Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome everybody to the Tuesday February 17th 2026 meeting of the city of Ever Planning Commission. My honor, would you please take the role? Sheriff Shelby here. Commissioner Chatters here. Commissioner Finch here. Commissioner Rage here. Commissioner Welch here. Thank you.

Miss Chatters, would you please read the land acknowledgement tonight? Absolutely. The Everett Planning Commission wishes to acknowledge the original inhabitants of this place, the Sto people, and their successors, the Tleup tribes. Since time immemorial, they have hunted, fished, gathered on, and taken care of these lands and waters. We respect their sovereignty, their right to self-determination, and honor their sacred spiritual connection with the land and water. We will strive to be honest about our past mistakes and bring about a future that includes their people, stories, and voices to form a more just and equitable society.

Thank you. Everybody get a chance to look at the meeting minutes for our 6th of January meeting? Anybody opposed to passing them as presented? Fantastic. All right, on to reports and comments. Any commissioner reports? Hearing none. Any public comment that isn't specific to later in the evening for the public hearing? No. No. Outstanding. All right. Uh Yoro, it's over to you, I believe.

Sure. Um we've got a good agenda for you today. We're going to talk transit. Look forward to our long range uh plan for the Ever Transit uh system. We've got a uh quick update on manufactured housing communities today in advance of a public hearing and some more focused work on that uh next month once we're through critical areas. Then I think the lion's share of the meeting is going to be uh devoted to critical areas and potentially getting to a planning commission resolution uh and recommendation on that work. Since our last meeting in January uh 6th, I believe it was our last meeting here. Um the city council took up uh worked through and passed the Ever 2044 housekeeping ordinance. So, thank you for your uh hard work on that over the six months prior to that. Um, we also uh briefed the city council's uh parks and built environment committee on both of the topics, not the transit one, but the other two topics that are on your agenda today, manufactured housing communities and critical areas. Uh for the those three council members on that committee, this was the first uh that they have really dove into critical areas. So we went way back to the very basics and uh started with where we were at in this uh in these chambers in about September with what are critical areas, where are they in the city, what's the regulatory framework and all of that. Um so spent most of the time there giving uh them some background to prepare them for uh some more briefings and focused work on that in the weeks to come. Uh we have completed the graphic design and printing of the comprehensive plan. Speaking of Everett 2044 and I've got a printed copy for each of you to take home today. Um so that is also up on the web page as a PDF for anyone and we'll be distributing it to council members,

planning commission members and uh key staff and departments within the city. I think that's what I copy for each. Sorry, where did that who said that? Oh, okay. You that was me. Um, I think with that, uh, that's it for my staff comments. If there are any questions on general issues, happy to take it. York, was there a draft resolution that uh, yes, passed one passed one out to you, I think.

There we go. Thank you. Right. I think uh new business is our briefing on the transit long range plan. Okay. Yes, we have Mike Schmeer here uh who's going to walk us through this. Mike Schmeer is the uh director of Everett Transit and Rob too. All right. and Rob McFarland.

Uh, with me this evening is Rob McFarland. He's our manager of planning and he'll be assisting with the slide presentation. There we go. Well, good evening and thank you for the opportunity to present Everett Transit's long range plan connecting Everett in 2045. This plan is a strategic road map that guides how our transit service will uh unfold over the next 20 years. Subsequent plan updates will occur at five-year intervals and that will provide opportunities for refinement to the plan as well as course corrections along the way. This plan sets forth priorities for service expansion, infrastructure investment, and financial sustainability to meet our community's evolving mobility needs. So, this latest draft actually began back in 2023. uh we paused its development in order to make space for and factor in the city's update to the comprehensive plan adopted in 2025. And uh as we circulate this draft, we

will assemble the comments and information gleaned from this process and then uh return back to council. We have a presentation with them on the 25th of February. We will come back to them in April for final adoption. Public outreach for this plan was conducted in two phases. The phase one outreach occurred in 2023 and then phase two in 2025. And outreach activities in both phases were robust and included the use of print media, digital marketing, surveys, and numerous face-to-face outreach events which are all detailed uh in the appendex. I was looking for the words. The results of the outreach confirmed uh some clear themes for this for us. Number one, you've been around transit at all. Frequency remains king. Okay. How how many uh how often the bus arrives is most important, followed by coverage. Uh regional connections continue to be important. Safety and security on transit is a top focus for investment as well. Another theme that reflected uh strongly in the outreach was support for Ever Transit's incredible paratransit service. And sometimes uh the paratransit service gets lost in the conversation, but it's a vital part of what we do every day. Uh Ever's paratransit service goes above and beyond minimum service thresholds as established by the Americans with Disabilities Act in that it pro it provides service to all Everett residents aged 65 years of older and and older and it extends the service beyond the minimum hours uh of service required. So the feedback here is interesting. It indicates very strongly that service policy decisions that go beyond minimum requirements are both visible and valued by the public.

As mentioned already, information from the city's comprehensive plan played an important part in the development of this long range plan. Uh the comp plan shows that nearly 70,000 new residents will call Everett home by 2044. that 84,000 new jobs approximately will be created in our community and that 38,000 more housing units will be needed. As Everett grows, so does the need for a transit network that supports more people with more trips and more options. So, Everett Transit's growth network in this plan uh details what that looks like. And with the outcomes of the growth network, uh we're going to see a 25% increase in the service hours by 2045. Uh the three times the three times writership growth in wrership by 2045. That is not just an Everett local statistic that is put out by Puet Sound Regional Council. So there's the expectation that all uh transit ridership will increase substantially. 30% more people near 30 minute or better service. That's just Everett. uh transit speaking on this, but we know that there's going to be more frequent service as when it's added by bus rapid transit through community transit as well as link light rail. So, an abundance of fast and frequent transit in our community, uh extended service hours on weekdays and weekends, expanded access to regional connections, and then strengthened connections uh to that light rail and bus rapid transit. So under this planned service growth, Ever Transit is forecasted to serve up to 4 million riders uh in a year by 2045, which is almost two and a half times the wrership of today. So that's that's the that's that's what we're gearing up for. Another element uh that the outreach

pointed us towards was on demand service zones. And uh a lot of interest has been shown in on demand service options, sometimes referred to as microtransit uh in areas where fixed route service is not efficient, such as in our community. Valley View has been an area where we've tried a lot of different combinations over the years to provide service uh and fixed route buses are not ideally suited for that community. Uh and then we failed to get traction in any of those scenarios with wrership in that area. uh something like microransit would be a really strong lifeline to that community. Now of course we still do operate paratransit service um in that community. Another area is Muckleio Boulevard where service was rerouted due to construction with the Edgewater Bridge. uh ridership patterns have since shifted uh towards more efficient alternatives and uh in these and it's it's hard at this point to go back to putting service again uh an environment where we've put a lot of different service on the road there in a lot of different configurations and just failed to get a lot of traction with writership. Um so in that situation as well in that context uh having on demand service that can specifically serve people uh in that area uh and provide that lifeline service is is important with these two proposed zones uh identified in the plan. They are forecasted to provide approximately 5,000 trips a year would add approximately 3,500 hours of service. Probably one of the things that you've heard most about Ever Transit is its uh foray into zero mission service delivery with battery electric buses. Uh Ever Transit was an early leader in electric bus deployment with its first fully electric bus arriving and being put into service in 2018. And since then we have delivered approximately 2 million miles of zero mission service which in a

relatively small service area is the equivalent of 80 times around the this this Earth. That's a lot of zero emission service that we've been able to deliver and we're proud of it. Our updated plan includes a balanced approach to fleet management. He transits 48 bus fleet today includes 24 battery electric buses. The remainder of the fleet is a mix of diesel and hybrid buses. All of these use R99 or renewable 99% renewable diesel. Within the first 5 years of this plan, we expect to replace the diesel and hybrid half of the fleet with the latest generation of diesel electric hybrid coaches and continue to operate them on R99. This puts us in a much stronger position to ensure service delivery if the city is uh is for the city in the event of a major storm or similar event that could knock out power to the grid. Under capital projects, we are aligning this plan with the city's transportation improvement plan program. This updated capital expenditure list is also represented in the transportation element of the comprehensive plan. Uh for transit, it includes ongoing maintenance and upgrades as well as one-time large capital needs. Uh the items on the right side of this slide are accounted for in our capital expenditures while those on the left are project by project. A couple of major capital projects projects to highlight include construction and the possible relocation of our vehicle maintenance facility and our operations and administrative facility. The uh buildings here that you see on the left were built in 1964. The one on the right is 1972 and uh they are in significant need of upgrade at this point. We've received at this point significant federal and state grant funding to move

design and engineering of these facilities forward. And we're currently engaged in a site feasibility study to identify the optimal location for relocation of these Phil facilities if that's the direction that we go in. Safety continues to be a priority for all transit agencies and we're doubling down on that commitment as part of our long range plan update. Our goal is to ensure every customer, employee, and member of the community feels safe while using and interacting with our transit system. Ever Transit maintains a federally compliant public transportation agency safety plan that outlines our proactive approach to safety. Currently uh this past year we also conducted a threat and vulnerability assessment for our system and in this coming year we are doing a uh similar plan for emergency preparedness and continuity of operations on the financial picture. In the in our last long range plan adopted in 2018, Ever Transit identified a structural financial gap and recommended pursuing a local sales tax increase to 9/10. That's the maximum allowable under state law without specific state legislative approval. This increase was is was deemed essential at the time to support a growth scenario that called for more frequent buses, earlier and later service and improve connections to the future link light rail and regional bus services. That recommendation remains true for this plan as well. This next slide will show you uh where we're at right now. We are currently at a sales tax ever transit operates on a local sales tax rate of 610 which has

remained unchanged since 2004. This provides enough funding to sustain our existing level of service but not enough to expand or modernize as ever grows. While temporary CO 19 relief funds have significantly helped and supported our operations in recent years, these are one-time funding opportunities and they are winding down. Another new source of support is Washington State's Climate Commitment Act. And the source, this source of funding was vital to Move Ahead Washington, a uh far-reaching legislative piece that came out a couple of years ago, which among other initiatives reimbures transit agencies for allowing youths age 18 and under to ride fair free in Washington. While helpful and exciting, Move Ahead Washington funding is not a substitute for stable ongoing revenue like sales tax. as uh the state's budget concerns increasingly point people towards this uh pool of money and try to repurpose it in other directions. This slide shows Ever Transit's financial future and it shows the impact of what a voter improved 310 increase in sales tax revenue will do to facilitate the expanded growth network. Now as you can see the revenue and expenditures throughout this uh period remain balanced and this facilitates the growth network and it shows projected capital reserves growing in support of durable capital investments. These will undergard and support transit. So the reserves that you see the red line that that increases. It's not that we're here to pile up money in the bank. So when those monies are drawn down, if they're not, if the if there are no expenditures relative to major capital investments, that's the trajectory that

you're going to see with that. But if if along that way you start to see we'll be pulling money out for that Moab facility, maintenance, operations, administration building that we're looking to uh relocate transit into. So, but if it doesn't without those expenditure expenditures, this is the line that you see. So for uh as we wrap up here the strategic roadmap and key milestones uh from 26 through 30 really maintaining fixed route revenue hours in 2030 with council direction and voter approval uh request for a 310 sales tax increase for transit and that's what sets in motion uh the following uh elements here. So, uh, 2031, a 6,000, uh, hour increase in fixed route revenue hours, uh, launching on demand service. 2035, another 5,000 hours of revenue service. In 2037, we're looking at a fuller restructure as Link Light Rail hopefully uh, reaches our community uh, with strengthened regional connections. In 2041, another 10,000 hours, and in 2045, another 5,000 hours. So you see a 26,000 hour increase in revenue uh hours during this time. And that I think there's one more slide and that is the final slide right there. And I'd be happy to entertain any questions if there are some from the commission. electric bus.

Yes, we well there could be a couple on the down list, but right now we're operating all the Gillig battery electric buses. So some of the stories you may have heard about our electric buses involve Proterra and those are more first generation electric buses. Uh those have all been retired now. So we had nine of those Nerf fleet. Those have been retired. and the 24 battery electric Giligs 2022 and 25 versions. Those are out all out in service now. Uh we rolled them out. The first one B0700 was rolled out in 2018. We continue to roll them out through 2021 and here we are at they were retired 1231 2024 2025 I'm sorry.

They didn't last long. Part of that was that Proterra uh went into bankruptcy. We were no longer able to get parts or service, keep them on the road. Question about your facility that you're looking to relocate. I'm assuming you're looking to relocate it because there are other locations that are better for your operations.

Yeah, there's there's a couple of pieces to this. One is that we are really shoehorned into our current operation and and there's a need to expand it throughout this plan. We're we're looking that there's going to be a need for for more space. Um there's also with with the arrival of Linklite Rail, there's the expectation that that area where we're currently located at and where uh City of Everett's public works service complex is located. Uh that that will be more its highest and best use will not be what it currently is today. Sure.

It'll be for some form of development. And so we're we're looking at a few different locations that will um help support us uh long into the future. And when you are done with the existing facility, do you own it currently? And we do. Would you be selling it, surplusing it, and selling it? I would We would. Okay. Yeah. That would help to offset the cost of moving into a new facility. I think it would be helpful even though finances are beyond the purview of this commission. um rather than showing surplus that continues to hockey stick um maybe show the anticipated impact of your capital reinvestment. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you. I had a question about the on demand service being deployed in 2032. Is that just when that's financially feasible or is that something that could be done sooner?

Yeah, right now um you're really looking with on demand service. It's not just a matter of buying a couple vehicles and putting a couple drivers in them. It's really starting a new business line. So, that's going to take staff. That's going to take uh capital rolling stock investment. When we're talking about microransit solutions, they come in a lot of different shapes and sizes. Some of them are turnkey. Some of them are self-operated. Some of them start turnkey and then become self-operated. I think that's what you're seeing with Community Transit's plan right now. Um, so right now we're kind of running at our limit and we don't have the ability to start those two types of initiatives right now until more funding comes in that we can count on. And part of that is that once you roll something out, you don't want to have people really like it and then say, "Yeah, sorry. We can't keep that going." You know, we we want to be able to once we roll that out, we want that to be out there for good. Yeah. Any further comment? Uh, any public comment on this talk?

Thank you very much, sir. Appreciate your time. All right. Uh, old business. I know that we have two items. Um, manufactured housing and critical areas. Uh, folks in the gallery, are you all here for critical areas? You here for manufactured housing? Manufactured housing. Would anybody object if we flipped the business tonight so we could uh do all of the the fun stuff for the folks in the gallery first? Yes. Flip for critical areas first. Yes. No. Uh no manufacturing. Yeah. Current I think we have manufactured housing next on the agenda. There we go. And which will be a briefer uh bit here. Should we launch in? Yes, please.

All right. So, this is a followup. We've had uh work sessions or briefings on this topic in August, September, and and uh January and steadily developed the proposal. Uh I'm covering for Alisanne this evening. She is otherwise engaged. Uh some of the what's new this month versus January is uh uh Commissioner Finch had a good question about local ownership and I think that was a topic of discussion at the last meeting. Alisanne did some work to review all of the different parks and the ownership uh statistics on them and that is presented in the memo. And then the other major piece is that we have a complete first draft of the actual code amendment. So you can see how it would look like in uh in municipal code for the ownership. Um which actually wound up being a um well let me back up. When I briefed the council last week, last Wednesday on manufactured housing communities, uh we did a a pretty basic uh orientation to the topic. Um one question that I remember was what are the criteria that you're looking at for potentially designating uh a park or not in the new manufactured housing zone, which would protect it from redevelopment to other uses. We started there. If you remember back to our first packet and our first uh briefing, we had a set of maybe 10 criteria. I think we walked through them all. Uh not many of them were very satisfactory. Um I think in the end after looking at all of those again and then including this new information on ownership, um that winds up being I think the best criteria. It connects the best to the uh potential vulnerability of residents to displacement as a result of redevelopment um and a couple other factors that uh

that we're interested in when looking at manufactured housing. So you see in the uh memo today we've got uh the statistics on uh local ownership. So I think what local means is um the difference between that and owner occupied is that there are a few owners that own a few homes in these but they are residents of the park but maybe they own two or three other uh homes in the same park. It could be for family members. It could be for rental income. Those were small numbers anyways but that's the difference between owner occupied and locally owned. We saw a pretty clear pattern. Seven out of the 10 were uh were very highly uh local ownership and three of the 10 were almost zero or zero local ownership which means that residents rent both the pad and the unit the structure on it. Um in that case if there were a redevelopment of the site they would not have that structure to have to find a new pad or a new home for. And that's one of the main reasons for this uh uh for this entire proposal is that that is a a real challenge and a uh and a vulnerability for the residents that own the structure but not the land underneath it. So you'll see the proposal then um I I think this has been around where we've been heading this whole time, but the proposal is to reszone uh seven of the 10 that met that uh largely owner occupied structure and designate those for a new neighborhood commercial manufactured housing community zone. The other three would maintain the underlying zone and would not change. The three that would not change would be Broadway Terrace Mobile Home Park, Holly Drive mobile home park, and Pine Street

Mobile Court. Those are also some of the smaller ones out of the 10 that we have in the city. Uh, and the other seven would be reszoned to this new zone. Um otherwise in the memo we've got uh the same map of where all of the parks are within the city and then we have um the specific language that would go into Ever Municipal Code. note among that is a complete repeal of title 17 which addresses mobile home parks um and I think has become a little bit um moot or unused or uh has drifted away from relevance. Anyways, um the short version of these code, it would protect and within the zone, you would the only allowed uses would be continuation of manufactured housing communities. That could include replacement of units one for one. That could include minor reconfigurations if that was in the interest of the parks, but it could not be redeveloped into houses or town houses or anything else. There is a provision for um exiting the program which is in the proposed 1913 270C closing or selling manufactured home parks. It's on page eight of the memo. And um the the core of that was uh no longer reasonably economically feasible and that that could be demonstrated to the city council along with the uh necessary reszone criteria that are already part of municipal code. There's not a whole lot to it. Um, we had a decision to make on whether to develop all of the standards like some other zones, setbacks and minimum lot

sizes and lot coverage and all of those things. Um, we decided to propose modeling it after the parks and open space zone which does not have any of those, but the uses are relatively limited to a uh type that doesn't need setbacks and lot coverage. And in this case, uh, since we would not be building new parks or subdividing land or any of that, uh, we would not be cluttering those tables with another zone that would not use those development standards. Uh, so the development standards are essentially status quo until and unless a uh, park owner was able to demonstrate uh, no reasonable economic path forward. And that would be reviewed by the city to potentially exit this program. Uh other than that, we are planning a public hearing and asking for the commission's recommendation in a month on March 17th at the next meeting. Would love to hear if there's any other information that would uh help. Um I think between now and then we'll do another review of the code amendments. Um, and there may be some minor adjustments, but the broad strokes are there. And the city council uh did extend their appreciation for your work on this so far and looks forward to to seeing this move forward. Any questions on this? A couple of questions, Yoro. Um, I'm looking at the new language on page eight of nine of the memo. Yes. So, um, the title of that in in C, closing or selling manufactured home parks. I think that should be

manufactured housing communities, shouldn't it? To be consistent with Yes. Okay. Great. Um, in number two where it says the city of Everett may require manufactured home park owners. Um, and you may want to adjust that language or not. The may I think is somewhat confusing. Um, if I were to pick up the code and read it, I want certainty and so it's either, you know, will or shall or there's a process by which they determine without having to call you, right, if they need to,

right? um under four where it talks about the um second line um to include any change of circumstances. I think we should be a little more specific as to what those circumstances might be for clarity.

Right. And then number five, um I think you just touched upon this, but it says no manufactured home park owner may close a manufactured home park or obtain final approval, etc. Um, closing a business is a is a decision an individual needs to make. It sounds like there's a process by which they need to have the city approve that. Is that what you're saying? That is what is written here. There is a process in the state law already. Um, but this would add a city layer to that looks like.

Great. And I think just to further clarify what it is we're talking about here, um, we're not talking about all manufactured housing communities. We're talking about currently seven. Right. Right. There's probably a process by which in the future you could add an eighth or a ninth, but we're currently talking about seven. Right. So, we may want to define that term a little tighter and call it a regulated manufactured housing community or something like that. So we're clear that we're not talking about all 10, just these specific seven. Yeah, I think so. Clarifying applicability to only those in the NRMHC zone.

But I I do think that the ownership information uh was very helpful for me. Uh it gave me some clarity as to what it is we're talking about. Um so I appreciate the updated memo. Yeah, thank you for the for the question and the prompt. I had a couple questions, Yoro. Um, if a community were to meet all the criteria to close, would the zoning then revert to what it was previously? No. Part of the reszone process would include identification of a new zone.

Okay. And then to Commissioner Finch's comments, it just got me thinking if we did add another park, would that automatically be zoned in this manufactured home zoning or how would that process work? I I'm pretty sure that somewhere in municipal code we say we are not allowed to add parks or that is the position of the city that no new parks may be established. That's an existing regulation. I think that's not proposed to change, right? There's not much land for new ones. I guess they would be pretty small. Um, but unless we made a change, I think this is the this is the 10 that there could be.

And we're we're using local local ownership as really the litmus test of whether or not they're regulated or not. Um, what if you know as in the course of time the ownership levels drop? Um, is there a threshold by which that once it hits a certain point it's no longer regulated? There's nothing automatic to that point. I guess if a if ownership levels drop or there was another change, that would become part of the owner's uh request to exit the zone. Otherwise, everything would continue as normal. That would just become potentially justification for removing the zone.

Okay, great. And then I guess finally, um, is this the kind of thing that might show up on a title report? So I'm thinking about you know one of the issues here is the park cells right to a new uh ground less or who is leasing property to the homeowners. Um you'd want that kind of thing to be uh known and advertised. And so if there's a way that you can um on title on record make sure that a potential buyer is very aware of this these restrictions I think that would be wise. Good

idea. I would uh second that from Mr. Finch as well. I think the city should cover the title change and recording of that. I think that's a useful thing for potential buyers to have if it gets to that point. Uh any further comment, any public comment on this matter? There we go. All right, we have Mary Fence.

The button right there at the bottom. Um it'll turn green. And if you would please provide your name and city of residents for the record. Uh you'll have three minutes.

Thank you. Uh thank you Mr. Stevenson and commissioners. My name is Mary Fensky. Um I live at Fairway Estates in Everett. Um I am here to um implore you to do something with the zoning to maintain the current status. Um I'm 66 years old. I was working at Boeing. I moved to Everett and with the layoffs um with the strike I was forced to then go on social security. I've worked hard my whole life um but my husband died at 44 and even though he died so young my survivor benefits are more living off of his social security than my own. I put all my money into my house. I just remodeled my kitchen and uh It's all I have. So, if the zoning doesn't protect me and they can just sell to anyone, it would be devastating for me because I don't know if I so I wouldn't be able to sell my house. And so, it's a it's a huge situation. So, I just wanted to put a face and the reality to the issue. I have a lot of also um I think the majority of the park are single female women and uh we just haven't made as much as men because we worked in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s and a lot of them are widowed like me and we just don't have the income and this is critical lowincome housing. People worry I hear all the time about the developers saying well we're going to come in and we're going to create low-income housing. This is lowincome housing and they're destroying it. So that's what I wanted to say. Thank you for your time. Do you have any questions?

No. Thank you very much. Thanks. Any further comment? and Pearson. Is it?