Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

I would like to welcome everyone to the Lake Stevens Planning Commission meeting for November 19th, 2025. I am Chair Huxford. We are going to give begin the meeting with a call to order. If you would all um if you would all join me for the pledge of allegiance, please. 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 so much and I appreciate your participation this evening. We'll start with roll call. If I could start to my right with Commissioner Davis

present. Commissioner Connor Davis present. Commissioner Mike Der here. and we will very slowly he's ask for a roll call from

also known as Kent Clark. This is

Commissioner Nathan Packard. All are present and [laughter] accounted for. We do have one commissioner who is absent this evening. I excused. Do I have a motion to excuse Commissioner Morton? A motion to excuse Commissioner Morton. This Commissioner Connor Davis. Commissioner Der second. All those in favor? Any oppose?

Any abstain? Thank you so much. Again, we appreciate you all being here. We have a full meeting this evening. We're going to have two public hearings. So, we will open up a public hearing, close, discuss, and then move on to the second public hearing, close and discuss. But first, we have the opportunity for any guest business. This is any business not having to do with our agenda this evening uh that you would like to address the planning commission. Are there any items of guest business?

Thank you, sir. Would you like to um meet us at the podium? State your name, please, address if you choose, and you have three minutes. Okay.

Okay. My name is Ray Welk, and um I I at the risk of coming off like a little bit like a loose cannon, I've got a whole bunch of stuff here that um that I came up with. I just found out about this meeting a couple hours ago. And I don't know if it's a done deal or not, but I'm here to talk about what potentially could happen over here on the corner with the fivestory uh uh building. And um I've got the the the 204 to 44 comprehensive plan where they want to increase the population or potentially like 8,000 people. Um, and through that whole thing, there's a lot of stuff, a lot of different points with long paragraphs of how they're going to do this and what's going to be done. And then transportation has one sentence. One sentence. The city will develop effective multimodel transportation system that emphasizes access, direct circulation and safety for vehicles, freight, public transportation, cyclists and pedestrians. And it's pretty broad statement. Um, so my concern is if there's 200 units or roughly 200, basically that puts 400 cars on the road between 20th and Grade Road. And um I I've got to shorten this, but one of the things that that um that it states in here about the development is to preserve and promote the carrier character of existing neighborhoods through thoughtful, clear, and objective development regulations and design standards that promote compatibility.

ility between uses, respecting existing neighborhoods, ensure adequate light, air, and open space, protect and improve environmental [clears throat] quality. Um, encourage infill development on suitable vacant parcels and redevelopment of underutilized partials. Ensure that the height, bulk, and design of the infill redevelopment projects are compatible with their surroundings. and five stories and four stories um I just don't think uh uh is compatible with downtown Lake Stevens. There's got to be a better place for it that's closer to main traffic thoroughares where we're not clogging up 20th and and grade road. Um that's and and again I don't know if it's a done deal. Um, I was supposed to be on the list of of updates and I've not gotten anything. So, um, that's that's why I'm here.

Well, we appreciate your time and appreciate you being here. Thank you so much. Thank you. And so that you know, this isn't a dialogue so that we can't answer any of your questions right now, but we appreciate that you have made public comment and we will ensure that you are made aware of any updates to that specific project. Thank you, chair. Thank you.

And everything I just said, I'll repeat later. Thank you. No, we appreciate you being here. Are there any other guest items that are being brought up that are not on the agenda? Do we have anybody online? Okay, moving on. Then we're going to move on to action item number four. This is the approval of the meeting minutes of our last meeting. This was on November 5th. Have all of the commissioners had an opportunity to um peruse those minutes? Are there any changes? Hearing none. Do I have a motion to approve? Commissioner Packard motions to approve. Do I have a second? Commissioner Davis seconds. Connor Davis. All those in favor?

I I I. Any oppose? Any abstain? The minutes are approved as written. Thank you so much. So, we're going to move on to item number five. This is the first of two public hearings. Uh we are going to have a public hearing that opens. There will be a discussion from staff. There will be public comment that are um encouraged on that item. We will close that hearing and then we will have discussion and then whatever recommendation might be made by um planning commission. So, at this point, do I have a motion to approve the process code phase public hearing? Commissioner Dorso moves.

Do I have a second? Commissioner Packard seconds. [clears throat] All those in favor? I I

All right. So, the public hearing on the process code phase uh wording is open and we will turn time over to staff to discuss. All right. Thank you, Chair Hexford, commissioners. Uh David Levitan, principal planner. So, we here we are here tonight for the public hearing for what we are calling phase one of the process code. Uh this is something that we've briefed you on a number of times over the last couple years. Uh we're still intending to have a second phase and potentially a third where we take a kind of a larger scale update to chapters 1416A and 1416B which deal with our process codes things like review types and appeals and noticing and trying to consolidate and streamline that. But we do have this first phase that we are needing to get completed by the end of the year. So that's what we're focusing on tonight. So as far as the agenda, uh, I'll be giving just a really quick presentation. There will be an opportunity for public comments. Uh, planning commission will then discuss and deliberate and then we we are asking for a planning commission recommendation to the city council. So let me get rid of this. Oh, I guess that's up on there. Uh, but anyway, just a little bit of an overview. We did first bring this before you back in late 2023. We focus on a couple of uh legislative bills that had come through in the last few years that had updated the growth management act. One of them was Senate Bill 5290,

which cities were required to update their codes to um meet the permit review timelines that are now statutoily uh required uh within the RCW and the WAC. And then HP 1293, which is focused on design and development review and really a focus on providing more clear and objective language and re removing subjective language. Um at the end of last year um we decided that we were going to adopt an interim ordinance to comply with Senate Bill 5290. So that was basically language related to uh the number of days that we have to review different types of permits. So type one permits, type two permits, type three permits. And so that was um approved by the city council via interim ordinance that didn't require a planning commission public hearing. But now as we are needing to adopt permanent language uh for that uh it does it is required to come back before the planning commission. So that's one component of this phase one. And then additional process code items that we've added are focused on things like further further refining the land use permit types. uh removing subjective code language and then adding and standardizing definition terms um just to make sure that the code reads as clearly as possible. So the proposed amendments are included in attachment one under item 5A. Um so kind of some of the highlights of that would be adopting language adopting permanent language for what was included in interim ordinance 1192. um shifting design review to an associated land use determination, basically to further consolidate it within the building permit or land use approval process. Um that's consistent with House Bill 1293.

Um we're proposing to change site plan review, which is a very clear and objective process where you essentially evaluating a project for its consistency with development standards. So, that seemed like something that should really be a type one process because you're essentially just saying, "Do you meet the setbacks? Do you meet the landscaping requirements?" Um, it's a little bit different than most of our type two and type three permits. So we thought that was more appropriate for a type one process, administrative process. Uh revises and adds and tries to clarify some language related to the plat alteration process. Uh both the review type um and then just what it's called. It was kind of interchangeably using terms plat and subdivision and we just wanted to clean that up a little bit. uh tries to remove subjective language from uh section 1416 CO50 which is our design review section as well as some associated sections such as signs and other things that deal with design review making sure that we don't have subjective language in there. And then uh something that we had missed during a code cleanup a couple years ago is we had adopted new supplementary use regulations and then they were already in another chapter and we forgot to delete them from that other chapter. So this is basically just removing duplicate language uh within chapter 1444. So as far as the public notice and public comment process, so we were required as this is a code amendment to send it to the depart Washington state department of commerce. We did that on October 8th. Uh we didn't receive any comments from the department of commerce or any other state agencies or any tribes or any other kind of organizations that that that's typically distributed to. We issued a notice of public hearing on November 8th. Uh we did not receive any written comments in advance of this meeting. Um we did receive a inquiry in advance of our last

work session on this which was your last meeting on November 5th. I'm from the Snomish County Commino Association of Realtors. Just asking about why we were proposing to change our type 3 permits from having to be completed with within 120 days to out to 170 days. And I explained to them that it was basically just to align with the language within Senate Bill 5290. We do still try to kind of very much meet these standards and exceed these standards and and get our reviews done as quickly as possible. Um and then any members of the public are able to provide oral testimony this evening. So similar to the uh well the same code amendment decision criteria that we discussed at your last meeting related to step housing um that's found in chapter 141675. Uh we need to make findings that the proposal is consistent with the comprehensive plan uh which the staff report determined was. Uh basically there are several goals and policies that aim to streamline the permitting process and clarify code language. Um needs to comply with the growth management act. Uh really most of this most of these amendments are intended specifically to address recent changes to the GMA and then it needs to be found to serve the serve and to enhance the public health and safety. Um, so really, you know, these are mostly administrative changes, but they do help to at least kind of streamline that process, make it a lot easier to interpret the code so that we can kind of make those findings and evaluate projects for their potential impacts on public health and safety. Uh, so with that, staff uh believes that the code language in attachment one is consistent with the required approval criteria. Uh so is asking for the planning commission uh following this presentation to open

it up for public comments and then follow that with a discussion and deliberation of the proposed amendments and then is requesting that the planning commission forward a recommendation to the city council to approve the revised code language as shown in attachment one. And with that I'm happy to answer any questions

before we go to public comment. Are there any initial questions from the commission? Hearing none, are there any comments from the audience on uh specifically this uh process code phase wording cleanup process? Do we have any comments online? Okay. Um

can I make one? Yes, this is um Commissioner Jennifer Davis. I since we have members of the public here tonight, it's awesome. Um it I I just thought that we should say that we've seen this um several times over the last couple years. So to I I just want to make sure that that you understand that we're not receiving this for the first time and then not commenting or discussing or having questions because we've already it's not our first time seeing it. So I just it always seems odd to me when there's no

I know it's very stilted. Yeah, I get it. Um, we do have um the opportunity now to close the public hearing on this portion and then have our discussion. Do I have a motion to close the public hearing on the process code phases? Commissioner Derso moves and a second. Commissioner Connor Davis seconds. All those in favor?

Any opposed? Any abstain? and we use um our first and last names. Not that we really like to hear our names, but it's for the recording. So, it's not that we're trying to um talk in first person. That gets strange. We are now going to have the discussion of commissioners. Again, we've to your point, thank you so much. We have seen this several times now. Uh were there any questions in reading it as written today that you wanted to ask staff? I just had uh this is Commissioner Derer. I had one question. It's on page 33 of the packet. That's uh 14.46.020. Uh section B. Uh that section strikes out uh the wording neighborhood character and uh so in reference to uh detailed description on how the proposed development is consistent and not in conflict with surrounding neighborhood character and neighborhood design and just leaving it with neighborhood design. Can you explain the rationale for the removal? Yeah, a lot of that comes just from the desire to um you know really neighborhood character is something that's really hard to really define and is something that is typically more appropriate for as was referenced in the set of public comments uh provided by the gentlemen. Um, you know, when you're establishing goal and policy foundation, it's pretty normal to use terms like neighborhood character because you don't really need to get into what exactly that is and because the comp plan is at a much higher level. When you're getting into your code requirements and you're evaluating projects for compliance with those standards and with those guidelines, when you say neighborhood character and you don't necessarily define it, it makes it harder to

actually evaluate projects. And so kind of within the hierarchy of the of the comp plan being at the top and then the development code being an implementing ordinance, we just felt that in the spirit of um House Bill 1293 that removing terms like neighborhood character within areas where we're evaluating projects against those code standards um would provide more clear and objective language. It's something that if the planning commission has concerns, that's a pretty minor thing. I mean, you could propose to keep that in if you'd like to to see that term stay within the code language. uh you know my personal preference would be to uh while I while I recognize the uh need for clear uh and uh objective criteria uh to keep something in here that references the neighborhood character because that is important for Lake Stevens and ensuring that um you know a structure that goes in is consistent with the character of the neighborhood so that it's not sticking out like a sore thumb um is something that I personally should be under consideration when um uh when evaluating.

Yeah. And I and I totally understand that and I think part of the thought process is a lot of these especially the approval criteria they reference compliance with the consistency with the comprehensive plan and then that's where you get into addressing things like neighborhood character. But um yeah, that's something that if the planning commission would like to see that remain, you could incorporate that into your recommendation. C

can um so when I originally saw that as you were asking your question, I assumed it was taken out because it seemed redundant that those two things were similar enough that you don't need both. So help me understand why character is is extra, you know, important to add in addition to the design, right? Because I see those two things as very similar. Yeah. I suppose in my mind, and granted, not not a developer, not a plan, right? Um neighborhood design is is the structural or the layout of what's going on in the neighborhood.

Um you know, is it a is it a um what what are the property setbacks? what the what the properties look like. And then character is granted harder to define uh to Planner Levitan's point, [snorts] but it it is something that uh you know, it are we putting um terracotta tiles uh in a northwest house, you know, those kind of those kind of ideas. Uh are we putting um structures that are out of character with the neighborhood um in that space? Yeah, I guess I just in my mind that's part of neighborhood design, right? The design of the homes, not just the plat and the overall setup, but the individual home designs and are there is there consistency in that. So that's just

my mind. I read them separately, but I can see I can see where people would also put them together. Okay. Yeah. Thank you for clarifying. My question was also along those lines, although it's on page 28 and it has um 28B1, single family, residential, and infill and middle housing projects developed under chapter blah blah blah are exempt from site plan review. And kind of the same idea where you've got an existing neighborhood and you're infilling and the flavor of that infill doesn't reflect the existing neighborhood. So I was just wondering the question that I had was why is that exempt?

Uh the thought process on this is I mean the site plan review is typically we don't do it for residential. It's primarily on the commercial and industrial side. It's it's intended when you don't have say a preliminary plat process or some other sort of alternative subdivision. you're you're generally going to be addressing the design and the consistency with the development standards through the building permit and that there really isn't a need for a separate land use process for say a single family residential project. And so just clarifying that I don't think that we currently require it, but it's not specifically we don't currently require site plan review for single family residential development, but it's not specified within the code. So, we're just trying to address whereas if you have like a large scale apartment building like a large like an actual multifamily residential and you have drive aisles and you have landscape buffers and kind of all sorts of things like that, you really still do need the site plan review to evaluate the soul the site on a more holistic basis. And so we're trying to differentiate something like that versus somebody that's building a forplex or somebody that's building a duplex or a single family home that it's an outright permitted use that you generally wouldn't be required to go through a land use review process. You're essentially just evaluating it against the development standards and the building code and the development code. So, um, you know, we basically we we went through, you know, over the last five to six years and have updated our code to allow for middle housing in most of our single family residential neighborhoods. We had done that even before HB1 1220, which required us to do it as part of our last comp plan, but we already were allowing duplexes and triplexes and forplexes within all of our zoning districts. So, if you have

these outright permitted uses requiring them to go through a kind of what was previously a type two review and even through a type one review when you can largely capture that review, not largely, you can capture that review through the building permit process. We just didn't feel like it was we wanted to just clarify that we treat those types of uses differently than a larger scale residential project. And and does this wording do that? Single family residential and infill and middle housing projects developed under this chapter are exempt from site plan review.

Um this is director right. Maybe I'll jump in here really quick. Um I I agree with where planner Levitan is discussing this that there's a distinction between having a very smallcale project do an additional land use permit but that they are not required to do a site plan review is also a misnomer because part of their building permit plan they do have to do a site plan to show compliance. So, I think that some word smithing could probably take place in this section to really capture the idea that we just don't want to have these um as Dave said outright permitted uses go through a more strenuous regulatory process um that can be combined with their building permit. And if I could just clarify, so when you have say one when you have one, you say you have a 5 acre lot and you're going to subdivide that into let's say 15 units or 20 units. Um you have to go through the plat process, which is where you're actually evaluating site design. You're just you're evaluating how the roads are going to be laid out, where the lots are going to be, where the access tracks are going to be, where the open space tracks are going to be. So you're doing for a larger scale residential single family residential project, you're doing that review at the at the subdivision stage. But if you're not going to be creating individual lots and you already have say, you know, we we you already have a single lot where you can put a forplex on it, we just wanted to clarify that you're not creating new lots that you're basically already need to comply with the code that that's going to be evaluated through the building permit phase. So, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to require them to go through this land use process. And again, I don't think that we've required any of the like if somebody wanted to

build a forplex on a 10,000 ft lot within the R six zone or 10,500T lot, which they'd be able to do within the R six zone. We're not currently requiring them to go through site plan review because it's already an outright permitted use. They're not creating any new lots. We just wanted to clarify that within the code. And chapter 1446 deals with it spells out what that applies to. And so when we reference chapter 1446, I think that it cap does capture it. But as director Wright noted, we can maybe clarify or add some appending language to say to explain why it's not needed because this review already occurs as part of the building permit process.

Okay. It just stood out to me. It just Yeah. No, I get it. The wording jumped out at me. Are there any other questions or comments? So, we're at a point in the evening where we need to make a recommendation as a commission. How do we feel about recommending as written or would we like to amend any of the the wording as written? I I wouldn't mind uh an amended version that retains that neighborhood character language. Okay. At the at the discretion of my fellow commissioners.

And I I do agree with keeping character in there. That's a you know like a defining quality of a neighborhood is what I think of as character or defining qualities. I mean any neighborhood has every neighborhood has design but what is unique to that neighborhood could be architectural elements could be you know landscaping could be um you know you know streetscapes um you know lighting that those are things that are that add character um and to be quite honest like we need to we should try to as a city uh promote character within our our neighborhoods um I think everybody like everyone wants to have certain character in their neighborhood. So, I think it's it's warranted while it's vague. Um, you know, we'll leave that to the end user.

Thank you, Commissioner Packard. No objections. Commissioner Jennifer Davis. Um, I support that amendment and I support it as well. I won't um add wording to change 28, but I would ask that it be looked at one more time before we go to council with that. So, with those changes, do we have a motion to approve and send forward? Commissioner Packard, motions to approve and send forward. Do I have a second on that? Commissioner Der seconds. All those in favor? I.

Any opposed? Any abstain? All right, we are halfway through the public hearing process. However, we had a guest join us um a couple minutes after we started. If you, ma'am, would like to add any guest business that is not on the agenda, I would open up the opportunity for you to do that. If you have comments that you'd like to make that are on the agenda, we'll give you opportunity during the public hearing. So, not to put you on the spot, but if you would like three minutes at the podium to introduce yourself and give your address if you choose, uh we would love to have you join us. if you could stand at the microphone so we can hear you please. Testing, testing, one, two, testing. [laughter] My name is Laura Yetus, but everybody calls me Leia. And I was at the city council meeting last night, which is why I'm here. This is the first time I heard about this meeting. I live in Tis1 and I have heard rumors about the development that is being thought about planned. I'm not sure what stage it is, but it's for a large multi-story development with commercial buildings on the bottom in TIZ1. I live in TIZ1. And not only that, I live on 20th Street in TIZ1 and I'm on a daily basis amazed at the traffic on 20th Street. And at the city council meeting last night, they mentioned that um the traffic impact fees for TIS1 would be different than for TIS 2 and TIS3. And I agree, they should be different. I think that the traffic impact fee should be greater for anything in TIS1 because when any development happens in TIZ1,

we're stuck here unless we go through TIZ2. You know, people who live in the neighborhood in the Northshore neighborhood usually don't work in the Northshore neighborhood. Their doctors are not in the Northshore neighborhood. We depend on access to highway 9 and h access to US2 just like TIZ2 and TIS3. Only in our case it's worse because we travel through TIZ1 and TIS2 to get access to our jobs and to our doctors. So I'm here tonight on the um agenda. Well, there was a presentation. I know that Russ was there, Christie was there, and you said that at the meeting tonight, you would be discussing TIZ1, and I'm specifically interested in how the traffic is being evaluated in this study for this proposed multi-story building within TIC1. So, that's why I'm here tonight. And I am concerned about the traffic. I travel the trestle with fear and trepidation on my way to work and I don't want to see it get worse.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. We appreciate your comments this evening. We appreciate the participation of the community and know that we are also community members. We all commute. We live here and volunteer our time on behalf of the planning commission. So, um your comments are greatly appreciated. I would make sure that anybody here that is not already uh linked up with the city so that they're receiving um um updates on what's going on with the city on certain projects, please do so before the end of the evening. Uh I will move then on to our second public hearing of the evening. This is 5B public hearing for uh code revisions to chapters 1408 divisions 14 to110. Uh this has concurrency management systems and the t uh traffic um impact mitigation fees. This is um well let's leave it at that. Do I have a motion to open the public hearing?

Commissioner Connor Davis motions to open the public hearing. Do I have a second? Commissioner Jennifer Davis seconds. All those in favor? I I I.

Any opposed? Okay, moving on. The public hearing is open. We'll turn time over to um staff to direct us on this um request. Thank you, Chair Huxford, Christy Schmidt, planning manager, and thank you for those who are attending this evening for part two of this presentation. Tonight, the focus here is the planning commission public hearing to the amendments just stated by our chair. Within the packet tonight, you have a total of eight items. I would like to point out that attachments one and two, you were sent out a revision of those last night. I accidentally had included your previous work session attachment from October 15th. So, I did take the opportunity to highlight the two areas in each of the code sections that had been changed based on your comments and staff input related to that. And then we will go over those in strikeout format this evening. So if you haven't had a time to review that, you we will have an opportunity this evening. Background information for everyone and particularly for the audience. This would be the planning commission's fourth meeting regarding these topics. You've met on this between February and May of this year and just recently also in October. So these amendments are proposed to be consistent with the adopted comprehensive plan back in 2024. The city has contracted with an engineer, a transportation firm, transpo to help the staff with the technical and administrative documents to help support these code amendments that reinforce the adoptive comprehensive plan goals and policies. I'll move forward. Here's a adoption process slide. As I stated that the the

planning commission has seen these three times previously. We did go ahead with the notification process to the state department of commerce. We issued the 60-day notice of an intent to adopt. So that um forces them to look at our documents that have been proposed and that was done in early October. Once city council acknowledges approval of these, which will be after probably at least one or two more work sessions, we do have to issue a 10-day notice back to the state. The public hearing notice was issued in early November with tenative dates of uh public hearing tonight before the planning commission on the 19th and then one before the city council hopefully in December, but more likely it might be January. the SEPA uh the exemption notice was issued and it's also part of your packet that was issued on the 13th of November. And as noted, city council did have another work session last night. We were hoping to get some input from them which we did receive and I'll go over that in a few slides from now. So the amendments before you are consistent and based upon the transportation and capital facility elements in the comprehensive plan. We will have the public hearing tonight pending the recommendation from planning commission. It moves forward to city council for them to continue work session and then scheduling a public hearing. So the purpose of these amendments is just this is just a global summary is to include the concurrency standards to be compliant with what was included in the adopted comprehensive plan. We are incorporating the last five to even back to 2012 best industry standards for multimmodal street and sidewalk standards for the city of Lake Stevens. And we are updating the traffic impact

fee methodology along with the including the latest trip generation manual. So, I wanted to talk about the city council work session last evening and I do understand that um planning commissioner Packard, he was present there at the meeting and we also have our council representative Donahghue here along with a couple people from the audience. Just to sum up the discussion, if you haven't listened to it before, city council, they did not have any substantive comments on the code amendments themselves. So, and that would be for 1408, 110, and 112, which are before you this evening. They did have comments and did request that staff go back and verify the methodology that has been prepared that compiles and validates the CFP projects that make up the total for the transportation impact fee. And so what staff is doing is we are going back to our traffic consultant transpo and we are going to be talking with them to validate that and provide any clarifications as needed for that. And then I believe director Wright also has a few comments.

Yeah. Um thank you. Um, I just wanted to just make sure for the the commission as you um listen to the rest of the presentation and go through your deliberations that you just focus on the point that um sort of your your part in this is to review the code language um that was just discussed the 1408 110 and 112. We've provided the other documents to you to sort of show what that link is, but setting aside the the methodology documents and um how it's implemented doesn't affect the the code itself and that stands on its own and the other documents stand on their own and play a different part in this process. So, I just wanted to make sure that the commission and the audience understands that there's a difference between what you're deliberating tonight. We've tried to give you a full package so you can see it through its entirety but understanding that um there are different elements that take their own paths.

Thank you for that clarification Russ.

So with that we are moving forward to the concurrency updates. Here's a picture here of a good example of what concurrency looks like. When Costco went in, they were required to do fairly extensive improvements along the frontages and along on the highway. So, this is just a summary of the concurrency management system and then I'm going to switch screens after this and then we're actually going to look at the strikeout version that's before you this evening. So essentially we're looking at clarifications, new terminology, exemptions that are listed within the code, multimodal requirements have been added, and also level of service to match the comprehensive plan. Um, I do understand there might be some comments later from some of the public about some of the level of service and what's to be incorporated. And then we did add in a section that talks about administrative responsibilities for clarification. Any revisions in the PowerPoint is noted in yellow and that will match the strikeout version that we're going to take a look at. So, what I'm going to do is switch screen. So, bear with me. You might see a little bit of a mess up there, but I'm going to go pull up the strikeout version so we can walk through it together. And let's stop share here. I always love it when SharePoint closes out on you, but I'm going to pull up another one. Let's see. Okay, here we go. And I'm going to go ahead and reshare my screen so we can look at these together. and it should pop up here in just a second.

Okay, so this is attachment one. This is our concurrency management. You'll see them the majority of it looks the same that you saw back in October. And I'm just going to go ahead and scroll through and if you want to follow along with me, I'll go ahead and walk us through it. And this is also for the benefit of the audience also. So as you can see we have our table of contents. The sections here in teal have been amended to match the comprehensive plan and include any clarifications and terminology required to match um current state regulations. So you'll see that we've added and done a replacement globally throughout here for development proposal. It's changed to development activity. So you'll see a lot of this and I'm just going to go ahead and scroll through to the yellow sections that are different from your last work session back in October. So page one has nothing. Page two is your first clarification. This is the administration section for the planning and community development department. We added in some clarifications here. We felt this was necessary to explain what our role is in executing concurrency determination. And as you can see, we establish application requirements. We're evaluating development activities to determine if they comply with the level of service and the no impact criteria based on the identified exemptions. Then in addition that we are going to be tracking these and it in back in October I went ahead and showed you the administrative tracking matrix that we'll be doing and providing an annual report back to the city council on any intersections that are getting close to or may be reaching level of service uh peaks or thresholds and we are this includes monitoring projects and maintaining records. So, moving forward,

if any of you have a point that you'd like to stop, please stop and raise your hand or point out and I'll go ahead and stop and we can discuss any proposed changes. I'm going to move forward. I'm going to scroll quickly because the next change is until later on. Going through page five, we have our level of service identified in here. And I'd like to point out for the concurrency, the level of service that is provided in these sections, it's not as detailed as the comprehensive plan. And the reason being is the comprehensive plan states everything and all the details that involve how you get to that point. The code actually has a threshold that if you hit it, you're exempt or not. So, this is meant as an identifier for people to look at the code and the threshold that staff enforces when reviewing development proposals. If someone's curious as to why they've exceeded that threshold, it's the indicator to say, "Hey, go look at the the handbook or the methodology document that's intended for the traffic engineers andor go specifically look at the comprehensive plan." So, I just wanted to point that out because that has been a question in the past. Okay. I think that might be the minimum excitement here except for back here under the sea portion. We previously had a section that regarded sewer improvement credits um because we were under the potential at that point in time we might be making the assumption of the sewer district that is on hold that is not currently at this time. So that item 8 was removed and that is it for the concurrency strikeout section. So I would like to open it up to the planning commission for any questions or discussion on this particular chapter.

Yes, Commissioner Davis. Um, Commissioner Jennifer Davis, my question pertains to um the very first um highlighted section of changes in 14.110.025. I'm going to go back there. Um and it's subsection A3. Okay. Yes. The the task of tracking cumulative project impacts. Yes. Um I'm curious about where I'm sure that there's a a metric for that. How do how is that where's the threshold for the cumulative amount of impact now that is triggering some other action? So is that where is that located and how do you process that information?

So currently to be honest with you we are not fully tracking it on a project by project basis. We are tracking it based on our traffic reports that we receive with each development proposal. We do not have a cumulative tracking process right now for the city. this is what this is going to implement and I do have an example of it and then our threshold that we've identified is 75%

believe is what we've agreed on as staff so it'll be right before it's hit its threshold that it raises the flag that we realize that we need to look at improvements to the intersection condition it and or move it up on the six-year CIP list to get that level of service corrected and fixed so that is our intent at this time and this has been our proposal and if day of arrest have anything to add on this new process? No. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Yes. Great question. Anything else from the commission on concurrency and again we'll open this up for public comment in just a moment. Okay. I'm going to go back to the PowerPoint. Go back. Okay. Since we Well, I have to stop share and reshare. Quick question. Yes. Uh, thanks. Under exemptions, Commissioner Connor Davis, under exemptions. Yes. Temporary construction trailers, what what is Oh, temporary. How long is temporary?

So, temporary is I'll just go ahead and give an example. When a land use approval for a 25 lot plat has been done, they've started clearing. They need a spot for their job shack. Yeah. They roll in, you know, a manu manufactured home or something like that and they go ahead that as a con temporary construction outfit. That's one version of it. Um it can also take form in other structure shapes. Um so that would be an example of that. And so when the land use then is fully completed that needs to be removed and it is exempt from it because it's not a permanent structure.

Thank you.

Okay. Let's see. So it our last meeting and also before the planning commission had asked to see the administrative documents. As you know it's not in in your purview but it is part of the review. It's something you need to understand that's being proposed because it does implement the code amendments and so hence you've seen those last time and this time you have full copies of all the documents before you. I do understand they're a lot. It's a lot of reading but they're there if you want to dive into them. So I do have summaries again like I did last time for these these ones are in some more detail. I would like to point out that one of them is the concurrency handbook. This is used by the developers and their engineers. And what they do is they follow the instructions in this handbook on how to prepare their traffic impact analysis that gets submitted to the city with their binding site p plan or their project. And so this allows us to assess the project and see if it's compliant with our code and the level of service. So it's a resource document for the developer. And then I do have uh within your packet, we do have the developers worksheet you've seen before. And as I noted earlier, we'll be providing an annual report to the city council on level of service and where we're at with our um documents that match up with the comp plan if there's anything that's getting close to failure that we need to move up on our improvement list. Here's an example of what the matrix would look like. So, for instance, up here we could have we have the city museum that's in process right now. Project number, date of issuance, if there's retail, that one does have retail and commercial space. It [clears throat] doesn't have residential units. Um, it may have a little office. There's no industrial. And then you list

uh the total peak trips. And then within here, the Excel matrix is built in with the thresholds. So this is how we will enter and track the projects from here on out. Okay. Well, with that we will move on to the next sections which is 1408 which is definitions in the code along with the traffic impact mitigation fees. And again here's the summary of the documents that you've looked at previously before. The two sections in yellow are what I'm going to stop share my screen and go look at the strikeout version here so we can take a look at that. We'll go ahead and pull up the next attachment. And I just thought this would be a lot easier than um you having to re-review stuff. So see I'm going to reshare my screen. And then the folks in the audience were also provided copies of the handouts and if anyone else who came in maybe a little later if you would like them we can provide them to you also. Okay, there we go. So here we are. There are revisions on three pages here. It's noted at the top on pages 4, 8, and 9. So we will be looking at those. The definitions have not been changed. Those have remained the same over the past couple months. These match the the state requirements and the RCWS. We just need to be consistent. So when we go apply for grants or we have our projects presented, we're all using the same language and lingo. I'm going to scroll on down and moving into the traffic impact mitigation fees. The first section that we look at for changes is the applicability in the exemption section. So that's section 30.

And this is where one of our first changes are. And this was the um discussion that was held before city council. Again, this note is in here for the planning commission and the council. Our RCW offers jurisdictions the opportunity to provide discounts for affordable housing and also for early learning centers. City council uh two meetings ago on this topic that they decided that they were interested in looking at options for affordable housing but not for early learning child care facilities. So last night we brought back to them several examples of multif family tax exemptions along with affordable housing ranging from discounts from 100% down to 20% on that. We were looking at at least for the impact fees part two did they conclusively give us any feedback on the exemptions? Do you recall there's a lot of dialogue and we didn't receive any clarifications as far as the reduction for affordable housing. So, we will be bringing that back to them in another package in December for a work session. So, I don't have an update on that, but it will be forthcoming to you. And that is a council decision because it's related to um city subsidizing that fee in exchange for an incentive for affordable housing.

Christie, uh this is Commissioner Connor Davis. Just to clarify, so they took up discussion to on affordable housing, but didn't take up discussion about early learning childcare centers. Could you just clarify? So they did. They had a discussion on it and they decided they didn't want to pursue a discount for an impact fee for early child learning care facilities, but they did want to look at and analyze a further discount for affordable housing incentives and reduction of the impact fee. Okay. So, that was their and that was decided couple months ago.

Okay. U was there uh I know this that's this is an aside but the justification for not pursuing um reductions in these these fees uh for early learning childcare centers because I know that is a like remarkable need in Lake Stevens. Um it is like the going rate is about $2,000 a month right now for child care. That's a it's $24,000 in cash for one kid. Sure. I would fair to say it was probably cost basis and nothing because the city would have to subsidize those fees and they felt providing the affordable housing was probably

a more stronger need versus the daycare and I don't and Russ go ahead. No, I think that's subsidized the subsidy. It's the subsidy need versus a commercial based business business. So they felt the housing is where the need was versus a commercial business and subsidizing that. It's just it just not doesn't pencil out to to do both. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And in the state law it offers you can do either or

or [clears throat] none or one. It's really up to the jurisdiction. And we found when we did our surveys that only the very large cities actually offer the subsidy because the smaller cities don't have the budget and or the housing authority program to track and keep track of it or the staffing. So that was all part of the consideration also. Okay. Thank you very much.

Okay. Well, great questions. I appreciate that. So, I'm going to go ahead and move forward here on to the next section. And let's see, it's a couple pages through. So, I'm moving down to, excuse [clears throat] me, page eight. All the changes have remained the same for the past several months here. And so, we're looking at page, it is page eight here. We are looking about the offset or credit for development activity. And this is an area we wanted to provide clarification also for the development community as well as staff. It is a confusing credit to give just because you have essentially three different options. So we really wanted to specify for not just the developer but also for staff on how you look and how you give back the credit. So that's literally essentially what this section does. It talks about having the developer and or value of the land or the cost of the construction on how it's tallied and then in addition when land is proposed for dedication and the persons required to play an impact fee they can essentially how it has to be assessed with the value from the assessor's office and then how they receive their credit and how it's tallied. We wanted to be very specific so there's no commun no miscommunication on this particular section on how the calculation is conducted for dedication and scrolling through hopefully no one's getting motion sick. That is literally it the changes for that particular section. So I'm going to stop sharing my screen and I'm going to go ahead and move back to the PowerPoint presentation here.

and we will get moving forward with the second public hearing. So, moving on to the traffic impact fee zones here. As you can see, the blue area is noted um by Leah in the audience. This is the TIS area one noted in blue. Then we have area two which is TIS 2 and three. Currently, the proposed TIS fees for two and three are going to be average because they really share the same facilities and you travel through one, you travel through the other. So, it makes sense to merge the two costs into one average fee. TIS1 um as calculated with all the CIP projects, it is a high fee. It was originally around 11,000 which is why council wanted to maintain comparable fees with our comparable sister cities um Everett Lynwoods Nomish etc. So we looked at ways to uh reduce project costs and how we could come up with a more comparable fee. So that's the issue of discussion before council. So we'll be going back to them with that. Um the areas are proposed to stay the same at least as far as a geographic boundary goes and these are contained in the technical handbook and the cost basis document. This is the developers worksheet that you saw last time. This is what's used by the developers to actually calculate their fee and this gives staff the tally of the impact fee that they have to pay with their building permit etc. This is the cost basis document. This is probably one of the more meteor documents in here. Hasn't been updated in over 12 years. So, it was very important to get this updated. It establishes our legal framework and for

the um traffic impact fee program and how to accommodate growth through 2044. Let's see. In addition, it reviews the six-year and the 20-year plans and it also defines what the impact fees are. So, in summary of tonight's presentation, as outlined in your staff report provided to you this evening, the proposed code amendments are consistent with the comprehensive plan goals and policies. It complies with the growth management act. The public noticing it was obviously effective. It did work. People heard about it and the comment periods have all been issued and noticed as well as SEPA. uh the code amendments are categorically exempt from SEIPA and that exemption was issued earlier this month. So with that staff's recommendation to the planning commission and this is for your motion and for discussion approval of the proposed amendments based on the consistency with the items therefore mentioned. And with that I would like to put it back to the commission for any questions for staff. Okay. Thank you. With the commission's permission, can we open up for public comment? Uh public, this is your opportunity to speak. Um you have three minutes each. If you would like to take the podium, make sure that you're speaking into the microphone. Your name, please, and address if you wish. Bunch of reluctant people. Don't let it. It's scary out there.

My name is Tom Hansen. I'm a recent resident of the city, but I've been involved with the transportation industry here in the area for over 36 years. I'm a licensed professional civil engineer. As I said, I've worked in the public transportation, engineering, design, construction for 36 years before I retired several years ago. my last 17 years of my career as a public works director, city engineer for local jurisdictions in the area. So, I've read hundreds of development proposals. I have implemented, written, acted on, used traffic impact uh ordinances. And from this background, I make my comments tonight. I am for traffic impact fees, but I do have some serious concerns about the one this one's presented. At first, I'm just going to go through some minor code things that I found real quickly and then I'll get to the the major meat. In 1411030, you have an exemption for single family residents. I would suggest you add the words construction of a new single family resident on an existing lot, not part of a subdivision process. In 141105, this section references back to the comprehensive plan for what the LOS standards are. I recommend that the LOS standards be actually specifically directly explicitly laid out in that section of the code rather than reference to another document. Why as an outsider practitioner do I have to go searching for those LOS standards? Just complicates things. Um 141207 C1 and this is throughout the document. This is just a little pet peeve, but the word city should be capitalized consistently through the whole document. It's not um in section two of that same reference, uh who has the authority to make a determination is left out. It's crossed

out on top and it's not put back in. Who has authority in that area? Um so then I'm going to get into the transpo report. I found it significantly deficient. I think quite frankly the city has been misled and not given adequate information. This is an engineering report. It should have been stamped by a professional licensed civil engineer in the state of Washington. It is not. The authors of the report are not identified. So, you can't trace back who actually wrote that report for transpol. Um, and it's actually you're going at this wrong. This traffic impact fee should not be called a traffic impact fee. That's a it's misleading. It should be called a transportation facilities impact fee. And the reason I say this, you go down the list of projects as shown in appendix A in the report. There are 67 projects identified in there. 52 of them are active transportation, bike and ped projects. Only four are intersection improvement, 11 are road improvement. So the main thing behind the things is projects to improve active transportation, not traffic. So it really should be mislabeled differently.

Mr. Hansen, about 30 more seconds. Sure. What? Pardon? About 30 more seconds.

Okay. The other the big the big thing is in that appendix A of that report, there's only two intersections that are labeled to go to level service F for traffic in 2040 without improvements. your road improvement projects and intersection improvement projects if they don't address those level service F should be deleted from consideration for dealing. The other thing is for the pedestrian projects the cost of the project should be only associated with curb and gutter the enclosed drainage underneath if needed and the pedestrian facilities behind. It should not include overlaying the road or restriping the road or adding a two-way left turn lane. So on these reasons, I think transpo led you wrong. I think it needs to be redone and I think the basis will significantly alter what is being charged for traffic impact fees proposed in this deal. I urge you not to take this forward to council until you go back and have the transport transpo report redone. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your time. Is there anyone else that would like to address the commission? Thank you. your name, please, address if you wish. Hi, my name is Darren Piper. Um, I got I'm a little confused. Is this for residential and commercial or just residential? Both. It's for both. It is.

Yeah. And then uh uh we're at concurrencies consider already pipeline. So if you have a if you have a which I have a permit am I grandfathered in from the new codes or not is my next question or needed to be addressed. And then also, why does a developer have to have it for 10 years on here? Um, a financial guarantee for 10 years after the project is my next uh question on that one, too.

So, that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Piper. And again, we are not just staring at you for fun. This is we can't have a dialogue, but you posed some questions that we need to get answered for you. So, we appreciate your comment this evening. Thank you so much. Is there anyone else that would wish to make comment on this portion of the public hearing again? Your name, please. Three minutes. Laura again. And um I would just like to thank you for your comments. I'm sorry I didn't catch your name.

Tom Hansen. Tom, I would like to thank Tom Hansen for his excellent comments. I do not have a copy of the transpo uh report, but I just from hearing people talk about the traffic impact zone. That's a myoptic view of the impact of development. Um, we are talking about not just traffic, but people trying to cross traffic like the students coming from the three schools in my neighborhood trying to cross when there's no crosswalks. If we're talking about having people who are disabled in a new development, a lot of times they have to use public transportation. I don't know if any of you have ever ridden 280, the bus route that services my district, my TIS. It's terrible. There are two bus stops across from my house where they simply dump you off on a grassy patch by the side of the road. There's no sidewalks. There's not even a crosswalk that you can cross. You're simply dumped off on the side of the road. So when you're considering a traffic impact zone, it's not traffic impact. It's community impact and traffic is only one small part of that. So number one, I'd like to get a copy of this report and I'd like to look make sure that the copy includes the data. My background is computers, bad data in, bad data out. So I'd like to see what Transpo used to create the data for their study. Thank you and thanks for listening twice to me.

Thank you so much for your comments. Any other comments from the audience? Uh uh 30 seconds. Thank you. Thank you.

This is Tom Hansen again. I'm sorry I left one report, one item off on what I felt was deficient in the transpo report. We're not allowed to judge traffic as a criteria in the city anything but PMP peak hour. But the report should have addressed the situations that are happening in the city in the AM morning commute where because of inadequate state highway facilities, Trestle Highway 9, we have significant backups in our city. And until someone comes up with $300 million, we can't solve them. The highway department does. So the only thing we can do is put political pressure to get them up on the list. But the folks out there in the audience in the do not know that that's the issue. That's the problem that's happening. Thank you. I appreciate that.

You are welcome. Do we have any comments online? Okay. Do I have a motion to um end the public comment portion of this public hearing? Commissioner Connor Davis motions to end the public comment portion. Do do I have a second? Commissioner Der seconds. All those in favor? I I

thank you and thank you for the comment. I appreciate um anybody that will take time out of their evening to come and help us um deliberate some of these decisions. So, Commission, the time is now yours. We have um documents in front of us that we are being asked to amend and approve or simply approve or ask for further clarification on prior to going to city council, comments that you'd like to make, questions that you have.

Yeah, this Commissioner Connor Davis, uh Mr. Hansen, thank you so much for coming and uh speaking to us and bringing a lot of this to our attention. uh a lot of well just about everything that you shared is a bit over my head. Um so that is gets into the weeds of this but it seems to be like pretty profound noxious weeds that need to be dealt with. Um I I don't it seems like something that would need to it seems like pretty considerable um issues with the with this report that would need to be remedied by the city. Um I mean and just a real quick I [clears throat] looked up you're the public works director of the city of Woodenville. Um, so this isn't just somebody that's a fly on the wall coming in, um, but somebody with considerable experience in um, yeah, public works and development of this sort. So, I'm kind of pummexed in terms of what to do and I I don't think I could in good faith um, have this move on to the the city council.

Commissioner Der, thoughts? Uh well, what I what I've heard is uh a speaker who has uh some very valid questions and concerns. Um I would be curious if the city has a response uh to to some of these.

That is planning manager Christy Schmidt. And thank you for your comments from the public. I I would like to point out that these are the issues that council directed staff to go back and to validate and to research and if necessary clarify and bring it back to council. So there are there is an option if planning commission decides or determines not to make a recommendation this evening, we can leave the hearing open for continuance. That is an option and then it would be readvertised. So please hold that um for consideration in your discussion. And also director Wright has a comment.

Yeah. Again I would I would go back to the point that these technical documents were talking about

they are one issue. The the code documents themsel are are something else. the they are related but the implementation documents can be amended outside of amending the code. So again just trying to put in perspective what your your task is tonight. Does the code language have sufficient direction um for us to enact our work? Um setting aside um I I appreciate that I actually worked with Mr. Hansen 20 20ome years ago. So um we we know each other. Um, small world, but um, no, I I appreciate that we can continue to refine the transportation methodology and go back and look at those as a comprehensive plan issue, not as a code issue because that's really what they are is they're related to our comprehensive plan. That's something else you'll be seeing later this year is the docket and our final um workshops on the 2025 docket and the only things we're bringing forward are related to the transportation plan and the capital facilities plan. So that's the opportunity to have a more fervent discussion on those versus the code. I think uh Mr. Hansen brought up a couple of good points about some additions to the code language as it talks about the exemption for single family homes. Um the comment on capitalization that is a debate um as old as time on how you defined that. So um have my own opinions on that but I'll leave that one alone. But I I think the the comment on the

exemptions is probably a worthy um addition. But the the larger question of the methodology um how we're deriving our impact fees that is definitely worth discussion and I would point out that in the code and you can correct me but I believe it's section 060 that sort of lays out what the primary loss factors we're looking at in making our determinations and those are based on the delays sections 050. Thank you. at specific intersections. Whereas in the comprehensive plan, there are probably 10 pages or more in the transportation element dedicated to describing levels of service and those are on different roadway types. Those are active transportation, those are transit. Those don't belong in the code. Um the code again as we've we've talked about a lot. It the comprehensive plan sets your goals and policies. Um it has all of the background work and then when you dig down to the code you want the minimal tools you need to implement and have again those um objective standards that you can point to and say this is the metric we're we're holding you to. And the other documents again they're broad they're global and they have a purpose. But um again just trying to dream uh draw that distinction between the code work and the the transportation element that's interrelated which you definitely have another opportunity to discuss this year. So, um I will leave it there and turn it back over to uh Manner Schmidt and the commission for your your discussion.

Before you before you push way, just a just so we're um tracking tracking the same. Would it be a fair statement to say then that the proposed revisions before the planning commission for 14110 and 14112 uh are while related to the transpose study are not predicated on the transpost study? That is correct. And and I will say one more thing. Oh, in 1408. 1408. Yeah. The definitions. Yeah.

Those are more for consistency with state law and that's really the the driver to update those. And the option was put out if you wanted to extend it. Uh Christie had said that we would readvertise but if you say you want to take this up again and see the revisions as suggested by the audience we can set a date setting we can set a date which would be your first meeting in December to take this up again. Commissioner Davis, Jennifer.

Um, I guess I lean towards the idea of leaving the meeting open

until our first meeting in December. Um, I keep I'm torn though because the idea that the um the implementation documents are truly they're incor sort of incorporated by reference into the code and that's something that we're going to have a chance to talk about at a later date. Um, I don't know. Having Mr. Hansen's comments like right here in real time is making me really think it through. I get Okay. I guess where I'm coming down is I would say with the proposed change to the single family um that that the audience member, Mr. Hansen, suggested refer the the amendment to that section.

Um, I forget the exact language he used, but something sort of finessing around an existing lot. um than I would be for moving it forward to council on the understanding that we're going to be able to that staff is working on the implementation documents and then that we'll see that at a later date. Clear as mud. Love it. Okay. Sorry. I I I Well, we're not motion yet. We're we're discussing

changed my mind. I was originally thinking maybe leave it open, but I as I sat here, I thought that given that these are related but not interlock, they're interlocking, but they are not the same processes that I'm comfortable with the code amendments with the proposed change that Mr. Hansen mentioned about the single family lot reference. I forget which. Do you know what subsection that was? That was subsection 141030.

Yes. So I'm I guess I what I'm saying is I'm comfortable moving this piece forward to council because I understand that we're going to be discussing the implementation documents, the methodology and all that which is being evaluated right in currently by staff. So the traffic impact the the transpose study all that is going to be re-examined. But does it make sense because um we already have a note from city council that they want to look at something before we give it to them um that that was stated earlier today on Chrissy's report. Are we making a recommendation tonight that they want to look at themselves before we recommend? Well, I'm seeing the code and the implementation materials as two separate things that we're

But doesn't that sort of negate our council wants to to have more information on the fee portion of it and the methodology which is this larger Okay. conversation. So, um Okay. Thank you.

I'll stop because I'm not making it better. No, you're you're awesome and don't go anywhere because I like where you're going. Um, Commissioner Packard, you're in an awkward situation right now. Not to state the obvious, [laughter] but um, tonight um, you will be speaking as a commissioner and then you will be taking this up as a council member. Where where do you fall on what we should do this evening?

Uh, that's a great question. I was having an internal debate. Um, yeah, I'll admit, uh, as Commissioner Connor Davis said, a lot of what Mr. Hansen said went over my head. I I wasn't exactly tracking it. Um, so I I'm not opposed to moving forward because I I didn't quite grasp some of his concerns, but um, so I will leave it to the rest of the body to make a decision. Okay. So, between the four of us, um, I'm going to take that as abstaining. That's great.

Um, [laughter] between the four of us, uh, we have a decision to make tonight. Uh we can either separate the two which are legitimately separate um and approve the wording as written this evening or we can continue to keep this open and discuss at our next meeting with more information perhaps a little bit of time to glean some education on some of our parts on what was stated this evening. I would air this Commissioner Connor Davis um to air on keeping the the public comment section open and allowing a bit more time to yeah just really wrap our heads around this.

Um um you've actually closed your public comment but you would hold open the public hearing public hearing. I'm sorry. My apologies. The public hearing portion. Yeah. And and what would you want us to bring back? That that's that's the the question then to the commission. If we hold it open, that's not a problem. But it's what what information do we need bring to bring back to you related to uh 1408 um 14 110 and 14112. You're back.

I I had some simple wording questions on um which seem insignificant now because we're so in the weeds, but um page 45 e capacity returned. Um, that didn't seem um clear uh clear to me. Uh maybe it's just how I was reading it at the moment. By the way, I don't need glasses, but they just look so darn good that I'm wearing them right now. Um so, page 45 in our packet. And if you could provide just for staff reference the code section that you're in. I'm thinking it's 112 that you're in.

Yeah, it's um page 45, letter E. Okay. And I'm I'm sorry, but it my computer's locked up here, but it is um um it was what was not uh used the capacity would would be returned

and I was just looking for clarification andor some sort of rewarding because that read strangely to me when I read it. Okay. So, noted staff will review that text portion of 040E. Thank you. And then page 48. Um, and this is 141090. Um, above and below it, the fee inl but I couldn't find what that fee inl defined as. And maybe I was just missing it, but it brought it up in two different portions of fee in Lou without um clarification without defining it. Okay. And then um I also had questions that were brought up this evening about um the different transportation districts. For example, I live in the south end of the lake and anybody that is going to the high school has to go through the south end of the lake to get to the high school. So this u differentiation of cities I understand I suppose the need but everybody pays the impact for everything that comes into the city. So I made a note about that and then I have a note to bring up during commissioners. Um but those were the only two clarifications that I was going to bring to staff this evening. Any other questions? So just to clear u what is commissioner Jennifer Davis proposed was the there's modification to the language in 030 regarding single family housing. We close the public hearing portion to move on to uh city council. Correct.

heard a couple of other suggested now from um so so I would say at this point there's probably about four three or four language changes that have been requested, right? So I think it's okay. Let's hold it open. I I'll help you guys out. Let's keep it open to your first meeting in December.

You can see some cleaned up language. Hopefully between now and then as a separate item, we can give you some more feedback on the implementation manuals and what we're doing to um make those more clear and then you'll have a little bit more time to reflect some more information and you can feel good about making a strong recommendation to the city council. Does that sound I think that's more than fair. Are we comfortable with that? So, we're going to carry the public hearing over. Um, all those in favor? I I I Thank you. Uh, nobody's going to oppose and you're abstaining.

Can we just set the date certain for that? Absolutely. And if we could also with that verify that we would have a quorum. Um, yes. So, we need to make sure that Commissioner Morton is available that evening. um his feedback on this actually would be um interesting to to add to this discussion. So I'm glad that he will hopefully be back by then, but we won't know until he is here. He has assured me he will be at both December meetings. Okay. Do is everybody else available? I am available for third. I am available for the third. Commissioner Davis and Yep. I'm good for the third. The other Commissioner Davis? Yes, I'll be here.

Okay. Um then we will have a quorum. Okay, perfect. And while we're at it, or do we have a quorum for the second meeting in December? And that is the same week that we've also been called into a 3hour training on a Monday. Yes. Your procedural class not to let feelings known. So the 18th. Are we available on the 18th? Yes. Commissioner Davis, I 18th 17th. Yeah. Is there a time urgency connected to this?

No, there is not. And in fact, we don't anticipate city council adoption until January or perhaps. It's pending December. It was tenatively scheduled for December 9th. Okay. So we will bring this back then on the 3rd and you are just looking for um a nod on for the 17th. So we have a correct if something happens between then and now you will be the first to know. Perfect. Thank you.

Okay. Deep breath. Um we are at the point where we can move on from public hearing to number six discussion items draft work program. Um, director Wright, this is you. Okay. So, rather than going into the slideshow portion of this, I think we'll just um walk through the um proposed work plan together. So every year, you know, we set or start discussing the work plan for the following year. Uh this year we got hit with um hit, I shouldn't say hit with, we were able to work on a lot of state legislation that was recently passed. So that became our focus for the past year year plus. And I think we've done a great job of getting a lot of those issues taken care of. So next year, we're really not proposing adding a lot of new topics, but just completing uh what we have hanging out through the end of this year and then taking up some of the projects that as a city we've really wanted to get to like our industrial plan, things like that. So I'll just walk through um your packet with you. So I believe we're starting on page 108 of your packet. So, first quarter next year, we're going to try to wrap up the critical areas regulations. The second part of our transportation package we've been working on um would be finishing up the work in our sub area plans. And that's not just the traffic piece. That's also just making sure that our sub area plans are up to date um with our our comp plan. So, we want to

work through that. Um the process code updates phase two. We've already talked about that and that's just going to be further refining our code to make sure that it's very efficient, developer friendly as well as easy for the the staff to administer. Then we're going to be looking at more of our housing initiatives. Again, this is a followup to some of the work we've done this year, but specifically next year we would like to get back and do some practical code looking at our cottage housing. How can we retool that to make that a functional tool? Really revisit our mixeduse um code. Again, the idea of making all of these more effective tools. Um as I already mentioned, it's really important to us that we get back to the Lake Stevens Industrial Center. That's been hanging out for about two years now when we did our initial work doing the market analysis. So again, no pressing state legislative business. So we should be able to get through that important project for economic development in the next year. Um when the parks department completes their parks, recreation, and open space plan, then we'll finally be able to get back to having a similar discussion to traffic and re-evaluating our park impact fees. And so that will happen in the latter part of next year. Um, keeping a a placeholder in there for code cleanup. Um, always finding more little inconsistencies. So, as those arise, we'll hopefully be able to bring those to the planning commission as a package um some point next year. And then obviously we'll be looking at our comprehensive plan docket. We haven't heard from anyone yet that

there's interest in doing any amendments and the city really hasn't um proposed anything large. The biggest thing we would do would be to adopt our pros plan and to our park element and refine that. The school districts will be updating their capital facilities plan. So, we'll need to reintegrate the different school district plans, but we should have a pretty easy um go at the comp plan again next year. Again, I've already mentioned we want to continue to do some updates to our sub area plans. And we're just having this placeholder in there for a utilities element update if that ever becomes necessary. And then we do have the annexation placeholder in there. Again, these have just been communitydriven annexations over the last couple of years. No city initiated. And we will have in the first quarter of next year the completion of the Faggerly West annexation. It's with the boundary review board. That won't be something that comes to the planning commission, but that does go to city council for their action. Um continued participation in external boards. That's what you see there. and then just some of the economic development um parts of the job that we have to do. So with that, are there any questions from the planning commission? Any ads you'd like to see us try to add into our work program or are you feeling pretty good about what we're proposing?

I had a quick question about um the Santid Basin plan relationship. Is that just like 30 second? I'm just curious about that. So, our um surface water division has been working on a basin's plan. Um so, it's greater than just Lake Stevens and part of that is focused on salmon recovery. And so, that will not become an element of our comprehensive plan, but we want to see if it'll help educate or further refine say our natural resources element or things like that. So there might be some interplay but it would not replace any chapters we've already developed in our covenant just augment.

Was that 30 seconds or less? Sorry I didn't want to put it up there. [laughter] Any other questions? Thank you so much. Let's move on to commissioner reports. Commissioner Der, no comment this this evening. Commissioner Connor Davis, no comment this evening. We're going to skip Commissioner Packard for a moment. Commissioner Jennifer Davis. Nothing for me.

Um I will go next and then we'll have you end. Uh the first is I received the word that we um did make a case for with the approval of a city engineer um some improvements on the intersection of South Lake Stevens and Machias. Uh there are is going to be a three-way stop there which will be um a very good thing for the community and and both with safety and with speed um there and I am very very grateful that uh our pleas were heard. The second thing is we do have one now two open positions on the planning commission. I am hoping that those interviews will be conducted here between now and the end of the year hopefully and that we can um fill the commission fully and if anybody in the audience today would like to submit their application, please do. Uh there was great comment this evening and we are always looking for people that are invested in the community that want to um volunteer with us. And lastly, if

can I ask a question on those planning commission spots? How many applicants have we had so far? Um I believe two. Two, but it's still open for another week till the 26th. Okay. And lastly, although he just interrupted me, Commissioner Packard, if you would join me, congratulations. Thank you. We look forward to continue to working with you. And on behalf of the city and your fellow commissioners, we wanted you to have that. Um we appreciate your time and service.

Thank you. With that said, we'll move on to planning director's report. Rests, back to you.

Okay. Thank you. Um, I just wanted to give you our third quarter report. That's something we've been doing for a few years to make sure that the planning commission and the city council have the the same information and that you can recognize the good work that you've done and be aware of the other work that staff is doing. Um, so I'll just quickly go through what you've accomplished with the comp plan. Heavy workload on the housing action plan implementation. Um, you made your recommendations on the step housing that's getting ready to go to city council for their work. Uh, you know, we did a little bit of work at the beginning of the year on the parks and recreation plan and I've already sort of said that that's going to get punted and then um we've started some of our work on the sub area plan updates and hope to get those completed in the next year. Um, where the heavy work has been this year is in the development code. You had your hearing tonight on the process code update. So, thank you for that as well as the concurrency management system and traffic impact fees. you've spent a lot of time this year talking about the critical areas ordinance. We're in a really good place with that. Right now, we've had draft code language back from our consultant. So, we should be able in the beginning of the new year and I don't remember Dave, did we have another briefing scheduled before the end of the year?

Yeah, I think depending on what we're looking at on we're obviously having the meeting on the 3. Um, so I may try to put together at least kind of a high level overview if we're meeting anyway. Um, just to provide that as a second item.

Okay. And that's one of the last major sort of mandatory updates that we're working through and I think we're going to be in a good place with that one. Um, the city I've already mentioned had the annexation earlier this year. It's for three residential acres south of 20th and that's getting wrapped up again. It's in front of the boundary review board right now. then we'll go to city council for their formal adoption. Uh so some projects that the staff has been working on um and I wish that we had have been able to complete it already, but we're working on a public engagement plan. So I know that is something of great interest to both the planning commission and the city council. So we've been working on putting a how-to guide together that can be shared across departments. ticks and trip, you know, tips and tricks on different types of engagement, doing forms, flowcharts, um, how do you speak to different audiences, how do you engage different audiences? So, that's something we're really looking forward to completing and definitely we'll bring that to the planning commission and share with you when we're a little closer on that. We've also been working on taking the citywide strategic plan and updating our uh, department strategic plan. And again, that's paused right now, but that is something we hope to to pick back up. Uh, I've been working on a couple of large capital projects. Um, the museum and retail building being one. We just um received our bids for that project last week. So, we're working through the contract negotiation right now and I'll be able to reveal shortly um who is awarded that project and we're hoping to see that start construction in the spring. And then obviously working on the the civic campus. That's been the other big project. Making pretty good headway on that. I've refined the scope of work for our consultant and really have a good layout now for all of the

departments. So we know where we're going to sit and do good work. And then a big thing that was completed in the last month is I've been working on an agreement with the city of Everett for a few years to allow some development activity on the waterline and both the cities of Lake Stevens and Everett have passed that agreement. What that means is you'll see some minor code adjustments that will allow parking on the northern 30 feet of that easement and that opens up some more development opportunity or at least enhances the the properties and gives them a place to maybe do some parking or some lower intense parts of their development. So, uh that was a really long time coming and we're really happy to have that completed. Um, I don't know if you looked in your packet, but one of the fun projects we've been working on is we've done a banner project. So, that's been a beautifification goal for the city for a long time to have banners on Main Street. So, we've been working with a design architect to go through our different um, city icons representing the different districts and those will be the basic banners. And then we've done some seasonal banners and super excited about them. They look really great. And we're also moving forward with our next bit of wayfinding signage and that should be installed um when

within a month I would say. Great. Permits were issued early November. So yeah.

Then development wise um we continue to be busy. We've seen some larger projects obviously Soer Hill and all of the commercial activity up there that's really been going along um quite well and really excited about that project. Uh continuing to see subdivisions. There's been three new subdivisions and then we have six active subdivisions and then we're continuing to see a focus on new multifamily type projects which aligns with the comprehensive plan that you recommended last year and the zoning strategy. Um you have your permit numbers um in there last quarter, you know, 623 permits. That's up from what we had in 2024. um our code enforcement officer continues to be busy picking up those signs off the side of the road and doing a lot of other things. But um we we like to we we actually he takes great pride in if you drive through our city compared to other cities there's not the clutter that you have in a lot of communities. So I know we take great pride in keeping our streetcape nice and clean. and then our building official and our planning manager as well as our administrative assistant continue to work together on process improvement. Um we've switched over to a different database storage and that has been quite a chore and we continue to work through that and improve that. And then in our permitting software, we are looking for lots of different types of automation so we can u have the computer do those route tasks and allow us to focus a little bit more heavily and use our brain power where more appropriate. [laughter] I'm continuing to try to get rid of all of our paper before we move south next

year. And then we continue to work with other jurisdictions. um our building official really helps um with a group of east and north side building officials and we want to have coordinated approaches to how we do business across jurisdictional lines to the extent that we can. Our customers are their customers. So that's been a really cool thing to be part of. We're working on an interlocal agreement with our um fire district. Hope to have that completed um maybe beginning of next year. And then again, just continuing to try to improve our software, our handouts, everything just to make our jobs more efficient and our customers have a better experience. Um, and then just the staff report goes over lots of training opportunities that we've had and happy to address any questions. But

any questions of director Wright? Hearing none, uh, we have come to the end of this meeting. Do I have a motion to adjurnn? May I make a comment? Uh perhaps it was because I interrupted you that I didn't get a brief moment to give my own. Well, you had a chance. Commissioner's report. Uh I just want to say thank you for the past two years. It has been a great opportunity to understand how the city works. I struggle to think how I would be prepared to jump into the next role if I hadn't been participating here. Uh, and just appreciate the camaraderie, appreciate the open conversation, uh, the dialogue, the respect. Um, it's been great. So, thank you.

Thank you. And why don't you make a motion? Uh, I make a motion to adjurnn. Do I have a second? Commissioner Connor Davis seconds. All those in favor? I I Thank you all.