Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome. I now call to order the 432nd Planning Commission meeting of the City of College Place. Today is August 18, 2026. It is 6.01 p.m. and Clerk, we are ready for the roll call.

I'm not ready.

Commissioner Tan. Present. Commissioner Frey. Here. Commissioner Rogers? Present. Commissioner Reiswig?

Present.

Commissioner Ivey?

Yep.

And Commissioner Santillano, is that absent or? Excused. She's excused and Commissioner Stepper has resigned. So we'll have a vacant position six, but we do have a quorum.

All right. And then our agenda reminds us of the appearance of fairness doctrine. And I think it's now time for public comment. Do we have anybody submitting written comment in advance or request to speak?

There were no comments submitted.

Okay. And then we come to our consent agenda. Um, Consisting of the agenda for today, which is August 18, 2026, meeting minutes from last week, anything you want to change related to that or entertain a motion?

I move to approve the consent agenda as presented.

All in favor, aye.

Aye.

Hi, I think that was unanimous. So the motions passed, moving on, coming to our regular agenda here, which is a workshop to discuss development code regulations. And I think the staff will now lead us in a tour of edits.

Go ahead, turn it over to me. All right. So we passed out a few attachments in advance. Hopefully you had a little bit of time to look those over. We got them from our consultant on Friday, so. Little later than usual, but I also uploaded. a digital version of this small piece of paper that you got when you came in those are some staff edits that we are entertaining and want to kind of bounce off of y'all so let's start with the fully planning checklist development regs v1 in your attachments

It should look like this.

Yes. It's the first attachment on this agenda item. If you have trouble getting there, you can raise your hand and I'll come help you really quick. COCP CPU fully planning checklist development regs V1, that, yes. so this was a list that our consultants identified um where we need to make sure that we are complying with state regulations and mandated changes through this comprehensive plan update process and so you can see requirements if we're already in compliance if we aren't in compliance and we need to make changes etc uh the spreadsheet really doesn't work on this sharing platform but um got it i think that if we pdf'd it and full screened it it would still be very small text that no one would be able to read but um anyways okay well you've printed off just for us anyway it's high level discussion stuff like i said this is for complying with state mandated changes um if you've got any questions about any in particular we can talk about them but i just wanted to highlight a few of the items within here that are more influential than others you could say we do have some mandated changes When it comes to emergency housing and emergency shelters, we have to make these permitted within the city in many areas. And so that's highlighted on the first page. There are three different code changes regarding that area. I can't speak at length to this particular change, but it is state mandated and our consultants are doing their best to get us into compliance with it.

It's the permanent supportive housing. So basically it's Places like churches, schools, private schools, they are allowed to provide that sort of transitional housing under state law. So we have to make that our code compliant with that. And so that's what this change does. Any questions on that type of housing?

I was wondering what what this what this meant and so I appreciate the clarification that does this intending to this is intending to include student housing then this permanent supportive housing or is this intended to provide I mean yeah it's still a little bit mysterious and and maybe it doesn't matter because we don't have a lot of decision space on this so

This housing does relate to supervised facilities for security reasons and has provisions for sex offender treatment services and other things like that as well.

Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, I was actually confusing that with another 1, another 1, the mandated changes. Our zoning code actually addresses this, but it needs to be expanded to all areas that allow housing. That's the difference. So, these are facilities, like, if you have been, there's 1 over in walla walla over near dusty ski shop, which is actually light industrial area, but there are. I'm not exactly sure on the zoning but They do allow housing in that neighborhood. It's kind of a mixed use neighborhood. So that's how that facility is allowed in that neighborhood. But the secure. Transitional housing, it's, it's for people that have been deemed safe to be released for whatever reason by the state, but they still have to be housed in a secure facility. And they generally are released back into the areas where. Their crime is taking place so that they can still connect with their families and whatnot. It's, it's a not a very the communities do not like these facilities. So they have a really hard time providing, citing them. That's why they often end up in light industrial areas. But they're there. It's basically like a. minimum security jail. I mean, they have surveillance cameras, they're monitored 24 hours, their goings and comings are monitored. So that's what this addresses and we're required to, they are done through a conditional use permit process. And I think that's also one of the changes that is reflected in, that will be reflected in our code update. any kind of i notice also this include uh emergency shelter uh i think that's under c yeah that's c that's a little different um we we have we're mostly in compliance but we need to add a definition um for what an emergency housing is um In our code that that will align with the state states code.

They're like a minimum or maximum length of stay in any of this.

I do not believe that you can regulate the length of stay for the item C that's shown in here for the emergency shelters. I don't think the state allows you to regulate the length of stay. And then the last one on the first page. We're already in compliant on this, but we're not allowed zoning codes aren't allowed to define what a household is any longer because it means many things to many different groups of people. And then the starting on this top of the second page. Do you want to go line by line or do you want to? Did you have some ones that you want to highlight?

Highlighted ones were on the second page. We've got some parking changes. So, especially when it comes to design standards for certain housing types especially senior living there's new standards on on how many parking spaces we have to add and then also there are some changes to dimension requirements and whatnot how much space we have to provide for a parking spot on a street or if it's angled what those dimensions are versus if it's a parallel spot or a 90 degree head in so those will be edited in our design standards in terms of accessory dwelling units we can choose to get rid of those parking requirements completely um but i believe we're most likely going to stick with one parking space per accessory dwelling unit on site

when we first allowed um accessory dwelling units the planning commission had very in-depth conversations about whether or not we should require parking for those those accessory units and we landed on an additional stall per um adu and the state the state is recommending that we remove parking requirements we're not required to for adu so um I think staff is leaning on the side of let's keep them. We haven't received pushback when we've implemented that requirement on the ADUs that we've permitted. So it's a community desire. What do you want your community to look like? In areas where there is an actual mass transit, the state is requiring that you not require the additional parking spaces. But while we have a public transit system and we have fixed stops and we have fixed routes, it doesn't meet the definition of mass transit. The routes are not frequent enough to qualify for that, so we're not required to eliminate parking.

it seems to me that like if you don't have a parking space it's like building homes and not putting driveways and garages right i mean the assumption is you build a house you put a driveway in a garage to get your vehicles off the main roads so when you add an additional dwelling unit there and don't require them to have capacity at least for one i think you you risk creating a hardship on neighbors and neighborhoods and and so i think that that Personally, when I, when I've seen that, and we've, you know. I have some of those in my direct area. I appreciate that. There's additional parking required.

1 of the thing I would point out is that when we, we also changed how we calculate what qualifies as a stall. We now. we now allow stacked parking or tandem parking. So you can park, you know, if it's on your, you can park cars behind your garage doors where you should have cars parked. And therefore, you know, basically most homes have four parking stalls. Our prior code said you only had two because you would have to move one. So there's some additional flexibility there. and how we calculate that. That's helpful, I think, to, you know, one of those tight lots. And you realize how valuable that on street parking is.

I think those are the main ones in that area. we are looking at a potential change to kind of match what walla walla has done the city of walla walla has pretty much removed accessory dwelling units from their code We currently allow in a single family zone a maximum of a duplex and two ADUs on the site. So that's four units total. At a certain point, if someone adds a triplex and says the one on the end's an ADU when we don't have a size, we don't have anything in our code that really defines what an ADU is other than that's just a living unit. And so at a certain point, calling something a primary dwelling versus an ADU doesn't really matter anymore on a site. A housing unit is a housing unit. So we're thinking of going to there following their lead on that just allowing four units on any single family lot and one thing they do that we don't is that they have a lot coverage um standard and we would likely look at bringing that back it was cut in a previous code change and so if we're not looking at adus anymore as 80 years and everything's just a dwelling that seems like a more logical way to. Regulate how many dwellings you can have on a lot is you're kind of regulated by your lot coverage.

Yeah, right now. You know, regardless of the size of the lot, technically, you could. get four units on a lot, we would have a little bit more, it would be actually a little more restrictive if we went to a straight up four dwelling units per lot and then considered a maximum lot coverage. Maybe you still got the four units, but you keep the structure smaller and footprints smaller so that the overall mass of the structure is not overwhelming the neighborhood, but you still get to that density. if desired. We're at a little bit of a competitive disadvantage with Walla Walla when it comes to developers looking at, especially when you're looking at a lot of our future growth is going to be redevelopment. And so the more simplistic of the code where it's easier to understand for the developer, Um, where we're kind of speaking in code, like, oh, well, you can get to 4 units, but you have to call 1 of them, you know, a duplex and the other 2 are accessory drawing units. And it's just. I think it would be more streamlined if we went to a 4 units per lot. And then brought back some sort of lot coverage to help. You know, minimize our mass.

that we're interested in your feedback on that so a couple quick questions if you can refresh my memory is the state code say we can't limit accessory dwelling units smaller than a thousand square feet and we can't be more restrictive on setbacks and heights than what the house is that's basically yeah so so we could in theory say you can't do an adu greater than 1001 feet if we wanted to you could And then on lot coverage, would that be based on foundation size, roof size, or solid surfaces like driveways and parking stalls and stuff?

It depends on how restrictive you want to get. If you want to say, oh, your lot coverage is 75%, then usually you calculate it in all impervious surfaces. But if you say it's 50% or 35%, our old code used to say 35%, which was a pretty minimal one. So it was strictly like the footprint of the structure.

That's how Walla Walla is currently, 50% lot coverage, structures only. The thing we're running into right now is basically you've got people trying to put as many lots on a property as you can, and it's mostly just coming down to can they park it and can they provide stormwater on site.

And you need to set it back.

Yeah. Yeah, you could go to limit the size of the ADU. We had that original, our very first ADU code. We got into limiting the height of the structure and the size of it. And then you get guys that are like, oh, well, does this closet count as living space? And you're like, yes, it does. And then the other thing too is it penalizes conversions. Like, you might have a basement on a big rancher or something, daylight basement that's, you know, 1,500 square feet. And, you know, it's challenging. It has its own other set of challenges.

Yeah, when I worked for the county, we had an 1100 square foot max, and it was based on the size, a percentage of the size of the primary dwelling, and there was so much math wiggling going on that it was tough to regulate.

So we want a yes and approach, right? We want to be expansive in, like, we want to invite that growth, but we also don't want to get those pinch points of, right, we get into parking issues or height. So I think... You know, is it possible because I don't know all those codes that would be involved in there to write it to say, you know, while while. Maintaining these, or these have to, we have to be in compliance with these codes. I mean, I can see you could see someone saying, yeah, I'm going for on a postage stamp straight up. I know, you know, stacked on top of each other, you know, whatever. i just because i was going to that place of like but no more than so such and before you started talking percents i was thinking you have to stay within a percent of the overall you know square footage that you have on that lot and and i don't know this well enough but i could see how both sides of that coin would could get you right we don't want to just be a come one come all because then we are gonna you know they're gonna abuse it yeah and you raise a good point too with the if you just

we would have to hone in on how we calculate the parking, because if we're just talking about dwelling units, then is it like for a single family home, we require two parking spaces. But if it's a fourplex, generally that's one and a half spaces per dwelling unit. And maybe that's fine. And then there are other factors that will come into play If you get over 4,000 square feet for the entire structure, and then you have to spring clear it, which is fine. I mean, you know, these developers will, when you tell them that, they'll go, okay, well, I'm not going to exceed that. So... And then there's other factors too that developers will consider. It's, you know, for smaller units that are 600 square feet or less, you get reduced connection charges for water and sewer. So there's incentive to build smaller units that in theory would be more affordable and probably require less parking. So.

one other option that's not mentioned in here is going the route of kind of a portland desk type design and it's called floor area ratio and as you bump up your number of units you get more floor area ratio that floor area ratio is calculated across the entire structure though so adding a second story does increase your floor area ratio where it does not increase your lot coverage, if that makes sense. Your floor area ratio is the total square footage of the house versus your developable lot. and they have tiering. I think a single family home gets a 50% floor area ratio, a duplex gets a 60, a triplex gets a 70, and a fourplex gets an 80. So your massing is going up. It's also going up in the air too, typically, with that.

Would you like us to explore this more? Yes. I think it might be helpful if we certainly could explain better what Walla Walla is doing in terms of just simply being competitive with them and keeping it simple for the local developers that are more likely to be the ones that are going to take on Uh, redevelopment project, I mean, we're, we're probably not going to attract people from Portland in Seattle. It's going to be our local guys, but. Are going to be doing these turn burns. So, okay, well, we can do that with the, yeah, with this thing.

Hot subject, I can send out some materials for you all to review and we can probably have this be its own item in a future meeting where we discuss the different options. Middle housing, we don't have to comply with any of this because college place is not big enough, but we do incorporate pieces of this currently. Um. most of these are either small edits similar to that of the if we allow it in a residence we have to allow co-housing in all districts similar to that past discussion i think the same was for daycares on a past one

The last one on that page is about density bonuses. Are you going to cover that one? For churches and religious organizations? You can. Oh, yeah. So the state is requiring that we allow density bonuses for churches or religious organizations if they do a housing project. Um, so we will add a footnote to the table permitted uses to address that basically.

And that's a state requirement under the 1 of the housing laws.

I understand we don't have a lot of decisions based on that, but I'm curious how religious organizations would be involved in housing projects. The concept of those two together is not familiar to me.

I'm assuming, not really knowing what drove that change, but Catholic Charities is a huge housing provider in the urban cities. I'm guessing they probably were driving that. It's probably some push from Catholic charities and some of those other bigger churches that do that sort of stuff.

We do have an interesting one that's on the screen now in the middle if you can read that. Reduce restrictions for additional housing units with an existing commercial, mixed use, and multifamily buildings by exempting the added units from density limits, parking, and other regulatory requirements. this one i could see being a real pain for the city of walla walla with their downtown being much more commercially built out than ours in terms of their structures in terms of us i don't know of that many commercial structures that could actually be converted to residential that it would really affect us all that much. But if they were to do it and they basically had no parking on site, we couldn't require them to add any parking because it's a non-conforming existing structure.

So what happens, let's say we have a multi-story old commercial building If if there's a change of use, according to the. The building codes from commercial to residential that triggers a whole different level of review from everything from. how the wastewater and plumbing is handled in that building, because it might not be sized appropriately to have 20 apartment buildings in a building that was just designed to occupy 100 people or something. And then it can also trigger parking requirements from your zoning code. It can trigger a whole gambit of things that they are saying is exempt. And so it probably won't have an impact on us. I mean, unless, you know, heaven forbid, the university went away, and we had a bunch of empty buildings that they wanted to convert somebody wanted to convert to residential. So there are consultants going to provide some recommendations on this. So more more to follow on that one. But Did you have anything else to add to that?

I did not. We got through a pretty long list then of things that we don't need to address because we don't have a military base nearby. We don't have any shorelines.

Yeah. So like, if we grow further south to the Elk Hawk, that's a shoreline in the state, so we'll have to have a shoreline master program. Mill Creek is a shoreline. And they, because they're shorelines of the state, they have greater restrictions on what happens next to them. We just, you know, all of our creeks are critical areas and they're protected, but they're not as heavily regulated, so. Yay for us not having to deal with that at this point in time.

We don't have resource lands of long-term significance or agriculturally designated lands. or mineral lands. So do you want to cover the siting of essential public facilities?

Yeah. So essential public facilities are things like it could be a penitentiary. It could be a wastewater treatment plant or an elevated water tank. Things that are sometimes challenging to cite in a community, but they're a necessity. And so your codes have to address that. Our code does not. This table is not accurate. Our consultant said that we've complied and I think maybe they got confused with somebody else's code because we do not comply. So that that'll be updated. but that's a state requirement. It's pretty standard language for every community to have code for that.

There are some changes to subdivision regulations. We don't allow exempt wells.

I don't think we need to. There's some further clarification on that and then, um. Are well, when we approve a subdivision, we. Have findings in place, our code doesn't call them out. So we need to also update that. I don't know if that was in that section or the next 1, but. um we need to update our findings um basically that to make statements that there are adequate facilities like water sewer streets um things like that uh the most pertinent one in this area is probably the addition of unit lot subdivisions um

this is kind of similar to the short platting process except for lots within a kind of like condoizing units within a larger development you know that subdivision you can have a conforming larger lot for the zoning district but then when you cut up these smaller lots that have a house or a duplex on them or whatnot and subdivide them and you can sell them off separately they don't need to comply with the The requirements, the zoning district, they could have reduced setbacks kind of within the development. Um, you also get 1 extra lot. That is typically kind of the open space fringe around the area, which. Will most likely go into a, uh. Homeowner association controlled by everyone who owns within that unit lot subdivision. So it provides more flexibility for dense urban design.

in constructed spaces yeah one of the benefits from this tool and it is a requirement um is that um you might be able to short plot and subdivide off the adu that you built um and then So our typical short plat is like nine lots maximum. You, in theory, could get a tenth lot for the private road that might be needed for it so that it doesn't show up as just an easement across the lots. It's a little cleaner that way. One of the lovely tools that we've been given through all of the housing amendments to create more urban environments.

What is our current minimum lot size requirement?

Current what?

Minimum lot size.

Minimum lot size would be one seventh of an acre or maybe it's not. I want to say it's 5,000 square feet. We do have provisions to go smaller, but... Most of the other stuff really isn't all that influential, I don't think.

We are not doing any impact fees. This round anyhow. I know that there's. Well, I'll let Jim speak if he wants to, but.

yeah we we explored that as a school district uh primarily in uh 1920 when when we were exploding and we were uh really concerned that what we would collect we wouldn't be able to keep up with um that growth into to the opportunity to bond and so forth but but we've we are in support of of

not having it to to to welcome growth and not stifle anybody's uh desire to come here or and maybe change their mind because of it right now okay so not having impact fees doesn't mean that um we don't make development pay for impacts um we we utilize sepa the state environmental protect protection act um And primarily that's we've utilized that for transportation improvements. So we would have the applicant provide a transportation impact analysis and we identify based on size and we have them look at certain locations and make sure that, you know. those intersections don't fall below the level of service of D. And if they do, what needs to happen to bring those level of service back up? And that usually either results in them doing some sort of improvement to that intersection or contributing to a larger project. Maybe we have got a project penciled in and so Homestead did that when we redid College Avenue. The Hayden Homes contributed $250,000 to the signal at College Avenue and Whitman. And, you know, you structure those things. Usually, you end up with an agreement with the developer so that they don't get hit with that write-off that's, you know, as their development goes along, they pay it either at permit or in lump-set phases. then like things like water and sewer usually they are you know extending water lines sewer lines and they're having to loop things or they may have to put in their own lift station that they dedicate to the city um or if we've done a larger project um we have like the lift station we built um south of town there is a an assessment that we collect to to help recover some of the costs the city's expenses on those it's like a per acre assessment so so we are doing impact fees we do it a little differently

I don't think any of the other ones require really any highlighting unless you all have specific questions about them. We are encouraged to do more tribal outreach regarding our projects. And in terms of traffic, we're just making changes that we have to.

And I can't really speak to the TDMs, the transportation.

Traffic demand management.

Yeah. Our consultants haven't really provided us with any feedback on that other than in progress, so. Any questions on the mandated requirements that we went through?

All right. If you had a chance to review the critical areas checklist, similar thing where we had a list of required changes from the state and the consultant went through and itemized those, checked if they were currently in compliance or not. Not a lot of change here. in this specific area. However, we are looking at likely adopting the county's critical area regulations. The city used to share the same regulations as the county back in 2018. They were changed and I would say they were oversimplified. They lack a lot of detail that a person trying to develop within a critical area has for guidance that is available within the county. And it is very hard to measure their compliance with our critical area code as it is currently written. It's very ambiguous. Going back to what the county and something similar to what the city of all of all I have would be preferable as the person that so evaluates pretty clear reports.

This critical area update. Is the funding for it's pretty limited. So 1 of the options that we have is to adopt what the county has adopted. Or what they will be adopting and that's the most economical. Route back in the early 2000s, when we all all 3 jurisdictions got together and did, it was a major update across the state. And we use the same consultant use the same best available science document. We ended up with slightly different ordinances in terms of, like, our setbacks from creeks, the cities, because we're already pretty heavily impacted the creeks already. We chose to have reduced setbacks. Whereas, in the county, they had larger ones that were more in compliance and we with the. best available science recommendations for setbacks from creeks and wetlands and things of that nature, steep slopes, we would still tweak and keep reduced setbacks. So that'll be the plan as we move forward.

Question. In college, please, Is there specific area being defined as critical area? Because in my mind, okay, like in Walla Walla, the watershed of Bennington Lake and Mill Creek, those will be defined as critical area, but where in College Place?

So our critical areas are the streams, which have 35-foot riparian buffers on them. The whole area is within what's called the critical aquifer recharge area it doesn't affect us as much as it does the county because we're on a sewer system but when you've got septics and like a winery on a much larger septic okay or if you've got a farm Also, an example is the airport where you've got fuel tanks and stuff. What if 1 of those fuel tanks starts leaking into there's there's measures and there's certain reports that you have to. do to show that you're taking best practices to make sure that nothing's going into the ground. If someone were to propose a new gas station, we would certainly... So we're looking at the potential impact on the environment rather than what is already existing there. Yeah. At least in terms of the car and the aquifer, you certainly don't want anything getting into it. A storage tank of some sort.

they need to provide information as to what would happen in the case of a spill what protections are in place that sort of thing we have soils that liquefy so pretty much every subdivision there's a geotechnical report um that will also that'll just help with the design your foundations it'll help with your how you treat your storm water um We have soils that are susceptible to erosion. We have steep slopes. Any of the bluffs around here, there's steep slopes.

Out in Homestead, there's wetlands and there's steep slopes that they've got certain setbacks from. You can't build your foundation within a certain distance of the toe or the top of the slope. And I think... So those are the big ones?

Yeah.

We don't have frequently flooded areas. We have minimal. All right. The biggest one, the biggest change I think is the push by the state for no net loss on habitat. So we do have to comply with that and evaluate projects that are impacting riparian areas and wetlands.

Is that going to get into, from what you've read, loss of tree canopy or bird habitat?

Potentially. I think Walla Walla is looking at a 100-foot buffer from streams now. We currently got a 35 foot buffer from streams. So if you are impacting under no net loss, there's potential mitigation requirements for construction or construction.

Well, there's got to be a reasonable use exception. We need to get into this in greater depth, but the last time this topic came up, I mean, if you cross the street from where I live, there's an empty lot that has Garrison Creek that runs through it. And the lot's maybe 110 feet deep. if you if you've applied 100 foot setback you've basically taken away all ability to develop that lot and that's a taking so i'm going to assume that there's got to be a reasonable exception in place for um you know where you look at the nate that the neighboring community you you know provide protections you know maybe you make them do tree plantings and stuff but so You know, if we had something like that in the neighborhood in place, Jim, where Jim lives, that neighborhood would, there'd be like, 4 homes in that neighborhood. So. We will have more to follow on that because we do, you know, while most of our creeks are. Developed out there, there are still some areas where there's. Yeah, possibility for something to happen.

So some of those red lines are going to show up in the Title 14 Unified Development Regulations. I'm not going to open that up and go down there, but you can see the verbiage in the code for some of the stuff within these checklists. The last one is the municipal code update tracker. That's the piece of paper that you got. These are the ones that Uh, our staff initiated changes that we'd like to discuss with you all. So, at a high level, the table of permitted uses hasn't been modernized in quite some time. There's a lot of. uses missing, we want to potentially move some of the... If you look at our permitted uses table, we've got P's for permitted, C's for conditional uses. I think it's S for special use and whatnot. Potentially look at moving some of those around, allowing some neighborhood commercial within residential districts that sort of thing um also if there's uses that are now common that weren't 10 20 years ago making sure that those are in the code i don't have examples for you off the top of my head but um that would that's what we're talking about there when we say updates to the table of permitted uses one that is brought has been brought to our attention is at martin airfield tarragon northwest is interested in adding the potential for an air park use this would be uh living with your airplane hanger, kind of. So a large residential house on a piece of property that is zoned industrial. We currently don't allow any industrial housing other than I think a watchman's quarters or something along those lines. So this would require a change. But there are some examples in eastern Washington that they've pointed us towards. So certainly something up for discussion. In terms of our parking and loading standards, not a lot of uses are called out in this area. It is very flexible. It does provide four options using certain traffic books and what their uses are used to parking ratio within them. There are methods to get to a parking ratio for any use, but it might work a little better to just list them out in our code rather than referencing another document. This could also be where we address accessory dwelling units or the lack thereof in regards to residential parking for numbers of units. We didn't really extrapolate on this, but we do have an issue of people parking in their yards in College Place, whether we want to heavily enforced that or not is another question.

Do we have a clunker ordinance? You know, like a car that hasn't moved is parked in the yard for a period of time?

Yes, we do. That's considered a nuisance. And so if it's not operable, licensed, know if it's a parked car let's say you're rebuilding your 1965 mustang and you got a parked car that that needs to be stored indoors not just out of the sight of the neighbors but stored in like a garage or something so we do have we do have things like that in place our code does state that parking is supposed to occur on hard surfaces but we have a lot of existing driveways and whatnot as well that are The parking and yard one is really challenging because, you know, we have a defined area of what your driveway is. And then we have some people that want to use the yard area of their front as their additional parking. So they'll just either park in their grass and then it dies or they've xeriscaped and it just is basically gravel. And so there's some desire to try to regulate that a little bit more so we don't have a bunch of front yards that turn into parking lots. If you're interested, I mean, maybe you guys aren't interested in regulating that level, but we would be.

You're the one that I lighting standards.

If you've got So we we require like, um, let's say Target comes to town, we would say you need to provide Lighting in your parking lot, but we don't provide, we tell them that you can't exceed a half a foot candle at the property line and that it needs to be shielded, you know. Face down, so it's not shining up into the sky, but we don't ask. We don't tell them how bright it needs to be. Internally and or or regulate how bright it is internally, you know, maybe. usually it's a you know it's a safety issue right parking lots need lighting to so it's just a safe environment at night um so with almost every time we talk to somebody about you know do designing a parking lot and they we say well you need to provide parking and they're like what what to what level what how bright do you want it so this is a distinct in our energy code i should say it gives you a fast right That's a good question. I don't know the answer to.

So, John, this would be specifically for commercial development and it's not looking to address anything within the residential.

Right, because in the residential zone, you know, we have our. We have a city standard for street lighting intersections and usually mid block. And they have a spacing ratio for that. Um, it's relatively new because if you go around town, you'll notice that a lot of our older neighborhoods are pretty dark and we're working on bringing lighting into those neighborhoods and we do sidewalk projects and stuff. But, um, but, you know, anything commercial, so even the schools, um, university, um. But, yeah, general commercial stuff. Would that affect a subdivision or residential?

Um, just that would be okay.

We have new regulations that would affect development. For street lights and that kind of thing. No, we're housing of no more than so much that reflects out of the house or that kind of thing. Um, or this is right now you're just addressing commercial.

Development would just address commercial. Okay. We could so we have nuisance regulations that address. Your neighbor that might have a spotlight that pops on and change in your kitchen window. That's that's a nuisance. Violation, you're, you're supposed to maintain under a current lighting standard. You're supposed to maintain your light on your property and not exceed a half a foot candle at the property line. So. And glare is one of those things that we can address through the nuisance code. We've had to deal with that when we let lines park up. We have some street lights, not street lights, but pedestrian lights along the lot line there. And we have to shield it so they don't shine into their yard.

Next, we get into density, dimension, area, height, and setback standards. We want to clarify within this section, make it easy to identify density ranges, minimums and maximums per acre. currently in our single family residential district i think we've got it listed as seven units per acre but depending on lot size and then people wanting to add adus can get complicated pretty quickly um so we're mostly in that instance trying to regulate with parking and stormwater kind of as we discussed earlier um there's the potential as i mentioned to adopt floor area ratios which will get you more information on um in terms of setbacks we want there's a about 15 to 20 notes in that section that apply to different situations and i think the last code update the notes got numbered incorrectly so you've got a number three in your single family district and you go down and it's speaking it's supposed to speak to side yard but it's speaking to rear yard things like that we definitely need to clean all that up um to make flexibility on lots a little more to increase flexibility on new developments of lots. We're looking at potentially reducing the front yard set back to 15 feet, allowing you to bring your house a little closer to the front. It might not apply to a garage. We still want to keep parking off the sidewalk, but Bringing houses forward might mean you have enough room in the back to add an ADU as well. We also don't have a provision that allows you to, if you've got a historic neighborhood, to match the setbacks on either side of you. And so in every other municipality that I've worked at, there's been that provision. any questions on that area or anything you'd like to add again reevaluate parking requirements we have a section of code for cottage housing that we believe is quite overly complicated uh we have had no cottage housing proposals in the city of college place since that code was adopted so we want to either look at simplifying it or removing it um the next one multi-family open space this was pointed out to us we currently have a minimum of 1 000 square feet of open space to be designated for multifamily developments per unit. And that is five to ten times higher than most of our neighbors in eastern Washington. And that is potentially stopping some apartment complexes from developing in the city. So we definitely need to look at that and evaluate what ratio we would want to go with for that standard. In our subdivisions, I think I did a copy paste wrong here. No, that's right. Subdivisions also require 1,000 square feet of designated park or open space per dwelling unit. The problem is when you get bigger developments, that number can proportionally grow to an extent that developers don't wanna they want to cap it at a certain point typically. So looking at that as well. In terms of our master plan development district, very similar to our cottage housing, it's got some slight contradictions within it, which makes administering it hard. And so we need to look at that. There are some other MPD districts throughout the state There's also one of the current requirements is that it match up with our comprehensive plan. We had this first iteration of the Stone Creek development that wanted to incorporate some commercial into their master plan development district, but they didn't want to go through a code update. However, our code requires a future land use map comprehensive plan amendment. That's what I meant. Those take longer. they're more complicated. And so the master plan development seemed to simplify that process when it really didn't. They still had to jump through hoops that they thought they were going to have to avoid, that they thought they were going to be able to avoid. But if we potentially opened up some neighborhood commercial uses in residential districts, I don't think this would be as big of an issue. Or it might just not be necessary if we're allowing single family and multifamily and some commercial to kind of coexist, which I think some of our changes that we're making would allow that.

Allow that without going through a master plan development? Is that what you're saying?

Correct.

Yeah, it's really challenging. To have something in your zoning code that doesn't isn't consistent with your comprehensive plan from a zoning standpoint and land standpoint, because. You need that consistency, but so how do you how do you accomplish that? And that's why. You know, we're seeing that flexibility in some other codes, but we don't we're not. We're not understanding how. know we don't know what their their comprehensive plans are like so it's possible that they could have something in their conference and plan that makes makes master plan developments you know they're consistent with each other from a land use and zoning standpoint from from what i saw in looking at one that was provided as an example for us um they seem to have mixed use districts

throughout their city already. They're a much bigger, denser city than we are. And so that's probably where that flexibility works. Whereas with our zoning districts and separation of uses that we currently have, there is not the flexibility that was imagined when they wrote the original code. And as we noted earlier, critical areas protections looking at a pretty large overhaul, but also tweaking the counties before we adopt it.

I think that's it, right?

That would be it, unless there's anything else that you guys have concerns regarding or... We're certainly open to discussion.

Yeah, not seeing a lot of discussion. Yeah, clearly the trend is to build more dense housing, affecting the price of housing and by getting more units on the market. And it's interesting to see the tension between the cost and the quality of housing and balancing the different elements like green space and density and different things for different needs. Appreciate the careful consideration your team has brought to this. So I think, as you suggested, we're probably done with this. So, I think that brings us to the next item on our agenda. Which is trying to follow here, but they have additional report, I think, for the urban growth area applications.

Yeah, just real quick the, the setting of the final docket hearing was supposed to take place on the 11th, but there was an error in the county's public notice process. So they had to re. Publish for the hearing, and it's now on the. 31st at 830 in the morning for the county commissioners. Um, we basically will have an hour to present our proposals. Um. We have 2 applications 1 of them is a swap and the other 1, which is a little more complicated is the expansion and it's, you know, it's a. We're walking a tightrope on because we're just trying to get onto the final docket. This isn't really a hearing on the merits of our application, but they don't. I'm not sure they fully understand what our application is and they want to know what our application is because it seems to be influencing whether or not it goes under the final docket. And so we, you know, it's really challenging for us to get our message across. And there's already obstacles with the county recommending denial, but it not be on the final docket and there seem to be missing pieces of the application. Uh, You know, the county commissioners are saying they've read everything and that the staff points out or says that that there's missing that that that they've. That the city has said they would provide information and and they haven't done that. And yet. The memos are in the packet and we sit through these workshops and can't speak because we're not parties to the workshop. And it's just a lot of misinformation out there and. So, a lot of frustration on, I mean, I'm. The whole, you know, you've heard me talk about the whole way the application has been handled. I mean, we've been in this process for over a year. Very frustrating. Um, and so. Well, we're going to do our best at this hearing to present our case of why we should get on the final bucket and. from there so we'll have more more information next month hopefully do we have any recourse uh worst case scenario

We don't get on the final docket or. We do get on and we get denied on the final docket. Is there any recourse legal recourse to go back? And I mean, this was a, this was a 2025. Uh, application that's now nearing 2027. is there any recourse to say, like, like, you guys. This was. a debauchery is what it has turned into it's it is a political puppet show of sorts with anyways but i i just i want them to know that like i our school district will we'll see what legal action we have because what they've done is drag out something that was due a year ago into nearly 2027 which is impacting our ability to plan for our next school bond and All because I think the collective information and people that were involved, obviously they've changed their director and so forth. I just don't think they know what they're doing. And they've hired on a hired gun who is giving them west side advice. And so I don't know if you guys have talked, if the mayor talked about if this were to go south, Can we go back to fight the fact that there was... I think they didn't do their due diligence from day one.

I'm not really going to talk about whether or not there's any sort of legal action the city can take in a public setting.

On the same line, do you guys have access to legal counsel?

We do, we have hired, we have legal counsel, the city does, but we've also hired a land use attorney that's helping represent us. Yeah, his name's Mark Vickis. He's out of Yakima. Yep, I don't disagree with anything you said, Jim.

That's all I have. Yeah.

Thank you, John. That's the end of the reports. Then that brings us to the end. We are scheduled to come back together on the 15th of September. Any other business? If not, I entertain a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Second.

Seeing no objection, the meeting is concluded at 7.17 PM. Thank you. Thank you.