out to council so you are aware and can attend if you are able to.

Thank you. Okay. Next we have council reports, and I am up first, and I do not have a report. Let's see. EDC has July and August off, so I'll be reporting again on them come September. And then LTAC will be in full swing come in September as well. And I think that's it.

Happy summer.

Happy summer. Council Member Greenstein. I do not have a report. Council Member Cox.

I have one report on the Intercity Transit Authority meeting that took place on July 15th. It was a packed agenda. We conducted a public hearing on the draft 2026-2031 transit development plan. We did not receive any public comment, and the plan is scheduled for a vote by the authority at their August meeting. We authorized the general manager to execute approvals under the existing contract with Forma Construction for work that's been going on at the Pattison Street site. These include a metal structure that's being adapted and interim hydrogen fuel projects. That piece of it is for, not to exceed $750,000. And then, There's also a 500,000 contingency that our finance manager felt we should authorize as needed for the FORMA contract, sorry. So this brings the new total baseline project for the whole redevelopment there of Paterson at 88.7 million. We adopted a resolution amending the 2026 budget to reflect financial activity during the first half. We received an update on the walk and roll, well, excuse me, from the Walk and Roll program developer on the 2026 Bicycle Challenge and Bicycle Community Challenge, we heard that the vanpool manager's efforts with WSDOT has resulted in increasing the vanpool's funding subsidies by $222,631, which is Pretty amazing when you consider it was only $94,000 last year. We're also working to keep abreast of proposed sweeping changes from the Federal Management and Budget Office pertaining to federal financial assistance. General Manager Bergkamp gave a few examples of proposed changes. One, agencies will have the discretion to terminate discretionary grants if an award isn't achieving program goals, it isn't supporting agency priorities, or if deemed no longer in the federal government's interest. A 90-day suspension authority is established, which would allow federal agencies to pause awards and issue stop work orders to recipients while considering the future status of the award grant. Another piece of that, political appointees at federal agencies will use independent judgment when evaluating grant applications, inserting a more direct political lens in grant reviews. There's a requirement to ensure that federal funds do not, quote, fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate DEI gender ideology or pediatric gender transition procedures for individuals under 19 years of age. And there's several more, including a requirement to participate in Department of Homeland Security's E-Verify program for employment eligibility of both employees and contractors performing work under federal awards. The reason the general manager brought this out is she says there will be, these changes will increase administrative burden, further unpredictability in federal reimbursements, and introduce at-will termination of grants mid-project by federal agencies, and potential loss of investment revenue for delayed repayments, including the uncertainty of federal funding as administered by the current administration. Don't know quite how this is going to affect Lacey, but I think I Needed to get that out on the record so that you all are aware of it See there's one other there's That was a big meeting. Okay. The Lacey Transit Center is scheduled to get four to five perimeter loading zones and real-time signage so that people can see where buses are and when it's going, as well as a crosswalk and flashing beacons and a stormwater facility upgrade. And then finally, General Manager Bergkamp mentioned that she had had a meeting with council members, Ryan, see you and discuss the possibility of more bike valets at City of Lacey events. So she heard you, Ryan, and that's my report.

Council Member Denning? I don't have a report. Council Member Turner?

I do have a couple of short reports. I attended the Nisqually River Council meeting on Friday. That was the 17th. And we started out talking about some of the concerns with Salmon, the current I-5 crossing over the Nisqually Delta. is one of the major barriers to salmon survival. And we need the Nisqually Delta to grow up safely, but the way I-5 was built, it doesn't spread the way it needs to. So there was a discussion about trying to figure out how to fix that, and I know that there are gonna be some conversations with our congressional delegation as well as with some state legislators. Fixing this will not only help the baby salmon survive, but it also reduces the flooding pressure and allows for sediment to move more freely and a number of things. So that's one thing. And then I'm always impressed by the number of kids that are benefiting from the council members in terms of learning about the land. They have a number of projects, everything from plant scavenger hunts to cleaning areas of scotch broom, which I didn't know what that was, but apparently it's a very aggressive plant that they needed to get rid of. in order to restore the prairie habitat. And they're learning about how to be good stewards in terms of how to take care of fish and whatever. So I'm always impressed by the number of projects they have the school kids involved in. The last thing I'll highlight is that we were asked to take a vote to prioritize the 2026 salmon habitat priority list. It was a list of projects. There were five of them. that totaled 2.874 million dollars which is an increase in the funding that they had previously which was 1.815 and it had like i said there were five projects i i let them know before they took the vote that i was going to abstain because i didn't have enough information prior to the meeting to make a good decision um But the vote passed on without me, so it did pass. They did approve the ranking. So that's Nisqually. I also attended TRPC on July 10th. We talked about Cascadia High Speed Rail and the I-5 program. The Cascadia High Speed and I-5 program is Washington State's plan to make travel safer, faster, easier between Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, and other parts of the state. And so it has two parts. One is they're still looking at high-speed trains that could go up to 250 miles per hour. And to do that, they need to look at, do we need to have a new train line? How often would it run? Where would the stations go? What would the cost be? And so they're still looking at all of that. The question I had to them is, once you decide where the stations are going to be, will you do some sort of modeling to figure out how the placement of those stations will impact housing affordability? And they said that they were going to do that. They weren't quite there yet, but maybe in another year they would. The other part of it is a master plan for I-5 to modernize it, to prepare it for the future, and to make sure that we can go from border to border. And so right now, I-5 is too crowded, needs more preparation for floods or earthquakes or things like that. So that's another thing that they're looking at. They combined both of these together into one project so that all travel options are working together. We also talked about multimodal levels of service, and TRPC reviewed the top measurement options for each mode from a systems perspective. They're making efforts to make sure TRPC is asking the right questions. making sure they're looking at their right measuring systems and how they do or do not support people who use the system. The question I had for them as they looked at, I think there were four areas of multimode, modal transportation, pedestrians, bicycles, transit, and vehicles, I was looking for something that that assured me that they were going to include people that use wheelchairs, strollers, carts, walkers, that sort of thing, because it's not included in the language. So we had a discussion about that and they said that they would make it clear that under the pedestrian area, they would make sure that they say that this includes people who use rollers of any type. Um, Okay, so the other thing, TRPC is doing a little bit of restructuring, including adding a deputy director. And that's all for TRPC. I enjoyed also representing Lacey in the Lake Fair Parade. That was a lot of fun. My arm is getting tired with all these parades. But it was fun. It was a lot of fun. And I'm looking forward to seeing people at Cutters, along with my colleague. Looking forward to that. And reminding people that I do have a website now, or a Facebook page, Councilmember Maren Turner on Facebook. I'm looking for followers. Okay.

Councilmember Sioux. Yeah, I have one very quick update. ORCA met on 7-8, and... There wasn't a whole lot that we went over. It was just a kind of an overview of the Lacey, Tom water and Olympia area for air quality. And the other 2 major things we discussed was that we're not having a meeting in August. So we'll meet again in September and at some point. between now and I believe November, a federal delegation is gonna be coming and visiting the Lacey Monitoring Center at Mountain View Elementary School. When I get more information on that, I'll definitely pass it on. But yeah, I think the last thing that they mentioned was that you can basically Google Washington smoke blog to find live updates about smoke activity in Washington state. And that is the end of my report.

All right, well, it looks like we have reached the end of our agenda. Just a couple quick notes before we go. We have some events happening this week. We have Cops, Cars, and Kids, Saturday, July 25th. That is going to be here at the new police station. It is not open yet, but we will be having a quick event there. And then Thursday morning, we will be having Coffee with Council. That's this Thursday, July 23rd at Cutter's Point. on Lacey Boulevard at 7.30 a.m. We hope the public can join. I believe it is Council Members Turner, Dunning, and... No.

Turner and Greenstein.

Turner and Greenstein? I thought there was three of us.

No.

Okay.

I was thinking it was tomorrow, but it's Thursday.

Okay. So that is Thursday morning at 7.30. So we have reached the end of our agenda, and if there is no objection, I'm going to call this meeting adjourned. As usual, you keep it classy, Lacey.