Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

OK, I think we're ready to go ahead and start the meeting.

Great, thank you very much. Alright, bang my virtual gavel. Calling to order the meeting of the Lake Oswego Planning Commission for Monday, July 27th, 2026 at 6.30 PM. Hosting this meeting virtually today. Michelle. Can you or Christina please call roll? Not sure who's in charge of that.

Chair Najak?

Here.

Vice Chair Bruce?

Here.

Commissioner Avachon? Commissioner Gini?

Here.

Commissioner Call?

Here.

MISSIONER SLIGH.

HERE.

COMMISSIONER TWING. COMMISSIONER TWING. OKAY. WE SEE HIM ON THE SCREEN. SO COUNSELOR VERDICK.

HERE.

Thank you very much. Speaking of Councilor Burdick, next up we have item number three, City Council update. Councilor Burdick, do you have anything to share with us?

I think we're in the process of doing interviews for the city manager. So that's been taking up, we've been most of last week. We're also, last week at our meeting, we had an update on e-bikes. and how the city could maybe, what our code should look like around e-bikes, make sure that our code also is in line with what the state has. So that was a big study session that we had. And then we also had the tree code. So, and I think you're all familiar with that. So nice job, Director Nomadilou for that. I think those are the key items. And then we do have neighborhood night out next Tuesday. So I hope you guys are joining your neighborhoods for that.

Great. Thank you very much. Next on our agenda is item number four, approval of the prior meeting minutes from July 13th, 2026. Open the floor to any additions or changes or motion to approve.

I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE A MOTION TO APPROVE THE MINUTES AS WRITTEN.

THANK YOU. DO I HEAR A SECOND?

I'LL SECOND THAT.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH. ALL IN FAVOR TO MOVE TO APPROVE THE MEETING MINUTES FOR JULY 13, 2026 AS WRITTEN, PLEASE SAY AYE.

AYE.

ALL OPPOSED? Hearing none, and all abstain.

Thank you very much. Chair Najak, just as a point of order, I'm not sure if Commissioner Twing participated in that vote, so maybe we could confirm whether he participated. Commissioner Twing, are you there? It doesn't look like he's there, so I just want to for the record that he didn't participate in that vote.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Alright, next up agenda item number five. We have public comment for items that are not on tonight's agenda. Do we have anyone signed up for public comment?

We do not have anyone signed up for public comment.

Great. Thank you. Number six, Commission for Citizen Involvement, General Updates. We do have a postcard that I have open. Let me grab it and read it out to folks. So this is Lakewood Neighborhood National Night Out at our prior meeting, we got several other of these notices for the neighborhood night out as well. This one is for Lakewood. August 4th, 2026 from 630 to 8. Join us at the corner of Lakewood and Middle Crest. Come together with friends, family, and neighbors for an evening of fun, ice cream treats, and community spirit. Let's celebrate what makes Lakewood special and we hope to see you there. It says if you have Need more information? To email the neighborhood chair, lakewoodlf at gmail.com or go to the website lakewoodoswego.com. Which brings us to tonight's item number seven, our update on the housing needs and production. Do we have anyone signed up for public comment for this item?

We do not have anyone signed up for comment.

Thank you very much. That moves us to the Housing Needs and Production Update, PP22-0005, to receive a staff update on the proposed approach to comply with the new state requirements related to the Middle Housing Bill under House Bill 2138, adopted 2025. coordinator is Eric Olson, long range planning manager. Eric, give the floor to you.

All right. Thank you, Chair Naujock. I guess just before I get started, it looks like Commissioner Twing has his hand up. Are you able to speak using the Zoom function, Jim? I can just see your hand up, but that's all I can really see right now. yeah, I don't know if you want to say something related to before, but I, we just can't hear anything from your square, but we can see that you're here. So, um, yeah, I don't know if you can work with maybe Christina, Michelle, to try to figure that out. Um, But yeah, apologies for that, Commissioner Twing, but I guess I'll just go ahead and get started. I am here to, as Chair Naczak mentioned, just give you all an update on what we plan to do as a city to comply with requirements that apply to us under State House Bill 2138. That's a bill that was actually passed last year in 2025. But it's sort of implementation deadlines in terms of what cities need to do to comply start on January 1st, 2027. And some of them also take effect on January 1st, 2028. So that's just something to note there. So there's a few things that we've known about for a little bit now, but haven't talked about in too much detail. I think we presented these to you a little bit at the last work session that we held with you all related to the annual code amendments. And we talked a little bit about some of the code amendments we had been proposing partially in in order to comply with House Bill 2138 by the deadline of this coming January 1st, 2027. So I just want to talk a little bit about the bill as a whole and what is in it and what we intend to do as a city to comply just with all the other pieces that are involved in what HOUSE BILL 2000 OR I'M SORRY HOUSE BILL 2138 UM ENTAILS SO UM I JUST WANT TO KNOW IT LOOKS LIKE UH COMMISSIONER AVASHON IS HERE NOW SO I'M GLAD TO SEE YOU UH COMMISSIONER AVASHON THERE JUST WANT TO KNOW THAT YOU'RE HERE BUT GOOD TO SEE YOU And yeah, I guess I'll just note, I don't have a presentation or anything, so I'm just gonna be talking at you tonight, just giving you a brief summary of what I included in the staff report. But yeah, essentially, as I mentioned, House Bill 2138 was passed during the 2025 legislative session at the Oregon legislature. It was a big legislative session. There was a lot of legislature being considered and a lot that ended up being passed. I want to say there was like hundreds of different bills being considered and a lot of those ended up going through. I did put together an attachment that tries to summarize kind of what applies to us and what we're proposing to do to comply. And so, you know, I guess I'll just go over that attachment, really, because I think that's the bulk of what I wanted to cover here. So yeah, I guess I'll start out. A lot of what House Bill 2138 is intended to cover was with respect to middle housing. So that's something that I think for those commissioners that weren't kind of along this ride with us back when we originally adopted legislation to comply with the state's middle housing rules, we were required by the state to adopt a code essentially that allowed basically in all areas where single family zones or where single family residential housing was allowed, we also had to allow what are called duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes. the idea being um single family home structure something that looks like that but that would contain two three or four units duplex would have two units triplex would have three quadplex would have four but would be within one structure uh you know those units would uh share um walls and be eight attached so there'd be attached configurations allowed um at that point as well as Other middle housing types that were allowed at that time included cottage clusters as well as townhouses. So these are all allowed within our single family residential zones currently in the city of Lake Oswego. It's been, I think, four or five years now since we've allowed those. It was 2022, I guess. So it's been about four years since we've been allowing those types. And we haven't seen a lot of them come to pass, really. We've just seen some of our first cottage clusters come in in the city and still sort of struggle on the market. But I would just point out that the state has Then essentially through this bill, they want to make the proposed rules for college clusters a little bit more flexible. So what they had originally proposed, I think a lot of folks thought were pretty flexible, actually. They had some requirements for orientation standards, standards where the cottages had to be facing either inwards towards a common courtyard or towards the street. So there was certain percentages of the units within cottage clusters which are detached housing units I guess detached not attached units between five and eight units is how we decided to define those as a city we had to allow up to eight units on the same lots where we allowed single family residential homes so pretty big change as you could imagine but you know the design standards were written such that they were supposed to kind of mitigate any potential adverse impacts on design character, but they were still pretty flexible. So I guess in short, other types of housing, so duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes were, you know, the idea was that they were going to be forced within the same envelope as a single family home, more or less, that we would have the same zoning regulations, same front setback, side setback, setback plane, all of those things, the same regulations that we would apply to single family structures would still apply to duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes. The individual units, of course, would have to be smaller to fit within that envelope, but that was the idea. When it comes to cottage clusters, however, it was different because that would not have worked. So basically the state mandated that the cottage cluster standards that we have now and there are ten foot setbacks on all sides, more or less with those orientation requirements. There are other requirements that are in our code as well that meet the state's minimum requirements that have to do with you know, accessibility and pathways and parking, things like that. There are a number of standards that are specific to cottage clusters, but for the most part, they need to have a common courtyard, they need to be oriented in a certain fashion, and they need to have circulation paths for folks to be able to get around, but they are relatively flexible. We also, in Lake Oswego, we adopted some standards that allow for a... minimum average size for cottage clusters. And we went ahead and adopted those. So I just wanted to put that forward before I start talking about some of the changes that the state is proposing for cottage clusters. So what the state wants to do here is really allow for not just detached configurations of cottage clusters, but to allow some of those clusters or some of those units rather to be attached to one another. So that is different than what we would allow under our current code. Under the current code for cottage clusters, there is a 900 square foot limitation or a maximum for the footprint. So that's not floor area. You can have more than one story. But in terms of the footprint of the building, it's only allowed to be up to 900 square foot currently. The state has passed some new language that says that that can be Instead of 900 square foot, they want to be more flexible and they say that it should be a small footprint or floor area requirement. That is very big. I think they understand that to a certain extent. So the intent is to loosen that up. They don't know exactly what that means. And they're going to basically develop and refine what that means through additional rulemaking. There's a lot of changes that could kind of be added to what I just talked about for cottage clusters, but for the most part, there will be rulemaking. that will codify those things by January 1st, 2028. So all the cottage cluster related changes we need to implement by January 1st, 2028. That's kind of the last set of changes that we're required to do for the state for this bill. For our purposes here in the city, we are proposing to incorporate that into our code audit and amendments work. So we hope to have the details on that rulemaking before that project's over and to incorporate that into the code amendments that we end up including for those recommendations as a part of the code audit. So some pretty big changes to the cottage cluster regulations. but some changes actually to the definition of duplex, triplex and quadplex that actually kind of blur the lines between cottage clusters and other types of middle housing, particularly these new, what we're calling detached plexes. So as I mentioned, we currently allow for these attached configurations, sort of two, three or four units within single family envelope, if you will. But as we learned about at our last work session with Ellen about the 2026 code amendments, we will be required by January 1st, 2027, so pretty soon, to allow attached configurations for duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes. So as we mentioned during that update and talked about a little bit, we do intend to adopt code that would allow for those configurations as a part of our annual code amendments this year that is going to be actually the next meeting that the planning commission will have on september 15th we'll have a hearing on those annual code amendments for 2026 that will include those changes that would allow for detached configurations in addition to attached configurations The idea being that we would then again wait for the state's rulemaking process to play out with respect to cottage clusters. It's also going to talk about some of those detached Plex configurations and the types of rulemaking for siting and design standards, sort of the parameters, the you know, sort of sidebars of what we're allowed to do in terms of regulating those types of housing. The state will have a lot more detail on that in the coming year or so. So we then incorporate or we plan to incorporate the additional changes to what we allow for that siting and design for detached plexes in addition to cottage clusters by January 1st, 2028 as a part of the Code Audit and Amendments Project. So kind of a two-step approach there, but really just the basic minimum compliance approach right now because the state doesn't know what will actually end up being compliant. And it would be unwise to go through and adopt something and spend a lot of time coming up with setting and design standards that we do not know or have any confidence whatsoever will meet the state standards. So that's how we propose to go forth and comply with that particular piece of this law with the detached plexus. But I think it's just worth considering that this is a really big change to middle housing and particularly the sort of form of middle housing that we see in the city. There could be some benefits from this, though, too. There could be some sort of opportunities for this to be a little bit more in character actually of what we see in the city. So there could be ways that we regulate this or incentivize things that are actually more in character and what we want to see in our neighborhoods. So just something to consider, particularly with the sort of smaller units and those detached structures. All right, just moving forward, some other middle housing changes. This is one that we actually don't have to do much about with our code right now, but basically there are some smaller changes that, you know, they kind of change the definition of where middle housing needs to be allowed. instead of on each or it used to be required in areas zone for residential use that allows detached single unit dwellings. Now it's on each lot or parcel. So it's a bit of a nuanced change, but we believe that the CDC currently complies. That's kind of how we interpreted it already. But moving forward. Yeah, I think this is another one where we believe we comply with this for the most part, although there are some, again, there's some nuance here, but basically we need to allow middle housing to be added to existing housing on a lot, including as a single, if there's a single unit dwelling that's currently on a lot, we need to allow for middle housing to be added as either another single unit dwelling on that lot or a single unit dwelling in an ADU or as a duplex and different kind of configurations. So we don't really know that there's anything on our our code currently that would prevent that as long as we go through and adopt those changes that would allow for detached plexes this would be something we would need to require or we would need to comply with by january 1st of next year again so as long as we make those changes as part of the annual code amendments for 2026 we think we will continue we will comply with this we already do allow for things like cottage clusters to be developed on a lot or parcel with an existing um you know existing unit on it so we we do kind of allow for those detached configurations to preserve existing structures and allow those to be incorporated into something like a cottage cluster but because the sort of detached configurations are becoming more flexible we are going to need to allow those in more flexible configurations so that actually could be an opportunity to preserve more older housing, existing structures while we're actually seeing more development occur. And that's something that we could potentially look at ways to incentivize as being something that could be a benefit for the city when this type of development occurs. Another thing related to middle housing is really a limitation, a new limitation on the ability of local governments to require a traffic impact analysis or really attribute an exaction based on traffic impacts for middle housing. Basically, we can still require a system development charge or a fee-in-lieu variance charge or Basically, development requirements specific to the lot or parcel or its frontage, like right-of-way dedications and frontage improvements. But we can't do a traffic impact analysis or an exaction based on traffic impacts. So it's a bit sweeping, I guess, in the way it's written. But it doesn't, in the way it's written, actually apply to developments with, well, it only applies, rather, to developments of more than 12 units. So it's really something where those developments wouldn't have really triggered anything in terms of traffic analysis anyway. The way that we would do our analysis wouldn't really have impacted anything of, you know, basically anything of less than 12 units regardless. So it's really not much of a change, more or less. So I think Uh, basically it, you know, there's an exaction for these larger developments. And because of that, it basically, you know, we can still require traffic impact analysis for larger developments, which is the only thing that we would do now. We would only apply them to those larger developments currently. And in terms of there's actually a few more provisions related to affordable and accessible bonuses for middle housing, so they went through and defined accessible unit more specifically to. refer to sort of the highest threshold of like the most accessible type of accessible ANSI or ANSI accessible unit. It, you know, establishes really solid percentages for affordable units. I think basically for the purposes of this bonus, though, it's 120% of area median income or AMI or below for 10 years. And basically if middle housing includes one or more accessible or affordable units, so the way that I've just defined those, so accessible is ANCA, affordable is 120% of median income, um if it includes one or more of those types of units you can get a bonus unit so for duplexes and triplexes you can get one additional unit so you can go from a duplex to a triplex or a triplex to a quadplex for a quadplex townhouse or a cottage cluster you could get up to two additional units so um you know you could get a pretty decent bonus um you know more or less this could have this could have some impacts in our community but it you know i think we It's worth noting that density, we really don't see folks struggling or really wanting to do more units and not being able to. I think for the most part, the fact that you can do up to eight units on a cottage cluster on a typical lot is more than most folks can actually fit on a lot. Generally speaking, the amount of units you can actually fit on the lot is the upper threshold. So we don't really see this as being something that would be too beneficial for development, but it is something that, you know, if somebody does come in and say, you know, I want to go through the expense of adding an affordable or accessible unit to my development, I want to get this bonus unit, we will have to provide it to them. We propose to comply with this by essentially just implementing the state statute. We do that for a number of other things. It can be easier sometimes and more beneficial than actually including it in our own code because the state can make changes to their actual statutes and the ORS itself. So we can go back and continue to reference that. It might sort of evolve over time. Um, without having to, you know, make changes within our own code. Um, and they might end up, you know, repealing it or changing their policy as well. So, you know, we can kind of make our own decisions as to whether or not we want to, um, have that. So if the city does wanna say, you know, regardless of what the state does, we wanna have that in our code, that might make sense to adopt it in our code. Um, and if we only wanna say, you know, we think that this, you know, we're, we're just gonna kind of go along with what the state is requiring us to do, but we don't think this is a great idea. um it might not make sense to include it in our code so um you know i think for now because the unlikeliness of this actually being beneficial within the city we're proposing just to implement the state statute and similarly i think um yeah there's other kind of um You know, we would have to theoretically allow for some, I guess, conventional increases to developable floor area, higher density when it comes to allowing this additional sort of density. So I think, you know, if they did want to increase the number of units and they were running up to, well, I can't fit this on the lot. theoretically they could come and ask for, you know, they could say, I want to go higher. I want to build, um, closer to the setback line. I want to, um, you know, have less separation between units, whatever it might be, I think that would be something that we would have to allow. It is very kind of squishy language there. But yeah, I guess that is something that could happen. But again, we don't really see people running into that limitation very often. So I don't really see this being super viable or desirable, rather, for a developer. But it could be something that happens.

I have a question. when you say you don't see people running into this limitation um so you're saying that like when you see proposals they just they're never over that like eight units

Yeah, folks aren't coming to us saying like, oh, I really want to put more units in my development and I'm just having a hard time getting there necessarily. I think it's, you know, if anything, we will present them with, you know, the possibilities for what they can do on their site. But, you know, it's not super common that they can't fit the units because of the zoning, I guess, or the, you know, the density allowance is not, being enough. So that eight units is generally more than what people have an appetite for, I would say.

Yeah, because I wonder if part of it is just the lot sizes that people have been looking at so far. If someone had a larger lot, they'd be looking at more units. Or it could even be constraints like how much parking is feasible for the site. I know I'm always constrained by parking and not actually able to maximize density.

Yeah, yeah, you know, to me, you know, it seems like there are probably certain size lots where maybe this makes sense, but it almost just kind of is blending between middle housing and multifamily and just kind of getting into that gray area where maybe just multifamily has sort of um, you know, uh, efficiencies of scale and whatnot that make a little bit more sense for folks that, you know, that are going into like the six plus unit world and Lake Espigo at least. Right.

Um, but yeah, you know, I think it's, you know, you, you, you probably have more insight to this than I do, but, um, yeah, it's also sort of like, uh, this size of project is also just a sort of different class of like financing and investor altogether. It's not really like a, institutional class investment. It's more of like a infill developer type of thing. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, regardless, I mean, we'll, we'll see, I'm kind of just, you know, putting my finger in the wind and saying, we don't see, we don't hear much about this right now. That doesn't mean that things can't change and that the market won't kind of begin to explore this type of thing with that bonus being available to them. So, and it will be available. I think we're just proposing, you know, to not necessarily place it within our code, but that is, you know, a question. So I think, you know, we certainly explore that if something, or if folks think that's advisable.

Yeah.

I know for me generally, more units on a lot means, you know, better financials. So I'd be curious if, um, you know, having that, the income restriction on that, if you would really have to actually run the numbers on it case by case to know if it is worth the additional cost of construction to have more income if it was, uh, restricted. It's interesting.

Yeah. And I don't know how much it costs to do like an accessible unit either, like the ANCA, especially being like a pretty high standard, um,

Yeah, or like what, you know, design or site amenities would have to give to fit an additional unit too that might otherwise impact the desirability of the development as a whole.

Mm-hmm . Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, the fact that you can get up to eight units, I, you know, I could really just see that being pretty desirable in and of itself, especially if you can do attached cottage clusters, um, or units, at least within a college cluster and get a little more flexible there. Um, and not just be limited to those small footprints. Um, you know, I think that, um, anyway, that, that might be something that becomes more desirable.

Thank you. Thank you. I have a question or a comment. I mean, given the density of LaPas Regal, how much do you think we're going to be able to use all these changes? Where would the other than foot here, where is the development or redevelopment could be happening?

Well, I mean, it would be infill, most likely. You know, and we've seen a lot of infill. Like I said, we've seen cottage clusters already, right, in first edition in particular, and also in McVeigh South Shore. We've seen a development there already, and we've seen some duplexes and triplexes here and there. Not a ton, but they're out there. I think these ones, because they're, as Rachel was pointing out, they are more appropriate for infill. This is middle housing. It's not this big. You have a big juicy site and it makes sense for a big development with multifamily and mixed use and all that kind of stuff like we think about for foothills. This would be more... you know, 10,000, you know, maybe 6,000, 7,000 to 10,000 square foot lots or somewhere in that remote range where the zoning wouldn't allow for multifamily to begin with, right? And, you know, a developer might say, you know, I could make more money if I have more units. So I don't want to do a single family because I might be able to sell a nice single family, you know, house here for a couple million dollars. Um, or I could sell, you know, a couple units in a duplex for one and a half million dollars, or I could sell, um, a couple of different college clusters for who knows, you know, I think it, you know, I'm just throwing out numbers, but you know, a little bit less than a million dollars each or, or whatever it might be. So I think there's a calculus where it might make sense to put more units on there, but I think the market is still trying to figure out what makes sense and what this, you know, what the market actually wants. Um, what sort of combination of density and size and parking availability you know actually works um for folks i think you know duplex is probably a good uh you know a good sort of barometer i think you might be able to say yeah i think especially duplexes that act more like single family you have one entrance facing you know maybe it's on a corner right and maybe one entrance faces a street one way and the other faces the other street the other and they're kind of separate um you could probably get a decent amount of return on that um but you know i think there's a lot of nuance and limitations on what you can do there so i think that's kind of what we're running into but you know i think the state is finding um that developers want a lot more flexibility and that's what essentially this bill is all about um and i think uh yeah i think there's a lot of things that we're still learning i think along the way that will you know just naturally produce more housing even absent these rules so i think you know the development community is still adjusting and finding out what works and pro formas that they can replicate throughout the region you know and that um that is a big part of you know the market kind of adjusting to this new reality um so You know, there's a lot to kind of figure out here still about what works and what doesn't. But, you know, I think there's a lot of desire for the market to be able to do that, I guess, independent of what cities might want to regulate. Any other questions? All right, I'll get back into this list here. That really is a good segue actually to this next point on covenants conditions and restrictions. So this is probably out of all the things in the bill, the one that will make the biggest impact. So House Bill 2138, this actually took impact right when it was passed. And I think it was July of last year. Aaron Ostrowski- And July 17 of last year, it basically retroactively voided any private restriction we call them CC and ours or covenants conditions and restrictions governing documents that you often find in homeowners associations. in particular, but they often go along with just, they can be tied to a property absent HOA as well. But any CCNR provisions that might unreasonably restrict middle housing or accessory dwelling units are now retroactively voided. Um, that was something that was not the case when the, the state originally, um, required, uh, communities to go through and allow middle housing to be constructed. They said, you can't do that moving forward. You can't void it, you know, moving forward, you have to allow it, but those that existed previously can remain in place. And so that was actually a big. um reason that a lot of folks were you know not as concerned about it in their neighborhoods is because they thought oh you know i live in an hoa or a planned development where there's a lot of um ccnrs that you know will restrict this and so you know there's always the ability for folks to change those independently like the city doesn't advantage or hold or control those private agreements so those can be changed so there was never really any pure guarantee there but now the state has come through and actually made a sweeping change that says those are actually retroactively voided so just want to point that out that actually unlocks a ton of potential that was not previously there in terms of if we're to go through our existing residential neighborhoods and think about what type of development could be unlocked for middle housing, this really changes the game there a little bit for just the geography that we're looking at. So just want to make that clear. No changes to our code are needed for this and no changes really by the city at all, because this isn't really something that we are involved with. But when it comes to private transactions, this is a pretty big game changer. There's some other changes related to middle housing land divisions that I'll go over with you. Essentially, middle housing land divisions, I think we touched on this a bit during our last work session, but they're intended really to be a mechanism to separate middle housing into individual lots for purchase to be bought and sold. So the idea is not that they're like a subdivision where you're taking an existing lot and dividing it up to be to increase the development potential. The idea is that a middle housing land division is really just taking something like a quadplex and, you know, taking the four different parcels of the four different units and creating a parcel for each unit. So taking what you can already do on the underlying lot that's already been done and just kind of making it into separate parcels for purchase and sale and whatnot on the private market. So basically, there were a lot of somewhat confusing requirements that were in the state statute for this previously that this bill went through and clarified. Essentially, it allows existing units to be on a water parcel with one or more units like they don't have to have separate waste water or wastewater utilities, which was previously specified that you had to have separate wastewater. We are authorized to require it, but it's the state doesn't require it. So there's just a lot of things that cause conflict in the state statute that are changed per the input from local governments to make these things run a little bit more smoothly. Essentially, we have to allow a mental housing land division after, before, or concurrently with a building permit. And yeah, it's all relatively technical getting into kind of building permit processes, so I won't talk too much about this. But yeah, it does kind of help us and give us a little bit more flexibility there. So, Yeah, I think I would just point out that we currently, similar to some of the things I mentioned previously, comply with middle housing land division requirements at the state level by directly applying state statute. That's, again, helpful almost exactly for things like this where the state goes through and clarifies things and changes things and tweaks them so that we don't have to do the exact same thing in our code. So that can be helpful, at least in this case it is. So yeah, I think essentially we could go through and adopt some new provisions as part of the code audit projects. They are working on model code that could help and sort of improve some of these things, but there could be some benefits to not doing that. So we'll talk about it as part of that project, but we might not actually recommend incorporating this into our actual code. And it might make sense to continue to just apply the state statute. Or middle housing land divisions. Um, and the last thing I really wanted to touch base on was, um, with respect to process for expedited land divisions. Um, and basically, uh, this is really about, uh, yeah, the procedural requirements, um, saying that basically local governments cannot hold a hearing or allow any third party to intervene or, or oppose an expedited land division. And, um, only an applicant can appeal an expedited land division. So, um, basically, um, you know, it's, it's something that is about process about process related primarily to that middle housing land division, um, and the expedited process for that. Um, so it's, you know, it's pretty outside of the realm of what we. would have in our code. It would be something that we would administer just again, directly based on state statute, but it's a pretty major process change. Again, it's kind of unclear what it means to say that we cannot allow any third party to oppose the application. It's pretty broad language that we're not exactly clear what that means, but I think basically they, are just trying to cement in place the idea that these types of applications are really pretty routine, are supposed to allow for the purchase and sort of marketability of these individual units to be bought and sold so that there should be no kind of need for additional debate on these things that would just be an obstructionist tactic basically if it were I think is the idea so um anyway that is the sort of last change that I just wanted to talk about that doesn't again require any major changes to our code but something that we will be implementing through the state statute And that's really it. I covered a lot and I'm sorry if it was a little meandering. I know that there was, you know, I guess I'm trying to step back a little bit and talk a little bit about middle housing in general for folks that might not have been around when we adopted that because it's not the most obvious term in terms of what that means. And the state has its own specific definitions for that. So it's really, you know, we've been on this road of the state adopting new legislation that gives us new requirements that we need to comply with as a city for four or five years now. So it's just kind of it's been a continuous process for us now for some time. So for folks that are new to this, I apologize if we just talk about it like it's been just one long thing that we've all been doing together. So please don't hesitate to ask questions and let us know if we're saying anything that sounds like gobbledygook to you all. Commissioner Guinea.

I have one question. Is there a summary that summarizes all these, some of these changes?

Some of the changes? Yeah. Yeah. There's summaries that I included as attachments to the materials that we sent out for the meeting. So I tried to try to make my own attachment that has a really clean summary of everything that affects us here in Lake Oswego. So that's probably the best one to use. But I'm sorry, Commissioner Gini, it was Andreas's hand here.

Hey, thanks. And Apologies to you and director. I didn't, I didn't send this question ahead of time. It's pretty high level. So if you just want to kind of riff on the first thing that comes to mind or that we're going to talk a lot about this in subsequent meetings, but I'm just curious of all the provisions, the ones we talked about tonight in house bill 2138, the ones we didn't get to, um, kind of in, in your professional opinion, like w what are the areas that stand out to you to give the city the most. meaningful local discretion? Like, where do you see the biggest opportunities that this is going to give us for more housing that stays in the character of the neighborhoods?

Well, maybe I... I hope that I might be misunderstanding the question, but because what we see from the state coming down is they're taking away our discretion. That has been sort of what's been happening in the bills that have been happening in the last, you know, Eric noted, five to six years. And they're also now taking away the ability for citizens to provide input. So all we did was talk, all Eric did was talk about HP 2138, but we have other bills, HP 4037, that was passed just a few months ago that limits our ability to provide notice on clear and objective applications for residential development and only allows applicants to appeal. So the trend is that they're taking away local decision making authority over our land use regulations. And there's another bill, HB 2258, where they're doing rulemaking now that I find extremely alarming in terms of what it is that they're proposing. That really kind of takes away our local authority over zoning. So, but in that, when we do apply, when we do our code amendments to comply with state law, we are going to try to exert our local authority as much as possible to maintain our standards, because that is a really important here in Lake Oswego. There's a reason why we have the codes that we have. And we recognize that there's a lot of history behind them. And while we do think there are opportunities for improvement and for simplification, that we certainly have plenty of opportunities for that. None of us want to throw out our code. We have a standard for development here for this community, and it's worked very well for us, and we certainly don't want to lose that. So again, I'm not sure that I'm answering your question, but that's the trend from the state is every legislative session, we see them just chipping away at our local zoning authority.

No, that's that was perfect. That's where I was going with this and just how long it takes to turn the ship of. City codes and I mean, it's just. Feels like we're just gearing up to be continually reacting to. You know, this is incredibly staff intensive time, intensive, confusing to the community members process to comply with the state. And then we don't know what's going to change in. 24 months, 36 months again, not even time to measure some of the metrics that you and Eric have talked about, like, oh, is this working in getting us closer to our goals?

Yeah, and it's really unfortunate because we We go out there, you know, four years ago, we adopt a bunch of code and we talk, we have committees, we have this big sort of community effort. And we say, you know, this is what we understand to be the case. Cottage clusters are gonna look like this. And this is the code that we're gonna have for cottage clusters. And they're, you know, gonna have certain functions. And we understand that, you know, for instance, they're not gonna have attached, know units included in the cottage cluster or they're not going to um you know we're not going to have detached triplexes or whatever whatever it might be they have a certain expectation about what things are going to look like and you know even with the ccrs that was something that was you know folks felt good hearing that for whatever that's worth. But folks were concerned. And that was one of the things that led them to be less concerned. And now after that conversation is over and folks got through that and built a little bit of trust with them through that process, the state comes back and removes all that. And all that trust is gone. And we have to go back and do this process all over again. And, you know, it's going to be, um, a lot more difficult this time around, I think because of that. Um, so just, uh, you know, just unfortunately that's, that is the case, I guess. I just want to respond to your question though, commissioner Gideon, like a little bit more, um, You know, I guess I do see there being some opportunities for us to shape this a little bit as a city through incentivizing things. And I do think there are a lot of requirements that we're asked to do by the state. And, you know, I do think that that is obviously, as we've been talking about for quite a while now, and as Director Montalu pointed out, is quite restrictive and does rein us in in terms of zoning and what we're allowed to do. But I do think that there are some opportunities there. if the state's saying, hey, you know, you have to allow these detached units, there are, you know, that does break up the mass of a large building that can have some positive design outcomes. When you think about places like Evergreen, where they have pretty small lots, they have pretty small sort of, at least in certain parts of Evergreen, they have pretty small single family kind of fabric there. There could be a lot of interesting sort of design features that we could incentivize that would be positive outcomes, I think that would add to the character of that neighborhood. So I think there could be some opportunities to pursue things of that nature. And I think accessibility is another really big one where that's something that maybe it wouldn't be the character, but we can incentivize things like accessibility, or the types of units that we want to see for housing needs. But also, you know, I think we can um try to shape a lot of what we're seeing by incentivizing you know the things that we want to see the most i suppose um if that makes sense i think it you know it's a little bit complicated to talk about what that looks like right now um but uh you know i think there could be some folks that that you know are are upset about kind of the idea of detached um units that Um, you know, if we do regulate them in a certain way, depending on what the state lets us do, um, we, we could see some really, um, some contextual designs that are consistent with sort of like the worker cottages or like the smaller kind of historical, um, development patterns in Lake Oswego. Um, so it's just something to, to think about, um, you know, we, we didn't always have these large McMansions in Lake Oswego, and this might be a way to kind of honor that.

lot to go over though today any other questions that folks might have so yeah the state requiring all these changes but does not provide any sort of funding or anything yes and no yeah go ahead eric if you want to

would say um you know that that's not necessarily the case they they are giving us a grant particularly for you know our rezoning for housing project right now they do have grants available we could have pursued a grant for the code audit project but there's a bigger grant that we were able to get from metro um so they don't you know they they do have funding available i would say it's it's not great and needs to be improved. And I've given comments to them up to that effect that, you know, if they are serious about this work, then there needs to be a lot more funding for that work. Um, but yeah, they're, they're trying. But I think for the most part, there's, I think the biggest criticism I personally would make is that there's a ton of infrastructure investment needed to support adding density, particularly the infill density that they're referring to that is unfunded. And they don't, they're basically putting that on cities with this kind of talking about no traffic impact analysis type of legislation. So I think that, is one thing where I think there's a huge need for that type of investment. Not even close to enough. Yeah.

All right. Any further questions for this work session? Just wanted to, since we're on the topic of housing and affordability, reiterate for our new commissioners as well as older ones that if you have questions about the ins and outs of affordable housing, what is AMI, what is affordable, please reach out to me. I'm happy to be a resource and share my knowledge with folks. Moving on in the agenda, we go to item number eight, other business.

I don't have any other business at this moment.

Anything from our other commissioners that anyone would like to bring up? Hearing nothing, that brings us to number nine, schedule review.

All right. So, yeah, as I mentioned, our next meeting is actually September 15th. That's when we'll have essentially just the next meeting will be a hearing on the annual code amendments, 2026 code amendments with Ellen Davis. So we have a recess during the month of August, so we don't have any meetings during August. That's not typical, but we will at least make up for that with a lot of meetings this coming fall. So lots going on in the fall, including additional work sessions on the rezoning, the code audit and foothills. So you'll get all that before the end of October. So don't worry about that. We do have, I think, a few changes to the list, but it is similar to what we had last time. But for the most part, yeah, just wanted to make sure you're all aware that September 15th is our next meeting date. Commissioner Call.

So just to clarify, is it September 15th or September 14th? Is it still Monday?

I think you may just misspoke. I'm so sorry. Yeah, I have the 15th in my head. I'm so sorry. It's the 14th. That's a date for Foothills that I keep on talking about because we were thinking about our CAC meeting on that day. So I'm sorry about that. goodness i'm trying to do this off the top of my head without actually looking at the schedule so that's the type of thing that could happen when i'm doing that apologies um but yes that is it's a bit of an odd day because we actually have um for whatever reason um it never happens like this but for whatever reason in september we have a planning commission meeting on a monday and city council meeting the tuesday after um they're usually on different weeks so

Jessica.

Sorry about that. I just wanted to give you a quick update. Counselor Verdick had mentioned that the Tree Code regulation amendments did pass with the Council at their meeting on July 21st, and I just wanted to let you all know that they did adopt the recommendation put forward by the Planning Commission. So just wanted to report that out and also just thank you for those of you who are involved with that. Just really appreciate your involvement in the work sessions and providing guidance on that project. The findings are scheduled for adoption on September 1st, and we expect the amendments to go into effect in early October. So thank you all very much for your participation and your guidance during that project.

Thank you, Jessica. I know tree code really brings everyone out of the woodwork around here and it can be a stressful time for staff. So thank you all for your hard work on that.

Yeah, I should have mentioned actually House Bill 2138 also included requirements about clear and objective tree code requirements. So Jessica's tree code project was also in response to House Bill 2138.

And HB 4037, three months before we were set to adopt it. But yeah, so we were able to comply with two state mandates with that one. But who knows what they'll change next.

Very true. Thank you, everyone. With that, our meeting is adjourned. See you all in September.

Thank you. Thank you.

Bye.

September 14th. Thanks everyone.