Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Well, welcome everyone to planet commission.

Let's have our pledge and then we will go about our Yeah, our next item.

All right.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. all right well our first item of business before we do our roll call is to welcome our new member of our client commission tony mattessi okay so uh we need to do a swearing in is that right which

Yes. Hi, guys. Hopefully you can hear me. Okay. Hello, planning commission. I'm here on behalf of the city council and Mayor Hill to formally swear in Tony. So I'm going to do this virtually. I was thinking I will pull up the oath. You all can hear me, right? Okay, great. Nothing like talking when you know, we can hear you. Okay. So here's your oath of office, Tony, if you could raise your right hand and repeat after me and I'll try to go slowly here. So I state your name. Do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support the constitution and laws of the United States and laws of the United States. And state of Washington.

State of Washington.

And the ordinances of the city of Lake Stevens.

And the ordinances of the city of Lake Stevens.

And that I will faithfully and impartially.

And that I will faithfully and impartially.

Perform and discharge the duties of planning commission member.

Perform and discharge the duties of planning commission member.

According to the law.

According to the law.

And to the best of my ability and understanding.

To the best of my ability and understanding.

Awesome. Congratulations, Tony. You are official.

Thank you.

Welcome.

All right.

We're shaking hands. Have a great meeting, everyone.

Thank you. Okay. Great.

Well, I had the pleasure to be part of the interviewing committee for Tony and the the other candidates and um uh I'm I'm really looking forward to having Tony uh and and your opinion uh and uh and your input on what we'll be discussing would it be appropriate to introduce yourself everyone yeah uh Tony matasi I've been living in Lake Stevens for six years and uh planning on it just being a starter area but

My wife and I have fallen in love and don't plan on leaving anytime soon or ever possibly. And, uh, yeah, I've just really been wanting to get more and more in part of the community. And so that was part of my goals for the past year and a half joined rotary. And then that has led to applying for this position and joining the commission. Awesome. Oh, great.

Um, thank you. We will, uh, go on with the roll call. So Janice Oxford here. Tony. Jennifer Davis. And my brain is... Mike Doerr. Mike Doerr. And we have Amy Lodowski and Connor Davis are out. Did they ask to be excused? Okay. If we can have a motion to excuse them. So moved. Second. And all in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

And that was Janice that seconded. Thank you. Sorry. Now that we have Jennifer back. I'm not the only female.

Yeah, I think Connor is enjoying his summer too much. As a teacher, I follow him on Facebook, and I see all the places that he's going. Great. So we have any, is there anyone online? Okay, we have nobody in the room. So we have no guest business. Has everyone had a chance to review the minutes from our last meeting? And does anyone have any comments? And if not, we can take a motion to approve the minutes.

I move that we approve the minutes as written.

we have a second i'll second jennifer davis second okay uh okay uh so two improvements all in favor aye aye any opposed great so uh we have uh as our discussion item tonight our main discussion item tonight we have the public engagement plan and uh that will be presented by staff

Well, good evening, Planning Commission, Christy Schmidt. This evening, with great pleasure, we have an intern with us for the summer of 2026, Alicia McPhee. She's been helping us get some projects that have been on the table kind of out the door that have been sitting back on our long range program. And one of them is the draft public engagement guide. So as part of her internship here with City of Lake Stevens, part of it is giving a presentation. And so tonight you are her assignment in presenting the public engagement plan. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Alicia to make the presentation on the work that she's done on this project.

Perfect. Well, yes. Hello. I am the planning and community development intern this summer. And one of the main projects I've been working on so far has been updating and reformatting the public engagement guide draft. And so today I'm going to be walking you through some of the key changes that we've made and gather feedback on this updated draft. And so, first with some background, the draft was created and presented to the planning Commission in 2025 but then the guide was placed on hold due to shifting priorities to long range planning. And so now, since they have some more bandwidth from hiring an intern, we are able to revisit this project again, and I have been able to spend some time reformatting, editing, and expanding it to a completed draft version. And so one of the main goals of the public engagement guide is to provide staff with a one-stop resource to use for public engagement. And this guide includes multiple different tools, methods and guidance for all different levels of engagement. And the guide is designed to help staff communicate projects early on, gather input And find solutions for engagement setbacks and all of this supports the city's mission of providing a safe desirable community with open communication and public service. And so I'm going to be briefly going over some of the key updates with this table. All the ones that are on the left are the completely new additions to the draft. And then the ones on the right are things that I've updated, but were in the previous draft already. And so starting with the new level of public participation section on page three. This provides context for the new flow chart and graphic that are on the following pages three and four. And all of those support the updated and revised public participation spectrum table, which is on page five. And then there is the new section beneath the ground rules for collective creativity figure, which is on page 10. And that just provides context and guidance. And there's also some new resources, templates for engagement materials and images throughout the document. as well as a fully updated engagement timeline sample in the appendix on page 22 and reformatting improvements across the entire document. And so now I'll be going over some of the additions in a little more detail, starting with the new level of public participation section. And this section introduces the idea of determining the appropriate level of public participation based on the attended role of the public. And it includes guiding questions to help staff evaluate their project and identify the right level to use. And it includes it introduces the public participation spectrum framework, which is what our document uses. And that framework has identified five levels of participation, and those include informing the public to understand issues options and solutions consulting the public by gathering feedback involving the public to ensure public concerns are considered throughout the process collaborating with the public. by actively involving them in every step and decision and empowering the public by placing the final decision with them. And at the bottom right of this slide is the new public participation relationship visual that illustrates how communication flows between the city and the public at each different level. And next is the new flow chart that goes along with the public participation spectrum framework. And this flow chart is used to determine the right level of public participation. And it is intended to be simple, clear, and a quick tool to help the staff identify which level of participation fits their specific project. And it walks the staff through a couple yes or no questions with each question building on top of the other and reflects the increasing public participation. And so by answering each question, the staff can identify where their project realistically fits. Next, we are looking at the updated and expanded public participation spectrum table. And this table now includes the goals, public promise, examples, strengths, and challenges. And if the staff doesn't want to use the flow chart from the previous slide, they can still identify which level to use. That would match their project by reading through the row of goals to determine which one is appropriate. But then they can also use the examples strengths and challenges rose when planning engagement techniques and the public participation. spectrum framework is intended to help reduce over engagement and under engagement for these projects. And now looking at another addition is the section beneath the ground rules for collective creativity. This new portion adds context for the ground rules and includes practical tips that can improve collaboration when working in groups. And the original 2025 version only presented this visual. And so by adding these boxes, it provides more information on what each element means and makes this visual much more beneficial for the reader. And so some of the next steps that we are hoping to work through is gathering feedback and edits tonight, and then inputting those into the guide and finalizing it, and then hopefully presenting this guide to the city council later this month, or possibly in early September. I do believe it's going to be later this month. And for the feedback, we have some questions that we are wanting to ask you, which is, is this document easy to use and understand? What are some additional ideas, resources, templates, concepts for public engagement or tools that could be beneficial and practical to implement? Are there parts of this plan that feel too detailed or not detailed enough? Are there any additional city stakeholders that can be added to the list in the appendix in Section A4? And any other changes that you guys would think would be beneficial for the guide? And that is all.

Excellent. Could you leave those questions up so that we can give you that feedback? So who would like to go first and provide their feedback on all these questions?

I had a specific comment. It had to do with the response summaries. Well, first of all, globally, I loved it. It's great. It's something we've been talking about for feels like decades. And I really appreciated the sort of CoB, Cindy Spence, algorithmic worksheet for staff to use. I think that that's really transparent for the public to see how these decisions are made that it's not by whim. It's there's an actual CoB, Cindy Spence, I think is great. CoB, Cindy Spence, The this topic of response summaries. I thought was so interesting because one of the hurdles. I think that we see a lot on planning commission is keep the public comes they give comment and then the CoB, Cindy Spence, We sort of evaluate we give our recommendation Council makes their decision and then members of the public are like, well, it didn't go the way I thought it should go. So what's even the point of me participating? It's shouting into the void. There's a lot of, I think that can be a barrier to public participation. So I was thinking about, that's wonderful. I like that as a concept to help address that idea of that the public has sometimes that their participation is pro forma and it's sort of to check a box and it's not really being evaluated. So my question is, Is there a way to, and I don't know, I'm so backwards with AI, but is there a way that AI could be leveraged to somehow summarize the deliberative processes that happen? Because I know it would be really staff heavy to have anyone actually summarizing all the processes, but it'd be wonderful if a member of the public who participated in, whether it be in a workshop or in public comment, could say, wait, whatever happened with that? And what did council say about that? And what did the planning commission end up doing with our input? So that was kind of what I was thinking. I think the response summaries are a great idea. And I was just trying to think of a way to capture sort of the why so that people feel like their participation was genuinely evaluated and plugged into the process.

That's my comment on that.

Definitely. It's Commissioner Jennifer Davis. Sorry, speaking of AI, we're supposed to say our names before we speak. Yeah.

That's a good call.

I know that's definitely something that I hadn't considered but can look into somehow adding that process in. Yeah.

Mm hmm. This is Commissioner Dewar. I really appreciate where this is going and some of the changes that are here. And I find the graphics and workflow models to be very helpful. I think about how I might apply something like this where I work and I can see some things that I might borrow in here. So thank you very much for that. Especially, especially some of the discussions about kind of that civility and communications, all too often I've seen things get hostile fast and usually that comes from a position of just not being well informed on the way in so it manifests itself in the form of fear and anger. So hopefully that helps with that. I think if I had kind of one ask, it's actually two. One, just that we go through and make sure that everything in here is a may consider instead of will consider so that there's that scalable flexibility and that we don't back ourselves into a may, will, shall problem. Yeah. Um, and, um, I think the other piece, you know, as I, as I look at this is does the city of Lake Stevens have like a PIO office or is it sort of, yeah. So that, um, so that there can be, uh, along with these outreach, whether it's a planning thing, a public works thing, just kind of that constant repetition, whether that's a YouTube short or a TikTok for the kids or whatever it is, what's going on, not just a traditional email blast or something like that, but a 30-second spot, you know, drone footage of Lake Stevens saying, like, hey, are you interested in this area?

You know, don't forget we're soliciting feedback about X, Y, or Z. I will add, we did, we have a split position.

Okay.

So we do have a split position that's our grant writer communications person. And so we did run this document by our communications person and they were generally supportive of it, had a few tweaks and edits. But I think your suggestion that we could go one step further and see how we include them, such as newsflashes on our website. We do use, well, in the past, we had a tool to do our projects on our website. I think that tool is going to be changing. But I hear your thoughts that we need to be looking at all of our opportunities. And we do try to push out our projects through social media, at least sort of an initial stab. So I think that that's probably a great addition that we're covering our basis on where we're distributing information.

Yeah. And I think one of the reasons I bring up like a PIO or graphics person or something like that is, and again, a trap that I fall into is I can communicate technical items very well, but my graphical ability is zero. And a lot of people respond well to that. So having somebody who whose profession is that who can take the technical and make it so that the whole community can understand it in something simple, flashy, and, you know, with a little bit of music behind it, you know, that I think will go a long way.

What we do plan to do next, and if you have further ideas after we answer these questions, and if you go out to your businesses, and if you have other ideas, our goal is to keep this a living document. so it doesn't die. And so we can update it with technology, just like your AI suggestion and graphics. And then in addition, after our meeting here, we plan to go send this out to our department heads and staff, get additional feedback based on your comments, and then present to city council on how we intend to use this document. So we could use it in the comp plan update for 2026 as an example. That's it, I'll turn it back to Alicia.

I do have some feedback. This is Commissioner Martin. So overall, I think it's, this is great. I like that the majority of the document is the templates, I think that's the most viable part of this. And I do, but in the body, I do have a couple things I would like to suggest. One, one of the main One of the main misconceptions that I think a lot of people have in the public is they believe that the city has dictatorial powers and that when we present a plan or proposal that it is, or that it's, that's what we are dictating or actually maybe instead is People are afraid that a plan becomes something that's going to be required when it's they're already grandfathered in or. If they're people complain that something is happening in the city and the city doesn't have power to stop it like I see apartments going up, but they don't want to see apartments going up why doesn't the city stop that well. we don't have the legal authority to stop it, right? So I would say in the section where you have tools and methods, I would say do dispel misconceptions. And in the page before, there's the civility inquiry and creativity. I would add to the creativity section, look for win-win solutions. uh that's from my seven habits uh experience um so uh that that would be my my suggestions for the body um also when it comes to the templates are really useful, but in addition to the templates in here, it would be nice to have, and you probably already have this, a library of previous engagements. So like for example, when the comp plan update, there's public engagement for that, it would be nice to be able to say, okay, what did we do the last time we did public engagement for a comp plan update? I just wanna take that, tweak it, And then boom, it's easy done rather than, I mean, the worksheet here is good and it should be followed, but for things that are similar to what's been done in the past, it's probably even easier to go and go pick out that engagement library or the engagement process from the library and just modify it. I like that there's, uh these the formulas and the and the flow charts of engineers love this stuff so um that helps a lot i i think it helps objectify things that are subjective um and uh let's see a few questions easy to understand yes uh the the the PB, Harmon Zuckerman, The stakeholders. I think that's very comprehensive and I think I don't mean a suggestions for that. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, Yeah, that's feedback.

PB, Lupita D Montoya, Thank you.

I only have one quick addition, I would add in stakeholders under housing partners and agencies, the Association of Washington cities and our dialogue. We often refer to what cities surrounding us are doing. what cities that are perhaps hesitating on some of the legislation. And the Association of Washington Cities has also been very helpful in finding that. To counterbalance a couple of my colleagues, AI is not a friend when it comes to being a business owner in Lake Stevens or anywhere right now, because it is the black hole of time. And when you want a moving piece of work, if you get into an AI circle, you can count the rest of your day gone. So not a fan. That's why we have a panel because there's others that are. I think that it's putting people out of jobs and it's making my job so much harder. So those are just my two cents worth. Otherwise, I think it's lovely. The idea that you're using current photos will go a long way. The fact that we've used the same static photos for presentation after presentation is noted. So I like that we have some current stuff going on.

Thank you.

I don't have too much feedback to provide. This is Tony . I do find the document easy to understand. I definitely liked all the different charts. Big fan of that. And just the clarity. I did not have any stakeholders to add. I tried looking through it multiple times trying to find something. I think you've covered every one that I could think of.

Perfect.

Good. So any other feedback? No? Great. Well, thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, so on to the next item. We have, let me scroll back up. Okay, we are ready for Commissioner's Report. That was our one discussion item. We do have the Planning Director's Report, which has some content, which is in the packet, but let's go over to Commissioner's Report. First, Commissioner Huxford.

Nothing today, thank you.

Christopher McConkey- And Commissioner matasi this is just so you know, this is an opportunity to bring up things that are like not specifically on the agenda that are. Christopher McConkey- germane to planning Commission stuff not like personal items right. Christopher McConkey- But anything like that that has germane to planning Commission stuff you'll you'll see examples, but do you have anything. Christopher McConkey- Nothing at this time. Christopher McConkey- Jennifer Davis and nothing for me.

I'm starting to want to welcome our new Commissioner, I will say firsthand that there can be kind of a learning curve and we ever start using like jargon or something, please, please, please like slow us down. There's a lot of acronyms that get thrown around and it does take some time to learn at all and We're here as a resource. We're all in it together. We look forward to working with you.

Thank you for Yeah, um, what was let's see it's the uh what is the name of the document that the big document we had it's like it's the uh the it's our our has the city plans for all the different it's our strategic plan our strategic plan or it's our comprehensive plan uh it's one we did like about a year and a half ago uh where it has all of our the plans and policies uh That document was really informative for me when we went through it. And I encourage you to go through it. It's our comprehensive plan. If you go through the comprehensive plan, fun reading, but I encourage you to at least look at that document. The comprehensive plan is kind of like everything that we do, everything that we do kind of like condensed down into one document. So I encourage you to do that. And we recently updated it. And we're going to be continuing to update it on forever. So my feedback, I've been thinking a lot about the tree height, the setbacks for the streams and such. I've been thinking a lot about that and there's one item in there. I know I made my, I made a statement at the time about the, and it seems useless, the fences. Is my question is the split rail fences. Is that a state law or is that something that we put in as a as kind of like a helper so that we can help remind the homeowner not to go beyond this or what

It is not specifically a law. It's best practice to provide a physical separation and split rail fences have been widely adopted because they allow for animals to continue to migrate in and out of critical areas, but still create that physical barrier. Okay.

Christy Schmidt, planning manager to add on to director writes comment. We do have a codified fencing and signage that is required in the code. So the type of split rail fence that's actually outlined in our, we have a detail in our ads. So that's where it comes from. Well, other jurisdictions have different types of fencing, but the split rails, the most common one, cause it's most affordable. And as Russ mentioned, it does allow.

animal migration and passage of animals yeah but not people well okay well um i i yeah i was i don't know if this is a appropriate time to mention it but i i would like to see if there's a way that we can discuss even the way to make that uh i may or to make it uh optional rather than required because it's from what we discussed earlier it's not enforced anyway and uh so why even do it so um i don't know it's it's i'm i'm far out in left field for this but uh it's just my my opinion i thought about this

So Planner Levitan will be bringing back the Critical Areas Ordinance to the Planning Commission, I believe it's early September, to you. So that may be an item of discussion within that topic.

Yeah, I would like to discuss that later when it's appropriate time. So that is all my comments. So let's go on to the Planning Director's Report.

Okay, you have the report obviously in your packet. So I might just highlight a couple of things and add on a couple of things. So the first big news that's not in here and it would really be part of our third quarter report is two of our key staff people are leaving the agency. So our building official is retiring. So we're all very excited to for her to take that next step in her life. And then our code enforcement officer has accepted a position in another jurisdiction. So we'll be recruiting for those two key positions. And I just bring that up because we try to do an introduction of who we are at the beginning of the document, just so you know us and some of the roles that we do. Otherwise, if we go to basically some of the permit statistics, this has been a really, really busy year for us. We've had some really, well, some expected, some unexpected projects, a lot of school projects and the sheer volume of school projects we're processing this year has taken place. We could have had another employee just dedicated or two just dedicated to school projects. So that's been a really big one. We've been working on a long-term migration of our paper records into digital format. And along with that, we've been going through a quite intensive disposition effort that Don has been creating. crucial in doing that and so we are going to be paper free by the time we move to the new building except for archive materials that we have to maintain but otherwise we're either scanning tossing um so that has been a herculean feat like cleaning out the stalls right um talked about our development review statistics, you have some photos in there of some of the new projects. And then just the statistics on our code enforcement. And hopefully you all have seen our new gateway signs that we've put up, continuing to try to do our beautification. And then we were able to work with other teams to get the artwork up for the America 250 celebration. So hopefully everyone appreciated that. the new banners as well as the other versions of banners. And then our civic capital projects are going along very well. It's fun to watch the progress on the museum every day. And it's really cool. They're getting ready to start going up with their third story. And I can say that we have a great first floor tenant and we're getting close to having a second floor tenant. And then we have a contract now to have a consultant or contractor start the city hall construction. And so we're looking forward to that project starting and then be moving over there sometime early 2027. So that's just a quick overview of our report. Otherwise, I don't have a lot of new things to add other than just the volume of work. It's been a busy summer for us. Sure.

Great.

Thanks.

PB, Harmon Zuckerman, I do have one question on the the permit performance chart. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, The average is very close to the limit. PB, Harmon Zuckerman, And I'm wondering, do you have an I general. What was the range of those because it looks like all the good portion of these went beyond the statutory deadline guessing.

Yeah. This represents, it's not in, well, maybe Christy, you're going to need to help me because you did a lot of the review of this. But I think the expanded report, I don't remember seeing projects that have gone missing. Beyond the statutory deadline or a handful?

Very few. Excellent question. So what we do to comply with 5290 when we have projects that go over two reviews, let's say four. we ask the applicant to provide a 5290 waiver letter, which essentially waives us from the state statute. And the reason why we do this and it's recommended by the state is because we do allow concurrent submittal of permits. So what that looks like, someone comes in for a subdivision, will allow them to submit a construction plan at the same time so that bolts all their permits up to four permits traveling at the same time not all the permits that come in early get issued with the first permit so as an example the construction plan has to hang there and wait there so that is why you'll see some permits that go over but we're still not penalized for it We did have a couple that did went over because we were short staff. We've been short staff. So we did have some over the dates. We hope to improve our range next year.

Okay, good. Yeah.

We do. It's an in progress because now we have full staff. So we'd like to get back to where we were the year before.

We had a staff. Now we don't.

Yes, well, okay. We're going to work on it. HR is helping us.

I only mention this because a friend of mine had a long, their permit process took longer than they were expecting. I just wanted to...

can provide that feedback are you done I don't want to enter no go ahead yeah um if I may probably off of that question if there is a um hang up during that process specific to something I'll say the energy code does the city um go out to um maybe an outside entity an authority in that area something outside of the city, or is it up to the petitioner, the permit holder, to then prove to the city?

It is up to the applicant. We provide review comments for compliance. They have a check sheet for their energy credits, and they're required to provide a certain level depending on their project. And so it's up to them to provide and select what items they would like with the building permit. As an example, single family home, whether they choose energy efficient water heater, whether they have a solar panel, et cetera. There's multiple choices that they can pick, but it is the burden of the applicant to design it correctly to meet code. Understood, and asking for a friend.

Just saying that if there is a process that is going through that the applicant holder has now proven, does that clear the way to the person that comes behind that applicant holder? Does the city learn from every permit? Because every project is different, right? And so does the city then say, hey, listen, this was verified that this was, outside of the norm and was proven to not needed to be in that space. Sure. Will they then convey that to the next person that comes in to shorten that next person's delay?

I would say yes. The answer is yes. And I'll give the example of a our tank. It's a storage facility for a stormwater facility. At first, they weren't permitted. We have allowed them. We have four or five in the city. And now we do allow them with certain requirements. So you could take that same applicability to the building code also.

Okay.

So yes.

But with the caveat, they still have to prove the applicability to their project and so it still has to come as part of the recommendation of their architect engineer specific to their site does the city need to vet the project as much if it's a new technology a new technique no that's where we're learning but it's always up to the applicant still to prove that is an acceptable means and measures to complete their project and we verify that through our review process

Okay. That might be one of the things that could be communicated a little bit better. To have something hung up when you know you're not the first has been a complaint that has come from my own household, as well as people that I know that are in the same space. So again, anything that can be done to help communicate the process better in a moving target, in a moving industry, would be very much appreciated.

We do try to be very direct and upfront with our applicants and provide guidance. So if there's some sort of issue, you can feel free to give me a call and we can talk about it.

Happy to do so.

Thank you.

And with that, I think we are at the bottom of our agenda. Do we want to adjourn?

I'd make a motion to adjourn, yes.

I'll second it.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? We are adjourned.