Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

You make all the difference. All right, I'm gonna call this, whatever date it is. May 21st, Sammamish Planning Commission meeting to order at 6.43. Sorry for the late start. We've been waiting for a couple people who have been dealing with traffic. Okay, so first we will call roll. Ajay Chakrapane. Here. Syed Safavian. Here. John Bachman. Here. Mike Brusco. I'm here. Hesham Anquad has excused absence as does Sudha Sikhar. And we're waiting for Mazhi. He should be here shortly, but we will get rolling. So any changes to the agenda? Okay, seeing none, agendas approved by common consent, and the minutes from the May 7 meeting. I think we talked about kind of the same stuff. All right, seeing no objections, we'll consider those meeting minutes approved by common consent. All right, first, we've got non agenda public comments for three minutes. Anybody?

No, this is the three-minute one.

Well, I'm giving out the cheats.

Okay. Good evening, Planning Commissioners, Paul Stickney, Sammamish. If you didn't get a chance to watch the Tuesday meeting on impact fees, it was a good meeting, lots of discussion, a lot of discussion back and forth about there are different approaches. Some things were worked in to review in the future, and I think it was a good thing to watch. So I've been using the impact fee platform because it's so integrated to land use if you do it right and that deals with the comp plan and with our fiscal sustainability issues and our lack of housing for stages of life and generational it's time to to sort of I can't force anything but I can ask to strongly consider elevating, considering adding internal market rate housing and put that on the work plan for a decision next year to add that to the comp plan. In light of that, I turned two things in for non-agenda comments, which I'm not going to speak to. one of these. The other I just gave to Council and you haven't seen. You've seen the 5k plus a is okay and that's got a lot of links not just to public comments but to a plethora of information in support of this. The other thing that I don't think I gave Planning Commission but I gave it to Council on Tuesday This is a really powerful piece from the PSRC with housing policy back in 2022 that came from the vision consistency tool for local comprehensive plans on housing. Take a look at what the PSRC wrote and look at my comments. And last, one year ago today almost at a parks planning commission meeting i gave out the sheet i'm giving you guys today so it's it's one year re-submittal anniversary don't have time to read all this but the first section is foundational important what are the Fiscal reasons for doing 7,100, 5,000 market, 2,000 affordable over 20 years. One-time revenues for the city, 185 mil. Annual recurring revenue for the city, 15 million. Average savings per person who wants to downsize, about... 3,000, some 250 million a year. What are the advantages for doing it? Meet 70% of the lowest threshold of researched need. Compared to housing that we built from 1999 to 2025, about a third of that traffic and a fifth of those students and bring a thriving city heart together and oh by the way if it goes into town center town center can handle from three to five thousand more units with no added traffic to what the 2007 eis is forecasting appreciate the chance to sum all that up thank you thank you paul you covered a lot of ground there uh

Who's next? This is for things that are not, because the agenda is the Title 24A, so anything that's not that?

Good evening, Thursday night lights at the Planning Commission. Romero, Valderrama, Aramayo, it's good to see you here. I hadn't expected to speak at this session, but I just came from Deb Soghi's memorial, and I wanted to take this moment to thank you all for your service to the community and thank everybody from the staff that's involved in this. because we sometimes forget how important those people are to our city out there she came to our city in 1985 spent the latter half of her life dedicated to the city establishing the chamber of commerce the farmers markets and many other activities I went there to her memorial. They expected 50 people. There were over 100 when I left that place. So she has a legacy that I hope each of us can come back and be remembered in the same way for our dedication to the city. So again, thank you all for your service. And if you get a chance tonight, remember her as well. Thank you.

No second graphics.

Yeah.

Good evening. Mary Wictor Sammamish for 25 years. And I did meet Deb Soge. And for many years, she spoke here and did so many things for this city. So thank you for that from former council member Ramiro Valderrama. I haven't said his name that fast enough. So I wasn't sure what I was going to say for the non-agenda public comment. But I will speak to Paul Stickney's housing numbers, because I think we also have a council member here in the office. in the meeting tonight and we're looking at a structural fiscal imbalance where because you only don't you don't have enough inflation gets you so your crossover point where your revenues don't keep up with your expenses so you end up negative and our date is about 2029 on that. And they're looking at $500,000 here, $900,000 here. If you watched the last council meeting, I actually built 100 homes on 25 sheets of paper. And you can do the same thing using the Sky Apartments with just two sheets of paper. So would you rather have 25 football fields used up and you get way less money, or would you only like to have two football fields used up and you get way more money? So that was my visual thing that you really need. And that data came from Urban 3, which is a nationwide and international consultant that Framework, who did our town center stuff, was doing. It was from a presentation in 2025. And I think I copied you guys on that. I didn't bring the actual papers. So when we're looking at, oh, how do we fix it? By the way, the utility tax is implemented, so maybe you notice your utilities went up. That's only bringing in $11 million, and that only helps for one year. Doesn't even help that long. So you need something bigger. So the person who's talking the biggest numbers is Paul Stickney, who studies housing a lot, even more than the stuff I study. And he says the fiscal effects, if you have 7,100 new homes, and the ABC, which is the more affordable, the mid-range, and then the more expensive. The one-time revenues for the city are $185 million. $185 million. I didn't see any numbers like that. We have really great finance people. The annual recurring city net revenues are around $15 million, so $4 million more than the utility tax was helping for. So you're getting $185 million one time. and $15 million recurring. And then the average savings per household, because people can live in not such big houses and they can downsize, is $3,000 per month. So the people will actually save $25 million per year. So I did my little paper thing with city council to try to show you how it's not better to just have single family homes or townhouses or things that are bigger because those sprawl and take more trees, more land, grow more grass, have much more roads. They're more expensive and they have more people that travel and use parks. Whether the smaller stacked units, which you can walk by and see Sky Apartments today there, that holds 159 people on 1.67 acres of football fields an acre. Thanks.

Thank you. Anybody online? And I'm seeing nobody else here in the room. So we will move to old business, which is Title 24A. And what we'll do, we'll start off with a brief presentation. and then move to the public hearing. Actually, we'll have that we have any questions about the presentation, we could do that, then hear the public hearing and then debate. And if everything goes well, we will pass a motion to move this on to council. All right, who starts?

Remember how I said my computer was having problems on Friday? It's not responding right now, so hang on just a second.

I thought you were saying, so I'm going to start, but now you're saying.

No, so we might have to do a little switcheroo.

Maybe you're just stuck in traffic. Oh, is this me?

That's you.

Don't touch anything. OK. Yeah, but Zoom is not responding. Should I send it to Zoom? We'll see if this works for us.

Okay. Good evening Planning Commission. I'm Miriam Leitner, Planning Manager and I'm joined by Jackie Belil, Management Analyst. Tonight we are providing an update on Title 24A. Next slide. Thank you. We will start with some answers to some questions that came in from commissioners. Then we will do a review of the changes made since the last meeting and then hand it back to the chair to open the public hearing and deliberate. OK, so we're going to start with the questions we've received. The first one about the errata sheet is going to be addressed in a different way. So in talking with legal, we found that our newer ordinances do include language that allows the city clerk, upon approval by the city attorney, to correct scrivener errors and clerical errors, references, and other minor corrections. So the city attorney is going to connect us with another city that she works with that has an administrative process that allows the public to report these types of items directly to the clerk's office so that they can be corrected. Once we have more information, we're going to be working with the clerk's office so that we can develop something similar here in Sammamish.

Can I interrupt? Maybe for the people that they're looking at these slides at home, they don't know what is the RETA, you may want to kind of explain?

Sure. Yeah, so it is a sheet that's usually placed, I believe, at the front of a document that lists any changes, any corrections that were made to the document. So what we are suggesting here is that instead of having a sheet that lists everything, that we just go directly in and fix it outside of the docketing process. So it would be just a form that gets filled out online. It goes to the clerk's office. They consult with the city attorney. As long as the city attorney approves those changes, they get made right away. OK. The next question about clarifying the difference between the periodic update and the annual amendment cycle. Kind of building on an answer we had from the last meeting, we recommend that this detail be added to the website, which is typically where the public is going to get more information on the docket. However, another option that you can consider would be to add additional details to the periodic update section. Right now that language is very technical, so I think there's some room to add some additional wording if that's what the Planning Commission recommends. OK. And then moving on to the final question, we wanted to start by just clarifying the intent behind this section. Our intent was that we created this language to help address items that were sitting on the docket for several years without any action. and providing city council an opportunity to kind of be reminded of those items and to make a decision on how they want to proceed. And this could mean keeping it on the docket, prioritizing it as a work plan item, it could mean that it's directed into an integrating existing work plan item, or it could mean that they choose to remove it. We envisioned that this review would occur as part of the annual docket process. So right now, when we bring an item through the annual docket 2L, we only focus on new items for review and input. But we recommend that this be modified moving forward to include a brief review of the items that are currently docketed and then a discussion of those items that have reached the five-year mark with no action. We believe that this provides a more comprehensive approach considering the docket requests. There would also be proactive communication ahead of that presentation with applicants whose items are approaching the five-year mark so that they know that the meetings are coming. They have time to prepare an explanation of why they feel their items should be prioritized to bring to those meetings. This approach also means that there would be four public meetings, which includes the two public hearings, as we do with the regular docket process, one with the planning commission, the other with city council, helping to ensure that both the applicant and the public have multiple opportunities to share their input.

Next slide.

Okay. Lastly, there was a question about why area-wide future land use map amendments are permitted only during the periodic update. As we were researching the definition for area-wide future land use map amendments and area-wide rezones, which we talked about at the last meeting, we found that Sorry. Jackie's going to be sharing the definition that we came up with later. But we found that in all cases, these types of changes were city-initiated and broader in their scope. So they tend to apply to a whole neighborhood or several neighborhoods or to a whole zone or a whole land use designation. And the scale of those changes are likely, as we know, to affect a variety of areas, like traffic and transportation, parks and the environment, as well as other things. So this is why we think that it needs to be limited to periodic updates, because it ensures that all of the elements and all the changes are considered together and calibrated citywide so that we fully understand our capacity and how we move forward as a city. We did want to note that this does not apply to the creation of subareas and neighborhood centers, which were already identified in the comprehensive plan, such as Mr. Eastman's property, because the RCW exempts the initial adoption of a subarea plan. And our comprehensive plan states that neighborhood centers would follow subarea planning processes. So I'm now going to hand it over to Jackie, and she'll go over the changes that we made.

Thank you. So as Mary mentioned, we're going to go over the changes that will have been made since we last saw you. And unlike last time, which we went over the changes at a very high level, this time we are going to go over every single change that has been made, every single little one. And it's only a few slides, but we'll also, I'll pause a few times so that we can, if you have any questions or comments, we'll take those during the presentation. So to start off in general provisions, so 24A05-0103, we heard feedback regarding which agencies or resources should be included as part of the consideration of docket requests. And we amended the language to include additional public agencies and tribes. And the language is also updated to better reflect the actual process that occurs. And then in 24A-05-02-03, we corrected where periodic review needed to be updated to periodic update. And in 24A05-0204, we added a definition of area-wide future land use map amendments and area-wide zoning map amendments, as Miriam said, which are city work plan initiated updates to multiple parcels, often with many owners, to implement the comprehensive plan shall only be considered during the periodic update. So I'll go ahead and pause here if anyone has any questions or comments about this first section. All right. On to the next. It's okay. We can always, when we get to the next section, we can always come back to.

So you've updated periodic review to periodic update, right? So does this behoove that we will have updates when we are doing the periodic review? Is there a classification of that? Is there a difference of that? Or what is the...

It was merely a typo. So when you look in the GMA, it refers to a periodic update. And for whatever reason, we had missed that one item and said periodic review. So we were clarifying that it is the same thing.

OK, because when I read it, it did not feel any different, probably because I was just in it. But then the point is that I thought that there was a difference of definition between the two of them. OK, thank you.

I also have a question. Let's go back there. I think that I asked this question before. Is there anywhere that makes reference to the definition of periodic? Is that every week, every month, every six months? Anywhere in the language says periodic means?

And what the code does is it points to the periodic update. It points to the RCW. And the reason we didn't want to include an actual time limit is because it changes. So it used to be seven years, then they changed it to eight. Now it's 10. So we thought the cleanest way was just to refer back to the schedule that's in the RCW, because that will remain updated as it changes over time.

So if the developer comes and asks for the same question that I'm asking, what is the answer? Maybe the answer today maybe is different than next month?

I don't think it changes that dramatically. I think it's, I'd say, every several years or so, they'll review it. and if they need to make changes. But right now, it's every 10 years.

Every 10 years. Thank you. If it's an RCW, it probably is. It's legislation, right? It will take whatever, right? It comes from Olympia, right? So it won't happen every month or something. I'm assuming not. Yeah.

All right, so in the next section of annual amendments in 24A-10-0102A1 and 2, we spent a long time working on this section with legal to clarify what the process looks like for the city council and planning commission as a body versus a city council member or commissioner acting on their own behalf. which you see in section one, and then as well as city staff, which was the same process, so it didn't need to be listed separately, so it was added to section one. And legal helped us clarify the process for initiating a docket request for the city council as a whole and the planning commission as a whole. So, To provide a bit of a summary and give an example, so if one of our commissioners decided to bring up an idea for a docket request, if the majority of the commission voted for the docket request, then the idea, the request would be submitted on behalf of the commission as a whole. And if the majority of the commission voted against it, that commissioner could still initiate a request as an individual. We've laid out both of those processes in this section. We tried very hard to make this section as clear as we can so the process is consistent. But if anyone has feedback on it, we would love to hear it. We also moved a language specifying only a property owner or authorized agent can submit the site-specific amendment. We just moved it to a sub-bullet under the same place. And then in 24A-10-01-02-C and D, we changed the word and to say and or. So that is clear that both comp plan and development regulations will be reviewed or one or the other. And then where it says that the director of community development, we added the option for a designee.

So if the director were to request the designee, he could do that.

And then I have one more slide for this section, and then I'll pause again for questions. So also in 24A-10-0103, we added the option for a designee as well. Then we changed the language from consider to evaluate, and that was based on a recommendation from one of our commissioners. In 24A-10-0203A, we heard feedback about the term effectively closed was too vague. So we removed that section and instead added additional option for the council to remove items that no longer align with the city council priorities. And this goes back to the question that Miriam addressed a couple minutes ago. And then last in 24A-10-03-02A, we updated this section to be consistent with 24A-05-01-03 as we discussed on the first slide and removed items that are procedural like SEPA that can be taken, they'll still be taken into consideration. It just doesn't need to be codified. So I'll go ahead and pause again for any questions, comments about these last few changes.

I cannot for the life of me remember the whole 24-01-0, so can you go to the previous slide? That's the easiest one. Okay. So in number two, we've corrected city council members to say city council, right? That means that has come up before city council and it has passed from the city council to go forward.

So this was another case of, I don't want to say a typo, but kind of a mistaken reference where we wanted, we were particularly referring to the city council as a body and the text said city council member, which indicates an individual. So we corrected it that we're referring to the city council as a body.

So this is okay. So this one defines it as a body. It doesn't.

The city council is the body.

The city council member is an individual. Okay. Okay.

Would that, would the same definition apply to the planning commission as well?

And we left it as.

So planning commission as a body is similar to the city council as a body.

Yes, and then I think at least one place you'll see it referred to as commission, because we do have other commissions. So we wanted to leave that open, that obviously arts commission, parks commission, the same thing applies. So if it doesn't specifically say planning commission, it's because it can apply to- Any of the commissions.

Yeah. Okay.

So let's go over who can apply for the docket. You mentioned about individual council members, they can basically put a request. As a council member or as a private citizen or either or? Either or.

If they are applying as an individual and not something that the whole council voted for. I'll get to that.

I'll get to that before that.

Yeah, then it's the same process as a member of the community.

And to clarify, they would be applying as a community member, as an individual, not as a-

later on when you were talking about, I was carefully listening to your presentation, when we talked about the planning commission, you said that if the individual council member put a request as an individual, then he or she needed support of the entire planning commission. That's what you said. That got confusing in my mind.

So the clarification is there's two ways to go. You as a commissioner or a city council member on your own wants to submit a docket request. Maybe it's a site-specific land use map amendment to change the zoning for your house or something like that, right? That would be an individual request. If you were to come here and say, hey, planning commission, I think we should add a policy XYZ. and the majority agrees with you, then the whole planning commission as a whole would submit a docket request. So the planning commission is advocating for a docket request to add this policy. If they said, no, we don't agree with you, you could then choose, as long as the timing aligned, to go and submit a docket request on your own. As your own personal opinion, you think this policy should be added.

And similar procedure applies to the council members or council as a whole?

Yes.

Thank you. It's a matter of hats, which hat you're wearing at that time, basically.

Sorry, I have another question. So let us say that I want to make a zoning request. Let's just say in my area I have The land next to me is open. I've been talking about like a place of worship. So let's assume that's the easiest one to ask for. It's the place of worship that I want to have over there. And that's a request that comes. I bring it over here. And everybody gets to work on it. But nobody agrees with me that that's the reason. And so it fails. The commission is no longer actually becoming that. At that point, I get to... again submit the docket request as a J, a private citizen, to do this work. I love that, actually, because then it gives me two chances to do this thing. But isn't it a little unfair that we get two shots at it versus one shot?

I mean, you wouldn't... In the first example where you're bringing it to the Planning Commission, you wouldn't have submitted the docket yet. You would say, hey, fellow commissioners, I'm interested in doing this. Would you like to submit it as a docket request on behalf of the commission? they say no, then you still can go on your own and do it anyway. So you're not fully going through the whole process.

OK, great. This is sounding better and better for me. Because what you're telling me is that I can dip my toe in the water, figure out if it has the support of it, and that becomes. And if it does not, then go and submit that as a separate request as an individual. Do I need to do that in a meeting like this? to say that even if I'm making that dipping the water test, I should do that as a motion to be approved for and not as an unofficial let's just test the water.

No, you would need to tell the chair that you have an agenda item that you would like to add. Got it.

So it becomes part of the public record? Yes. He would be excused from voting.

Yes.

Yeah, so that's what... Conflict of interest, so you could not... Yeah, he cannot vote on that. I cannot vote on that.

It would be a conflict of interest. Then it's your own item.

I cannot vote on that. And let us say it's tied and doesn't go through, or it doesn't go through. I can still apply as a private citizen. And obviously at that time I don't have the right because I'm applying it as a private citizen to be able to do this thing.

Yeah.

And kind of following that, does he have to start all over again, or he keeps his order wherever it was?

Well, again, in the process, you would come to the commission before you submitted a docket request. So no paperwork would be filled out. You're just having a conversation formally added to the agenda. So unless he started the paperwork early.

Which is possible, right? what he brings up is a true point. Because I've been in this all this time, now I know the whole thing, I might want to get ahead of it to move forward on it. What I'm trying to come to is to say that are we putting the commissioners at a significant advantage versus the rest of the people? Same with the council. Same with the council as well. So that criticism may come from the public.

It's something we can consider, we can talk more with legal about for sure.

Yeah, I'm really, if a citizen comes and tells, hey, I made the same request like Ajay did, but then he got two shots at the apple and I get just one, that I don't know how that lands. It could be that, yeah, this is part of the process because it's part of the city record, but What prevents them from saying, I failed because it didn't get approved. Now I am amended it, and now I want it again.

I guess, for me, the difference is it didn't get approved. It just got approved to submit a docket request, right? It hasn't gone through the staff analysis. It hasn't gone through any of those initial steps. You're simply submitting the docket request Got it. On behalf of the commission. So you're still gonna have to go through all of that review, the public hearing, then the city council review, and the city council public hearing.

That's a good answer. There's only one docket approval happening. You're only at the first stage where you're getting people together. And this could, you said public agencies, I'm assuming, for example, an HOA could get together or a religious group could get together or something. So it's just like that. We are a public agency, right? A commission, planning commission. Yeah. So like you said, there is just one approval.

here. The number of shots doesn't matter. It's just one approval. And everybody goes through that one.

So I'd point out, though, that if a commission member or a council member brought a personal docket item to the table, the chances of it moving through the commission or the council would be very slim. It's just an ethical issue. In fact, a conversation might even not start. The chair would say, this is a personal item.

Don't even bring that up.

Don't even bring it up.

Okay. Yeah, I've been trying to think of, there was something months ago that when we first started talking about this, it was like, oh, this is something that we should have docketed. There was something related, must have been to the comprehensive plan. And it was discussed because it was part of the discussion that the Planning Commission was having. And that seemed like something that the Planning Commission should say, oh, we've been working on this. There's a gap in the comprehensive plan or regulations. Let's get that docketed. Let's submit that. So it wouldn't be an individual, I want to change the zoning in my property. It would be something that would come up through the normal, more likely, the normal business of the Planning Commission. So I think it's not like I've got two shots. I think it's that there's work that we're doing that makes sense that, oh, we want to lend the weight of the Planning Commission to assure that this issue that we've seen gets raised and potentially docketed.

But from the public point of view, why the city council member or the Planning Commission member have the privilege What's the justification in their mind? Why they should not be treated as a citizen and go through the process like anybody else, no matter if I'm a commissioner or the council member?

Well, this is where I think it goes back to what Mazir was saying, that eventually it's the review process and that's just one for everybody. Right.

But in their mind, they kind of look at it from the outside, why The privilege has been given to the council member or the commission member to go through the process. What is the justification?

What is the answer to that? I think what they're saying is just like an HOA or religious group is a public agency, the council, city council or the planning commission is also an agency. So we can get together and come up with, if Ajay has a plan or whatever he wants to do, and discuss as well, say, should we go together as one? And we all agree, yeah, yeah, this is something we need to docket. as Mike mentioned, we can put forward as a public commission docket versus an individual docket because we are then a public agency in that case, correct? That's what I'm understanding. It's not like we're getting too short or any privilege or anything. It's just We are a group of people who kind of are working together, just like an HOA would or somebody else like that would, right?

Yeah. I would also add you as commissioners and the city council members as well are going to have to use some judgment and discretion, right? And some introspection is what I'm requesting for my own personal gain, or is it for the greater good of the public? And if it's for the greater good of the public, then it should be with the planning commission. If it's for your own personal gain, then you submit as an individual and you go through the process just like anybody else would.

So this may be apathetical, but what has been the previous experience with the city? Has there been any case that we had a council member or commissioner member put a request for a docket?

Since I have been here, we have not had that happen.

So this is the first time that...

So if there is such a docket request that comes, it is something that was discussed in my HOA meeting that came up, and if they come, I could very well tell them, apply it separately. Please don't make me do this thing because I want to have that objectivity to do this thing. You do it separately. If I do it and if it fails, there's going to make it more complex and all those things. That leads us to our judgment, whether we want to go through that circuitous process like we talked about or go through the simple process that is there. At the end of it, both of them are one review. That's like how Maser said is that it becomes that review process itself. It's no longer advantageous to be on the planning commission or not.

just had one small point here so you mentioned public and public agencies what about private groups is does that not like what is the definition of public agency and like do the hos form as public agencies or are they private uh religious groups so if you can clarify yeah they are private i want to just take a second if you could be patient with me to pull up the code wording exactly Like are we just missing here a typo like we forgot to mention private or should we add that or?

Okay, let me read the wording as it is currently in the code. Proposed code. Members of the public and public agencies, persons, entities, council members and commissioners acting on their own behalf, city staff or agencies other than the city council and planning commission may initiate a proposal to amend the comprehensive plan or development regulations and are subject to the requirements and processes of this chapter. So I think they could probably classify as an entity or an agency.

Okay, so do we, as Syed mentioned earlier for another question here, do we, have we defined that? Does entity include HOAs and religious organizations and stuff? Is there some kind of a key, what? Non-profit organization. Yeah, NGO, yeah, non-profits, exactly, yeah.

I don't believe we currently have a definition in the code. So we can work a little bit with legal after this before we get to some of that.

I'm just trying to be fair to everybody, right? So just make sure that we don't exclude people like that.

That's a great addition. I would be careful to make sure that whatever definition we include doesn't exclude everyone. We don't want to say that an entity is these three things. Sometimes by leaving it big, it allows it to include.

Some kind of catch-all word. Exactly. Thank you.

Oh, I would also just point out that on a single docket request, you can have multiple applicants. So for example, if an HOA were to submit a docket request, they could have the president, the vice president, the secretary, the treasurer, all listed as applicants. You can have more than one person under the same request.

So thank you. That was great because I had a question to say, I was thinking the same thing, which is that if I'm part of a HOA, I'm not on the board of the HOA or anything, but I'm part of my community, my apartment, my house is part of the HOA. So if my HOA president, vice president, secretary, and all put in a request to say that this is the thing, that doesn't cover just my house. It covers over 300 homes in that area, which is part of this thing. So they may come back and say that that is public agency as well. As we were talking about the definition, I could not differentiate to say is how is the city council and planning commission different from the HOA when both of them is a group of public group of people who qualify as a public in that thing is it because of because we are part of a governmental uh division that we are doing that or is there something else that I'm missing over here because I could not differentiate it yeah it's because you and the city council both review and recommend docket proposals so As part of a... As part of your lines of... As part of government of Sammamish.

Yes. Yeah. So that's why it's specifically called out a little bit differently than everyone else. I see. Because you're part of the review and approval process.

Okay. So it doesn't need that clause that it's a governmental agency. As long as public, but it's understood that if it comes from the city council or from the planning commission or even the park commission or something like that, that is part of the governmental agency that is doing it. And it's different from... a HOA doing it, although that also covers the public.

Yeah, or an entity.

For an entity, yeah.

Or agency.

Yeah, or an agency. Got it. Thank you. Thank you.

Give me one second. I forgot where I was.

We have that kind of effect.

Did I move on already? Okay. Okay, thank you. Okay, and we moved on. Oh, okay. And the last section is that there were no changes. So that was a pretty quick one. So I can hand it back. If we at this time have any more questions, we can do a couple more questions, or you can open the public hearing, deliberate, and we can still answer questions.

I have one question. What is the timeframe from the time that the applicant has met the requirement and submit every documents that needed to be submitted to the city by August of every year? What is the timeframe from that point on? My understanding is there's a class for five year maximum for the review? Can you walk us through that process, please?

Sure. So I think there's kind of two parts to that. So what is the process in terms of the timing of everything? And then how does it relate to the five years?

Yes?

Yes.

Okay.

So after somebody submits a docket request, we take all the docket requests submitted by the first Monday of August at 5 p.m. We look through those, we review them, we make sure that all the information has been submitted as it should be. We work with our permit center to let them know if there are fees that are applicable, those get charged. Once those gets paid, if they are applicable, they're considered a complete submittal. After that, we start processing them. There's a clause in the code that summaries of all of the docket requests submitted get posted onto the website, and the public has the ability to comment on them. So we set all of that up in our website. It takes us about a month to get the summaries made and get everything posted. We allow a two-week comment period for those. And then we take all of those comments that are received, and we integrate that into the packet for the first planning commission meeting, which is typically October of the year. Once we have that first initial meeting, we go back, we review all of the materials, we have some internal discussions and we'll come back with a recommendation for each item based on the criteria that's in the code. That's usually done late October, early November. Then it goes to the city council for their review. So they have a workshop first just like the planning commission did. That's usually in mid-november early december followed by a public hearing which usually is the last meeting in december sometimes a little earlier depending on the council calendar after that depending on which version of the code you're talking about in our current version they'll have one month to submit a full application in this new code we're recommending 90 days to give a little more time um and then after that it depends on our work plan so by that point we usually start developing our work plan in november december We wait for the public hearing. Once we know an item is officially on the docket, we integrate that into our recommended work plan. And then that goes to the city council for their review and prioritization. So on top of that, there's also budget. Depending on what the docket request is, sometimes there's a budget that's needed. So hopefully we're able to integrate that into the budget if it's a budget year. If not, that's something we need to work around as well.

So that is the beginning of, based on what you're saying, that's the beginning of the second year?

Yes. Yeah. It's about, so from August till December, so about six months, right? A little less than six months is the first part of the process. After that, it depends on the prioritization of the work plan and if we have adequate budget. And then it can move forward. Sometimes it's a year, sometimes it's longer, sometimes it's six months. It really just depends on our staffing capacity, what other things have to get worked on, and all of that. I think our point is if after five years, after something's been docketed, it's been on the docket for five years, if it has not been prioritized by the city council on our work plan, it seems like it's a good time to re-review. We're not suggesting that it gets automatically dropped. We're suggesting that there's a conversation, that we have this list, we're bringing it to city council, Every year, right? Here's what's currently on the docket that we haven't gotten to. Here's the new items. Here are the items that are hitting the five-year point that you really want to pay attention to. Please direct us. Should it stay on the docket and get added to the work plan? Should it move into an existing project that maybe it's related to? Or should it come off because it's no longer a council priority? That's what we're We're asking because the staff, especially as we have transition over time, it's hard to track all of those items that have been sitting sometimes for 10 years without any action. So it's just a way for us to clean things up. Does that help?

Yeah, I'm kind of, let me tell you my concern. My concern is that what happens because of the workload and shortage of staff and all that, and there has been a number of docket item requests that has already passed five years. Then what? Does the applicant has legal authority to challenge the city or the city council or take any action?

It's entirely at the discretion of City Council, so I don't believe there's any legal action, but I think our point is that By integrating this conversation about what's currently on the docket already every year when we look at the new docket request, it's a way to kind of revisit. Because right now, we don't do that. It's just there. We just recently added it to our website so that people are aware of it. We're trying to do a better job. But I think it's like building that awareness. If you don't see it, you don't remember. And so it's a way to kind of... keep in mind, okay, you're adding new docket items, but there's this list of ones that have already been docketed that should move forward because it was at one point indicated that there was interest in doing so. And there's also these ones that have been sitting for quite a while. Let's take this time to reflect and give direction on how they should proceed.

On a timetable-wise, what is the relationship between this Title 24A and docket request discussion and all that, and a discussion that has yet to happen is working on a sub-area plan and all that? Can you elaborate? How are these related? Or they're not related, they're totally different processes?

They're related through the budget.

Through the budget?

Yeah, so we do, I think... One thing I would recommend paying attention to, right, is it's not just the work plan, it's also the budget. And those bigger items, like a subarea plan, require budget. And so the city, you know, like when staff put our budgets together, we include all of the items, things we know we have to do because they're state-mandated, things we know we should do because they've been docketed or we know it's a priority. We get budget... put together requests for all of those things. Whether or not they actually get approved is another story and then sometimes we're able to regroup and figure out how to do those internally and reduce the budget and sometimes we're not able to and the work doesn't move forward.

so set the budget aside if somebody put a request met all the requirements and he or she is in the process of seeing this application go through the process but the city hasn't acted on it as far as for mission sub area plan and enabled centers and all that is that going to be on hold the docket request we're going to be a whole till city gets it's duck in the row so to speak and do this up area plan and all that Yes or no? Let me rephrase my question. If there is any docket request submitted, but that affects potentially by the formation or lack of sub-area plan, then what happens to that request?

It would probably wait until the sub area plan was developed.

This is the answer. So formation sub area plan and enabled center are the prerequisite for the review and approval of the

Typically, I mean if you have a specific example, I'm happy to talk In mr. Eastman's example, we do have money put in the budget for his request The understanding is that because it's for his personal property He would be required to pay for the development of the neighborhood center plan because it is for the benefit of his property. So we have budget in there because we need to put that in so that we can hire a consultant to support us in doing the work. There'd be a lot of environmental review, a lot of other kinds of review that we don't have in-house expertise to do. If the budget is approved and we can expend that, we're able to move forward without having to wait for a subarea plan. There is some pre-work we have to do internally because we never had a subarea plan developed for a neighborhood center. So we want to make sure we're taking the time to do the work to think about what elements are required when we start to create a neighborhood center subarea plan so that we're being uniform across the city and not just doing piecemeal work. one thing. Once we have that framework developed, then we can hire a consultant to kind of take it and roll with it.

So in his example, the progress made as far as reviewing and approving the sub-area plan, going side by side with the development of sub-area plan of that area, right? Sub-area plan of that area will go along with the review and approval of the target request?

We would need to do the work first to identify what elements and components should be included in the sub-area plan. We can provide that to him. He'll have to do the work to say, okay, this is what they're putting together. Here's my proposal based on what they said. Because right now what we have is still quite high level. There's some more work that he'll need to do to respond to the requirements that we're looking for.

And then you will review based on his feedback to that statement that you would make. To say, okay, now does it look complete? So Mr. Eastman will do the change and then come back and say, now I got it. Now I know what I have missed because of what you've told me I have missed or what you've told me you need. And then I'll review that. I'll make the changes as necessary to the sub-area plan.

Yeah, I think we would have to work together with Mr. Eastman, our consultant, and I'm assuming probably his consultant, that he would need to do this level of work to kind of draft a sub-area plan for his neighborhood center.

And that is a very important point that you're making.

So I'd like to interrupt here. I'd like to interrupt here because we're really getting off topic. We're talking about the code and you've moved into talking about process and procedure, which is already established. It's already a fact. So the question before us is, do we want to change or support the code changes that have been presented, not how the process works? If you need more explanation of how the process works, maybe take that offline. But I think our time would be better spent talking about the code changes.

no no we're talking about the relationship between the sub between the review and approval of the docket request and the sub area plan i believe that's already and i'm hearing from the staff that they're totally related so the question is is related to what we're discussing tonight do you have a proposed change to the code i'm trying to understand the process but the process is already established

Yeah, the process is established in terms of we would undergo legislative review. So there is some pre-work that has to be done in order for us to go through legislative review.

I have a slightly different way to ask. Is there a specific part of the 24A code that you have a question about or would think we need to consider changing based on the questions that you've been asking and trying to understand? No.

Yeah, so I'm just trying to think about how the process related to the 24. One question was about five years sunset. I call it sunset, right? One question and I got a clarification on that. Now I'm saying that, okay, if the applicant goes through the process as far as reviewing and getting approval of the docket request, but there is no sub area plan, what happens to that?

Well, then it goes and it becomes part of the work plan.

And I would just clarify, the docket request was to integrate his property into the comprehensive plan as a neighborhood center, and that part has been complete. There's another part, right, which is the work to form the subarea plan, and that's kind of a two-part thing, which is what I was mentioning.

Even though that we don't have a neighborhood center yet defined?

Correct. There is a pin in his general area on the future land use map. You can see it there. But beyond that, there's nothing else.

Yeah, so somewhat related question, and this gets back to the time frame for the periodic updates, which is 10 years, right? So I have a concern about that, because it's 10 years. It's a long time. So if somebody were to come and say, hey, I've got this great idea, and you say, well... You got to wait nine years before we can do anything with it. Is there anything in 24A or any other code that says we could change, like we can have a filibuster or whatever the right word would be, you know, to override what's in the code and allow a... area-wide change to the future land use map in less than that periodic update cycle that the state demands or requires.

As it's currently written right now, no.

I didn't think so.

And I think a lot of that is because there's so much data and calibration that goes into the comprehensive plan. So if you are making a broad change, it makes us have to go back and look at all of our capacity and how that all plays with one another, right? And then we have to look at all the elements. can feel minor, but it's not that minor.

No, it's not minor at all. And I get that. And I also get, and I think I understand why the state doesn't want these things to be changed willy-nilly, right? There should be some friction, if you will, or challenge or hurdles to get through making changes. It's just, if there's something that really does benefit the city, if there would be a way to be able to do that in less than that timeframe for the period. And so what I could envision is maybe making a statement for consideration by council, because I can't think of what the wording would be and all of that. It would be an escape clause. you know so just food for thought and what I think I'd like is to move to the public hearing hear what you know people here have to say and then we can deliberate whether we want to make any kind of amendment to the code that's presented or not is that if that makes sense if our major questions have been answered and we'll have a chance to dive a little bit deeper into things on the deliberations Does that make sense? All right. So then I'll get the gavel. And so we'll open the public hearing. And Mary has stood up. Are you coming in first for the public hearing? Okay. Okay. We've got five minutes, right? Okay, five minutes. All right.

Sorry, Mary Wictor Sammamish. I just, they always say Scribner errors. Those are the things that you fix. So we don't have to have the errata sheet, which was the first point on my public comment. Also, I really feel heard. I know you read my emails because a lot of this stuff was up there, and I think it will help you because, like, designee really helps when the director's not available. So just to... So Title 24, which became Title 24A, which we're updating now, it is the process by which you ask for or make a change that isn't necessarily a zoning change. So instead of using your example on of a religious organization or your example of an HOA. It doesn't really matter if it's public or private. I really wanted anybody can make it. The guy who or the person who is directing traffic and they figured out East Lake, that traffic signal, that needs to be in all way. I've seen it other cities. If it's not allowed in our code, he could get together with the church, the Redmond Boys and Girls, the East Lake High School, and he or she could so they could submit a docket. And then you guys would go, gosh, that's such a great example of safety. We support it because it's for the schools. I mean, the church could support it. Everybody could support it. What we're trying to do is nobody knows about the docket process. I'm the one that's used it the most because there was a lot of stuff wrong, and I've done them with other people. So you can do it. It doesn't cost anything as long as it's a public thing. Like Christy Malchow, when she was mayor, she was like, well, we can't charge Mary for the stuff she does because it's not helping her. It's helping us. But like James Eastman is a particular 100 acres. And then to get the neighborhood center or the sub area plan, he's kind of like a pilot project. And the city wants to work with him because he's going to build something. And if they work together, you guys will get a good process. You'll get a real live example. And he's an awesome person to work with. So hear, hear. So let's say I want to do a performing arts center. Performing Arts Center, I got to get some land. I might need to cut more trees. I might want a spire that could be a religious spire. Maybe it's even as tall as the water tower, which I'm sure that water tower is too tall for the regular code. You would get exceptions and exemptions like that. So it's kind of like whatever idea you have, how big or how small. Like I have one right now I've started in January. Fire hydrants should not be blocked anywhere in the city, whether they're public or private roads. You need to be able to get to them or they're not useful. So I'm not submitting that as a docket, because I'm hoping it'll actually be done as an emergency something, and soon, because there are issues. But basically, this Title 24A is for those. And I think you guys made most of the changes that I had emailed. So thank you for doing that, because I read it four times. I read it three times this week. And thank you for the errors is a big thing, because little changes shouldn't be hard. Little changes should be able to be done. Anyone should be able to do it any time. It does take a while. And I guess there isn't a list of the dockets, but I had septic to sewer conversions, which you guys have mentioned that you'll probably do in fourth quarter. It actually came up at the council meeting through Amy Lamb. And it's been talked at the Swatter District meetings, too. So I'm glad that's happening. And I'm actually one of the people on the OSS for Urban City with King County as well. So I'm glad that will be happening. The other one I have is called In-City TDRs. transfer of development rights from King County. So we had the Emerald Necklace goes in. Those have all been bought by the developer. They're getting used. They're used up. It means it worked just like the affordable housing bonus pool, one in 10 that got used up. So right now I live in steep slopes area where some of our vacant lots are selling and the failed ones are selling and the failed ones that completed there's problems. And the city staff will actually tell you those are unbuildable lots. But we build on them because in order to get an individual plot, you can't take away the right for somebody to build. You need to be able to transfer that development, right? So it needs to be able to be sold. But that was my in-city TDRs had to wait for the comp plan, 2024. So 2019 to 2044 was five years. And they were waiting for density for town center. But TDRs could work anywhere in city. So I'd really like to see it go forward. But right now, it's... 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26. It's been seven years sitting and I don't want to wait the next 10. So please don't cancel that docket. Nobody has spoken against it. It's a good thing. The GMA says you're supposed to have that as a tool and we would really, really like to have it in our area. So if somehow that comes into question, let's have a grandfathering that dockets that have been passed and approved, they get a zero time start and they can go the five years or something because we just can't have it deleted because The reason I've come for 10 years and I do the water district meetings, it's really hard to do stuff. And we do need to have some of the changes and we'd be better off with TDRs. In fact, David Pyle has even said you guys have spoken with other cities and they're like, oh, that's a really cool idea. And we just particularly need it because we have so many critical areas. And then just on... the email that I sent right at 5 today. So the Scribner errors are getting done. I said, could you please show an example of, like you have the definition now for area-wide, but like the church across the street, if they want to do a zoning, you said that they could, but they don't know that. I'd like somebody to reach out to them and tell them to do that. And like anybody else that wants to rezone, like the people who are doing the wildlife corridors, it's quasi-judicial. But I think we need to look at some of those examples, and you can read my email from today. Thanks.

All right.

Good evening, Romero Valderrama de Mayo again from Sammamish. Thank you again for holding this hearing and deliberation, which I actually think is more important than you may recognize at this moment in time, because underlying it is accountability and transparency in this city. And I've heard several of you talking about ethics issues, transparency and accountability, and that's what comes to the core of this. I got concerned about this item when I started to see discussions about letting things disappear off of the docket if in five years it's not acted upon out there. What drives that? Let's go back and visit two things. First of all, the history of our city. accountability and transparency is not what we are known statewide for we've had multiple council members on multiple councils and one at least on this council who have testified to doing public business on encrypted apps and destruction of public records on that now we're seeing an issue about having things swept under the rug this is a lengthy process having been twice mayor and multiple council members i've seen citizens take multiple years to gather information to be on the docket to begin with. So you have to respect the citizens and their work. I've seen planning commissions putting in numerous hours in deliberating what was put on the docket request. I've seen staff prepare elaborate matrices of options and comparisons and works to go through before it ever gets passed and before it has the lengthy discussions on the council and deliberation. And then you have SEPA reviews and others, and then it comes back to trouble you to go again. That deserves respect for all that time that's been put into it. Future councils may have the right to not want to follow through on something in the future, but they need to be able to track this, as you've been recommending here on the table, They need to also explain if something's going to be taken off the docket, why, as a courtesy to the citizens, to the Planning Commission, and to citizens at large, not just the ones who have done it, they are doing that to understand their motives and understanding for that. So that's the first thing that we need to make sure that we're doing. Second, related to that, I just want to remind you that as Planning Commission, you're not just a hearing board, you are a state-mandated organization. You're the voice of the people that are here. So what's being brought to you is mandated by state to present to the council. And when I was on the council, I endeavored to always make sure that if we did not agree with the Planning Commission and their recommendations. They owe the city staff and the Planning Commission the courtesy of explaining why they are not going with each of those decisions because of the time that you're put in. And again, you are cited by law as the voice of the people. So out of respect, that should also be honored. And I would hope that you would continue to remind the council that. They sometimes have more information that we don't have. Sometimes they have other agendas, but they should come forward and be forthright and explain what is taking place. So this idea of things just dying and not explaining after years of effort by citizens groups and by going through this process is disrespectful and I hope that your recommendations go with that to the council. I like what you're recommending. I like those periodic reviews and monitoring that need to be taking place and feedback to the citizens where they are and why they're not gonna be done or if they're gonna be done, what's the timeframe to have those done over there. I think that we have a stronger, more transparent and accountable council and commissions that go forward. And then once again, even though I have 55 seconds, I want to thank you all for your service that you're doing here, not just those on the planning commission, which is the normal route to be on the council, and at least one of you should be on the council already on that, but also to the city staff and to the other participants that are here. Thank you very much.

Thank you for thanking us. And for your well-spoken comments. All right, Paul.

hello planning commissioners paul stickney sammamish appreciate mary's and romero's comments i've got four housekeeping things and then i'll get into my main meat which is to deal with uh the same issue you know romero uh chatted about on my previous comment there was just one thing critical to add why do the market rate housing to add holistic added prosperity for posterity for residents, workforce, and the city. Now, a couple things. When you're talking about a commission, whether it's yours or any other, and a commission member brings up something for the docket for the general good of the city, not for themselves, cool. Is that vote unanimous or a majority of a quorum that is there to advance a docket item as a commission? Two other things in the general packet. Personally, I still have a problem with the language in there that talks about the comp plan guides the nature and intensity of development in the city. I think that should change to guides the appropriate land uses and development in the city. I don't like intensity. I think that's wrong. Also, I think it would be good to include the King County urban growth capacity study for many reasons now on to my main issue here In your packet the changes tied to what to do with a docket Essentially can be summed up to saying that if no action happens in five years, the city can remove it if redundant, outdated, or no longer aligns with council priorities. Ah, that's the problem. Somebody spends a fair amount of money to initiate a docket and to get it to the point of making a decision to put it on the docket or not. At that point, they don't have an expectation. They have a hope of being heard of what they are going to try to do. That costs them money. It costs them time. But that is council discretionary, totally. So they can't have an expectation yet. But if it goes through planning commission and public comment and city council, and they get on the docket, ah, that's a whole other kettle of fish. And that's what I'm talking about. Then someone spends a lot more money. They put a lot of time on. And to not beat around the bush, in my opinion, there should be no option other than a legislative review and a decision, period, and treat a docket like an impact fee. Impact fee, if you don't use it in 10 years, it goes back. On the docket, not the same. If it's not approved in five years after that happens and they've done everything they need to, spent all the money, have complete application, they have gotten put on, it should be automatically approved. Now, I don't want to force the city's hand. I'm saying five years is plenty of time, and changes of counsel don't count. Changes of counsel or policy have to allow the prior counsel's decisions to move forward, but then they can make whatever decision they want, but transparently, clearly. We didn't agree with that. Here's why. It can't just be swept under the rug when somebody has an expectation and spent a lot of money. So the real issue is... To dock it or not to dock it. That is the question. That's the main question if the council doesn't want the work plan if they The council should say we are going to do this. We've got five years to do it and I've recommended not that you have to follow what I say, but I've recommended a three-year and a two-year part which I turned in again today and make the decision, go through legislative review for things that have been, you know, docketed, and give a decision in three years. If not, a two-year clock starts. That puts it into somewhat hyperdrive. It brings the attention to the council. We can't get out of this or it's going to be approved. And I don't want to force the city's hand. I just want legislative review and I want an answer. So if you're willing to put it on the docket, it must have those two things. The point before that is, if you're unwilling to do that, don't put it on the docket. I appreciate the chance to speak, and I'll yield my last five seconds.

Thank you, Paul. Well, we'll appreciate being able to leave five seconds earlier this evening. Anybody online? All right. And nobody else here. Well, not nobody else here, but nobody wants to speak, so. All right, we'll close the public hearing and begin our deliberations on if we should make any changes. So I think what we should do is have a motion to approve the updated Title 24A code as presented. And then we'll have discussions on whether we want to just say yes to that or want to make any amendments to that motion. So we'll entertain a motion.

I move the Planning Commission for Sammamish Municipal Code Title 24A as presented to the City Council for approval.

I second. Okay, we've got a motion and a second. Now it's time for debate. So any debate? Who wants to start? Roger? Yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't catch you out of the corner.

Go ahead. I'm always getting the show. OK. So this is overall a net. But I just wanted to check one thing. And that was on your last one, which was the feedback mechanism, which was there where the noticing period, the noticing. would be through the website that was there. I was wondering, should we change that to all assets? Because over a period of time, we are going to change just the website. Somebody's going to come up with this bright idea and say that I don't want to have it just as the website. I want to have an app which I would like to submit, and I want to have what I submit through the app as part of the public record. and let's say it comes up here and we say, okay, understood, the world has moved on, we also need to make it, we will make it part of a public record. Now, without calling it all assets that the city that the city, I won't call it owns, but the city, we'll find the word for it, but that the city has in its position. We have now not done that. So I was wondering, can we generalize it to say on all assets for noticing?

Go ahead.

I can try to channel our legal carry. Saying something like all assets would leave the city pretty open because if there were an obscure, I'm going to say Twitter, it's called XNow, account that the city no longer uses, but we don't post on that, then the city has not completed their obligation to post on all assets. Okay. I would be very cautious of being too all encompassing, if that makes sense.

Why we call it assets? Why don't we say communication means?

Either way, it's too broad. So we had a conversation with legal about some of the issues with social media. And they were alarmed when they saw that we just said social media. Because by not saying Facebook specifically, we put ourselves at risk of being sued because we didn't post to somebody's preferred other form of social media.

Are there some mandates or guidelines at a state level for all these communication between the government agencies and the public?

The state requires there's a list of different ways you can do it. And they require that you use the methods available. So we typically, when we do public hearing notices, we use the website. We post in the Seattle Times. If it's site specific, we do a mailing to people who are around the site. We also sometimes will send out emails to people on various lists that we have to notify them. So we do employ a variety of channels to reach people. We also use GovDelivery emails as well to reach people who've signed up for those. So we're using multiple channels even for the comment period where it's only online at the beginning. We are using a job form for that that's embedded in the website so there is an app. But we usually promote the availability to do so on social media so that people know that it's available.

Okay. That's all music to my ears, okay? But I'm Gen X. I love that website, writing, I love to write, you know, going with forums, I mean the bulletin boards, whatever you have, all of those things. That's great. But I was just thinking, if there was another person sitting over here, the youth, some of the youth board representative, they'll be like, why not, have a better mechanism. I don't use any of those things. I use Instagram, I use X, for example, right?

Or something else like that.

Are we timing, are we dating ourselves to not include those things? And I understand the burden that'll come on city staff, which is that now you suddenly have to monitor not one or two, but you have to monitor like five, ten of them, but To prevent that from being a problem, are we making it harder for the public?

I would say just because it's not in the code doesn't mean we don't do it. Does that make sense? So there's the minimum requirements, I think, go in code. There's also administrative things that we can do outside of code. So for example, we could put in our newsletter every month public hearings that we know are coming, or we could still post to social media, it's just not a code requirement, so we're not putting ourselves at legal risk that we didn't satisfy it, we're just going above and beyond what the minimum requirements are that are codified.

But we are stifling, bad word, not stifling, we are not allowing the public to use one of the more popular public tools to work with us on that. And I'm fine with that. We don't have anything. It's a very hypothetical discussion right now. But if it comes up to it that one year from now somebody comes and says, I have an app, and I want to give this where you're doing this thing, what is the process that happens? Does it go in front of city council and then gets approved and then becomes part of the communication? And we will change the code at that time? We'll change the language at that time?

I would assume it would probably have to start with our city manager's office and with our communications manager to ensure that we have the capacity to work within that.

It'll go through that whole capacity.

Yeah, and then yes, ultimately if they want to codify it, then it would have to be codified.

Got it. And that goes back to your point, which is to state that we are not overextending ourselves as city staff to do that work, but when that codification happens, they would have considered how much time it takes and what happens and all of those things. Is that, am I catching that?

Okay.

And even in our recommendation to remove it, we talked with the communications manager. And she said that the posts that she posts for public hearings on social media are very low interest. So they're not getting a lot of engagement.

OK, that was not very good for my ego, but that's OK.

I'd also speak a little bit to the social media aspect of it, where, as our communications manager said, it's no longer just a case of, if you follow this page, you will see this post. It's all about the algorithm. And posts that are not popular don't get shown to everybody. And so that's, again, where social media puts us at risk. Because we could say, well, we posted it on Facebook. But someone could say, oh, but it didn't show up on my feed.

And you have no control over it.

And the city has no control of that, whereas something like a website, it's the same every time you go to it. And everybody who goes to that website sees the same information.

It doesn't sound like we need to make an amendment to the code here. I can speak more on social media later if you'd like.

Moving along, I think, Mazza, you had a comment. Thank you, Mike. My point, I'm trying to make it again, and I'm trying to add on to what I said earlier. I heard Ramiro say, I listened to what Paul said, transparency, trust with the council, docket process, five years, things just falling off, sunsetting. I don't know if that's something that we can deliberate on and changes to it at Parvis. If it can, okay, then I would like to bring that to your conversation here because I... fully agree that if somebody's putting in effort somebody's doing things and and and things just fall off that's not good for everybody um i i had the privilege of going on campaigning for some of the council members last summer and in the fall and many of the people i talked to some of the things that came up was mainly was transparency and trust with the council and the city in general people in samaritans sometimes fed up they say we we think we're talking to a a blank wall and we don't get responses back so i think if we have a council or council members who just ignore dockets and they just fall off we'll have a problem so i think The best way to do this is there should be some kind of an SOP or, you know, process defined on timeline. I'd say, hey, X amount of time for this, the Y amount, you know, whatever the algorithm or whatever the steps of flowchart is, needs to be called out. And there, I think Romero mentioned that, hey, Paul mentioned three years, two years or whatever it is. I mean, I don't want to go to drastic saying, hey, it becomes like a threat, like it will get passed or legislated, whatever, if you don't do any action. that's kind of extreme but at least some kind of action some kind of liability accountability has to be provided to the council say you have to do something um i would like to see past data and see how many items like that have fallen off the five year is it too many or is it just once in a while if it's too many then When you talk to council and city management, say how we staffed it. I mean, where is the bottleneck? Is it the council? Is it the staff? Is it us in planning commission? Who's not doing the job to move this forward? So I don't know if you want to have a discussion on that or how do you want to handle Mike? But this is something I think I'm concerned about, yes. I don't know how does feel about that, but yeah.

actually let me i love that you know just to build on that a little bit the the wording basically says that council can decide just to remove it after that five years and if i understood correctly i think i did but having the list of everything docketed and bringing that up year by year provides that visibility it's less likely to get lost but doesn't provide the the rigor of okay if we're going to take something off that there's a higher bar than just like oh it's you know we've been keeping it in front of us and it the priorities just changed and it disappears i'm i really love the comments that we heard from you know the public hearing about the amount of time and effort that you know many people including planning commission and councils gone through and to just say oh i don't want to be too glib but our priorities have changed that disappears is not right just flat out not right there's got to be something whether it's another hearing or legislative process i don't know exactly what that would be but i think that's kind of where you're coming from also right and apparently that has been the case in one

Long time ago I was told that somebody went through the process and went all the way to the city council and passed five years and the city didn't take any action on it. Do you remember?

Do you know of any?

Other than the examples that Mary has mentioned, we did, when we did the comp plan update, we looked at everything that had been kind of just pending and closed those out. So we decided which were going to get integrated into the comp plan update. Some got integrated into the critical areas update and some did fall off. So there is a, I believe it's a resolution kind of closing out that. So we're starting fresh with this last periodic update that we did and we know what docket items since then have been applied and docketed and are moving forward.

And can I follow up, Mike, with your comment and question? I'm assuming that even if the council decides for one reason or another, priority has changed and all that, the council would be wise enough to put something together to justify their position. They're not going to say, okay, we don't like this project, let it go away. Exactly. They're going to come up with some kind of a statement.

They're on the record saying yea or nay or whatever it is. Right. It can be used. Right.

I'm almost sure that that's going to be the case, that council makes a motion and approve a language that says, well, because funding is not adequate at this point because of shortage of staff and all that, and we cannot proceed with it, and therefore that at this point, this is our decision. Now, can they potentially, if they reach at the end of the five years, can they potentially authorize an extension of the time? beyond five years? Hypothetically in that, if that happens.

Yes, I think they would just opt to continue to review, you know, they would then revisit it the next year as well. They would just keep being up for discussion.

See, if you keep it up for extension, extension, you'll just keep going down. Someone's kicking the can down the road. That keeps happening. You need to have some kind of a resolution. Go on the record and say, yeah, approved, not approved, whatever reasons, and then it's done.

because it'd be very easy for council always to say yeah just it's not our priority you know next year next year um just in terms of the language because i'm trying to think of like an amendment right how we would word that um you said uh changing council priorities or something like that that this doesn't necessarily say anything about having a council vote right and maybe that's implied

It's yeah, I would say so that could be an area we could strengthen it I think There's our vision that we shared for how it would work and it would be part of the docket process itself Which includes two public hearings and again, our assumption was there would be deliberation So if they were removing something they would have a discussion about why they were making a motion to do so Okay, I think it could be strengthened. I

If that's the intent, yes, then because it doesn't read that way. And, and I don't know if that would refer them in the code to an administrative process that describes that or if it would need so help us out with how we might be able to make a amendment to tighten that up.

Yeah, I guess my question would be, to me, there's a distinction. Do you want it to be part of the docket process where they're reviewing both the new docket items and items that have been sitting for five years without action and making a motion in one public hearing to do that? Or do you want it to be a separate process from the annual docket process?

So help me understand. I assume everybody else is wanting to know the same way. So when we as planning commission, because we're the first that will start to have the deliberations. And what we've done in the past is there are new items to be considered, whether it's going to be Passover for the council for potential being docketed by them. uh what you're proposing is is now part of the documenting process would be new and the existing items and one that's come up to that five years we would have the same deliberation to then recommend the council keep it on or you know things have changed the person who wrote it originally said forget about it it's been so long or whatever so that would be a very transparent process and it would go through planning commission and the council before something can be removed. Does it say that in the code?

I think we should revisit it and make it more clear.

So what does the code say right now? Does it say silent at what happened at the end of five years? Is that what the code says?

Give me one second to pull it up.

I mean, the reason I bring this up is like, if we don't have things fall down, then I want people to get involved. And if people see no reason for doing this and say, hey, nobody's listening to me, we just stop not doing it. I mean, I appreciate Paul and Mary, and they come here every time, and it's the hard work happening. Yeah, I know. And I can't remember if Mike is there. He might not like this, but we're forcing them to do their work, basically.

So right now the language says the city council may take action on such amendment proposals. Sorry, I should start from the beginning. Outstanding amendment proposals, amendment proposals on the annual docket that have not completed the legislative review process set forth in this section five years after being added to the docket shall be removed, sorry, shall be reviewed by the city council. The city council may take action on such amendment proposals, including, but not limited to, removing from the docket any outstanding amendment proposals that are redundant, outdated, or no longer aligned with City Council's priorities, or designated an outstanding amendment proposal to be considered as part of the next comprehensive plan update as required by the RCW.

So we are out of it. It goes out to five years, goes directly to the Council.

But the code says action. That's the key word. So the council has to take some action.

It says, so it says they shall be reviewed. It says they may take action.

Yeah, can we change it? Must is what I think.

That's I think what we're asking if I'm not wrong, right? Yeah, actually, can it be must?

What I would recommend maybe is modifying the language so we can say, yes, must take action. But I think I would add, because right now the options are they can remove it or they can designate it for the next periodic update. And I think maybe we want to add another criteria on there that they can keep it on the docket or integrate it into a work plan item. They also aren't limited to those two actions. So if, yeah, but I think spelling those other options more specifically out, and I think also making it clear how it fits into the process overall for an annual doc, it would be helpful.

Yeah, because that, like I said, said, well, so planning commissions out of it, that's not what you described, you know, and so the language there really doesn't say basically, it would be going through. It's not quite the docket process. It's it's the review that includes the docket process. Because the docket process for those items have already happened. maybe that gets tied up in the wording somehow in ways that i don't want to try to even address right now but yeah so um i don't i think it's appropriate if we do a motion that that wording be clarified to include what you described that's on the video uh without having to try to you know wordsmith it here um but i think well it does anybody think that that shouldn't be added that we shouldn't tighten up that that level of review is needed before something could be removed or extended are we all well he made he made a motion and i can second it for the discussion to change the language to make it more kind of i don't know if it was there did you make a motion was it easy did you make no no i didn't make a motion okay but you can go ahead mike like i as a chair i'd like to ask for a motion okay so yeah so you go ahead with your motion

Yeah, I would make a motion to add or change the code language to include must so that an action is taken instead of may. What is that right now? Is that correct wording? I think, yeah. Does everyone second it?

Second. OK, we've got that. and and there was actually and i think we'll vote on that because that's one and then we'll there's another amendment to the main motion which is really about that whole process so this is one piece of that so um any further debate on the motion to change the wording from may to must okay so All in favor of that motion, which is amending our main motion? Aye. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? okay so that's passed one thing all right next is uh we're looking for a motion that would address basically ensuring that those docketed items that are getting stale go through that public process just like new docketed items so does anybody want to take a shot at what that motion would be So I move.

So the purpose of this motion is for what?

If there is a docketed item which is not reviewed on the year that it has arrived but continues to be there on year two or year three that it will be reviewed and voted upon.

Yeah, the council can't simply say, our priorities have changed, we will drop this docketed item. After five years. That there would be a review process that would include the planning commission and public hearing, council and public hearing. And rather than discussing putting something onto the docket, the discussions would be removing something from the docket. So you made a motion? No, I'm suggesting that somebody should make that. Usually the chair doesn't make motions. I don't know if that's a hard and fast Roberts rule, but... It's a tradition.

I was following up to get that wording, but I'm just going to give a shot at it to say that motions I mean sorry docketed items that are that have been on the docket for more than one year are required to be reviewed within the five-year period since since initial submission and and I WANTED TO SAY DEBATED AND VOTED BY THE PLANNING COMMISSION AND THE CITY COUNCIL BEFORE THEY ARE REMOVED OR RETIRED FROM THE DOCKET. SECOND.

I THOUGHT I WAS SO FLUBBING ON THAT ONE THING. VERY ELOQUENT.

It's I think it's we all understand the purpose of that. And whether the exact language that gets written in is something about the amendment process or the docket process or the intent is clear and what would actually what our public comments want and what we want. So any further debate on this motion that we have a second on

So this is about the process.

Okay, so all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. So that passes. Any further discussion? Anything else in that that needs to change?

I have one quick comment that's not a motion. Marian, on your first slide, you asked us a question about leaving the periodic and annual process information, whether we should put that into the code or on the web. We partially discussed that with our two amendments, but my thought is leaving more of the detailed information on the web gives you more flexibility and the ability to make timely updates rather than getting buried in code. That's hard to change. That's just a comment.

The only other one that I had a note, and it was an early on comment from Paul about, I didn't catch exactly where it was in the written code, but he talked about intensity versus land use. Did you catch that? And that's a kind of minor change, but it actually has some, I think, meaning.

Yeah.

It has some verification too.

So at the very beginning, Let me find you this section. Okay, so it is 24A-05-0102. The City of Sammamish Comprehensive Plan guides the nature and intensity of development in the city and requires regular review and revision to ensure it responds to changing circumstances or needs of the city and new federal or state laws. So happy to talk about.

And what is Paul proposing on that? If you could reword it with that.

So his he took issue with intensity. Intensity. Yeah. I don't remember what he proposed.

Change the land use.

Yeah.

OK. How does that read?

So it would be the city of Sammamish Comprehensive Plan guides the nature of land use in the city and requires regular review.

Instead of intensity? That actually seems to read better to me. Yeah.

Okay. Because Landus makes it more generic as well.

Yeah. Isn't it wonderful to have so many people reading this so carefully? No, it's great.

It really truly is. It's comforting. But I would love a motion, if you don't mind, to change the intensity to that.

I move that we change intensity to land use in that section.

Second. Okay. Any further discussion?

I have a question. I want to go back to the communication with the public. What code says right now as far as means of communication? We had some discussions as well.

Sorry, can I just walk on that? Yeah, let's, well, we can come back to that, but we've got a motion, a second on the intensity versus, so that we don't forget to vote on this one. Okay, all in favor of this? Aye. All right, and any nays? None, so that passes, okay. So, you had a question, Said? Communications.

Okay, so our code has three sections. three sections the first is periodic updates the periodic update refers back to the RCW itself where it lists out all the different kinds of communication methods and it says those will be reviewed and approved by the City Council under a public participation plan so when we do the periodic update that's the big update we typically put together a whole public participation plan that explains all the different ways we're going to engage the community that goes to City Council it's approved by them and that's what we implement The annual amendments, we have two different components. So the first is we post the summaries of the docketed items that come through on the city's website with instructions on how to submit comments. We also have opportunity for the public to provide comment on those through the city's website. We require that future land use map request and amendment applications follow the noticing requirements this is a new proposed that we do the same for land use applications so we're being consistent between the two and that we provide notice to commerce about the intent to adopt as required by the RCW for public hearing notices related to 24A. We have that they are published in a local, sorry, published on the website, published in a newspaper of record, which for us is the Seattle Times, shared via email with those who have subscribed to email notifications on the city's website. That's what's required currently, and that the comments received are distributed to the Planning Commission and the City Council prior to their meetings.

Are these form of communication with the public, you just said for the 24A, similar to, let's say, SEPA notification? Yeah. Same with the transportation master plan, with the comp plan and all that, so we have the same kind of policy for all this?

yeah i would say in the past so the way that we've proposed it yes um in the past there have been there was a requirement to post on social media for public hearings specifically only for comp plan amendments and for um development regulation amendments and that was unique and created some issues for us operationally but also legally as well

Also for projects, that's project level. I realize this is not the project level, but I'm going to ask question anyway. For a project level or project notification, you also have open houses.

is that would that be something that would be worth for certain types of land use applications we do have a neighborhood meeting requirement that is held by the applicant it is not held by the city um i don't believe that it's relevant here okay okay

All right, so we've got three amendments. There was the may to the must, the whole whatever we're calling that process piece and the intensity to land use. And those have all passed. So now we go back to our main motion, which is to accept with those amendments, the code as presented. So we've had that discussion. Is there any last discussion on the main motion? okay seeing none all in favor aye aye aye any opposed not opposed good job nice work thank you everybody Well, we need to talk a little bit about the upcoming calendar, because I noticed it looked like some dates were changing or what have you. So Evan, do you have that?

Yeah, happy to talk about it briefly. So in June, we'll be taking back up the council-initiated code changes. There are two things we're going to look at and provide the council some feedback on. Specifically, it would be the criteria based rezone and looking at the exemptions for the affordable housing fee and loop program. Uh, we are looking to cancel the first meeting in july because it's falling right on that holiday week and then the second meeting in july we're going to bump back one week uh to accommodate staff schedules so uh and at that meeting we anticipate talking about town center looking at its existing capacity and sort of dusting that off to to get it going again all right so keep tuned in so it looks like the july meeting will change for sure it looked like it was

yeah we'll finalize that and send it and confirm at the next meeting okay great all right are there any objections to adjourning this meeting so moved seeing none we're done all right we've got 30 seconds already good job everyone with the five seconds that we got from paul yeah

Thank you. What is the council's position on the traffic impact?

Yeah, it's all done. All done. Adopted. Yep.