City Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

four o'clock welcome to the Wednesday February 12 2025 meeting of the Liberty Lake Planning Commission uh we will do Pledge of Allegiance and then roll call so would you please stand and join me in the pledge pledge allegiance to the plag flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation under go indivisible with liy and justice for all thank you we have a roll call please ma'am Joe man here Tom salber here Jim Bonker here DG Garcia Here Charlie Janks here Dale Robbins uh Dale is in Seattle uh in court hearing he asked to be excused bill berer Jean H here and Troy Mullen here thank you so I hear a motion to uh approve the absences of commissioner foyer and who is move commiss Jinx okay is there a motion to approve uh I make a motion to approve the absences okay is there a second all in favor I thank you uh review the agenda there any additions or changes to the agenda for today motion to approve next motion to approve agenda second second all in favor I I next is the minutes from January 22nd any changes or issues with the me minutes from January 22nd move to approve the minutes as

written thank you move to thank you sir all in favor I Workshop housing policy so I would like to introduce uh you first of all can you hear me can you hear us sharifa I would like to introduce uh uh sharifa Abdul Salam uh Jennifer Shu and Andrew Oliver uh from uh uh fcj Alliance and Leland Consulting who are uh are teaming uh together to um support us in our housing uh and with that I'm going to stop my share and let uh sharifa share her screen Thank you [Music] Lisa can you see my screen yes all right well hello everyone as Lisa mentioned we are working on helping the city with the development of the housing policy and as part of this work we started a general review of the existing regulations and comparing it to uh State legislation and some of the resources provided by Commerce and we're going to walk through that today but before we dive into that I just wanted to give you an overview I mean Lisa uh uh presented the three of us so I'm from scj Alliance and then we have Andrew and Jennifer from Leland Consulting and a short overview of who scj Alliance is we are a Washington based company we have multiple disciplines including planning we were founded in 2006 with six people

and grew to almost 140 people right now over 10 different offices six of which are in Washington State including one office in Spokan which is the closest to you all um we have multiple a variety of types of projects that we focus on within our planning field at scj Alliance we mostly work on comprehensive plans including their housing elements we work on zoning codes and regulation updates we do a lot of public engagement events as you see in some of the pictures on the right hand side and generally we do on call services that includes support with all of these items which is what we're doing for the city of Liberty Lake when we submitted our proposal for the on call services we gave you all this chart that gives you just an overview of an example of some of the projects that we've worked on recently including comprehensive plans engagement materials GIS mapping zoning codes and development regulations and the cities at the very bottom some of the cities that are currently we're working with uh for on all services and with that I'll pass it on to Leland to give a brief overview on what they're doing and then Jump Right In hi so Leland Consulting Group is a team of strategic advisors based in in Portland Oregon um focused on Urban real estate Economic Development and public private Partnerships we work on uh the housing and economic development chapters of comprehensive plans throughout Washington we have a list here of all of the uh cities that we we've worked in recently and are currently working in um and the analysis we're going to talk about tonight is part of the work that that we typically do in these communities um and we're excited to to be here to present today yeah and before we uh go into the first section we're talking about I do want to invite all of you to ask questions throughout this session this

this is intended as a workshop not a presentation so at any point feel free to stop us and ask a question and we can discuss it right then and there and or right Jennifer the floor is yours great um so I'm going to talk about the adequate Provisions check lists um next slide so uh under hb1 1220 states require that jurisdictions make adequate Provisions for existing and projected housing needs for all economic segments um the uh checklists are provided by the Department of Commerce we filled those out they should be in your your packet uh this afternoon um and the purpose of these checklists is to document programs and actions that could help remove barriers to uh building different types of housing in the community um it's important to note that these checklists are not uh for the most part they are intended to be you know recommendations for the city as you're going through um the housing policy updates um you can you know you have context as city leaders that you know we may lack and uh you may look at some of our recommendations and say that doesn't fit with us here and and that's totally fine um the idea is just to identify those barriers make suggestions um about how those barriers could be addressed and then have that as a jumping off point for conversation for you all um the one exception to that is the accessory dwelling unit review um we are going we're helping you make sure you're in compliance with hb1 1337 which is um State requirement um so the checklist that were're we completed were the moderate density housing which includes things like duplexes triplexes Town Homes um that kind of missing

middle housing typology uh low ride and lowrise and mid-rise housing which is your more traditional apartment buildings permanent Supportive Housing and emergency housing um the accessory dwell dwelling units as I mentioned earlier and then we went through some local option tools which are different tools that cities can use to promote um affordable housing I'm not going to go line by line through every checklist so I'm going to hit the highlights so you know we can move on to more exciting topics um so as far as moderate density housing that uh Spokane triplex in the top right hand corner is a housing typology that is already allowed in Liberty Lake those kind of side bys side uh middle housing or moderate density housing units um so some of the barriers we looked at are really just about making the code a little bit more flexible to allow for a wider variety of middle housing typologies um some of our key recommendations around density uh we recommend considering increasing the max density in the R2 Zone to 16 dwelling units per acre um that I know kind sound like a lot but it is a typical density for something like a town home or a a moderate density housing um as far as off street parking uh it could be worthwhile to tie the number of parking spaces to the number of bedrooms so having more parking spaces for a two-bedroom unit than for a studio unit just again to allow for some of that flexibility um within the design standards in the R3 Zone there uh is some patio and deck requirements which as you build multistory uh moderate density housing could become an issue um so that might be a barrier to look at um and then design review I don't believe design review is required currently for this type of housing but it's not um I

think in the in the code it says something like for large scale Housing Development this is probably not what's meant by that but just clarifying that would be really helpful uh next slide um for low and mid-rise housing again the same comment on part working um and then and design standards as far as that patio and deck requirement um and the large scale housing design review just clarifying when that would be allowed or when that would be required potentially allowing um some of these types of housing without that design review and saving that requirement for you know exceptionally large properties um next slide please so for permanent supportive and emergency housing um I know this is work that uh you're already doing um in Liberty Lake uh I think there was a city council meeting recently on on some of these barriers um but under state law there's uh some new requirements around removing any spacing requirements so that means if there's you know a there has to be at least a th000 feet between shelters um with Transit proximity in Liberty Lake there that could also be a barrier um so just making sure that both permanent supportive and emergency housing are um not subject to those types of rules um parking a lot of times in these types of developments the the residents who live there don't have access to Vehicles so um there could be opportunities to lower the parking requirements um some of the zones where this type of housing is allowed it seems like office use isn't allowed um and a lot of times support services are are an important part of these developments so making sure that in conjunction with

this type of housing you're allowed to have some office Bas for Support Services um and then occupancy limits uh again are no longer allowed with uh the RCW the new RCW requirements Jennifer could I jump in here for just a second before we go on to the next slide um so I just wanted to bring to the planning commission's attention we just we fixed this in terms of emergency housing the second read is happening on Tuesday so that is going to be adopted we didn't we needed to do that so that we could finish our land Capacity Analysis um and and be able to demonstrate that we could meet uh the housing requirements um we put a pin in this one the the same things are going to need to happen happened for the uh Supportive Housing um however uh uh the permanent uh Supportive Housing however we it wasn't required at that time and we said that we would address this through uh the other code requirements but I do want to point out that it that we do need to do the same thing in terms of spacing requirements in terms of occupancy limits and we may want to look at the transit piece as well I have a question um so is what we ran through with you that you just described my recollection of that doesn't really comport with what's what these folks are proposing we may have a conflict so what we went through in terms of emergency housing it um there were some changes to code or to the rcws that we had to address in order to even complete the land Capacity Analysis is which is the foundational piece for the comp plan we recognized at the time and I mentioned this to this body and I just

wanted to bring it back to your attention that we were going to have to revisit this with permanent uh Supportive Housing also but that um it wasn't required at that point and that we would deal with it with all the other housing amendments that we need to make so I just want to really underscore the fact that that we have this is one that we have to do okay thank you sorry Jennifer no that's really helpful thank you um okay and then accessory dwelling units again this is just making sure that the city code is compliant with HB 1337 requirements um as far as parking the requirements say that you should account for distance from transit and lot size um and then uh the only additional thing that we wanted to bring up was design standards again allowing for more flexibility of of adus there are a lot of different types of adus that can be in different configurations and allowing for a wider variety would um open up more opportunities um so Liberty Lake already expects to raise about $50,000 annually from its housing and related Services tax um and that's you know not enough to fully subsid subsidize an affordable housing complex but could you know help help with you know infrastructure needs or or other uh parts of affordable housing development that's great um U some other tools that you could consider uh to uh increase the viability of affordable housing would be things like impact fee waivers or application fee waivers um and yeah that's that's all I got for now thanks Jennifer um so we're going to follow Jennifer went through with sort of a restructuring of all the information that she's provided so that

Jennifer just went through information as structured by the adequate Provisions checklists provided by Commerce so we took that information did a thorough review of the existing code regulations and looked at all of that together and grouped these different items based on the different zoning or uh areas within the regulations that we can focus on so we're not going to focus on housing type but we're going to focus on the area within the code that this thing falls under so we'll talk about the barriers Al together first and then we'll talk about the regulatory opportunities and we'll talk about those with more specificity than what we just covered before we dive into regulations we do want to notice that within Liberty Lake there are some environmental constraints primarily in the form of topographic constraints so so typically for any type of development ideally you want the land slope to be between 0 to 15% no more than 15% once you get in the 20% slope or higher now you need a little more engineering you need specialized construction tools you need uh different types of Foundations your erosion like uh likelihood is way higher so even maintaining buildings post construction can be Co costly so all of that means anything in built in areas that are steeper slopes than 20% becomes costly not only to build but also to maintain and a lot of the areas with open land available for Housing Development right now like in Legacy Ridge Legacy Ridge West B Lago and other areas within the city have slopes of steeper than 30% which is considerably steeper than that 15% typical that you want making these areas more expensive to to develop and therefore less likely

to become affordable uh for housing options in the future so this is one type of environmental constraint that already exists within Liberty Lake the ones that we can control more are the regulatory constraints that we're going to look at so we'll dive into a little deeper detail into the regulation the regulations that Jennifer just covered and you'll see that certain certain ones will have an asterisk next to them those in this section are in direct conflict with new state legislation so the the ones that have an asress next to them means that that they are things we must change and address in order to comply with State legislation and again I invite you to ask question with any item that I'm going to go through right now so the first area that we're going to cover is regulations relating to zoning uh zoning and density so first bullet point you see at the top right now as Jennifer mentioned the R1 Zone does not allow housing types like duplexes triplexes and fourplexes even though the city allows attached homes up to four units which is very similar to four plexes or triplexes or duplexes which are only two units that are attached in addition State legislation requires that we allow duplexes in all residential zones so that is something that we must apply into the Cod that is currently RIS restricting housing options and availability within Liberty Lake the second item is that the one that Jennifer mentioned which is R2 Zone currently allows for 12 dwelling units per acre but when you look at what is typically associated with moderate density housing it's more of 16 units per acre so just increasing that a little bit opens up more flexibility for developing housing types like Town Homes

uh within the different zoning districts regarding supportive and emergency housing this is what we were talking about and what Lisa was covering in terms of dis spacing the current code language says Hey the different facilities must be apart by three quarters of of a mile and they all have to be within a quarter mile from a Transit stop this becomes very restrictive on the areas available for such facilities um so this is all going to be revised as Lisa mentioned already regarding Adu restrictions within the zoning areas currently Liberty Lakes zoning code only allows for one Adu per lot the state legislation requires us that we allow two for tier three cities which Liberty Lake is a tier three City secondly adus are currently prohibited with multif family developments or duplexes so if we start allowing duplexes in our one zones do we want to also allow adus to be developed with them and to be uh to be completely transparent this is not required that we allow adus with duplexes but it is another option of expanding housing availability within the city across the different zoning districts um right now adus and the existing regulations you can only build them if the primary unit is larger than 1200 square fet in area and you can only build an a detached Adu unit if your lot is larger than than 8,000 square fet all of these restrict the Lots where you can build adus and are in direct conflict with the state legislation that states if your lot size is compliant with the underlying Zone you must allow the two adus per lot whether they're attached or detached similar to The Graphic that Jennifer was showing you have different configurations could be under a building

could be on top of the building on top of the garage garage Replacements you have a lot of variety but you just must allow the two adus per unit if your lot is compliant with the underlying Zone additional existing restrictions on adus regarding their sizes and occupancy currently Liberty Lakes code says your Adu size cannot be larger than 35% of the main unit size or 900 square ft whichever is smaller and this is in conflict with State legislation because it requires that you cannot have a Adu requirement maximum requirement that is smaller than a th000 square feet I know we're talking about maximum and smaller it sounds a little conflicted but we can't require adus to be smaller than a th000 square feet people can opt to build ones that are smaller but the code cannot require them to be any smaller than 1,000 square feet so we can raise that 900 square foot to a th000 foot in order to comply with State legislation some cities are opting to allow even larger adus but that's a flexibility in the range that you can allow and choose based on what's more appropriate for Liberty Lake as long as it's not smaller than 1,000 square feet another point that is currently in Liberty Lakes code that is in conflict with HB 1337 is the occupancy requirement for the principal unit the current code says you can only build an Adu if the primary unit is owner occupied the new state legislation says you cannot require the primary unit to be owner occupied for you to build an edu and rent it out all right moving on to off street parking requirements and we're going to

talk about those for the variety of housing types so as Jennifer mentioned right now the multif family homes including the smaller types all require the same number of housing uh of parking spaces per unit regardless of your unit size or the number of bedrooms so you require 1.75 parking space for a studio apartment and a 1.75 space for a three bedroom apartment so it's worth revising the code to make it corresponding with a unit size or number of bedrooms um the state legislation also requires that for Middle housing namely duplexes because that's what's required explicitly for Liberty Lake and for adus those need to correspond to the proximity of Transit so if you're within a half a mile from a Transit stop you cannot require minimum parking for duplexes or for adus so that's something that needs to be revised in the code to uh meet the requirements from the state legislation sharifa we've got a question here um go ahead do you have to have uh requirements for parking for the state legislation you don't but that's a city preference you don't have to but um and many communities are moving away from uh parking minimums and that works in a very Urban setting where you have where you have um robust Transit it's a little bit more challenging in a community that is and then uh can you charge extra for units with parking that's Market driven yeah but I mean there's no state law that says you can't do that okay okay no and um where

places have gotten rid of or reduced minimum parking requirements some developers will still choose to build more parking more money yeah right yeah um and then finally the one that we touched on is the support of an emergency housing currently are required to provide half a parking space per bed and then one space per employee and as Jennifer mentioned most residents in those places do not own a car don't have access to their private vehicles and this creates a burden in terms of this space usability for such facilities especially when we're trying to encourage building those closer to Transit so again same question for Supportive Housing do you have to require or do you have to provide parking no State regulation does not require you to require parking these are usually just for cities to control parking and understand depending on their availability for on street parking okay all right moving on to regulatory constraints related to design standards and the review processes within Liberty Lake so we mentioned the patios right now all the uh moderate density housing are required to provide uh 35 uh square foot patio for all ground floor units and for 75% of the Upper Floor units and this just adds a layer of Burden we know the intention of this is to provide high quality design and better quality living and some sort of private open space but this can be a a restriction that makes it less feasible to provide housing that is more affordable especially for smaller units because the size of this open space does not take into consideration the size of the actual housing unit itself so this is what

makes it more of a restrictive uh requirement currently multif family housing and mixed used zones all require a commercial component regardless of the demand so if we look at certain areas where there is a lot of demand for commercial this might make sense but in areas that are more neighborhood oriented you may be able to get away with just residential buildings that do not have a commercial component or some sort of a flexible flexibility in dealing with that commercial component so that's one thing to think of just to avoid having space that sits vacant and then developers are less encouraged to build in those areas um we talked a little bit uh Jennifer touched on that there are currently some design requirements for adus so we'll talk a little bit about what those are in the code So currently if you want to build a detached Adu on your lot you have to build a six foot tall fence to conceal it from the street and the intention with that is to preserve the single family neighborhood aesthetic so that's one additional burdensome say require environment that you have to build if you want to do a attached a detached duplex addition uh adus sorry additionally adus are required to have a pitched slope roof with a slope of at least four and 12 and that's okay but you don't require this for your single family homes or other types of housing so this is just a restrictive uh requirement that's only applied to adus in the residential areas and to Manufactured Homes which have a sloped roof requirement of 3 to 12 so that these are additional design requirements that are worth worth

looking into and for in terms of revision just in increasing the flexibility and the design of these spaces additional design review uh constraints is for manufactured homes right now they are required to be multi-sectional or double width with a minimum area of a thousand square feet this limits the option of developing smaller ones that can be even more affordable and more importantly the whole area of developing tiny home communities so right now the code does not allow for that so just thinking of expanding the options and removing those minimum requirements so we can allow for more affordable options to be developed within Liberty Lake and then we touched on the um occupancy requirements right now for uh Supportive Housing it's limited to uh 20 the staff are limited to 20 and the residents are limited to 40 regardless of the size of the facility regardless of the size of the lot so these are considered arbitrary limitations on occupancy and they are not allowed by state law so we need to revise those to align with the required State legislation and then finally for the design review and processes we have the requirement of the design review for all developments in mixed use areas so potentially just looking at that and making it a more streamlined process so there is less risk and less cost associated with the review processes for buildings um finally the last item that we'll talk about in terms of the regulatory constraints existing within the current code is the existing uh restrictions on office uses within certain residential areas so if we want to say build a um permanent Supportive

Housing or emergency housing facility in an R2 Zone we have to go through a conditional use permit for us to just allow supportive services within that housing complex and we all know that importance of pairing those complex complexes with the services that are required so ensuring that the code does not restrict the use of office space when built in conjunction with these facilities regardless of which uh zoning Co zoning District they're built within so these are the existing outlined regulatory constraint that we were able to find within Liberty Lakes law so now we're going to move into what opportunities we have so similarly we'll focus those opportunity into the different buckets of areas so we'll talk about opportunities in the zoning and density area we'll talk about the design and development standards uh permitting processes parking requirements and then psh and emergency housing standards now where wherever you see this srisk this means that this is required this proposed change or opportunity is required by state legislation so it's really more than an opportunity here it's more of a requirement so we looked at all these constraints within Liberty Lake and we looked at some resources from Commerce so Commerce has a guidance for developing your housing policy that's the name of the guidance document and then they they also have a housing action plan guide which is the hap that you see on these slides is referring to that housing action plan document So within these two documents they have a set of proposed strategies for cities and communities to adopt and utilize to guide their housing policy development so we looked at the

policies and strategies provided in those and compared them to the restrictions that we identified for Liberty Lake and started to propose um ideas to change the uh policies moving forward based on those strategies outlined in these uh documents so the first strategy that we looked at in the housing action plan talks about increasing the allowed housing types in existing zoning districts so for example we talked about allowing duplexes in R1 zones so that's a requirement and in uh in the state legislation they talk about the two unit configuration Beyond just duplexes so they also talk about having two Cottage houses or they call them a courtyard apartment if they're attached and you have a shared open space or stacked units if the two if the duplex is instead of side by side they're on top of each other so all of these options of a two unit configuration must be allowed in the R1 zone so that's per state legislation and then additionally one thing that we touched on a little bit earlier is allowing tiny home communities or co- living developments in certain areas for example if you have mixed use districts or neighborhood mixed use these might be nice opportunities or even are to to allow ow some co- living opportunities or tiny H tiny houses the benefit of these types of development is that they have a lot of shared amenities and when you share these amenities you distribute the cost of these amenities across multiple units as opposed to having these amenities per each unit which reduces the overall cost of developing them and renting at these locations um the next strategy that we looked at from the housing action plan guide is to increase or remove density limits so we talked about increasing

that density limit in R2 from 12 to 16 to align to align with the more uh a typical density required for moderate housing and then the allowing of two adus per lot as opposed to one Adu per lot and that's again per state requirement which is why you see the star next to it and then this is a suggestion for the community to think about and the city to think about is do we want to allow adus to be built with dup D Lees because we know we're going to allow duplexes across R1 zones so do we also want to allow adus within uh the same Zone with duplexes and I don't know if anybody wants to comment on this or if we just want to we' got we've got somebody here um I have two questions um but um the topic you were just talking about are there other cities similar size to Liberty Lake that you guys have found that do allow the adus to be built with the duplexes um I would say the tier 2 cities are more likely to go that route most tier three cities which are similar in size to Liberty Lake are opting to either allow the duplexes or the adus and that's what the state legislation requires of these cities okay but you know if there is an appetite for that um it doesn't uh limit that option A is very explicit about that this is an option for uh tier three cities to allow for edus along with duplexes okay yeah I was just curious you know Liberty lak's kind of unique um in in a way and I don't see that fitting in here but it's just that's the right one thing is different yeah one thing to note and the the way that Commerce tries

to uh encourage and push forward cities to allow for more housing availability by including dup uh adus with duplexes is that they say your code must require like for the um your your duplex and your single family home so if you have two lots one has a single family home and one has a duplex you can have the same sizing requirement footprint height and all of that so theoretically speaking on the outside they look like a single family home both of them but you have the option to provide more housing unit it's more about how many housing units per lot you have so that's more of a density Choice um for the city to reflect on but it's fair that most tier three communities that we've worked with are opting for adus only with the single family house okay that makes sense um and then the other question that I had um and this is just a generic question can HOA since we have so many OAS here um disallow duplexes in the R1 Zone even though state law is requiring it I don't know how that works with um HOA Authority so even if it in our code it says that it has to be allowed because that's what state law is requiring us to do can HOAs say well we don't allow duplexes in our neighborhood sharifa I've actually researched this one a little bit and so my understanding is that um an existing HOA um can have ccnr that prohibit that but a new HOA um new cc&rs have to be in compliance with the state law what I don't know the answer to and I don't I I don't think that anybody knows

the answer to this until somebody uh tests it in the courts is when you have a new phase so River Crossing East sixth edition does there does that sixth edition have to have ccnr that are in compliance as opposed to just joining the existing cc&rs and so I don't know the answer to that but I do know what that but I so I do know that uh new cc&rs um need to be in compliance okay thank you that makes sense well I'm just going to speak to the river crossing area since I'm on that HOA and we've had discussions about this and there's the ccnr unless they're revised are the same for the entire development and so for the main not for the others because there are some that have additional amenities uh we're intending to continue with our ccrs and and make amendments to them as need be and that's that's um that's I would read that that's how I would read that ordinance but like or that uh regulation but as I said until somebody tests it in court I don't know that we know that that that's the case I have a question with regard to um duplexes triplexes fourplexes on a lot let's say Joe has owns a lot and he wants instead of building a single family home wants to build a duplex and he comes into the City and for the purposes of transferring interest in the property he does a condominium property regime for the duplex so he sells one unit to to Betty and the second unit to

Joe how do you and this is part of an established subdivision that is platted for let's say 100 Lots well instead of now having one unit on the lot you've now got two units on the L a lot the subdivision was designed for 100 units the water lines the sewer lines the electrical power system the parks serve the community were based upon a certain yield now you're you're increasing the yield for every person that makes that decision to build because they feel like they need to help the state solve the affordable housing crisis they decide to build a duplex instead of a single family home you're now increasing the burden on infrastructure be it parking water sewer electrical systems how do you how do you compensate for that or can you it doesn't seem to me as though you can I mean you're just kind of stuck with what you got it's a fair question I think that uh because the lot size doesn't change what you end up with are two smaller units it's two smaller units with presumably that can support uh a lesser number of people in each unit um potentially um but at the end of the day um the regulations the rcws say that we shall at least allow duplexes what I will say though and I want to say I I want to say this I want to really underscore this point we do allow attached single family homes up to uh four units from a from a massing perspective from from a uh design from

uh from the street those four attached single family homes look exactly the same as a fourplex to or townhouse yeah yes is that because we exert some design pressure on the Builder no it's it's just allowed in the R1 Zone and some the builders do that some do not um you'll see that the River District was based on uh that their development standards are actually even provide for even a wider range of housing types and um mixed together a iety of housing types so you do get you get small apartment complexes you get um even six plexes uh for plexes Town Homes it's a variety of housing types and it and it does work um at the end of the day we we need to amend our code to allow at least duplexes I would I would respectfully suggest that the Planning Commission at least consider consider the concept of going up to four plexes because it's consistent with what we already allow if they are attached single family homes and and again this goes back to something and those of you who've been on here long enough enough have heard me say this over and over again ownership has no place in a zoning uh uh code um and that's really so if it's attached single family or it's a fourplex um the only difference may be in the ownership model or there may be no difference at

all well the issue is the number of units you end up with I've worked in jurisdictions where this the idea of atus um was a seemed to be a good idea when it was included in the code but then you end up with projects that are almost like rabbit warrants I mean you have end up with parking issues on the street definitely you have have infrastructure issues you got to deal with it's not a pretty picture when you get down the road ways it just doesn't work and I would agree so we have we allow adus in all zones in all residential zones right now we haven't had a lot of demand for it um yes we do have some barriers I don't think that's the reason why we haven't seen a lot of it actually probably the bigger barrier is the uh water and sewer connection fees because because there is no break for an Adu when it comes to connecting to uh the sewer and water and um and that's not within our control if it was if we were the water and sewer purveyor we would not be able to um charge those fees but right now the growth management act does not apply to the sewer and water prevails I know that in that issue if does apply um to the water how about taxing are ad's tax differently than a single family be well I I think that they're tax based upon their assessment um I I think that the uh in terms of and again building permit fees are based upon the valuation of the H of the unit so obviously size uh plays a big part in that um the city does have the opportunity to look at the concept of

potentially waving or reducing um permit fees for adus for to or for affordable housing maybe make it they could even tie it specifically to the affordability of the housing well in that sense on an Adu would an Adu be owned by a different person well that's so that's one of the things that um our code right now and I've long ago that it's not enforceable that the uh Provisions that it has to be that the primary unit has to be owner occupied that's not an enforceable uh it's not an a forceable code requirement and um I've said that for years um now the rcws say we must remove it so so you and there's there's even a step further on this they actually there's actually requirement that we allow for unit lot subdivisions and what that effectively is is if you have a home with two adus that you could actually divide that into three lots yeah so that and that's that's another that's another requirement that we're going to have to Grapple with in our development code this time around so I again there's a lot of things that we have choices in and um but there's a lot of things that we have to do one of the things I'm thinking is is that at our next Workshop I might actually um take you through these are the ones that we have to do so let's set those aside we're going to do that here's the ones that are optional do we want to do we want to consider this do we want to consider that and come up with a list that is that is Liberty Lake Centric that is this is what we think makes sense for our community we do have to tackle some of the these barriers and I

think but I think having having a robust conversation on the ones that are optional um I think goes a long way towards uh trying to figure out what fits for our community cons are our Consultants going to be coming to Liberty Lake and viewing it personally at some point um so uh Alicia is on the team Alicia SS is on the team so uh there she's already she lives here yeah well one other thing too to remember is property taxes are based on partial so an Adu unit on the same parcel wouldn't be taxed separately it would be taxed as an enhancement or an improvement to the primary parcel but the parcel owner is the one that pays the taxes that's correct yeah and I do want to speak to something that you mentioned Lisa and I've heard from uh several people is the option of having selling a unit as a condo versus subdivision these two two are separate things so subdivision is actually dividing the lot itself into two lots and selling something as a condo is keeping the lot as a single lot but for example just selling your Adu so the Adu is owned separately and you have some shared space for people to park and just walk through the unit to get to their Adu and so on and it is a requirement by state law to allow that for the duplexes so you must allow the duplexes to be owned separately either by selling them as condos on a shared lot or by subdivision so that is a a requirement that the city will have to incorporate into their code absolutely and actually um we don't regulate condominium isation at all if that's a word at all we uh uh that in this the state deals with uh condominium subdivisions the city does

not and that's and I find that interesting I'm not sure if that's true everywhere in Washington but in the communities that I've worked in in Washington typically that's just do you review the applications no you don't even get any review we don't have any review on condomini crazy yeah it's yeah that's crazy anyhow so my apologies back to you sharifa yeah no worries great conversation okay moving on to strategies for the design and development standards so we talked about the Adu standards themselves so we said the minimum uh allowable maximum is a th000 square feet so we can't require adus to be any smaller than 1,000 square feet if we want to put a ceiling on it it has to be a th000 square feet um and then we suggest removing the Adu standards like building the six- foot fence or the uh slope roof slope um and then we must allow adus to be built on all lots that are compliant with the underlying zone so if the R1 Zone has a minimum lot standard regardless of what if that's smaller than 8,000 fet or not the current code says 8,000 for you to build a detached Adu we can't require that anymore if the lot is compliant with the underlying Zone we must allow them to build two adus in any configuration they they want DET detached attached and so on and sharifa if I may comment uh have no minimum lot sizes that's number one uh number two um the rcws actually say that we can't have any design standards associated with the

adus that are more restrictive than what we require of uh single family homes so if we don't require fencing and screening for single SLE family homes we actually can't require the the fencing and screening for iding news same thing with the pitched roof Etc you're right and that is also applicable for the duplexes so we cannot require any design uh guidelines that are more restrictive for duplexes than we require for single family homes we can relax them more if the CH City chooses to but they cannot be more restrictive for the middle housing units than they are for the single family units um all right so we talked a little bit about the ground floor retail so maybe there are opportunities uh within certain mixed use districts where the city wants to revise or provide a little more flexibility in the requirements for um ground floor retail space if there isn't so much demand for it in a specific area we suggest neighborhood uh mixed use because those are more local oriented and you could have just uh apartment buildings next to mixed use buildings and that could work really well but that's optional for the city to uh reflect on and Shar if I can just mention that again that is that is core in the River District C of the River District regulations that they allow that's how the how the little commercial center across from Orchard Park was developed as a neighborhood retail Center it is um it is a one of those new urbanism Concepts that is that really is placemaking because people can suddenly walk to their uh to the neighborhood commercial areas and whatnot so that's I I just want to I want to point that out the other thing the flip side of that is

that in our mixed use zones not River District but our other mixed use zones we have a onetoone requirement uh uh one square foot of commercial to one square foot of residential that doesn't make one of the reasons why we haven't seen any vertical mixed juice anywhere in the city other than in the River District where they don't have that requirement is that the typical for a for a vertically mixed use building is ground floor commercial with a couple stories of of apartments above but with the onetoone requirement it doesn't work and so that's something that we should really consider also and the commercial actually may help make the r the ground floor commercial may actually create a little bit more neighborhood also make um provide an opportunity for to kind of um reduce some of the cost associated with the residential because the commercial brings in uh better Revenue just a thought great um additional strategies related to design standards we have the manufactured home we talked about that a little bit when we were talking about the constraints so removing the design standards such as the roof slope requirement and then also the size requirement limitation so if we allow multiple sizes it means we open up the opportunity for building uh tiny home communities which can be way more affordable than uh Alternatives um other design standards that did not have a directly related policy that stated explicitly in the Commerce resources but Commerce does encourage cities to look at policies that are more specific to the communities is to modify the requirements for the balconies we talked about that so just potentially remove it

or base it on the unit size so it's a little more flexible and adequate for developing a variety of housing types and then relaxing the design and development standards for areas where we want to look for opportunities for adaptive reuse say we have office buildings and then with the changing dynamics of how people go to the office maybe we want to convert some of those units to residential relaxing the design restrictions on those buildings to allow a less costly conversion of those to residential that's one thing that is worth revising in the code or just allowing more flexibility for those types of conversions all right okay well look at opportunities related to the review and permitting process so generally speaking the housing action plan has a line as strategy that's just streamline your permitting process one way of doing it is to remove any design reviews required for the r zones for example um and then if we require any design review because we care about certain metrics it has to be an administrative design review so it doesn't go in front of of a commission it's just done with staff um within just like the planning department of the city just to streamline the process another thing that we touched on a little earlier because it was brought up is the subdivision process streamlining so you can see a star next to this because for the middle housing it is required that we allow for subdivisions for us to sell these units have them owned separately and this increases um it makes a more affordable home ownership opportunities for folks and then if you don't subdivide the unit

itself again just the condom condation or condominium isation that word new word that we're going to be adding to our dictionary moving forward um parking standards so generally speaking uh reducing the off- street parking requirements one Avenue of doing it is relating it to the unit size itself when we're looking at multif Family Housing and then um for duplexes the state legislation does specify based on the lot size if your lot size is smaller than 6,000 square F feet you cannot require more than one parking space per housing unit so if you do a duplex on a lot that is smaller than 6,000 square ft you can only require one space per unit the developer or the uh unit owner has the option to do two spaces if that's what they prefer but the regulations the code cannot require them to do more than one per unit if it is the lot is smaller than 6,000 square feet if the lot is larger then you can require up to two per unit um middle housing and Adu units that are within half a mile from major Transit stops we cannot require any off street parking for those and that's per state legislation so that is a requirement that we must adopt into the Liberty Lake code and then finally one thing that we talked about earlier as well is adjusting the parking mandates for the uh Supportive Housing permanent Supportive Housing emergency housing and other specialty housing facilities finally additional uh opportunities that are specific to the permanent Supportive Housing and emergency housing is to remove the spacing requirements

and Lisa talked about that already increasing or even removing altogether the proximity to Transit requirement um and then one thing that we talked about a little bit as well is allowing how uh office uses along with these facilities regardless of which uh zoning District they're built in to make sure that we provide a um complete uh service for the residents of the those facilities and then finally the one that is actually required by state legislation is to remove the arbitrary limitations on occupancy so instead of just setting a number of 40 we go to um just like a load per square foot as required in terms of health and safety standards so we'll use that as a requirement to set the occupancy as opposed to just an arbitrary number finally another thing that we talked about a little bit is to provide options for short-term rentals only in the context of um say like a bridge home situation or transitional housing so they are not like airbnbs they're not for recreational purposes or tourists but they you have to qualify for short-term rental rentals and those can be programs to support um temporary housing to help people get on their feet be before they can move to permanent housing Solutions question how do you define short-term rental housing what term so there actually we've got state law that defines it as 30 days or less 30 days or less yes okay and but and one of the things that I and I think that this is one that we really need to look at for some temporary and even some per permanent Supportive Housing they do

very often they will will look at rental on a month-to-month basis so that 30 the 30 days um we have to be very careful in how we do this however because we want to be more explicit about the fact that we do not allow short-term Airbnb uh ver Vera rentals ver yeah thank you um we don't allow that and we want to actually be more explicit in our code with regard to that so we're going to have to be careful in the language so that we if we want to consider the short-term rentals which I think um is an essential part of of the concept of at least temporary Supportive Housing and certainly um may be for permanent support of housing as well or transitional housing excuse me um I just think that I I just think that that's that's going to be we're going to have to walk a tight rope on that one all right okay with that we cover that barriers to affordability and opportunities to address those barriers and I'll move it back to Jennifer oh yeah I'm gonna take this one oh and hi everyone uh thanks for having us um I'm going to talk a little bit about rally disperate imp imps uh the analysis that was in your packet and how this fits into the comp plan update and uh recent legislation so as part of hb220 along with other analyses that you have or will be hearing about um such as the income band housing U land Capacity Analysis uh and the checklist that Jennifer presented earlier um there's a requirement that jurisdictions address

zoning that may have had a racially disparate or exclusionary effect and and uh and address patterns of displacement so there's a Commerce has a book all about how to do this and it's divided into these five steps that you can see here uh step one of course is community engagement and um so in order to supplement that effort and um and look at some history and data uh we have steps two and three uh which uh you know comprise the background analysis and the policy Matrix um that where is in your packet and I'm going to talk about here and then these things feed into um policies and Regulatory updates uh through the comp plan process so uh there's a great project that's been undertaken by Washington State to map Parcels with racially restrictive covenants these are Parcels where the the deed to the the land says uh you know that only people of a certain race uh can own the parcel they're not legally enforcable um uh and haven't been for a long time but they still exist on a lot of parcels um and you we looked at this data for Liberty Lake as you can see there there aren't any in the city um because the city was developed after um after the Supreme Court legislation essentially so there's you know still some fastigial ones uh here as you can see it's Spokan Valley but this is not a sort of a historical um you know artifact that we have uh in Liberty Lake contrary to a lot of other Washington States so uh we're looking at at some data here this is the race and ethnicity by census blot group in the city uh each dot the dots are randomized in those orange census block groups that you see and the dots represent different races and ethnicities as you can see there's not really anything that stands out um the city is pretty homogeneous racially but the the uh you know non-white

populations are kind of distributed around more or less um more or less throughout the city with possibly a little more more diversity in the area there um to the east of you know in the center of town it has some um more multif family hous um looking at demographics uh this chart shows only the nonwhite uh percentages um in the city uh in blue and the county in yellow uh so Liberty Lake 93% white a little bit less diverse than a few years ago um a little bit less diverse than the county which is 84% white um uh the you know there's the largest share of nonwhite residents in Liberty Lake are mixed race and Hispanic and Latino populations um the Hispanic population's increased in recent uh years over the past five years and there's been a slight decrease in Asian residents uh now we're going to look at some more housing specific things so uh looking at Cost burden this this is a term used by Hud and uh it essentially uh is defined as a household that's spending more than 30% of their income on housing costs is considered to be cost burdened and a household is uh considered to be severely cost burdened if they're spending more than half of their income on housing costs so overall uh as you see on this chart there's a lot of blue there's not a great deal of cost burden in Liberty Lake which means overall um people in the city are able to more or less afford their housing for the most part um there's a small levels of cost burden um among white asian and Native American households um you know white households are the most likely to be cost burden this is also mostly just because most of the households in the

city are white so there's a wide degree of income Spectrum uh across the the the population um because it it makes up you know over 90% of the population um looking at tenure that's renting or owning so homeowners are in blue renters are in yellow uh again there's not a lot of huge differences except we see there small percentage small share of Native American households in the in the city are likely to be all renters at least according to the HUD data set here Asian households are uh are a little bit more skewed towards renters and Hispanic and Latino households are um Prim homeowners uh so this is important to look at you know the reason we're looking at at these particular metrics is because uh you know renters can face different housing challenges uh can can face housing instability eviction raising of rents uh which you know can have a a more immediate and strong impact on housing security uh than homeowners who generally obviously have more secure housing so it's important to look and see if there are disparities in income uh sorry in tenure by by race which we don't see very much of here all right this looks at rental units in the city and uh the existing amount of units versus the uh incomes of of of households so uh going from left to right we have levels of Ami that's essentially income household income based on the area median income so at the left you have households that are very low income extremely low income earning less than 30% of the median income and then 30 to 50 50 to 80 on the right you have households that are earning more than 80 you know and and and higher so higher income households uh so what you see here is uh kind of interesting there's uh a small deficit of housing units affordable to the

lowest income households in Liberty Lake about 55 or so I mean there's margins of error on this but essentially it's showing that um you know the cost burdened households that we saw in a couple charts ago are are essentially these households that are earning less than 30% Ami but there's not enough housing available so they're having to pay more than they can afford in housing and rent some of these Surplus units that are showing up in the mid-range uh of affordability on the other hand on the high end we have a deficit of units as well this is a little counterintuitive but what it's essentially saying is that there are you know uh 100 or so more households that you know could afford uh that that are paying less than they than they could pay for housing uh down renting essentially so this means that they renting units that are uh affordable to households that are making a little bit less um so this can take away uh some supply for households that are earning in those moderate incomes uh so there's you know what it really shows is is is a need for a wide variety uh of housing types across income levels um to ensure that there is sufficient affordability in the community a question yeah seeing all this data is from 2017 to 2021 I take all of this with a huge grain of salt because it has changed dramatically um in the last couple years especially have you guys done comparative studies to and I know you have to go off of something but what it is now compared to what this data is showing because I would imagine it would be quite a bit different going off of actual numbers today as opposed to to 2017 to 21 yeah thanks for the question um it is um a a big detriment of this data set that the that um HUD produces that it's got a quite a bit of a lag

this is the most recent data set from HUD that disaggregates all of these metrics by you know by race and by these very specific income groups um I think you know as part of the comp plan um there's G to be or has been a Le can speak to this um some uh you know updated housing needs looking at current affordability levels it may not replicate this chart exactly um but um I would imagine that you guys have where will be doing some of that I don't know if this um but but for this particular data set you know like this breakdown is tricky to um is tricky to redo with with with more recent data but we can definitely like pull at pull out you know current incomes overall and current affordability um of rental units from more recent like real estate Andrew quick question this data is based upon census block groups correct yes so it's so it's so it um it doesn't have a clean clip to the city's uh boundaries oh no it does yeah this is based on the city boundaries okay thank you my comment on that is 20 17 data is almost worthless to us well it's um it's from this uh Chaz data set so yeah it's it's based on the American Community survey so it's Census Data that's you know an average of recent um surveys over a 5year period uh so it's not it's not like point in time from any one of those specific years but yes it it is old uh and uh I think you know it would be important to look at and and we can talk further about this you know and um about looking at some more recent affordability metrics it's like using 2017 gasoline

prices okay couple more slides here um so this is a map uh that we developed based on um uh a methodology that the Department of Commerce developed looking at Social vulnerability this is essentially looking at a weighted score of income share of non-white populations and share of renters and each one of those compared to the county so what you're seeing here is uh you know on the scale of of 0 to 15 uh there's a relatively low social vulnerability scores throughout Liberty Lake uh a little bit higher in uh you know these areas uh in the middle of the city where we saw higher concentration of multif family housing and um but the the you know areas with what the state anyway considers to be high vulnerability are like over 12 on this on this scale so um you know this is part of the sort of uh overall look at displacement risk um that's part of this Commerce methodology and we're not seeing a a high a high scores on this on this index here um looking at incomes uh by race and ethnicity uh again um there's some but not huge disparities the Hispanic population uh is um you know more likely to be above median income uh Asian residents a little bit less so uh white population again because it's the majority of residents has a a a wider span range of income levels um throughout throughout Liberty Lake and uh we did look at the next slide on yes on where this matches up as well so it's part of that um other map one of the fact that went into that was uh median household income by census plot group uh so again um there is some you know more wealthy and less wealthy

areas of the city uh as you can see here but again it's Census Data uh at the blot group level it's kind of hard to get down to this level of granularity but it does paint a general picture uh of you know where there may be um some higher and lower income residents so what does it mean okay uh the population is 93% white um a lot of these metrics as we saw are not um particularly uh skewed in U race and ethnicity so there's not higher rates of cost burden there's not lower incomes overall among non-white residents bipac residents of Liberty Lake um there are you know a little bit of lower incomes and higher vulnerability score in in some areas which have denser housing also more renters there so that also tracks with the data we've been seeing but overall all you know this is not showing that there's um either historical or or current you know strong disparities by race or ethnicity in the city um it does point to you know another question which is uh you know looking forward into the future and this comp plan Horizon uh you know providing a wide range of housing types sizes affordability levels you know is probably the most important thing to ensuring access to housing for all residents you know regardless of race uh and income in the city so okay I think question yeah so the last bullet point there may be barriers to people of color getting housing in Liberty Lake I I dispute that yeah I I think you know it was a sort of condensation of that thought I was trying to express there that uh that you know there are um uh population in the county that when we were looking at the county and City comparison data for example uh there are some more disparities there by race and

ethnicity and you know if we if we're talking about uh you know rental housing availability and affordability and things like that um sometimes those do correlate on the larger scale um you know due to Historic patterns of exclusion Etc generational wealth and all that so I think the idea behind that bullet was to sort of Express um that potential um but yeah it could be phrased different is is bullet 3 unique to Liberty Lake or is that something you see generally in communities that that could be an analog to Liberty Lake um no I don't think it's Unique to Liberty Lake um often um you know there are uh some some such correlations and not always I know Jennifer do you have have you you have some thoughts on that from other Med you've been working with yeah um I would say that um you know in a lot of cases areas of denter denser housing also have more rental housing people who are in rental housing typically you know make less than people who are able to afford home ownership so um it's not uncommon it's pretty common in all of the cities that we worked in that that's the case thank you uh okay yes uh thanks stre I forgot there's one more slide um so the packet the RDI Matrix that is in your packet um I just wanted to briefly explain what it is and what it's for um we looked at some recent updates to goals and policies and and usually we go back to the previous comp plan but uh you know staff have been U making some preliminary updates to goals and policies here in Liberty Lake and we uh

evaluated those against uh this criteria uh developed by this Commerce methodology uh looking at whether or not those goals and policies are supportive approaching or challenging um impacts on racial disparities in access to housing uh and so the recommendations or findings in that Matrix are one of many things that are going to go into uh the goal and policy updates in the comp plan one thing to note is that there is some discussion um in Commerce guidance about avoiding um certain discussions of neighborhood character um because the term neighborhood character can you know have um U Can can have implications about reducing access uh to neighborhoods depending on how it's phrased and how it's used and and what it means of course uh you know communities um want to preserve the things that are important to them and uh that's not exactly what's in dispute or you know what Commerce is cautioning against but there is uh some sort of emphasis on maybe rephrasing or specifying the things about neighborhood character rather than a general um uh policy that refers just to Neighborhood character in The Abstract uh in order to sort of ensure that it's not um you know doesn't have a strong exclusionary um undertone so that's you know that's uh where we're at with the goals and policies as far as the racially disperate impact and of course throughout the development of the element there will be um plenty of other goal and policy updates um as a result of all the state guidance that Sharie has been talking about and uh you know uh other necessary changes and changes that you want to see to the vision for your community and again just uh similar to the adequate Provisions the uh goal and policy review that's part of the racially disperate impacts assessment is not

uh it's it's kind of a jumping off point for discussions among you know you all and City staff to decide um how you want to in you know address some of these these barriers there were not a lot of barriers that we found most of the policies that you all are working on are are great so I just wanted to give you more context on that all right with that we'll talk about next step so we covered the barriers as we saw and then discussed opportunities for them so what we're doing right now behind the scenes is looking at everything that we explained to you all today and comparing it to the housing goals and policies in the housing policy as part of the comprehensive plan because as mentioned earlier this is all part of our support to the city in developing the housing policy so we're going to look specifically at the existing goals and policies and update those to align with the GMA with countywide planning policies and the local vision for Liberty Lake but ensuring that we are in compliance with State legislation and then after we identify the goals and policies we'll go into defining implementation strategies so developing very clear metrics and strategies for us to effectively Implement all the policies that we're proposing in the health cling uh plan and with that that's the end of our presentation and we can take any questions thank you uh sharifa Jennifer and Andrew that was great um we will be um uh covering part two that uh uh

sharifa laned out the next steps at our February 26th housing policy workshop and um um we will then we will be taking some time based upon your feedback at that session um to take a first cut at a combined chapter for Housing and Community Service uh we said all along we were going to combine those two because it's it's necessary to do as we look at emergency and Supportive Housing Etc and so um we'll be looking at a first cut of that hopefully in April and uh trying to um synthesize all the thoughts that I'm hearing from you guys and the feedback that we're getting from our consultants in so that we can be kind of aligning with comp plan and focused on what what makes sense for our community so thank you so much uh all and we'll see you couple weeks thank you bye bye So Lisa at the next time we discuss this housing policy you talked about coming in with a list of two lists one that we can live with and one that is are required we can discuss yeah we can discuss yeah and so I that so that's my game plan is that I'm going to try and break this down in a different format so that we can say okay this is what we got to do that'll just be in there these are the things that we have to talk about and we may need to have a third workshop on this to really do the drill down and in fact I told you that that's why this is this is

constantly changing in fact I you have new one uh before you now just a couple questions before the next meeting on housing did these folks come out out and spend some time in the community driving around looking looking at the different areas yes and yes and they and did they meet with the community and talk about what they were doing we have not yet we're having these conversations now we will then be using that as a basis for some Community engagement so so that is but we have to we have to work through some of this um in order to even begin to have conversations with the community and we really need to get to a place where we're like okay this is what the state says we got to do these are the things that these are the things that we can have conversations about so what we must do is an education piece not an engagement piece what we could do is an engagement piece if that makes sense so we're trying to parse that right now and I we've been talking about this for a number of meetings and you're we're starting to get like a little more focused on exactly what that means and what that looks like so it's going to take us some time does the public have access to this to this document that we're looking at this evening um well they do certainly because because all of your all of your um packets are posted my intent is that I'm going to send out this presentation tonight to all of you we're also going to post it on our website and I think there's good information in there I think some of these uh some of these I'm hesitant to put too much jargony stuff on there because on the website because it's too much but one of the things we we are hoping to do is once we get a little farther along in in our conversations we have a better sense

what direction you might like to go and what areas you might have questions for the public on that then we can start focusing on an engagement piece um but and we could talk more about what we have been doing because I think that's going to um that's going to uh kind of give you a feel for what we could do and uh we do have we do have a task order with scj Alliance it's just for public engagement and so we so and they have done some cool things with that but we kind of have to there's we have to eat this elephant one bite at a time first and then once we have kind of a a direction that we think we need to go and have a better understanding of what we need to vet with the community then we're ready to do engagement so this is and it's a slog it's I have like three three part document that's just guidance on housing and commerce hundreds and hundreds and hundreds ofes yeah it's I I know it's overwhelming and I apologize about that so we've got about half an hour and I've got a really quick update for you guys one more question is it possible to get a copy of their PowerPoint yes I I just said that I was going to send that out to all I I want I don't I didn't want to send it out to you in advance of the meeting because I wanted you to be able to hear it and ask questions but yeah it's my intent that that will go out to you after the meeting you good sh of summarizing they did they really did and there's a there is a lot to it and uh um and again that's why I'm trying to get you these packets early so that you have

a chance to read and digest a little and then and then again it takes a couple times reading and digesting and noodling through this to kind of wrap your brain around because we're it's a big shift it's a big shift but we also if we if we look at it from a CommunityWide basis it's also a huge problem and it's getting worse by the day so with that before you um go into your presentation I just have one more point that I want to make um what Jee and I were talking about earlier I am very hesitant on a lot of the stuff that's being presented um especially if uh you said srj was that the right CJ yes CJ sorry um going to start with this public engagement process if we're making all these determinations on how we want to move forward and go about things if this data is old and it's being presented to the public as old data there it's going to be skewed and I know that this what we were presented tonight is a very small portion of that the point that I'm trying to make is that all of these other things that are going to be part of the public engagement I would strongly encourage the data to be more up toate if at all possible I know they have to pull something but I thought that was a very poor example what was presented tonight on what is actually going on even if the implications for what we're going to be doing are small um so this is what I got to say number one that's the best data that's available right now and um given what's happening at the federal government level I'm suspecting that we're not going to we would we would typically get the 2020 three data this year I'm now concerned that we may or

may not see that data is the best data we have to work with it the data is not nearly as these are there are boxes that we have to check here we have to do the analysis to determine if there's any uh uh um racially disparate impact what what I think it it demonstrated is that there's not particularly no that's what they said and so so we have a couple policies that according to um Commerce guidance we may need to tweak the wording on or be a little bit more specific as to what character meets the uh as it relates to um green infrastructure walkable infrast walkable bikable infrastructure we do we we can we can better Define what it is that makes Liberty Lake unique than just the neighborhood character I completely agree so and I agree with what you're saying too my point being that while that might not be a point of contention for this particular example right I'm trying to see the more overall picture if a lot of the stuff that's being presented in the future is based off of old data it's going to be really hard for us to make those important decisions because I would argue that housing affordability has completely changed in the last two or three years and if we're going off of a fiveyear guesstimate between 17 and 22 that's very old data and it's very skewed and that's just one example I I don't disagree I don't disagree with you and um again we're using the best available data to check this box yeah and so so this is I know the boxes have to be checked I know the box we have to

check right and they got to go off of some sort of data um I would hope that during that public engagement process whatever we're a part of or whatever we're not that that is a point that is made at the beginning of the presentation that this data is could be very old it could be skewed so take it as you will and this is the best data that's available however circumstances may have changed since this data was you know compiled or whatever absolutely absolutely it's a very valid point um and again I don't think that again I I don't want to give you false expectations that I think we're going to have better data if we have better data we will bring It Forward I just don't but the public needs to be aware of that most of them won't see that declare the source and timing of the data up front so they understand this is dated information right okay so that's a very that was all sorry continue so I just wanted to update you on some of the other things that are going on and I just finished my Community Development report did I Haven to mention to you that uh uh we've changed the name of our department to Community Development because we didn't have enough to do that's what it was originally right like the Gulf of America anyhow um but you know what I I'm I'm gonna actually I want to send out to you the Community Development report that we do for councils because a lot of it has to do with a lot of what we're talking about here as well as things that are coming up and the engagement pieces I want you guys to be tuned into what we're doing I'm going to try and give you a brief update right now yes sir could we change our commission title then yeah can development commission that's exactly what I was going to ask with the CDC is

we have okay we have to we actually have to change City or uh Municipal Code though if we're going to do that that's not remember we were gonna do that earlier any um so comprehensive plan element update I'm I'm going to just give you a really high level on a couple things that we're working on right now City facilities master plan which mostly is not us but it's um uh Mark McAvoy is working with uh with Ben our uh Public Works director as well as with um uh with uh oh my goodness uh towns and hury um to look at this and this is this is kind of a moving parts and pieces thing we also we're we're about to let the contract for the parks recreation and open space plan I'll give you just a quick update on that Transportation network analysis as well as I just want to just share with you what we've been doing on public engagement and what's coming forward um a lot of balls in the air right now um so why does this not want to move oh yeah so first the city city uh facilities master plan so um on Tuesday uh city council has a planned Workshop to talk or um we have a planned Workshop where we look at City Hall Library police department and what that looks like what our needs are for the next five years because that's there have been some conversations without any thought to the fact that we have no more room at City Hall and um most of us could hire a couple people to help us

with our workload but for the fact that there's no place for them to sit and so so that's what that's going to be about we have a couple different scenarios to look at with the buildings that we own with city council we'll share that with them on the 18th on February 25th Council has um proposed a special Council Workshop um I don't know if those of you are aware that at the February 4th meeting um we had a whole concept about uh library and Community Center in Town Square and so they want to have a special workshop on that on February 25th and hopefully with the with as we share what's happening what what the needs are for our city facilities and City Staffing um that that will get folded into that conversation we are trying to schedule dat to be determined a city council Retreat to talk about funding strategies for City facilities and really go through um spend some dedicated time to figure out how we get there so that's coming up and that's really important because this is going to be certainly a significant part of looking at the 20-year Capital facilities plan is figuring out that process and that what that looks like parks recreation and open space plan um so we have we we're because of the whole funding question for City facil we feel like it's really important that we break this into two phases so the first phase and um is uh we're about to scj Alliance did a great proposal we actually went out in December for late November and December

we had an RFP we had six proposers great proposals we uh reviewed them we narrowed it down to a short list of three for interviews uh scj uh Jen dial and uhh Chris Overbrook knocked it out of the ballpark and so um we're bringing this forward on Tuesday um it's they're going to go through inventory and assessment uh they have a a pretty robust public engagement plan uh they're going to cover need demand and needs assessment and then goals and policies and um really the level of service analysis that we that we need this is stuff that we need for the comp plan so the second phase um will'll then look at um again integrating what we did in the first phase um and really um involving some more public engagement as we develop the capital Improvement plan for our parks and also look at the capital facilities plan and this is this is key to developing a financial plan for how we're going to get there and so um and so so right now as the SK looking at the schedule we really do get this across the finish line by the end of the year which is good because that's about the time we have to plug it into that 20-year Capital facilities plan so um as for the transportation Network and Analysis I just wanted to share with you we have contract approval happening March 4th where uh they're pulling together the the scope and agreement right now as we speak we've talked about the public engagement we we found that when we did this uh back in 2020 and we had virtual open houses because we had

to but it actually was a great format for the transportation network analysis and we got really good participation so we are looking at doing a couple virtual open houses as we developed the network analysis which is again looking at taking the housing and land use pieces and plugging it it into our uh our transportation Network to see what that means in the next 20 years for transportation improvements we actually are going to do a story map um which is something that makes it we we've done a couple already and we'll talk about that in a minute but the story map is a really great opportunity for you to kind of take a deep dive into what's there kind of understand what the what different scenarios might look like Etc and it's a great thing to post on the website um uh we're also we'll also be doing agency coordination with Spokane Valley Spokane County srtc and wash do on this and our Target completion date for this is October of this year so it's it's it's going to take some time we we're we're looking at Gathering some mobile dat data in including pretty robust truck data which will help with as we look at designing roadways um it will help with uh design standards for for our collectors and our materials understanding what the what the truck volume is uh we're looking at uh pedestrian and bike also we'll have pedestrian and bike counts as well um at the key intersections uh we are going to do spok we're involved with spoken Valley with the sub area transportation plan right now we haven't seen they I think they've just finished the existing conditions and we have not yet seen it we should be having a meeting shortly to see that we will be using some of the counts that they already took and seasonally

adjusting them but we're going to have some overlapping counts so that we can use that for calibration purposes to Cal calibrate their data so it's going to be uh we're we're pretty uh I'm pretty stoked about this it's going to be great information for the bike PAD as well as for our transportation and this is really going to take us a long way in terms of our transportation chapter so that's uh so uh we are we do continue to work on that also I just wanted to share with you a little bit of the public engagement we've already done and the public engagement that's coming forward so um I know it's really it's a lot to cover but um we had a kickoff meeting in October a virtual kickoff meeting in November uh had a presentation before Liberty Lake Rotary Club Club on November 19th our climate policy action team met for the first time at the end of January uh we've got a a building and energy stakeholder meeting that was on January 29th in the climate uh uh element workshop for transportation on the 30th um of January um can you go back sure the um the transport what that was there four attendees yeah we had four yes we had four we had four attendees plus staff so so srtc um srtc came down with covid so they weren't there it was it but it was a really very robust discussion it actually probably we got is there is was it recorded no it was not these are stakeholders it's not a public meeting but we got really robust uh conversation good wash dot was there um wash do was

there um trying to I'm sorry my my brain is is Fri but we had it was a it was a very good conversation um I'd like to is there any way I can get some kind of feel for what what was discussed and what were any conclusions from that meeting well or am I it it will be coming it will be coming okay okay so um we've been doing Flyers um we just updated our QR code because the company that did our QR code went belly up so needed to do another QR code um we had an article in the splash we've been doing meetings with rotary the kickoff we had this is a picture from our uh cpat meeting in uh and these were we have uh a teacher and six of her students that are on our climate planning action team and so uh really great brid line High School yes then that's correct um we've also done some story Maps uh um uh Lance developed a story map related to annexation in UG and it's a pretty cool one and uh we've got that posted on our website he also is working on his a cultural and historic resource story map and we a story map for ex exp exploring Liberty lakes's climate element pretty cool um these are all on our website we are going to start with the annexation because it's simple um meeting with Community engagement commission next week and we're going to talk about uh pushing these out with a survey on Zen City to try and engage people and get some feedback on some of this stuff so we're going to start with annexation the history and cultural resource will be next we'll do uh the uh

climate element and uh we've got a few more uh engagements coming up so we've got our climate resiliency workshop on February 19th um uh with a that's a stakeholder meeting we've got we're going to the cirk career fair we've created this website scavenger hunt with our little Flyers with the QR code to get the kids to go there um if they complete the scavenger hunt they'll be entered into a drawing for VIP seats at the Fourth of July celebration anyhow so so that's uh so we're excited about that that may be something that we actually so it's so it's going to be a uh it's going to be a drawing a drawing for everybody who completes it but we might even take that to Farmers Market as well um we have uh also a sign code stakeholder meeting on February you'll be doing the workshop with them following that but we've got a great group of uh stakeholders for that um land Capacity Analysis has been distributed to the water and sewer purveyors uh Central Valley School District a Vista PD Spokane Valley fire districts uh Consolidated Irrigation Spokane County Environmental so that's all out there and we've asked them to take a look at it look at Capac capacity be reaching out to them in a couple months to meet with them and we do have we're hoping to schedule workshops in the summer uh with you guys to have that conversation about do you have the capacity so so that that is something that's that that we are working on uh and we're working on ideas for engagement um activities at Farmers Market um uh this summer as well as I'm sure we'll be at Barefoot with Park and

some other of the community events maybe movie Nights Etc so so I just wanted you to know that it's that we do have a lot of plates spinning right now but we are pushing this out as best we can and we're trying to get more and more creative on how we can push out the information and get people involved this is we're we're in early sausage making right now we have to do a little sausage making before we can kind of ask people to taste what it is that we're uh sample some of our ideas right so um but we're we're working to get there so that's all I've got on on updates for you um I will share with you and I won't go through it but I will share with you we're going to have a busy schedule next time with the sign code and with the next housing policy conversation as I said we'll probably do another one uh but um following that um because I think it's a lot there's a this is one of the bigger pieces of this comp plan um we are also in the process of working on various chapters to try and um clean them up a little bit streamline them a little bit um and kind of just in preparation as in Redline format to bring back to you to talk about some of the goals and policies Etc so we are we're in the we're in the throws of it right now um so that's so that's my story all right we're up to Citizen comments do we have any Citizens online all right we will move on to secretary's report yeah so I just wanted to share a couple things with you um we have uh we have um updated this once again I promise you it's going to change every time as we get as we're drilling down more and more on each of these

separate parts and pieces and we're figuring out schedules we had a call with um Commerce uh on our climate resiliency chapter and um we wanted to find out one of the things that we had the option of submitting our the greenhouse gas subelement for Commerce review and approval um but it required originally we understood it was a 120-day review it's actually a six-month review however if we do that um if if we if we go through that process um if we get sued which what that looks like is they take us to the growth management board um Commerce will defend us so we figured that since we're guinea pigs um I wanted on their dime and not on uh the taxpayers dime so we are we kind of stepped up our Pace a little bit so that we could be submitting that greenhouse gas subelement to Commerce um in August to to make the deadline work to make the whole thing work I do have an an update for you all um in terms of in terms of the Commerce or the the um legislation for extending our comp plan deadline to December 31st of 2026 that that hit the floor and it went to hearing I I don't have time to listen to the hearings but I'm hoping that it went well but um but they are but but that seems to be winding its way through the legislature so with any luck we'll have a little bit of a reprieve doesn't mean we're going to necessarily change our schedule because I'm still waiting for things things will

blow up things will things are going to take longer than we think and and I think how is going to be one of them so uh we'll just do everything we can to get done as quickly as we can and if we have more time to do the development code piece of it it's a grand thing now everything takes longer than it takes it's a true story yeah that it that is it planning commissioner reports any reports Commissioners uh our next meeting is February 26 I'll hear a motion for adjournment who to adjourn second is there a second all in favor I I thank you than thank you all