Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. I would like to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting. It's 09/22/2025, The time is now 06:00. This meeting will come to order. Tanya, will you please call the roll? Yes. Ali Shosti?

Here.

Ben Reed? Brian Kesterson?

Here.

Deon ditmar? Here. Justice phelps is excused? Sandra reynolds? Here. Todd oyo fessel?

Here.

For the record there' no remote attendance for board members at this meeting.

Thank you. Are there any added items or changes to the agenda from staff?

No changes. I did want to note that we have been in conversations with PSRC and their certification process for the downtown plan has been adjusted, which means it buys us a little bit more time for our downtown plan. So this originally, we would be having some information brought back to you tonight. But because we have a little bit more time and it's not on as tight of an adoption schedule, we had some other competing items. So, letting you know, we're not letting off the gas on it, we're just still working on it, but it will be coming forward in fall. So, letting you know about that process.

Thank you. Okay. The minutes from the previous meeting have been oh, yes.

We still there was an announcement of a meeting with the the general city council here a couple of weeks. Is that still on then or is that?

That meeting is on. It's related to the Recode Kent project. So we'll I'll talk about that during the second agenda item on Recode Kent.

Okay. The minutes from the previous meeting have been presented to the board. I call for a motion to approve the minutes of 08/25/2025 as presented.

This is Dion Ditmar. I move to approve the minutes as presented.

This is Brian Kesterson second.

Is there any discussion? Okay. I call for a vote to approve the minutes. All in favor say aye.

I wasn't here. Okay.

Those against say nay. Okay. The vote is approved, I guess, four to zero.

Tonight, we are holding a land use and planning board meeting in which staff will give presentations on Recode Kent Phase two co living, Recode Kent Phase two small scale infill development, and the update to the critical area ordinance. If there are no objections from the board members at this time, we are ready for the Recode Kent Phase II co living presentation. Staff, you may begin.

So I'm Deja Mitchell. I'm a long range planner here. And you may remember a couple weeks ago, came to you about with our coliving regulation. So I'm here again with some updates and just moving or how we're gonna move forward rather. So the purpose of tonight's meeting is we'll go over some legislation around co living.

We'll go over cancer regulations around communal residencies. We'll go over some proposed changes and timeline for adoption. So recently, the state passed some legislation around co living housing, so that would be house bill nineteen ninety eight. And house bill nineteen ninety eight essentially states that co living housing is sleeping units that are independently rented and lock able. They also have some type of shared facilities like a kitchen or another room that they may share with those living in or sleeping in the building or living in the building.

Sorry. So this regulation also says that co living should be allowed on lots that allow at least six units. So this includes lots that have some type of mixed use allow some type of mixed use development. Co living is also allowed on lots that allow six units through our transit proximity requirement. So you may you may remember when we had middle housing, we had a stipulation that allowed for up to six units if the lot was within a half mile of a major transit stop.

So that kind of plays off of that. This legislation also has different density requirements. So one sleeping unit equates to one fourth of a dwelling unit. So what that essentially means is you need four co living units to get one dwelling unit. So Kent has something similar and we call it communal residencies, but our code states that communal residencies is a business operated out of a single family residential home where an individual rents out a portion of their home.

So usually it's like a room, you rent out a room. So existing requirements for communal residencies are you need a business license, you cannot rent more than three rooms within the home or an accessory structure, and it's only allowed in zones a 10, NRL, and NRS through NR four a or four b, sorry, and Centimeters zone. So just some comparison here on definition. So there are some overlapping stipulations between the two but there are a lot more differences. So some of the main differences are building type, location and density calculation.

So for communal residences, they're allowed in single family dwellings or accessory structures whereas co living housing has no specification on the building type. Communal residences also are permitted only where single family dwellings are allowed, whereas co living housing is permitted on lots that allow up to I'm sorry, allow six or more units and that could be in mixed use zones or within major transit stops or lots or lots within one mile of a major transit stop. And as far as density calculation, community or communal residencies equate to one dwelling unit is one house or one house is one dwelling unit with a max of three rented rooms, whereas co living housing is one sleeping unit, equates to one fourth dwelling unit. And of course, those max or mins for units is dependent on the underlying zone. And then we have parking.

Parking isn't a big difference here. So for co living housing, it's required point two parking spaces per sleeping unit and no parking required within the one half mile of Bermuda train to stop. And then for communal residencies, parking requirements are based on the specific land use. So for single family dwelling units, it's still two two parking spaces per the dwelling unit and then accessory structure. If you're within that one half mile of a train to stop, you don't need any parking and then if you're without it, need a parking spot only for accessory dwelling units.

And again, this is for communal residencies currently. So applying that to our district regulations now and how our zoning looks now, you can see at the bottom we have co living as proposed. So our zones NRL through NRS allow for co living when they're within one half mile of a major transit stop. And then you have zones NR two through NR b, which allow co living through scalable density and transit proximity. And then you'll have at the top there, communal residencies as it currently stands.

So again, there is some overlap, but there are a lot of differences also. So our remedy for these differences is to combine the two and update the definition of communal residences to reflect our new middle housing regulations. And by this, I mean, we would update code to reflect that communal residences are allowed or residences, sorry, are allowed within all housing types on lots where five or fewer units are permitted. And then we'd we would also update code to reflect that communal residences are capped at three rentals per lot. So we would combine them to say more or less, if five or fewer units are allowed, then we would use our existing communal residences standards.

And then if six or more units are allowed, we'll do co living standards. But here is where I would kinda like to get you all's opinion. So we need some type of new terminology that reflects like a combination of communal residences and co living regulations. So we could keep it the same as communal residences as far as the naming mechanism. We could change it to co living regulations or it could be something totally new. So I guess I'm also asking what do you all see fitting there as far as this new terminology?

To

me it makes sense just to keep the communal residences terminology and then just in just say the the red note that you have at the bottom there, five or less and then six or more, and I think that's more than clear enough. I feel like co living I don't know. It just makes a little less sense to me. Great

job, Deja. I wanted to reflect. So if you look on the slides, apologies for including the notes, that's our bad. Deja reflected the notes in all of her slides that you're seeing here. We just accidentally printed with the comment, so that's my bad for not catching it.

So you get to see a little bit behind the scenes of how the sausage is made with our presentations. But, if you look at the slide number six, it's zone applications, so the one that's immediately before this. Kidding. Deja's recommendation was, let's put these two together and call it the same thing because if you say co living and communal residences, people aren't going to they sound so similar, you hear co and it sounds so similar. So, Deja's recommendation really is this next slide, slide seven, saying, let's call it one thing, and then just have a footnote that says, here's the requirements if you're five or fewer, and here's the requirements if you're six or more.

And so, that really, I think, is a user it's like an improvement for usability, for sure, that Deja's proposing. And I think where we were landing is like, do you have a terminology naming preference? Does one feel better than the other resonate more? The state is calling it co living. We can call it we could call it purple bananas if we wanted to. It doesn't really matter within reason. And so, I think, Sanjay, your point of communal residences sounding more inclusive or like understandable of what the intent is.

The co living is closer to a dormitory, I think, than anything else, but I don't feel passionately about one word over the other.

Okay. And our code does not specifically include dormitories as a definition, but as it's as the standards are for the state and our communal, they are not intended to be dormitories. It's not supposed to be three people in a bedroom, then you walk down the bathroom and there's, you know, 15 bedrooms with three people in a meet that are all using a shared shower and then

you go to

a off-site cafeteria. They are really different uses, so

that may be something that we want to make

sure we explicitly say they're not dormitories as well.

I

don't have particularly strong feeling towards either word. Yeah. I feel kind of the flip side, though, of what Sandra said. I would have said the opposite in that. To me, think of co living as, like, okay, could that could be just like a roommate situation where you're both maybe both on the lease. Yeah. But you know, like your kind of equal standing not one renting from the other one, but you're living together and you're not part of a family unit.

Yeah.

Does that make sense? I don't know that either word really is perfect because that seems like it could be a lot of different scenarios. I'm not sure if it matters if one person there or one family there is renting to another versus being on a shared lease, which is also a co living situation.

If that makes sense.

So, it could be either one, like no real preference for naming per se. Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah.

And to clarify, so if Deja and I are friends and we want to rent an apartment or any sort of living unit, townhome, duplex, and we sign the lease together, that's different than what co living as the state defines it is, where it would be if Deja and I don't know each other and I say, hey, I want to rent a bedroom from you, and Deja also talks to someone and says, I want to rent a bedroom from you, and it's kind of a forced sleeping unit arrangement where I'm forfeiting the right to pick who else is on the lease with me. So, lease is independent for that sleeping unit. So, it's for bedroom one, two, and three because we don't regulate in per state law, we can't regulate the number of unrelated individuals renting together. So, this really is saying if you have a house or you have a lot of times, there's also facilities that are they call them like apartments where they rent out sleeping unit 1A on the 1st Floor and there may be 10 units all lettered and then they share the same bathroom and kitchen and living areas, but the bedrooms themselves are lockable and independent leases.

It happened, you know, in I have we have a colleague who's now wife, but at the time was their partner, not they weren't married, that she studied abroad and had something very similar when she was in Europe. So, it's it's not uncommon in older buildings that were built before zoning regulations came in and restricted it or in European buildings.

Yes, I was wondering if you could say communal either slash or hyphen co living. That way we can relate that to the state, which has only co living and historically city had communal. So if that's workable, I think.

You're not being either or more so just combining them. Okay.

The question that I've I mean, I don't know if we have to worry about it, probably not, but it's like there's a lot of issues about how these how these things would work particularly if you don't even know the people. If you're in one of these four four apartment, you know, four pods thing, you know, how does that I mean, roommates get under stress at the best of times and if you don't even know each other, and are they coed or are Yes.

So I will say in Seattle, they do this a lot. So it's usually like a big home, let's just say you have a five bedroom home. Each room is a different lease for someone else. Uh-huh. And people find these places on like wherever you go to rent apartments, Craigslist. It's really like you have like a landlord who owns the home and they rent it out, rent those rooms to different people. It was very similar to just like an apartment that you would find online.

Yeah. So I've seen it growing up. My best friend's family did independent sleeping unit leases for students that were studying abroad. They lived near a university. And it worked really well.

The homeowners lived on-site and just happened to have three bedrooms where their kids had graduated and were out of the nest from high school. And so, they said, well, let's rent these three rooms out. And so, I think that is a common situation that we would see in our lower density residential. When you get into the higher density, it would be similar to an apartment community that has pools other amenities, like rooftop gardens and other amenities, where there's the private property management landlord company would take care of the agreements and the terms of end conditions and upholding the community standards. So, similar to any other place where you have shared uses, I think the issues with rotten milk in the fridge and other things, other groups that are in the business of actually building apartments and these other types of more multifamily structures as opposed to detached residential structures have ways of managing that that we don't get involved with.

We don't have to worry about it.

Any other comments, questions? Okay. So going into timeline. So we have until December 31 to adopt some type of regulation around co living regulation or co living housing. So we're looking for or we're looking towards a briefing on October 13, a hearing on October 27, and then on November 18, we'll take this to committee of a whole, and then we're hoping for adoption on December 9. So make it just in time a couple of weeks before December 31. So that is all I have for you all today. If you have any comments, questions?

Thank you Deja. Appreciate it.

I

skipped ahead If there are no objections from the board members at this time We are ready for the recode Kent phase two small scale infill development presentation. That is a mouthful. Staff, you may begin.

Hi, Landy. It's been a while since I've been on this side, but I am, helping to fill in some gaps as we are bringing Matthew Chastain up to speed. Matthew is in our current planning team. He has been with the city longer than I have. He started as an intern, and last year, we were able he graduated, and we were able to provide or offer a full time position that he accepted.

So he has a wealth of knowledge on the current planning side and is actively one of our, front counter assistance people. And we have had some ideas percolating on ways that we can encourage small scale infill development. And Matthew got tapped as, hey. You're gonna have an opportunity to learn how to do the long range planning side of codevelopment, but I'm gonna help bridge the gap in the interim because it's unfair to throw Matthew to you all. I know you're very nice, but letting him see

a lay of

the land before before we have him come up and present. So I'm here tonight to talk about the Recode Kent project schedule writ large. I know Deja has been working on one part of phase two. I'm gonna talk to you about kind of where we're going on the project. Then we're gonna talk a little bit about small scale infill development, the city's background information that we've been collecting on data and some of our priorities, and then, conversations about ways that we can help facilitate that small scale in infill development.

We're gonna talk about frontage and right of way. Spoiler alert, I'm gonna be focusing mostly on sidewalks, but we'll talk about that in a minute. So reminder on the project schedule. So we adopted the comprehensive plan at the 2024. The state said, you get six months to adopt eight different new housing standards, and so we did a six month sprint to make sure that those state mandates happen.

We still have a couple mandates that have longer deadlines. Coliving is one of them. And there were some other items like updating our design guidelines for clear and objective standards that we're still working through. Also, you may remember that someone representing the Mill Creek Historic District had come and asked for some clarification on our code. Deja's been working with both King County Historic Preservation Office as well as the Mill Creek Historic District, and we'll have some codes ready for you.

We're taking because there's not a state mandate, we're fitting it in with some of our other workloads. So we anticipate, next quarter for an adoption, quarter of sorry. The 2026 for an adoption on that. The other thing we're working on is looking at how we can facilitate so middle housing's definition is it's supposed to be small in scale infill development that meets the scale and intensity of the surrounding neighborhood. And so looking at ways that we can incentivize this, we've had conversations over the last year internally, and we're ready to bring those forward to you all.

I do wanna highlight phase three is already starting. So phase three was some of the more, I'd say, the cleanup fixes. Originally, I think we were calling it all phase two, both this part here and the second part here, but we're really seeing that there's a little bit of a differentiation. This is still focusing on some mandates and and smaller scale development. When we get into, sorry.

And that should say 2022, not twenty two zero two two for the date. When we get into phase three, we're talking more broadly about site design. How do we put Kent's fingertips on and fingerprints on development that's coming in? Also talking about unit lot subdivision. Right now, we limit it for short plats, which is nine or fewer, but we know that there's a desire to see homeownership opportunities, fee simple homeownership opportunities for 10 and more lots.

And so that's a conversation we're gonna be kicking off on October 22 with the council boards and commissions joint meeting. I encourage you all if you haven't RSVP'd yet, we'd love to see you there. I also think it's just a really fun time. You get to hear from other boards and commissions members. So you may not think that someone on the arts commission or human services commission necessarily may know much about land use and planning, so it's an opportunity for you to share information, but then also for them to share their perspectives and for you to hear really from our broader community about their thoughts on housing and and what our opportunities are and priorities.

So we now have three phases. I always said we knew we were gonna have at least two. Phase three has already this isn't a scope expansion. It's just really putting brackets around what we're doing in each of these phases. So going back a little bit, as a refresher, we talked a lot during the comprehensive plan about what our Kent's housing needs, and we said, we have the zero to 30% AMI housing need, and then when you look at 81%, which is work force housing up above, we have a lot of housing need in this non income subsidized, non affordable housing list.

And so it's that 80 to 120% and then 120 and higher. And so, we had a lot of conversations about wanting to increase opportunities for homeownership, especially those entry level home opportunities and those, the ability we heard a lot from the community of, I'm not sure my kids will be able to afford to live here, and I'm worried my kids are going to have to move out of state. And so how can we increase opportunities for kids in the community to stay in our community? We also heard during our council direction that during our council discussions that retaining the existing housing stock that is safe and livable is really important. So it's a lot harder to rebuild a housing to be naturally affordable when you're building it in 2025 or $20.26 dollars versus a house that was built in 1970 that has over time aged and is now more affordable.

So one way to think about it is what we build today in thirty years will be the naturally occurring starter home affordable housing if we keep up that housing production. Right now, it may not look like it's affordable, but in 1970, it also wasn't quite affordable. And so needing to continue that model, and also retaining what we have of our naturally occurring affordable housing stock when we can. So we did our comprehensive plan and, a reminder that we said we wanted to focus a majority of our growth in these designated activity centers. So those are where we're talking about really more multifamily and mixed use development town, for mixed use transit supported housing, the Industrial Valley for manufacturing and industrial jobs, the Canyon Ridge area, is a lot and Benson, which is at where Kent Canely Canyon and Benson all converge, up the Benson Corridor, and then also in Midway where light rail's coming in.

So we've said, yes. We're going all in on density in these areas. It doesn't mean we're not supporting housing elsewhere, but we're recognizing and focusing infrastructure needs to support the density in those areas. The comp plan also has a lot of goals, and you'll see, again, the themes of preserving, improving, existing housing that we have, making sure it's safe and livable, promoting a diverse range of housing types, and really finding ways to overcome barriers to housing production and affordability. So how does small scale unit development get built, and who does it?

And this was something that our, consultants had created for us, and their punch line to this joke was, who does small scale infill unit development? Nobody if your codes don't work right. Like, it just doesn't get built. And the reason for that is in order to justify building a unit in your backyard or two or three units in your backyard, it has to meet the three of these things. It has to be allowed, one, so that our zoning code has changed that with our middle housing codes.

It has to be marketable, meaning that there has to be some sort of way that you can either recoup your costs or be okay eating some of those costs if you're saying, you know, I'm okay with my child. I'm not gonna charge my child for the price of the land. They could just start a new construction build on the backyard. And then it also has to be convenient. So if we have so many hoops, so many things to jump through, people just throw in the towel and say it's not worth it. So what gets built is not that much if we keep stacking our requirements. But who is interested in building small scale infill development? When I say small scale, I mean up to four units. Who's interested in that? It's people with boomerang kids.

It's people who would like to age in place, but their primary structure maybe doesn't allow that because it's too many stories or too many steps, but they could build something else that is a single story. It's people who say, I would love to be here, but I am facing exorbitant costs, and so I would like to make some extra money in the long run to help offset. Or it's people who say, I want to contribute housing. I have a yard that I don't want to maintain, and I don't want to do this, or I could be okay with a smaller vegetable patch. I'm okay with adding some extra neighbors in my backyard.

So there's a lot of different people who are interested in this. We've done some data analysis over the last it's hard to say fifteen years. It feels like that should be way too long ago. And we've been looking at the progression of applications that come in for their preliminary land division and then get to their civil applications, their final plats, and then actual final approval of, you can go build housing on this property. And so we differentiate in the city of Kent between a long plat, which is 10 or more housing units or lots, and then a short plat, which is between two to nine lots.

So you would always have one piece of land, and it depends on what your end result of the number of lots are. So you would never do a one lot short plat because you would just not be creating any new lots. So it's how many new lots you're creating at the end of that process. So at the end of the process, does it result in 10 or more lots or two to nine lots? So when we look at the total number of preliminary plat applications, this is the first permit in the door.

We do allow pre applications, which is a, hey. Have a conversation with us. But when you get to preliminary plat applications, you start to vest your permits. You get more certainty from the banks if you get approval that you can get financing, and it actually vests you to the current code, meaning that at the time you applied, those are the standards you're in. So you can see over the last fifteen years, we've had a lot more short plats than long plats.

And then we can see how they move through the process. So the next step after you get approved for preliminary plat, we get into civil applications. So you can see there's a 50% drop off from preliminary to getting to a civil application, meaning the application normally for civil looks at utilities, it looks at any dirt that you have to move, clearing and grading, anything to get the site ready in order to do final lot lines and put houses on that property. So you can see it's almost 80% between preliminary long plats to civils and we already get a 50% drop off between preliminary plats to civils. When we get to the final plat application, that's the that's the final you can pass go.

You now legally own multiple lots instead of just one lot. So you're applying for that final paperwork, all of the legal things that the attorneys look at, the any covenants and conditions and easements. You see that there's a marginal drop off and at the end for the final approvals that you can put a house on from start to finish for civil plats, about 70% make it through versus for short plats, only 32% make it through. So that's a huge number and a huge drop off. And I've said, why is this happening?

Like, what what do we think is going on? And I have a couple hypotheses and then I have some conversations that we've had with smaller scale developers and people in the community who want to build. So why is this happening? I think one is people start the short plot process, and they say, I'm gonna make $3,000,000 because each lot can be worth $500,000, and then we'll build a house, and I'll make all this money. And they're just not doing cost accounting appropriately.

So this is something where I think people see, I have a big backyard. Of course, I am just sitting on gold. And it's like, the reason why no one has developed it is probably not because it's easy to development easy to develop and you'll get a huge profit. It's probably because the margins aren't there to actually yield a profit and make it financially feasible. So I think some of this number is we have people that are homeowners, smaller businesses that are speculating and may not fully understand the cost.

And then when they get into actually having to submit their civils, they say, oh, wait. This is not what I thought it was. And so I think that's where we see the first drop off. I think the second reason is just there's throughout the land use planning development industry, a lack of really quality experienced professionals. And so larger developers have the ability and the resources to get engineers and planners and technical experts lined up that can do larger scale development.

When you're doing the smaller scale development, again, the cost of the project and the margins are so tight that an engineering firm is gonna say, I'm not gonna waste my time working on four units when I could work on 20 or 30 or a 100. And so just the type of professional that may be available, they may not be as experienced, they may not have as much information, and that can lead to gaps in time and processes where permits could expire and other things like cost estimates may not be as accurate. So there's two things there. When we talked with developers, the biggest thing we heard is that the cost for frontage improvements is pretty fixed. So you may have a longer area in the front yard that needs to be improved, but whether you're doing four units or you're doing 10 units, sometimes it's it's the same amount of space in your front yard and that can be 60 to $80 minimum.

And so if you're required to do that type of improvement and you can only get four units, that there's not much profit margin there. If you can get many more units, each unit can absorb that cost. So instead of four units absorbing $80, it's 10 units. That's a huge difference in how much opportunity for for just turning a project around and the scale of economy there can be. So I'm in the business of killing dreams early.

Sounds really silly, but I would hate for any of you to say, I bought this piece of land. I'm gonna put all of my everything I own, all my savings in it, and then I'm gonna start to plan a short plat because I wanna build a home for myself and my mom and my sister. I want you to know upfront what your costs are and I want you to have a really good accurate estimate so you don't start spending money that you're planning on coming back to you but may never come back. And so with these short plats, I think where we're seeing a lot of this is projects are dying because the costs that were that are not included in just the construction to build a house, but all those other items, the driveway, the clearing and grading, the storm water management, the frontage improvements, all of those other things add up and it's death by a thousand paper cuts. So when we talk about killing dreams early, it's not because I don't want to see development, it's because I don't want to see you underwater for something that you would have no reason because you're not a professional in this field to know.

So a lot of times what we found where project killers was was zoning. You would say, I want to put two more 2,000 square feet homes in my backyard, and you would go to the front counter to Matthew or Lindsey and they would say, I'm sorry. No. So you didn't have to think any further. The answer was no and it was clear. They may tell you, well, you could add an ADU if you're okay with keeping it to a thousand square feet. You could do two of those, but you can't do another two two thousand square foot homes on your lot. No. Hard no. There's no workaround.

Now since we've adopted Recode Kent and had the state mandates, we have different project killers. So we've shifted everything from a very simple bright line, yes or no, into all of these other costs that typically larger development is already factoring in. So storm water management, utilities, access to the site, parking, environmental constraints, frontage and right of way. There's all of these other things that are really more on the engineering and technical side of things. Ali, did you want to add in a comment or question? I'm sorry,

I just missed missed That's okay. Don't worry about it. So do we have any metrics to distinguish between the number of permits that received but wasn't constructed versus those who expire during the process? Because you have to get to within three years or one point five years you have to get permits, could we distinguish between those two if they couldn't just obtain the permit?

Yes. So we have information. So I've rolled this up to be a little bit more straightforward so you can see the numbers. Within this, it's kind of like a waterfall. So you can see from preliminary to civils to finals to final final plat to final approval.

You can we have it broken down in another form. I can send it to you that shows, like, the expired versus submitted and incomplete versus versus never came back in and never talked to us. So we do have that broken out as well. And I will say, you know, this was we've had two recessions during this time, which is just one per decade. And so it does you know, there are things that we did do in the city of Kent to help with those applications during that time to recognize the unique economic conditions.

Yeah. That is a good point. How many of these happened during that recession? Because you have from 10 to 25, that's fifteen years

period. I'll So I would have to look at the data more closely. I know when I looked this I pulled this data originally back in April, but I've been tracking it for a while. I know it there wasn't a huge drop off because we did put things in motion to say your preliminary plats are extended during the recession. So it's not as drastic.

Yeah. The 50% for short plat, that's a huge number.

It is.

And I fortunately none of my project that happened to them. So that's why I'm kind of surprised. That's amazing.

Yeah.

So, thank you.

Thanks. So when we talk about these the high cost infrastructure and project requirements, some of them the city has some control over and some of them are dictated outside of us. So storm water, there's the national national pollution discharge elimination system or NPDES storm water permit. It comes from federal clean water act as well as state requirements. We really don't have much wiggle room or flexibility in that.

It's it is what it is. Utilities, we do have a utility in the city of Kent, and we talked with ADUs. We allow shared utilities to decrease some of those costs. But for utilities that are external, like Seuss Creek, Highline, we don't control whether they allow shared utilities or not. And then there's also just basic life safety requirements and that the state have, which could be self limiting on on ways that we could reduce costs with with the utilities.

Access is something where the city does have some city discretion. We can regulate the number of driveway points, the location of them, and the spacing of them. That's something that we do have within our discretion. Parking is another one, I think, you know, before it was zoning was blamed for why housing was not getting developed. Parking was another one.

Kent has already significantly reduced parking requirements, especially in those designated activity centers, and the state has done a lot of override in many of the decisions anyways and lowered them even further. We've talked about this before. But I think when we're looking at kind of the what are the things besides actual construction of the house itself, of the two by fours and all of the exterior and the insulation and windows. What are the things that add to the site? Here this is what we're finding a lot.

Another one is environmental constraints. So critical areas, flood frequently flooded areas, and shoreline. So these are things that Lindsay is gonna talk about later tonight, but we are facing more and more requirements from the state to build housing and to build it in a lot of areas. And at the same time, we're also getting state regulators saying, but these areas need environmental protection and are off limits from development. And so we're facing some multiple priorities and tensions here.

And a lot of times what we find, I think with the short plats especially, is someone buys land and they're like, it's not that wet. And it's like, well, it actually has a a mapped wetland buff with buffers that extend across the entire site. And so there's a lot of things that we we allow averaging and reductions and certain things to work within critical areas frameworks, but there's just certain things that are nonnegotiable that are set again by the state and federal government. And then the last one is frontage and right of way, and this is where there is some city discretion in conversations. And so tonight, I'm gonna bring forward to you I'm gonna talk about sidewalks.

Sidewalks. So this is a development that we required frontage improvements on. So the location, I actually think, when we look at maps and everything, it makes sense in the long run for this location for those frontage improvements. So when we say frontage, a lot of times we just talk about the sidewalk area, but it's really everything from the back of the curb that abuts the development all the way into the half line of the street. So when new development comes in or development is triggered, we say from the middle of the roadway over to your property, that's your frontage that you're required to improve.

And, generally, the way the reason we've done this is we say you're bringing in new development. As a city, our priority is to make sure that we're taking care of the impacts that you're causing to our roadways, to everything else. And so we want you to make sure that you're you're improving it and upgrading it to our standards and our future standards. So it looks like it's a sidewalk, but there's a lot of other things here. There's the access point for the driveway.

There's a wider street, so you can see on this where these barricades are, the street actually narrows in here and it narrows in over here. It goes off screen, so they widened the street. They added some storm drain and other drainage through the curb and gutter. There's a sidewalk. There's street trees. There's lots of things going on in this right of way, and I'm not saying that's all bad at all. There's reasons why there's good things. They also added some off street parking. You can see this is the travel lane here, and it goes off to the side, and then this is an area where parking is. You can see there's a mailbox pickup area.

So I'm not saying we should not require development to do any improvements. That's not my argument here at all. What I am saying is 60 to $80,000 is a lot of a cost, and if you're on a corner lot, it gets upwards of $200,000. And that's not accounting for other things like your actual connections for utilities and running utilities, addressing your storm water system. This particular development has a storm water pond in the front to help manage more runoff as well.

There's lots of things going on, But in general, what we're finding is when we have these smaller projects, they can't support the required improvements. So what we're facing as a city is we want we're saying we have a policy expectation. We're saying we want smaller development. We want homeownership opportunities. We want these these great flexibility options.

And then we're saying, and we have all of these other requirements that are making it so that project really can't absorb those costs. And so, this is just a basic kind of showing the infrastructure affordability for housing, and this is looking, again, just at those half block, half street improvements. It's not factoring in the rest. So when we go back to this table over here of what can the city control, it's looking at that frontage right of way conversation. It's not it's not factoring in those other ones.

So this for this particular instance, for this street, it's along an area where we do have planned improvements. We're planning on widening the street. We have improvements for sidewalks, improving pedestrian networks. This area, this is North Of James, do we really want that same treatment in this neighborhood? I would argue that we probably don't.

One is the existing street is probably not wide enough to support that without causing other encroachments into the parking that already exists in the driveway. So we would be effectively eliminating the driveway parking. And because of this location, it's close to a transit stop along James, we would effectively not be able to require any more parking. So we'd be taking away parking that's available on their own property to maybe get a spot or two in front of their house. I don't know that that's a great trade off.

I think we're having to have hard conversations right now about priorities. The other thing this does is it sets an expectation of, hey, my neighbor just got a sidewalk put in. How do I get a sidewalk put in? So it sets this expectation even though James is another block down, is the city ever going to come in and pave and put sidewalks in? The answer is no. The city does not have the finances and resources to retrograde development that was from pre sidewalk standard times. And so we don't wanna send a message to the community that, hey. We're gonna we're gonna be putting sidewalks in. Just just hold your breath, wait five more years, and it's coming. Here's another prime example.

This is, 2 40th, and this is a neighborhood you can see along 2 40th, there's sidewalks. I think if something were to develop in this where there's a sidewalk, they should absolutely meet the sidewalk standards. They should do that. Block behind. There's no sidewalks anywhere else.

Does it really improve what are we getting by improving and saying you have to add sidewalks here? I think we're compromising the existing parking, and we're compromising, some other things. So I wanna I'm I'm putting this forward as a conversation point. I jokingly call these our sidewalks to nowhere program because we have great sidewalks, and I suppose if you wanna walk the 40 feet, 60 feet in front of your house, it's nice and level and paved if you've paid for that, but the contribution to the broader network isn't really there. So these are some examples.

I literally could have thrown a map. I could have closed my eyes and thrown a map on any part of our city that's not already in a subdivision with sidewalks. They're all throughout the city. West Hill, East Hill, Downtown Historic Core. It's not specific to just one neighborhood.

It is throughout the city. So where I'm where where we're coming at as a city is we've been having these conversations, knowing what we know from our short plats. There's just a lot of things that as we're moving forward, we know that what we're saying in our policy and what we're wanting versus what our old codes were, which anticipated certain types of development, there's a mismatch and we're not going to see it. So one way to put this is there's likely never to be a sidewalk here. However, we have a housing priority that we want to see some other housing added into this neighborhood.

We could either say, well, if you don't get a sidewalk, you don't get housing, or we could say, you know what? We actually think the housing would make sense here, or this could also incentivize buying up of more units so that they can tear down all of those homes and add a lot more intensity of development so that they can justify the cost of adding in that frontage. I'm not here to say that more large scale buying up of land is bad, but what I am saying is our city has priorities of keeping the existing housing we have and helping to facilitate people that want to add incremental density. And so this is not an anti development. It's actually a very, like, how do we facilitate for the small smaller developers, smaller one and two mom and pops who are looking to add into their neighborhoods who, when they come to the front counter and we tell them it's gonna be $80 extra no matter what, they just shake their head and walk away.

Why is it more than double to do these improvements on a corner lot than it is to is if there's a quick way to tell me why that is.

So this is a prime example. So this corner already has the frontage. Mhmm. So it would just be that 80 that $80. But when you come here, you have this side of the property that needs to be approved for sidewalks. You have this side of the property that needs to be approved. And normally, we'll require you to put in some sort of ADA crossing at the corner as well. So it's two sides minimum plus that extra corner piece. So it's it's basically saying you have how many pieces of fronting a public right of way do you have.

Got it. Thank you.

Dionne?

Would it make sense to have, I guess, specific areas that you would target for sidewalks? Like, right now, you have meet meet me on Meeker, which is great, and it's, you know, starting to fill in. Great. But that was designated a while ago as a meant to be walkable Yeah. Street.

So, to prioritize things like maybe pathways to school that where it's a safety issue or pathways to amenities like grocery stores or transit and those kinds of things. If it's just in a neighborhood, if it's not designated as targeting it to specifically be walkable, would there there's not a necessity for there to be sidewalks other than really convenience and looks, but it's not the same as having a pathway that you are expecting people to be walking to get somewhere, if that makes sense.

That totally makes sense, and that's my last slide is, if we were to pursue something like a side a small scale sidewalk policy or however we spin the title, I still think there's reasons why we should still require it in certain instances. So if the development is of such a size, that it can absorb those costs. Fortunately for us, the transportation master plan and our comp plan has a lot of things mapped already that I think we could use as resources, so major roadways. Meet Me on Meeker downtown areas. To me, those like, we've said we're concentrating growth here.

We expect more transit usage. That totally makes sense to say, you still have to build a sidewalk. Like, this is one of our highly walkable areas where we're trying to attract activity. Somewhere that's on the West Hill that's in a little neighborhood that is not highly connected to transit and does not have those opportunities, Does that make the same sense? I would say we probably could set a threshold of the type of roadway, and then also we've designated where we anticipate the pedestrian network to be to connect so that we have sidewalks that connect to somewhere instead of sidewalks to nowhere.

We also have a bike network, and so I've I've put forward, like, I think these are some starting points for conversation. Are there other things that you all would think we should consider of if we say, sure. We're we're gonna we understand we're gonna exempt sidewalks from certain thresholds of development except when other things are in place. So, Dion, I'm I'm throwing the question back at you, and I heard spools already, but I'll

Yeah. And actually, it's funny that I had the the paper right in front of me, and I hadn't actually read it yet. And then I was like, oh, it's right there. Yeah. I think I well, just what I had already thought of as schools and then just amenities for people who can't drive to like, being able to walk to a grocery store to get services that isn't having them walk in a dangerous like, on a along a busy street or something.

Yeah. So

I think that busy street is a big one. Also important to note, we can only require it in front of your property normally. Very few instances could we say, you live five blocks from a grocery store, so you have to pave the whole five blocks. I know you know this, but just for the group kind of context of we could say you can pave you have to pave in front of your house, but not the rest.

Ali?

Does the city have any policy regarding fee in lieu of?

We do not at this time.

Do not. Have you even considered that? Ever came up?

So we have. So a fee in lieu policy is basically saying you don't need to do these frontage improvements. Instead, you can pay this fee, the city will take on something. It may be building it for you in front of your house, or sometimes it says we have these local projects in your neighborhood that it's gonna help contribute to broader mobility. One of the so one of the things is we would still collect transportation impact fees for these projects, so they would still be paying a baseline impact fee that goes towards the broader network to implement these goals.

Doing the fee in lieu when we were considering it, the challenge is to price it, we would end up still having a cost that is more that is eating at those margins significantly. So it was it it includes include a lot of extra overhead administrative costs. They have timelines of how quickly you have to spend the funds. Otherwise, you have to refund them. And then there's also just the the if the goal is to reduce barriers for this type of development, adding extra costs is creating a different type of barrier. So it may be a lesser of a barrier, but it could still be a barrier.

Yes. It only makes sense if you have a current project within a corridor, let's say a local roadway and then there are two, three people building there and you collect the money and within five years, I think the state law required that you spend that money within five years. You have to spend it within the same area. So sometimes it does make sense. Some cities have that.

But yes, you have to

be careful because there is lots of rules and regulations around it.

Yeah. And that's what when we've done some analysis of it, it was kind of the what's the end goal here? Question. So any other I heard schools, access to amenities, other basic life activities and essentials. Anything else?

I guess I'm thinking of on if there is if there are areas that are on the way to a major, I guess I'm only thinking for my personal way that I have used sidewalks. There are areas in West Hill, for example, that's just the area that I know best, that on the way to transit areas, there are no sidewalks, and some of those are along major roadways, but some of them aren't. And I understand the, like, waiving exemptions for within a certain radius of transit for, like, parking and that kind of thing, but I am wondering about exempting the sidewalks because that seems like the sidewalks that would get used the most because we're incentivizing people to go and use the transit. So why wouldn't we want a sidewalk in an area that people are walking to transit? Just just a thought.

I am all about waiving fees, though. I support I I just think I don't have anything else to contribute because I think you guys did a great job.

Thank you. I I hear you there, and I think we can take another pass and see if between our pedestrian network, the side the bicycle network, and the the functional classifications have them as, like, major arterioles, collectors. They have different designations. And I think we could probably come back with a map that overlays them and say, hey. Use your and we could send it out beforehand. Say, use your brainpower. Take figure out how you would get to x, whatever you normally would like to get to. Are the main streets covered that you think should be covered in this versus it's okay to walk down the end of your block type things.

Right. Like, can I get to the light rail versus, like, can I just walk to my neighborhood park or something?

Right. Or even just, like, if I really added a sidewalk at my neighborhood next door, would that really significantly contribute to the overall likelihood of me walking if it's just that two houses? So okay. We can report back. Matthew, again, is going to be taking lead on this working in close concert with myself and our public works group. So this is a joint city effort. We've been stewing on this for about a year and are now ready to have some conversations with you all because we think it's just a relevant time, and we're starting to get questions at the front counter and everything. So we will be bringing some information back in October on this. Thank you.

Thanks, Kristen. If there are no objections from the board members at this time, we're ready for the presentation on the periodic update of the critical areas ordinance. Lindsay, you may begin.

Hi, everyone. I am Lindsay Walker, and we're gonna be talking about updates to our critical areas ordinance. Tonight for our goals, I wanna discuss the gap analysis that we received from our consultants. We have some buffer options I wanna discuss. So we have predictive riparian management zone buffers, and we also have site potential tree height buffers.

And then we have draft code expectations I'd like to discuss. So our time line is moving along. We are still expecting adoption in December. Draft code should be released this month, shared with our stakeholders, and then we'll have our briefing and planning next month. Just as a reminder, every ten years, we have to evaluate our critical areas ordinance to make sure it meets the best available science.

And this is really to protect those areas, the natural environment, wildlife habitat and encouraging public safety by limiting development that could be in, hazard areas like floodplains and landslides. Types of critical areas we regulate are wetlands, geological hazard areas, protections, and fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas. We do also have floodplains and shorelines as critical areas, but they are on a separate update schedule, so we won't be talking about them much. So for our gap analysis, some administrative items, that we noticed where we wanted to expand on

our

exemptions. We would like to include mapping on our website that shows critical areas for the public to view, updating our checklist and our assistant brochures for applicants so they know what to expect in the process and what we need to see, and then updating definitions. We currently have a lot of codified language in our definitions, so we want to move that out and put them in the code sections they belong in and leave definitions just for terminology. We'll be updating it to align with the RCW and then adding more definitions for common terms we'll see throughout our ordinance. For wetlands, currently, we require five years of monitoring, and each year requires a report for us to review.

Best available science actually only requires us every other year for five years. So we're looking at aligning with that because it's a significant cost savings for applicants as well as staff time. We also wanna add language for as amended. We get best available science released every few years, and we only do this update every 10. So adding this language will make sure that it kind of takes care of all these requirements without going through a full code update.

Mhmm. And then rephrasing and clarifying language based on feedback we've gotten from our consultants and the public. For our geological hazard areas, we'd like to clarify language, to include that the 15 foot building setback is an addition to the buffer. We've had a lot of conversation about that over the last few years. And then making sure to clarify when the critical area signage and fencing is needed.

Mhmm. We talked a little bit last time. There's a request to have the professional record, either the engineer or the geologist, stay involved during construction in case something comes up so they can go back and assess the site. Previously, we didn't have any type of requirements like that, and it was kinda left up to who was gonna look at this. Certainly, the city didn't have the capacity for that. We also are considering revising minimum buffers to align with other surrounding jurisdictions.

Wilhelms Can you elaborate on that really quickly?

Yes. So currently, we have in our code for geological hazard areas that, you know, while you can reduce buffers with your your geotech engineer or your professional, if they can assess how it can be stabilized, You can reduce it, but no more than to 25 feet. Other jurisdictions have 15 feet as their minimum. So we're looking at that to give more development potential as long as the professional says it can be stabilized and mitigated. For wellhead protections or our critical aquifer recharge areas, we actually have a whole entire program that we adopted in the water system plan in January 2022.

When we looked at these side by side with our gap analysis, everything was really covered in this program. So what we wanna do is just pull out some important language from that program, make sure that this is readily available on our website, and then adopted by reference as amended so we don't have to do a full code overhaul for it. So the most changes we're gonna see is in our fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas. We'll be updating the stream classifications. Type one will be type s for shorelines.

This is will be along like Lake Meridian or the Green River. Mhmm. Type two would be type f for fish bearing streams. And then type three is gonna be a combination of type n p and n s. These are both streams without fish, but one's a perennial stream and one is seasonally dry.

Mhmm. We'll also be revising buffer with a subject to either the predictive riparian management zone buffer or the site potential tree height at 200 years, which I'll get into a little bit later. So the riparian management zone is a site specific buffer that protects the riparian functions. This includes stabilizing the stream banks, controlling the water temperature and providing habitat, which supports wildlife and biodiversity and filtering storm water runoff and other pollutants. So one option we have is to have this riparian management zone predictive buffer.

Currently, now, Type one or Type S for shorelines, it's up to two twenty five feet for that buffer. We're not proposing any changes. This is in a different update cycle with the shorelines. Mhmm. For type f for fish bearing, it's currently at a 100 feet. The new proposed buffers are under review right now, and we're hoping to get that later this week. The biggest change we'll see is the nonfish bearing, which is type n, p, and n s. Currently, we're at 40 feet, and it's going to increase to a 100 feet. While this does seem pretty drastic, other jurisdictions are having to establish the same buffer, so we're not alone in the concern that this is a pretty big jump. Mhmm.

We're able to recognize existing conditions, especially being in an urban environment like Kent, and we can include co changes to help with this, like functionally interrupted buffers. Growth Management Act calls for a balance between science and urban feasibility, and the critical areas ordinance must also support housing, storm water, and internal goals. So we have some options we can work with. I do wanna state that we do have the Valley Overlay District, is in the Industrial Valley. In previous updates, we fought to keep those buffers at 50 feet just for the industrial areas.

So we're maintaining that or proposing to maintain that. To talk about functionally interrupted buffers, here's an example of Panther Creek, which will be in light blue, and then the 100 foot stream buffer is gonna be in dark blue. So functionally interrupted buffers include legally established roadways, pavements, other other pavements eight feet in widths, railroads, things of that nature. And I've highlighted this roadway in green here on the map that you can see down here. So the buffers are gonna stop at that interruption.

So if you look at this hutted area in the north here, that is considered within the stream buffer or the riparian management zone because there's nothing interrupting that buffer. If we look down here to the south, this area is not within the stream buffer because there's an illegally established road there that's interrupting the buffer. So if they were to propose improvements to their property, they don't have to worry about being in the stream buffer while their property to the north would.

I see.

Yes.

One thing that we can also explore with this, can you go back to the top site? It's okay. So, yep, that yellow circle. So this is a legally established structure. So we can also consider exceptions to this to say, hey, you're already existing nonconforming now that we've adopted a new code because of the changes to the best available science.

We'll allow reasonable modifications in this area. We're not saying you can't develop at all within that footprint, but you can see the area with the vegetation to the Southeast. That would probably be off limits based on the requirements. But if someone wanted to add you know, they have a kitchen and they want to add on a deck outside of it or something like that, those are things that we could consider in our code still as part of the existing nonconformance allowances. So, want to we're trying to balance the state has the state gets to put a lot of requirements in and not say, how does this all work together?

As a city, we have to figure out how do we balance our growth requirements, our infill housing requirements, the removal of certain city autonomy, plus all of these other areas where the state says, best available sciences, we shouldn't be developing. And we say, that's great. We also have a lot of development that's already happened. So, what do we do in that situation? Because we don't want to outright prohibit development where it's already occurred.

And so same with that valley floor overlay. The reason we have those buffers as they are is because there's already existing development in those areas. And so it would prohibit it would effectively put a moratorium on development. And so, goal is to balance all of these requirements for jobs and growth centers, housing, all these other things. And so, there are opportunities not just to talk about it being functionally interrupted by our roadway, but also if there's existing development, how do we address that as well to allow some flexibility.

Perfect. Thank you. So our first option was that riparian management zone with the predictive buffers. The second option is the site potential tree height at two hundred years. This is something that the Department of Fish and Wildlife uses, essentially identifying the dominant species on-site, doing field measurements for the age and for the height of that tree, and using their predictive model to say, in two hundred years, this dominant species will be this tall, and we're gonna make those buffers at that height.

So essentially, it'll be from each side of the stream. And for a little bit more context, here is a graph from Fish and Wildlife. The red dots are going to be the trees that they assessed. In this instance, it's a western hemlock. So you can see there's 10 trees that they assessed between about 40 years of age up to 80, and the height ranges from about 80 feet up to a 130 feet. So based on their model and their information, they're saying at 200 years old, those trees would be between a 184 feet to 201 feet. So the site's tree height and the buffers would be a 193 feet to average it.

Okay.

So we have that option of either having those fixed buffers or having applicants do those site potential tree heights at 200. For the predictive buffers, it uses science based information, and it's it's easier to assess the development potential on-site. Homeowners can assess those buffers without hiring a consultant. Typically, they'd be able to call the city and ask for information. It'll be a good savings cost for permitting fees, for time lines and for consulting fees.

And this is what we're going to see more commonly across other jurisdictions overall. For site potential tree height, the buffers are unpredictable because it's site specific, and it could potentially exceed 200 feet for the buffers. It does increase the cost because you definitely need a consultant to go out there to do all that work and assess those tree stands. And you're going to more commonly see this with larger jurisdictions and jurisdictions with more rural development patterns or without existing development. Based on this information and having that predictability, we would recommend the riparian management zone predictive buffers over the site potential tree height. We wanted to get your feedback to see if you all had any questions or concerns with either options.

Yeah. I concur. I don't see how a potential 200 foot buffer would be it wouldn't allow any development in, what we were just talking about, like co living situations, trying to add a tiny home or something like that. Like it just feels like there's a lot more potential for just a complete moratorium, like Kristen was saying in her presentation just a few minutes ago, like completely blocking any development potential whatsoever.

Clarify, it's not all buffers would exceed 200 feet. Just most of the models we have based on the dominant species in our area, they can range at those higher rates, but there are circumstances where it could be 100 feet. Just the fact that it's unpredictable is we're looking at the more predictive model for the riparian management zones over that.

For sure, for sure. So, there's lots of different types of trees. But, I mean, from a non tree knowledgeable person here, whatever the standard person maybe you might call me, We live in the Pacific Northwest, and there are enormous trees everywhere. And so if I had to guess, the average tree in our area is going to be fairly large. And that so it sounds like what you're saying is exactly right. The our trees tend to be bigger, and so our average buffer zone is going to be much larger if we use the potential tree height one.

Thank you for the feedback.

We're not talking about any type of tree. The type of tree also important, correct?

Yes. So each it'd be specific to the site, and they would identify the dominant tree species on that site.

Correct.

And use that species for the age and height to determine the buffers.

Correct. So I'm also want to make a suggestion. You talked about the map. You're going to come up with a map on the website for the critical area. So my suggestion is that if we could make it user friendly, so if you have a physical address or parcel number, take it to the location, take you to the location so you don't have to guess what is the requirements?

So Deja did create a map for our housing implementation for Recode Kent Phase one. We worked with our excellent GIS colleague to create a map that is you can input your address, you can see whether you're within an urban separator or not, so whether you're excluded or not, what your zoning is, your proximity to transit for various quarter mile and half mile reasons. And so the goal is, as part of this update, to do similar with that user ability. I will say, if we do the predictive tree height model, it makes that prediction much more difficult because there's no model that says, these are the dominant trees, and this is the buffer for this site specifically. It's more of, if you have these trees on your site, and we have no way of knowing what every site has.

So, it would be a more straightforward way if we use the predictive buffers from a riparian management zone to just show those 100 foot buffers or what they land for shoreline and other areas. So, there's pros and cons, but we wanted your input on which method, the predictive buffers versus the proposed tree height. We hear you on the maps. We're working on it.

All right. For next steps, we're expecting to receive some draft codes this week that we'll be reviewing internally, finalizing some codes in there, sending it off to stakeholders, and then bringing it back for a briefing on October 13 and then the hearing on October 27. And that concludes my presentation, if anyone has any more questions.

I'm

sorry. I forgot to turn my microphone on. Thank you, Lindsey. Is there any further business to bring before the board? Fab. Since there is no further business, this meeting is adjourned.