Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Hey, we got a bonus. Now we're at six.

Six of six.

All right, folks, we're gonna go ahead and get started.

I'm gonna

The roll call, we're just missing Jeff Gadman, Spencer Zeman, and Jennifer Hyru, who we knew about. So everyone else is present. Thank you for being here. We're going to start with our land acknowledgement, and Kirian has agreed to share with us.

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 Squaxin Island Tribe. We acknowledge and remember those tribal people not recognized today who are absorbed or relocated into other tribes for survival. We recognize the ancestors and their descendants who are still here. We recognize and respect the tribal people of the Treaty of Medicine Creek as the traditional stewards of this land since time immemorial. and their role today in taking care of these lands in perpetuity. We recognize the responsibility to call attention to the histories of dispossession, forest removal, and abridged treaty rights that allowed our nation, state, and city to develop as they have today. We recommend that community members read the Medicine Creek Treaty of 1854. Thank you very much.

Moving on, I'm looking for approval of the agenda and consent agenda items, starting with the approval of the agenda.

I move to approve the agenda.

Judy moves. Second. Aaron seconds. All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

All opposed? Abstaining? Motion carries. Now looking for approval of the July 22nd, 2026 meeting minutes. Motion to approve.

Second.

Aaron and Kieran. All of those in favor of approving the July 22nd minutes, please indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

All opposed? Abstain? Motion carries unanimously. Moving on. Next is public comment. It does not appear that anyone else is in the audience virtually. There are no attendees here publicly. So we will move forward on to commission member thing. No updates. Judy? I do not. Kerian?

Yeah, I got to volunteer at Nisqually, the paddle to Nisqually. Aaron did see a protocol and got to learn about so many tribes and see this just amazing community event. So it was really a blessing that Nisqually did this and and shared so much generosity with our community and other tribes were very gracious and generous as well. And it was, um, it was an experience that I hope that everybody gets a chance to participate in one day.

Thank you, Alan. Oh, I just, uh, I've been doing, um, uh, Spokane, uh, We ran about 11,000 pounds of supplies to the community down there, getting ready, packing up and loading today. And then we got another delivery on Friday. So we've got a couple of runs this week and continuing to watch out. Majority of the stuff is sustainment, but now they're letting the residents back into their communities. That's actually when... the list is going to grow because they're going to find out what is needed and stuff like that. So we're prepared and we're also looking at the other wildfires as well. So we're activating a lot of ourselves down up in the I-5 corridor to get ready to support our east side brothers and sisters down there. Thank you, Alan.

Tonya, anything to share? No. I think all I have is if you haven't gone to the Great Kuyu Park, now that it's 14 month old loves it even though he's too small for everything but he really enjoys hanging out in it so uh it's on carpenter road magnificent only phase one is done so far so more to come in the years once we get some more funding and money uh but i encourage you to check it out if you haven't already so moving on to our department report

Um, Ryan's not here, obviously. Good evening, everybody. I'm Sarah Schelling, the current planning and economic development manager, just kind of sitting in Ryan's spot tonight. There is no department report except that he's not here tonight. So...

There is no public hearing, so we'll move on to new business. So you all were briefed with packets earlier at the end of last week for our street merchant regulations. So Shannon has a brief presentation and some material to go over, and I'll hand it over to you.

Okay. The awkward pass. Thank you.

All right, great. Well, thank you everybody for being here tonight. I haven't been able to have the opportunity to come back to Planning Commission probably since last October, so I see some new faces, at least to me. For those who don't know me, my name is Shannon Benson. I'm a Senior Project Planner with the City of Lacey, and I'm here today just to provide a really introductory briefing into some upcoming work that we have going on that's going to be in front of you a lot more in the coming months. And that is our Street Merchant Update. So as far as what a street merchant activity is, it is generally a merchant selling goods from a fixed location, typically within a public right-of-way or a private parking lot, from a temporary seasonal structure. So often we see that as something like a retail cart, a food truck vehicle, things like that. Generally within our code, they're permitted to sell food, non-alcoholic beverages, newspapers and magazines, and handcrafted goods. So you're looking at those temporary retail stands that are usually there though for longer than six months. Within the Lacey Municipal Code, all of our standards for street motioned activities are located in Chapter 1670. That's in our zoning code. That chapter was initially adopted in 2001, and it was last changed in a substantial way in 2014. The 2014 update kind of appeared to try to bridge some gaps from 2001. Obviously a lot with regards to technology and mobile vending changed throughout those years. So what was initially a lot directed towards newspaper stands, they tried to expand to permit things more like food vehicles. They changed the review process so that it was less time, less noticing for neighbors because there was an uptick in demand. That being said, those codes and regulations from the 2014 update are still what staff is working with today, even though years and those regulations generally are our general location standards which is what zone street merchant activities are allowed in those are usually going to be zones where you would regularly see commercial activity or any type of food service so commercial and light industrial zones community office our mixed-use high density corridor there are also specific location standards related to distances from existing businesses For example, there's a requirement that a like-for-like business be sited at least 100 feet away. If you're proposing a pop-up for an ice cream stand, you have to be 100 feet from an existing ice cream shop that's in a brick-and-mortar business. For site circulation, to make sure that there's not any intrusion onto regular vehicle connectivity, and then a strong pedestrian emphasis. A lot of the goal for the chapter as it exists now is to increase walkability and bring people into existing businesses. There are also some design standards related to size limitations, which is generally 200 square feet. It can be different depending on the type of food cart you're using. Site maintenance, just so that if you're located in something like a parking lot, there isn't any nuisance factors or litter anywhere. Material standards, and then a lot related to public health and fire safety. Those especially are things that we probably wouldn't expect to change in an update, especially when it comes to vendors that are preparing food on site and need to use things like a lot of electric, fire, things like that. Um, our review process, which I said changed a little bit in 2014 is largely limited administrative review. That's our lowest land use level of review. We have up to 60 days. Once an application is submitted per our actual timelines, I think these are usually turned around within two to four weeks. Um, if the project is large in scope, it could be up to site plan review, which required noticing to neighbors, uh, really formal land use approval and, um, more in-depth review. A site plan review for a street merchant activity would be probably something more for like a private farmer's market or an event with a lot of vendors involved. So as far as the intention of our updates, like I said, there have been a lot of recent changes when it comes to mobile vending. It's become increasingly popular, especially following COVID. I think for a lot of people who weren't able to attend brick and mortar businesses, dine-in at that time was a really safe and effective option. Also, for people who are starting new businesses at the time, it's a good way to test out your product, build a clientele, build a reputation, see if you can be successful before investing in actual property, tenant improvements, things like that. We've also seen a lot of changes in the type and duration of these activities. There has been a big move away from things like newspaper stands and big moves towards things like food vehicles. And same with duration and location. I think a lot of Our staff sees, as far as proposals, it's like small pop-ups in front of businesses in their parking lots, just saying, hey, come over, try some of this for a two- to three-day event, rather than something that's going to be there for a long-term time. So with all of those things in mind, this was added to our community planning agenda or agenda. work program in 2026 as a docketed item, which is why we're bringing it to you today. So our overall goals are just to develop standards that reflect those current business models. A part of our work over the next few weeks is going to be really actualizing what those are, both through research and through community engagement, to update any outdated or inapplicable language that isn't useful to our staff anymore, and just to improve clarity for applicants and implementation for staff. I think our overall goal at the end of this update is to make it clear what we are requiring from applicants and make sure that we have standards in place for what the actual proposals that we're seeing are, rather than having to interpret code that doesn't really make sense for the proposals that we see anymore. So as far as public engagement, our plan as of right now is to do a combination of both surveys and one-on-one discussions. That's probably primarily going to be with existing mobile vendors, nearby business owners, customers, and then the Washington State Food Truck Association. It was part of your... packet, I think that some guidance that we wanted, at least from Planning Commission tonight, is if you know of any other stakeholders that you would like to be included in that discussion or any other methods that we should be approaching, it's totally fine if you don't have an answer right now. I'm kind of putting everybody on the spot. But if you want to think about it as we go through the presentation, that could be helpful for us so that we come back to a work session with an actual ordinance draft or not ordinance draft, but update of the language that we're going to want to be using. We can make sure that we're including anybody that you think that we should flag at this point. Similarly, we are planning on doing a lot of internal research just into neighboring jurisdictions that have been really successful with this type of code. Some examples are Tumwater, Bellingham, Everett, and Renton all have pretty strong regulatory approaches. that are pretty clear and straightforward that we can lean on. Obviously then those would be modified for Lacey's community wants and needs. That would come from what we hear from our community engagement, as well as what we hear from staff and their kind of real world on the ground experience with processing these types of permits. But similarly to the community engagement question, if you guys know of any examples, that even just being, I went to the city one time and I really liked the way they had their food truck vehicle set up. That's something that we can look into to see what their approach is when it comes to permitting. So key places or spaces or just other successful regulatory approaches. As far as next steps go, we're planning on kind of concurrently drafting the update with our community engagement to bring back to a work session with you guys, hopefully at the end of September, if it works with everybody. And then taking any feedback that we get from you all during that work session, incorporating it and bringing it back, hopefully for a public hearing in late October, early November. If at that time planning commission feels comfortable moving forward with the recommendation of approval, we would be looking at council in December and January final ordinance adoption. Otherwise, obviously, we can modify our schedule for whatever everybody's needs are. That concludes my presentation. If there's any further discussion, do you guys have any exciting thoughts? This is pretty high-level briefing right now. I know there's nothing in front of you.

In Pasco, my best friend lives in Pasco, and they have an amazing food truck. area, I guess you would say, where all the food trucks surround an eating area that's covered. Yeah, it was really, I had never seen one like it. It was really unique.

Interesting. Okay, yeah, we're taking note.

I know that's something that is now kind of growing as a concern, even for the Lacey Night Market, right? Like we now are that we love our neighboring partners, but we want to be competitive. So we want to have the upper hand in that conversation. Anyone else?

My thought would be to public safety. If we would think about gathering data from maybe incidents or history of existing health inspection reports who were derived from current standards. And I know that there's divisions between what the department of health would do and then what we would do from our perspective, but maybe harmonizing or just an awareness of do those standards, how do those standards reflect in current practice? And would there be any reason to change or maybe that, that angle of it just requiring at the outset a compliance aspect?

Absolutely. And that's a good point. And too, especially when you're looking at other cities and counties codes for these types of activities, so much of, The review is mostly related to public safety. I think because they are temporary in nature, so you're not, you know, reviewing a large commercial building that's coming in. You're not inspecting it step by step. Hot water supply. Exactly. They want those built in during the initial review so we can condition applications appropriately and then revoke any permits if needed.

Yeah. And for awareness, we do have some standards associated with approval because they do have to get land use approval and then potentially building permit approval as well. So some of the things we do require are like identification of a bathroom nearby, a trash can, any building permit approval. And then obviously if it's food, we do require that they show proof that they have a health department approval for their cart, as well as a business license. They have to have a city business license in order to operate.

anything else from planning commission?

Yeah. I mean, kind of something to mirror, like what Tonya said. And then, um, also about like space. I don't know if this fits in the ordinance, but just something I guess that came to mind is, yeah, just thinking about, uh, or I guess it may place into like the location and design standards, but thinking of like, yeah, a place that is more permanent, semi-permanent, like, or like even, yeah, thinking of like Olympia farmer's market, like there's a structure there that can be used year round. And as this grows and evolves and, you know, it's already evolved so much, how's it, how's it going to continue to evolve? And so just like an opportunity there for the city and, all the other stakeholders to be creative and how we use our space in the city because there's definitely spots that that could go and make it something that like contributes more economically and socially to the to the city um as well so but yeah i agree with what everyone else has said about like yeah the other folks to be uh reaching out to us as we uh look into this more absolutely anything else

I think that's it for us then.

Thank you guys. I appreciate it. And we appreciate your feedback. We're excited to come back in late September with some actual material for you guys to review, and then we can all discuss it further.

Thanks, Shannon. Thanks, Sarah.

Awfully pass.

All right. So we will go ahead and close new business. There is no old business communication and announcements as a reminder. Our next meeting is set for the 26th. We have two public hearings on that. And then the remainder of the calendar, I believe we have no meeting on September 9th, and then we will come back for some work sessions and we'll see Shannon again. That's the calendar for the next couple of months. If you have any questions, please let us know. But our next meeting is August 26th, 2026. And I will call this meeting adjourned at 619. Yeah.

That has to be record.

No, I'm going to tell Jeff.