Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

excellent thank you welcome all to the um March 5th uh 202 2 Planning Commission meeting if you would all please call to order first uh let's do our Pledge of Allegiance give Nathan just a moment longer I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you uh we are going to go through a quick roll call commissioner derer here commissioner Mets here commissioner Jenifer Davis commissioner U Morton here this time thank you so much I am Janice xford I will chair the meeting this evening with permission from the Commissioners can we give commissioner Packard a few more moments to join us I did too I did too roll call commissioner Packard and we are all accounted for can I get a motion to excuse commissioner Connor Davis from this evening's meeting excuse um um do I do I get a second thank you so in our last meeting do I have any um all all in favor any opposed in our last meeting we have be because we are going to an AI format we are hoping to be able to say I commissioner Morton excuse it gets a little weird but for the recording it makes it better so if you don't do that I'm going

to follow up but don't think that I'm being redundant so that was um uh the motion was U made by commissioner Morton and seconded by uh commissioner Mets no Doer no who seconded no this is for today who just excuted okay Mr all right so I told you that's okay no that's okay so that's going to be um again something that we're going to have to get used to and it seems a little weird because you're talking about yourself in the third person but it makes for easier minute meeting minutes for our staff so if we can try try to work on that and I'll try to remember okay moving on do we have any guest business I see none in the audience are there any guest notes from the uh anybody online and guest business as always is opportunity for anybody to ask questions of the Planning Commission uh that is not included in our agenda so seeing none we'll move on to the um minutes uh we don't have those on the agenda but the uh we do have some meeting minutes from our previous meeting were all of the Commissioners able to peruse those minutes and were there any additions or edits hearing none do we have a motion to approve the meeting minutes I commissioner Packard make a motion to approve those and do we have a second I second all those in favor I hi any oppose any abstain all right we have gone through

the um agenda to dat again keeping in in mind that the minutes weren't here we added those on I do have a housekeeping issue if you don't receive an email about the Planning Commission by Friday evening if you would reach out to Don or myself um we're just trying to make sure that everything is going out cohesively so if you don't see something um in your email box please reach out okay thank you very good all right we are now moving on to the opening of a public hearing this is going to be um uh the 2025 comprehensive plan docket ratification uh do I have a motion to open the public hearing I appr morning move to open public hearing and do we have a second I commissioner do do roll second thank you we do have the public hearing that is open we turn the time over to you and have principal planner levaton you got a new placard very nice thank you so David Levitan uh principal planner so we are here tonight uh for the public hearing for the 2025 comprehensive plan docket uh back at your February 19th meeting we had introduced the docket gone through the items and now as required by the comprehensive plan uh as detailed in in chapter one the introduction uh the Planning Commission holds a public hearing to allow for any public testimony to provide any feedback in advance of providing a recommendation to City Council on ratification of the docket so I introduced this topics uh these items uh there's two map Amendment proposals and three text Amendment proposal proposals which were introduced on the 19th so I'm going to keep it super high level uh feel free to ask any

questions but uh we introduce basically just the the plan docket Basics uh that it can be done once per year that citizen initiated amendments as defined and the procedure established in the introduction of the comprehensive plan are accepted through January 31st uh we did not receive any citizen initiated amendments by the January 31st deadline so these are all City initiated amendments um so don't really need to go through the process too much but the docket was we the docket website was updated back in December um try to get some public notice out related to that um was it the items were introduced at your last meeting um each item is required to undergo an analysis to demonstrate compliance with the ratification criteria which are established in chapter one of the comprehensive plan which was just updated at the end of last year uh so that's attachments 1 through three of your packet tonight for this agenda item uh the Planning Commission does make a recommendation to city council um and just to clarify this is just for ratification of the docket there's been preliminary analysis for compliance with the ratification criteria but nothing related to the approval criteria that will be needed for the actual comprehensive plan Amendment which will occur later in 2025 so just a reminder we do have the two map amendments um and they both are just to bring a couple of properties that were overlooked during the 2024 periodic update basically we had intended to change the land use and Zoning designations of all publicly owned properties um to change those to public semi-public um and we missed a couple of those so we wanted to just clean that up as part of the 2025 docket so the first one is down uh just a little bit uh west

of here on the north side of the lake uh basically there's a sewer lift station L sewer lift station 1C it currently has a land use and Zoning designation of Waterfront residential so as part of the docket we are proposing to change both of those both the land use and the zoning designations to public semi-public um the comprehensive plan does call for public properties to have those land use and Zoning designations and as uh noted in attachment to uh this does meet the ratification criteria so we are recommending that this be included as part of the docket similarly uh for map Amendment M2 is just north of here uh fire station 81 this is a interesting one if you look at the area where the red meets the green um the southern half of the site currently has a land use designation of downtown local Commerce uh basically the parking lot for the fire station and the northern half has a land use designation and a corresponding zoning designation of public semi-public so we're just looking to clean that up uh to make all of that the public semi-public designation so it it already has the Zoning for the entire site of public semi-public we just need to change the land use designation of the Southern two Parcels uh similarly uh the attachment three demonstrates that it does meet the ratification criteria um and then there are just there are three amendments uh which we went over at your last meeting so the first is to basically update the city's three adopted sub area plans basically updating some of the maps and some of the policy language to reflect updates that occurred uh as part to the land use element and economic development element all the various elements of the comprehensive plan that was adopted back in October so to make the sub area plans consistent with the comprehensive plan

so that's text Amendment one text Amendment two is kind of which uh for those of you that have been on for a few years or more we have kind of standard annual administrative updates uh the most we tend to update the introduction with kind of new updated demographic information um and then kind of the most substantive one that we typically see is updating the capital facilities element to make sure that we're keeping our six-year and our 20-year Capital facility plans up to date basically rolling that forward a year um to cover you know the applicable six-year or 20-year period um and then text Amendment Three is um if you remember uh we had discussed in up when we were adopting the periodic update that we didn't do a major update to the parks element and that's because we knew in 2025 that the parks department was going to be leading an effort to update What's called the parks recreation and open space plan or Pros PL Pros plan uh some jurisdictions have added in a te to make it the pr plan for Trails as well um but to update that plan and then basically to incorporate those changes into the parks element of the comprehensive plan so attachment one um kind of goes over the ratif ratif ratification criteria for text amendments um and staff has determined that all of these text amendments are consistent with the ratification criteria so this being a public hearing public notice was required that was published and posted on February 21st um and then published again on February 28th uh did not receive any written we have not received any written comments as of today uh the project is categorically exempt from sea review the State Environmental Policy Act uh following any oral testimony tonight um if we have anybody Cruis in at the last

minutes um the Planning Commission will have an opportunity to discuss and ask any questions about any of the items uh before making a recommendation to City Council on ratification of the docket uh and then the city council it's a pretty quick turnaround they'll be holding their public hearing next Tuesday March 11th and with that I'm happy to answer any questions do we have any questions online yet okay Commissioners questions yes uh looking at the the Waterfront one is it uh does the neighbor's dock interfere within the property yeah yeah yeah it looks like it just goes right over the neighbor's dot yeah and there are areas where the property lines when you have all of these layers of GIS data they sometimes aren't exact they can be off by several feet but that's something that we can look into I don't think it's um all that relevant to the zoning per se but um it is something if there are concerns about that we can look at but I I have noticed that especially on some of these Parcels that extend into the lake um and they don't always match um you know the geometry they go off at different angles sometimes and it can be a little bit weird curves that yeah so I can zoom back into that one but yeah and so that's actually they haven't really I don't know why it goes that way but we can look into that and whether there would

be any impacts related to the new zoning um it would be an existing use um but Russ do you have any concerns about that or I didn't notice as well but I think your response is all we can give tonight that we can view it and find out if that does intrude the city's property normally we wouldn't be like moving property lines over the water and but as long as you're opening the box and uh reassigning these things you I might as well fix this is an opportunity to fix things that's all that's all my comment right thank you um so I understand the rationalization uh the reasons for doing it all can you help me understand what are the actual like practical implications of these changes I mean that means somebody can jump off of that edge of the property and claim it's public swimming water like what in all reality how does this really affect people for the specifically for the part over the lake both both both changes what's the for for the for the portion north of Lake Shore which is where the actual lift station is um you know it's basically just to align the use you know a public lift sewer lift station with the applicable lus and Zoning uh for the portion over the lake um yeah I'm not an attorney so I don't know if it have I mean it's still I mean it's technically public property the way that it's shown here it extends out into the lake but then there is apparently a private dock that extends into that i' yeah I wouldn't really be able to speak intelligently to what about the fire station property again what are the implications of that yeah so the fire station is similar that it is a public use it's a public fire station so instead of having that commercial land use and Zoning designation we just felt

it was more appropriate and consistent with the comprehensive plan which calls for all publicly owned Parcels to have a land use and Zoning designation of public semi-public and again practical application so I and I think I often see cars parked there for the brewery across the street are they free to park there because it's a community park are they not allowed to park there because that's designated again what are the implications so for a example for a practical application we had um couple of sewer district proper U projects that came forward last year and because they were located on Residential Properties they had to go through a conditional use permit and a more extensive Ive use even though they were replacement of existing structures so for public use you should be able to easily get a a permit to do something for public purpose so that's a big thing as to your question about the fire districts property I I can't speak for them in any Arrangement they have or don't have with the brewery okay across the street so for most people there's no real change here it's a it's a policy change as opposed to anything sort of meaningful impactful change yeah it's generally just for consistently with the comprehensive plan which within the land use element calls for all of these Parcels to have you know the same luse and Zoning designations of public semi-public I would also just add that there's oh uh this is commissioner Jennifer Davis um I would just add to that having the designation of public or semiu doesn't necessarily equal right to Public Access there's plenty of publicly owned property that doesn't have free open

public access associated with it so just something to keep in mind any other comments I have one but I don't want to we have anybody else that wants to make a public comment I would um just from my own experience if you go further down the lake we did a lot line adjustment um because we do stretch into the water and it was um it it didn't follow the build it was following the line of the curve and so we went through and spent some time and money making sure that it was clean um more for anything than the Li ability of such um if you have somebody's dock that may or may not be on your property that may be something that the city may look into uh so I would just offer up my experience in that it can be done and it it adjusted the line to follow the build um are there any of comments I will go back in time commissioner Morton made the first comment and then commissioner ORD followed up with a second comment there um commissioner Jennifer Davis uh was third and then I had my final comments chair huxford with that uh do we keep the public hearing open for these next couple of comments or are or um topics or are we able to close the public hearing at this point so I will ask for a motion to close the public hearing this is commissioner Jennifer Davis I move that we close the public comment portion of the hearing or that

we close the public hearing is that the correct motion do we have a second commission doer seconds all in favor I I okay so we have closed the public hearing on the 2025 comprehensive plan docket ratification do we have a recommendation to city council at this point or do we have any comments discussions internal to the commission we discussed this quite a bit last meeting and so um I felt like we had ample time to absorb what was being said and again this goes in front of a public hearing next Tuesday so this is not making it final this gives the public another opportunity next Tuesday to speak in front of City Council anything else we want on the record hearing none do I have a recommendation actually commissioner Jennifer Davis can I add one quick thing I love to say when we're doing the docketing and I said it last week but I want to say it again on the record just for anybody watching this in the future this is setting our to-do list but the substantive analysis is going to take place over the course of the next year so um it's great that the public has an opportunity to come before city council and look at our to-do list and make comments but there will be additional opportunities for public comment um on the substance going forward thank you so commissioner Morton I move that we uh approve the uh the U docket as presented do we have a second this is commissioner Matt second all those in favor I any opposed any abstained okay thank you we made it

through the public hearing again many other opportunities to weigh in on this please use them if you are watching us on YouTube in the future uh we'll move forward on uh number six discussion items we have two discussion items the first will be again principal planner levaton introducing a developmental code update requirements for step housing all right so I wanted to start by apologizing that the staff report didn't make it into the packet when it was first published so this was on the agenda there were no attachments to it so it was basically just a blank space on the agenda so I'm going to give an overview hopefully you've had an opportunity to read through the very brief staff report that we handed out to Commissioners this evening um and so I just this is similar to the critical areas ordinance update introduction that we did last meeting we have a variety of different development code updates that are implementation items to the 2024 comprehensive plan uh that's um Commerce has provided guidance on that we have until the end of the year to complete so uh step housing is one of them so this came out of house bill 1220 back in 2021 when City's basically the growth management Act was amended specifically within the house element uh discussions of the growth management act um and basically task cities with adopting goals and policies within their comprehensive plans and then developing code language to implement the comprehensive plan for different types of housing so this is a little bit hard to read but step housing stands for the S stands for the shelters within Emergency Shelters the T stands for transitional housing the E stands for emergency housing so there's Emergency

Shelters um which are B kind of very temporary in nature and then there's the emergency housing which um are kind of similar but tend to be more indoor and more permanent structures um and then the P is for what's called permanent Supportive Housing and there were some discussions of that and some analysis of that that went into the comprehensive plan so um that's what the step is for and so basically the comprehensive plan set the stage for the development code updates that we're now doing um we were required to adopt goals and policies uh specifically policies within the housing element of the comprehensive plan so we adopted four of those that talk specifically about emergency housing and Emergency Shelters there in policy 3.2.4 um allowing permanent Supportive Housing and transitional housing in all zones where either residential uses or hotels are allowed that's policy 3.2.5 um and then calling for us to coordinate with regional organizations with religious organizations nonprofit affordable housing providers to identify opportunities to provide this type of housing it is a type of use that is difficult to provide at Market rates and so it does re it does rely on Partnerships um it you know whether that be from other government agen IES or from religious organizations or nonprofits it is something that is difficult to build so Partnerships are going to be incredibly important as far as providing the opportunities for these to be built um and then one of the other items that was in House Bill 1220 is that we are not allowed to uh have impact fees for emergency housing so we did provide the policy foundation for that in 3.2.8 there in the housing elements so where must step housing be allowed and

again this is is kind of small but basically Emergency Shelters and emergency housing uh cities are not allowed to prohibit them in any Zone that allows for hotels So within the City of Lake Stevens that is specifically our commercial zon so our local business our business district our Central business district and um commercial District so that's basically the red the pink so a lot within our sub areas where the red areas are um it's kind of the easiest one to see which is the commercial districts the area in downtown which is our Central business district uh some of the pink areas with the exception of we have a couple of mixed juice properties on 20th and another areas those are are not required as far as now based on our current permissible uses but basically anything that's red pink or purple um is where Emergency Shelters and emergency housing um would have to be allowed based on our current permissible uses table and then when you move on to transitional housing and permanent Supportive Housing um those are allowed in any Zone that allows either hotels or residential uses so that opens up all of our residential districts as well so Waterfront residential R4 R6 ra12 and multifam residential so all the yellow and orange and brown basically anything generally except for the blue up in the northeast corner and then the green which are the public semi plug public properties so that's the vast majority of the city so um really a lot of this process is going to be acknowledging that these are requirements that they be permitted there is allowances for the city to adopt reasonable regulations um you know for things like health and safety and physical development uh the physical environment

so that is what we're going to be working on uh over the course of the next nine months so basically this needs to be updated by the end of the year um in general the the regulations the processes and requirements when it comes to the process that you put them through can't be more rigorous than they are for other housing types but there are local development standards and Provisions that we can establish within the parameters of the way that house bill 1220 was written to amend the growth management act that we can adopt so uh was going to get into a lot of the details this evening wanted to introduce the project um talk a little bit about potential opportunities for public engagement um we talked a little bit about at the last meeting um you know what are some of the ways that we can get the word out we have kind of three sets of topics in 2025 that are probably of great public interest that's the streets and trans the streets and transportation that Christy is going to be talking about after this the critical areas which we introduced last meeting and then housing and it's not just the step housing we're also going to be needing to make changes related to design review to other types of housing we are uh compliant with the Adu and the middle housing requirements that were adopted back in 2023 but there still are a couple other items that we need to update our housing code as part of the housing implementation work for the comprehensive plan so we just wanted to introduce this topic tonight as we begin to work on the uh public parti uh public participation plan starting to identify stakeholders um and a lot of cities in the county are working on kind of similar and aligned projects at the same time so have had some good ideas for us and so we can incorporate some of that so we're going to be working on that uh

we'll obviously be checking in periodically with the Planning Commission and the city council um and so yeah as far as tonight just wanted to answer any general questions related to step housing and then if there are any thoughts on public engagement we would welcome that from the Planning Commission just uh this commissioner dur just had a question uh you had mentioned the need for Partnerships uh between nonprofits and other organizations out and this is how we're going to pay for it um you know there's generally a lot of this is at is at a higher Lev policy level so that it can be built you basically don't create a situation where it's impossible to build it you create an environment where it can be built but to be honest I mean in this economic environment it's it's going to be difficult and there's going to need to be State funding and you know the potential for federal funding is probably pretty limited right now at least for the next couple years and so um yeah we we'll see where we go from here thank you this is commissioner Morton um are there any step housing in the in the city right now I'm not aware of any that yeah would actually meet any of the definition of

you know either transitional emergency um or permanent support of we have probably some um Housing Authority properties that include some kind of wraparound services that might be considered permanent Supportive Housing but I think they're generally just considered public housing as opposed to specifically designated as permanent Supportive Housing so it's it's an issue and it's like when we adopted our growth targets and they gave us a growth Target of about 400 permanent Supportive Housing units over the next 20 years that's more than exists since the homish county outside of Everett for the entire County outside of Everett so um assisted living facilities wouldn't count as those those would not no or a halfway house more related to Crime as opposed to just homelessness yeah so those are you know slightly different definitions I and I I'm happy to do a little bit more research as far as whether that that meets it I mean we've documented through the comprehensive plan that we have the Zone capacity to meet our growth targets um both for Emer you know that was the whole point um of the you know the updated comp plan that you were required to have your public heing on last month was because we had originally gotten guidance where we could just do a qualitative analysis of emergency housing but then we got updated guidance from Commerce where we needed to go back in and show that hey we do have you know capacity for 400 or 500 beds in the city we have much more capacity than that um but even as part of that quantitative analysis it was basically do you have the Zone capacity not where is it going to go and so yeah can happy to do a little bit more research on you know what some of our you know some existing uses but um when you look at different inventories um you know that the county

is prepared as far as what cities currently have on the ground we basically show zero any other questions um I just have one quick one this is commissioner mattz so one of the things that I know King County does is they open up a lot of the public buildings that that take places the Emergency Shelters and transitional is that allowable under this act where we could look at the same um types of I think there would need to be some commitment I can I would probably need to reach out to the City attorney to get kind of a more definitive answer on that as far as I don't know if those go towards the number again it's it's not so much that we need to show the capacity we need to allow them if somebody chooses to build them we need to have regulations in place that make them fairly easy to go through that process and so it's not so much about hey are we going to be able to put it through diff you know allow them through different parts of the city it's more are we going to allow them and is the process easy to go through and is it more stringent um than what it takes to say build a condo development or a new subdivision if you're make you know basically the state law says you can't make them jump through hoops that don't exist for other housing types any other discussion seeing none we will move on so again uh commissioner derer Morton Packard and mattz thank you uh we will move on now to um discussion letter B our proposed revisions to LS sms1 14. 11 um this is the concurrency um dis discussion where we started last meeting and we'll turn the time over to planish all right good evening Planning

Commission this is a followup from your February 19th meeting doing a little different format this evening I'm pulling up the attachments to get started I did want to follow up with what Dave had mentioned apologies about the staff report we do have a a technical glitch in Civic Plus for discussion items we are going to work that out to make it a default that the staff report actually gets attached without us having to go in and manually adjust it and make it happen so next time you will have full attachments for your discussion items so to follow up in summary back on February 19th transpo provided uh recommendations for us for concurrency as I mentioned at the meeting attached this evening you have the staff report before you which I'm essentially summarizing now now for you and we have a recommendation from transpo I'm showing the memo on the screen I thought it'd be better that way that way you have it in full context they have a recommendation of eight items here they discuss uh the need to provide an annual concurrency report consider collecting concurrency reviews and altering our tracking and methodology process and they go into some extensive details and along with including a matrix to track our last and fourth sub area plan for the city which is the industrial area we currently track concurrency for the other three areas within the city and in addition uh they make a recommendation about evaluation of thresholds for the city and updating our traffic analysis guidelines along with using concurrency trips per person not per vehicle so that's a change to reflect multi modal and in addition their last recommendation is to develop and clearly Implement a concurrency certification

process which we now do through a staff report but they're recommending an actual separate document for concurrency so staff has read through these eight items I have summarized it down below in a to-do list of six items so I just wanted to let you know that that's in your packet and so some of the next steps that we'll be coming forward to you and that we're working on with transpo is that we're going to work on how to develop an actual annual concurrency report that we will use to monitor level of service throughout the city and the impacts on the city's um Capital facilities and that will also reflect any changes in our Capital CIP six share and 20-year plan list the second item is to adjust our traffic impact zones we have three of them within the city we're going to look at the methodology for that and they're going to help us with some of the technical tweaking of it to make sure it matches our City's comprehensive plan so we'll be working on that actually they're starting working on that right now then lastly as I mentioned we will come up with a concurrency tracking Matrix for the last area of the city after we develop the Lake Stevens Industrial Center sub area plan that was on our work program for this year we're hoping to get to it um that's the plan um it might be one of the items that gets postponed to 2026 but as you are aware it is on our 2025 work program we're also looking at setting a concurrency evaluation a little higher uh for traffic studies and we will be making adjustments we have two handouts we use for develop velers we have our overview of basic traffic study requirements and then we also have our um

developers impact mitigation worksheet and so both of those include some methodologies and some Frameworks that the developers have to fill out and follow with their development application they submit that to the city and we use that to determine what impact fees they will provide and also what mitigation they will provide so transpose is going to be helping us adjust and change those to reflect the changes in the comprehensive plan lastly uh the concurrency tracking Matrix we'll do an annual report and that will line up with our multimodal standards that we adopted this year so we have to incorporate that in throughout our code through both the streets parking and also our impact fees to reflect that so that's the concurrency update for this evening and now the fun part comes into the code updates those are your other two attachments there are strikeout versions I will have to say these particular code changes aren't super meaty um let me see I'm just going to slide this up here I can activate this let's see if we can get this hold on yeah let's see no I'm leaving the webinar sorry I don't mean to leave the meeting let's get back on track here hey they have them in their packets don't they they do they have them you have them in your packet stop sharing start sharing all

right we're g to try this an oldfashioned way we'll go back reshare so the first one we're going to go through is your concurrency the the for

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