Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. Welcome to a, as I'm reminded, a special meeting because it's at two o'clock of the land use environment committee. And today is Thursday, May 28th, 2026. I would like to call to order this meeting. Roll call. I'm Robert Vanderpool, chair. Paul Barrett, council member.

And Clark Gilman, council member.

All right. Can I, we have a few folks signed up for, can I get approval of the agenda? Yeah.

I move the approval of the agenda.

Second. All right. All in favor, say aye. Aye. All right. We have an agenda. Public comment. We have three or four folks signed up.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Great. Hi, folks. My name is Heather. Although I'm a member of the DPAC, I'm here as a resident of Olympia wanting to share two stories to frame your conversation on sidewalk repair today. The first is about my dad. He's in his 60s. He has a severe traumatic brain injury. He walks either with a cane or a walker. Depending on the day, he can't drive. The other day we were walking back to the car from some food carts when we hit a sidewalk panel that was elevated about six inches from level, and I didn't even notice it until I turned around and realized he hadn't followed me because he was terrified. All of which to say sidewalk repair can be a life and death matter for some people, and I therefore encourage you to think of sidewalks as public goods that are vital to a living city and that the public should pay for. The second story is about a friend of mine who's a rural labor organizer. I remember having a conversation with him where I said something like, isn't it sad that we have to pick between forests to go explore in and the timber industry? You can't have both things. He was the first person to point out for me that that's a false dichotomy, that there's plenty in this big world for us to have a timber industry and forests, but that the powers that be want us to think small that way. And so bringing this back to sidewalk repair, I look to city council and city staff to be creative visionaries who look for alternatives to the narrative that in a city with goals like ours, it's either going to be good sidewalks or large trees or protected bike lanes. i encourage you and city staff to look for prioritization and bundling approaches and funding sources on these projects that will allow us to have all those things like our goals say we should and like other places in the world do thank you very much thank you next we have jim lazar jim

Good afternoon. My name is Jim Lazar, former chair of the BPAC from long ago when we launched the sidewalk program and part of the campaign for the 2004 Parks and Sidewalks measure, which created a million dollars a year for sidewalks. I appreciate the committee taking this up. I'm here primarily to endorse the Planning Commission recommendation to you. that you do more for sidewalk repair than the staff has proposed. In particular, to create a second crew, probably a two-person crew, to do pavement grinding of those smaller half to two-inch lifts, of which there are thousands around the city. acquiring another grinder and a couple of more people shouldn't be that hard. I have looked at the TBD sales tax projection that is in your packet. Unfortunately, that proposal includes three large capital projects, Pacific and State, Elliott Avenue, and Boulevard Road. The city's long-term financial strategy calls very, very specifically that we will not do new programs unless we are maintaining our existing infrastructure. The proposal that is before you from the staff is in direct violation, in my opinion, of the long-term financial strategy. This information that was in the packet, while very helpful, does not include how the million dollars of the 2004 voted utility tax money is programmed and also does not address the general fund appropriation for sidewalks. Prior to the 2004 measure, we had about $175,000 of sidewalks general fund money. The intent at the time of the passage of the 2004 measure is that that money would be rededicated to maintenance. That has not been the case, although the council in the last couple of years has devoted some general fund money to maintenance. I urge you to adopt the Planning Commission recommendation to add a second repair crew to do the minor stuff. I think we could do hundreds of grinds a week, thousands of grinds a year, and address a large amount of our tripping hazard risk very quickly. You should also adopt their recommendation that the city, not the property owner, will have responsibility for sidewalk maintenance. It's part of our street system. It should be maintained the same way as the street system is maintained. It simply makes no sense. to assign that responsibility to the property owner. We can't manage contractors. We would be doing them one at a time. That would be terribly inefficient. Far better to hire dedicated crews that do this work. If there is a case where the property owner has caused damage, to sidewalks, not street trees, but property owner. Parking heavy trucks on the sidewalk, for example. That becomes a property owner responsibility, but the general maintenance of sidewalks should be accepted as a city responsibility. I urge you to move ahead with the Planning Commission recommendation. Thanks.

Thank you, Jim. Larry Chesna. Larry.

Unmuted. Thank you. It looks like you have, I'm looking at the sheet that was in your packet there. If I read that right, it looks at the bottom line. I even studied it. About $5 million in the TBD. And that's a lot of money. And you've been sitting on the money. The city has been sitting on that money for quite a while. And my recommendation is very much along Jim Lazar's. We should spread these fixes quickly and throughout the city. It's summertime. And by the way, these kinds of fixes don't have to wait for the weather. These are kinds of these sidewalk grinding can be done in the wintertime in the rain, whatever. So we could spend start spending this money and start spending it and keep these crews employed all year round. Now, I think it's important to show the public, and I've heard some of this from the other folks of the Planning Commission, to show a benefit for the tax increase. And by only fixing the areas downtown, which you've been fixing for free forever, despite the fact that other homeowners were required to have it as their homeowner responsibility, I think that's time to change. Now I know you associated with the trees, but in effect, what it means is that businesses have been getting this forever fixed by the city at no charge to them while the public has had to gone either without repaired sidewalks or had to pay for it out of their own pocket. And now we have resources to do something about that. We should spread it around throughout the city. There's a cost-effective way to fix many more of the dangerous areas that we heard about earlier and I know about personally and improve accessibility. We need the lifts and sidewalks fixed. And from my information from Lacey, they get a lot more of those fixes done than what I've been seeing described by our staff. So again, I think this is a great opportunity to show the public that their tax dollars are making a difference and they can see it right there. So good luck and thank you.

Thank you. Okay. All right. Includes public comment. Can I get approval of the minutes for the April 23 land use meeting? So moved. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All right. We're on to our first agenda item, which is a briefing on the sidewalk repair policy approach.

Great. Thank you. I'll go ahead and share my screen here. I'm not sure in my notes. That's okay. I haven't given up. I even came to very proper classes. Good afternoon. My name is Michelle Swanson. I am a principal planner in public works transportation, and I am here to brief you and seek your input on a draft sidewalk repair policy. We would like that input before taking the draft policy to the full council for a study session, which is scheduled for July 21st. Sidewalk repair is a broad subject, and there are several city staff members here to help answer questions when we get to them. They are right beside me here, Max DeJarnette, Associate Planner, also in Public Works Transportation. Max has been working with me on developing the policy. Sophie Stimson, Director of Public Works Transportation, has been guiding Max and me in this work. She can help answer questions about the Transportation Benefit District sales tax, which is funding Sidewalk Repair. Sarah Green is the Transportation Operations Supervisor. She has been in charge of building and managing the who are making better duties, and Leanne Wells, who is the city's urban forestry program manager. And that interfaces in several ways with sidewalk repair. So broadly speaking, I'm planning to start by going over how we got here, and then I'll share what we heard during a recent public outreach process. I'll go over the draft policy, and then I'll turn it over to all of you for your questions and input I do hope that it goes without saying that if you have any questions while I'm presenting, we would, of course, be very happy to answer them, and I hope you feel welcome to interrupt. So first, I would like to be clear about the scope of what we're talking about this afternoon, and that is fixing existing sidewalks that are either lifted, cracked, or otherwise need to be repaired. Back here. The city does have a separate program and funding to build new sidewalks. And that program is outlined in the Transportation Master Plan. So this conversation is just focused on repairing sidewalks. And it is some time in the making. So this work began in 2022 when this committee requested that staff research some different approaches to sidewalk repair. And we did that and returned in 2023 with a presentation that covered a variety of possible ways to address sidewalk repair. One of the outcomes of that meeting was the finding that we did not really know how much or where the sidewalk repair was needed. So this committee recommended that the city do a full inventory of that sidewalk network and rate its conditions. We did that inventory in 2024, and the city also began a capital facilities plan program for sidewalk repairs. That program has been funded at a half million dollars annually through the transportation benefit district sales tax. In 2025, we got the final results of the inventory, which we shared with this committee, as well as the bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee and the planning commission. Also for the 2026 budget, city council directed that a four person crew be created to do sidewalk repair. And so now we're here. The crew is in place and it has started working and we are beginning the discussion about a long-term policy approach, which will continue at the July 21st council study session. Like most cities in the United States, Olympia's existing code holds property owners responsible for maintaining the sidewalks adjacent to their property. And like most cities, Olympia has found that enforcing this code has been difficult for a variety of reasons. We are not alone among cities when I say that we have enforced it unevenly when we have forced it. Currently, we have an interim strategy in place, and it works like this. Someone reports to the city that there is sidewalk damage. The city goes out and paints it as soon as we are able to alert people that the damage is there. We send a letter to the property owner advising them that it is their responsibility to fix it. And the city also repairs sidewalks as resources allow on the same streets where we maintain street trees. We are in good company in seeking a better way to improve the state of repair of our sidewalks. And in fact, the state legislature's Joint Transportation Committee has funded a study about new ways that local governments in our state can fund sidewalk improvements. This project is still underway, but one of the preliminary findings is that of the cities that they surveyed, 72% require adjacent property owners to fix sidewalks, More than half reported that this was not effective, and nearly all of the remainder said that it was only somewhat effective. So this leaves only 3% of respondents saying that this is an effective policy. So I mention this to emphasize we really are not alone. Now, in 2023, when I presented to this committee a variety of policy alternatives, they fell along a spectrum that basically broke down between property owners being solely responsible, the city being solely responsible, and a middle ground with a kind of shared responsibility and various options that kind of fell along the spectrum in between. But it is hard to make a decision without knowing the scale of the problem that you're trying to address. And that's why this committee recommended doing an inventory in the city sidewalks and their conditions. So in 2024, we hired a consultant to do that inventory. And of the 226 linear miles of sidewalks in the city, they found almost 28,000 unique locations that needed repair. They rated them based on severity. The results of which are shown in detail in the report. of note was the finding that 83% of the high severity uplifts were related to trees. The importance of posting to the city's website, and you could link to it through the story map that was included as an attachment to your staff report if you were curious about it. Members of the public who might be listening in who can also review the inventory, it is on our website. olympiawa.gov slash sidewalks. I'm going to spell that out for anyone who's listening and can't see the slide. That's o-l-y-n-p-i-a-w-a dot g-o-b slash sidewalks. While the inventory was underway, the city began the Capital Facilities Plan sidewalk repair program, which is funded at $500,000 annually from the new Transportation Benefit District sales tax revenue that the city began collecting in 2024. And that is earmarked for pedestrian, bicycle, and active transportation projects. And you can see the before and after of one of those sites on the slide here. And we're now in the third year of this program. Last year, the city funded four new positions and a mini excavator to do this work. And we estimate that the crew can repair between 20 to 25 sites per year. One lesson that's really clear from this work is the strong nexus that this has with our street tree policy. Right now, the city's practice is to require both the city and private property owners to have an arborist on site and doing sidewalk repair when a street tree is involved so that the arborist can assess whether the tree can be preserved and if its roots can be grown. And there certainly are urban forestry policy questions to explore. For now, Policy questions to examine have to do with where should the city focus its resources? And by resources, I mean both the new crew and the capital program for sidewalk repair. And is there a role for property owners? Given the scale of the repairs that need to be done, it is unlikely that city resources alone will make the progress that the public expects to see. With this in mind, we launched a story map to outline some of the challenges, and we asked the public for feedback in March. A story map is a website that has maps, photos, and a narrative to more easily explain complex topics, and we included a link to it as an attachment to your staff report. We also embedded a survey into the story map to ask people what they thought about some of the key policy questions that I just outlined. Nearly 1,900 people viewed the story map between March 2nd and March 20th when the survey was open. 363 people opted to respond to at least one question in the survey. If you checked out the story map before the meeting, you would have seen a high-level overview of the survey results embedded within it, and we also included more detailed results as attachments to your staff report. And for those who wanted to see any of the raw responses to the survey, they are available on the city's Engage Olympia page, to which we also included a link. And again, if there's anyone listening in who would like to view the story map, it is available at olympiawa.gov slash sidewalks. We got a lot of interesting, nuanced feedback, and we are grateful to everyone who took the time to share their thoughts. Thank you. For all of you, here is a very high-level overview of what we've heard, and that is that people think the city, not adjacent property owners, should be responsible for fixing sidewalks. We heard support for prioritizing repairs near common pedestrian destinations. There is some acceptance of large property owners being held responsible for fixing their sidewalks. And there is also some support for requiring that people fix their sidewalks upon sale of their property. So here's what we know right now. There is a very big need to do sidewalk repair in our city. And city resources are unlikely to meet it. Between the capital facilities plan program and the new crew, the city is now funding sidewalk repair at nearly $1.2 million annually. At that rate, our rough estimate is it will take about 250 years to fix all of the places that need fixing. With the spectrum of possible policy approaches that I mentioned earlier in mind, we considered some options and weighed their pros and cons, which is what is shown on this slide. The first option is that we stay the course with the existing policy and enforce it better by holding all property owners responsible for fixing the sidewalks adjacent to their property. This has the pro of sharing the burden of repair among all property owners in the city, and the cons of being unpopular, difficult, and frankly, unexpected for property owners. The second option is the shared approach, which splits responsibility between the city property owners. As the outreach results indicated, there is some support for this. It is also unfair to require some property owners to fix their sidewalks, not require others to do the same. The third approach is that the city takes full responsibility to repair all sidewalks, presumably with the new crew and the capital facilities plan program. There is strong public support for this, but we will likely not be able to make the progress that the public expects to see in the time that it expects to see it. Therefore, we are recommending a shared responsibility approach, specifically, We recommend that the city crew fix sidewalks near common pedestrian destinations. The sidewalk repair program in the capital facilities plan continues, and it also be focused near common pedestrian destinations. Large property owners be responsible for fixing their sidewalks, and that the city pursue creating a program that requires that sidewalks be repaired when a property is sold. Our ask of you today before advancing to a study session with the full council on July 21st is, do you support these policy components? Would you like to change them? Do you have other direction to offer? And are there questions that you would like for us to explore before the study session? So thank you very much for your time. And if there is someone that's new in, you cannot see my contact information on the slide and would like to get in touch, Please do feel free to email me. My email address is mswanson, that's M-S-W-A-N-S-O-N, at ci.olympia.wa.us, or you can call me at 360-753-8575, and I will turn it over to all of you for your discussion. Thank you.

Thank you, Michelle. It's okay by my councilmates. I'm going to ask if we can put Greg Quinton on to talk about the Planning Commission's thoughts. That's fine with me.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yep. Hey, how's it going?

Good.

Um, yeah, the, uh, planning commission in our last meeting, uh, got a similar briefing and, and had some discussion. I think we're, um, most of the way through our discussion have some preliminary, uh, thoughts. I think it was well covered by Michelle. Um, but we, part of it is just that we think the, you know, sidewalks are a public good and an important thing for the city to maintain for people's mobility. David Ensign, Actually reaching way back to earlier part of this conversation with different planning Commission members, it was noted that folks that. David Ensign, You know, are maybe most vulnerable to damage to the sidewalk or often also those you know we're asking them to report it currently that's a kind of an equity burden upon them. And then for a few, just a quick outline of a few of the topics that we've discussed. The first being about who pays. I think most of the planning commission is on board with this being a city responsibility that we can take on that spreads these costs across the broadest base possible so that we're not surprising a specific property owner at a time. In general, folks lean towards not making a distinction between small and large property owners, while the large property owners may be more able to deal with the contracting or some of the costs that still is passed down to apartment dwellers or smaller businesses in some of the bigger buildings. Then it was noted to try to look for partnerships non-profits and other groups in the city to to address this as it's noted it is a big task uh one thing as i was writing up some of the notes for the planning commission so this is from me not necessarily the full commission but um thinking about the uh report a lot of it or there is a lot of blocked sidewalks due to vegetation and this is hopefully a kind of lower lift level of maintenance that would open up sidewalks and might be more of a community organization sort of task. And then when it came to prioritization, at least in the story map, it's divided between the arterials and downtown streets versus more of a destination organization. And we thought that walking and rolling destinations were a good way to prioritize and staff had come up with a good set of targets for that. Part of this being that having the maintenance somewhat spread around the city so that everyone kind of feel it in their neighborhood in a timely manner. But also, and I think there is some overlap that between the Adrian Holovaty- arterial and downtown streets and and the destination map, but that we should be looking for maintenance that serves the most people walking and rolling those sidewalks so some balance between this kind of geographic diversity and. Adrian Holovaty- Making sure we're getting sidewalks that are most used fixed first. And then finally, looking for greater maintenance or greater investment in this maintenance as a public good. We've seen kind of time to fully fixed estimates that are just too long for the city and trying to find more resources to make this happen faster would be great. And I'll leave it there. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Greg.

Any questions, thoughts? Rather from shallow gray.

Well.

I I do see sidewalk repairs kind of one of the big biggest. Grassroots complaints in the city it's just. You know this is something that affects people I do believe also. That. Oh. Changing tree policies over the years have led to a lot of heaving sidewalks in relatively new neighborhoods that to me should not be experiencing sidewalk repairs so soon after the neighborhood was built. One thing we haven't really touched upon is our civilization has been going on for thousands of years and sidewalks have been in existence that time and that, you know, this is just a personal thing that I feel like, gee, can't we build a better sidewalk that just is gonna live up to some of these standards that we need? You know, these are things that I think about. The one thing that I would say is, I think sidewalks around schools should be prioritized also. I just want to touch upon that. Unfortunately, a lot of the schools throughout the city have no sidewalks, or there are no sidewalks leading up to those. So for me personally, from a policy standpoint, the public safety of kids going to school is a priority of mine. I do agree with Jim Lazar that I think a very efficient thing that could be done is hiring a grinding crew that just moves from place to place to place, grinding, heaving sidewalks, where that technique would be would be effective. I just think it'd be a very cost effective way of, of, of addressing doing, doing the greatest amount of good right away. And I do agree that people will see people out working and grinding those streets. That would be good in our own neighborhood. A neighbor had a big tree that heaved a sidewalk and, and they privately hired a grinder, and frankly, it's worked quite well. That has, that tree, that sidewalk has not reheaved. So as we are thinking about what's the, doing the most good for the least amount of money, I do believe that would be a very effective policy if we could supplement that onto the crew that is, that is going on. So those are just some initial thoughts. How we pay, you know, this is something I honestly have to really struggle with personally. I'm not sure how we should pay. People have a certain responsibility due to the vegetation that they're putting in to neighborhoods on heaving sidewalks. So to some extent the residents does have a personal responsibility. On the other hand, and I think if the city took the full responsibility, we could quadruple the sidewalk budget and people would still be unhappy that we're not meeting certain needs. So I'm not really prepared to answer that question, but I'm open to ideas, and I'm open to all of the ideas that were presented. I do want to make that clear. So those are just some thoughts I have.

Thank you, Paul.

this issue is is what brought me to sophie's office 15 years ago and then on to the bpac committee um so it's it's been a long interest um and i i understand that we've and actually we did a whole another round just a few years before your 2022 one Sophie was first proposing some ideas like the point of sale responsibility. It's a conversation that's been going for decades. There's been what was a 50-year list, now a 250-year list, but we've had long, long lists. And I think that the reality is after decades without holding property owners responsible, it's probably not feasible to suddenly implement, or even, I don't know how you'd phase it in, but I think that's what led to the survey results that Michelle pointed out from the legislature, that it's pretty difficult to pivot so many decades later and say it's your individual responsibility. I'm also thinking about the little signs we have that we were so proud to be a tree city and that the city had a role in promoting tree plantings along streets that turned out not to be the ideal species. And we've learned, arborists and urban foresters have learned over the time that what are more compatible with near the street plantings. So I have those things in the background and I continue to be interested that we take a mobility approach rather than just focusing on these are the lengths of sidewalks that need to be replaced. that if we consider that it's like the asphalt path that goes to Reeves, it's the neighborhood shortcuts, it's traffic calming in neighborhoods, that there's a variety of things in addition to repairing existing sidewalks and adding some new walking and rolling routes There's a number of ways we could try to improve the safety and efficiency of more kinds of mobility. So I hope we can consider that. And this may just be my personal understanding, but as one of the proponents of the 10th of a percent additional transportation benefit district sales tax, I understood that it was not going to replace existing funding sources that we bring together for large arterials and intersections. And we had healthy discussion and debate about that at the time. My understanding when we passed it was that in addition to being focused on bike, pet, and active transportation, we intended to focus it out in neighborhoods that were not major arterial or downtown repairs. So I strongly support whatever sorts of smaller project, lower tech, more distributed, kind of work might happen. And I understand the frustration that it's very difficult to get the money together for a complete street model. And this resource can help to improve the three or four that you've got on the list that are major intersections that we've long wanted to improve crossings or the intersection with the bike path. So I understand that, but I I also, I just, I had a, I thought a clear understanding that this sort of a list was proposed to us as we were considering the additional tax. And we said no to that and asked for a broadly distributed in the neighborhoods project. So that's, you know, that's my understanding is that you would come and ask individually about like the phones road crossing, the Elliott Street, anyhow. So I have a frustration about focusing downtown and a frustration about using this money to help create complete streets on arterials. But I also recognize that the calls for us to look for more funding, there's really only one place we can look for more funding and that's right back to the same local taxpayers who would rather not pay to replace their sidewalk. I don't know that they'd be any more excited to, um, have an additional tax or levy or, you know, whatever burden that would, um, fund the infrastructure that we believe we need.

All right.

Um, I'm agreeing with a lot of what I'm hearing here. I mean, I think that when this comes to the full council, having an understanding, a better understanding of what common areas mean could help. What's a common area? Well, it said in the presentation, common areas is where some of the projects would be built out of. Correct.

Common pedestrian destinations? Yes.

Ah, destinations. Yeah. And like, so I'm... wondering for the full council when this comes to the full council in a study session that we have an understanding of what that is because you know there are the arterials there is the downtown which definitely doesn't also need help but then there are the neighborhoods there is the the question of uh um things like making sure schools are covered which is a conversation we had i think last year or the year before with when we met with the school district um and like how do we ensure that we we meet those needs i'm also you know from from hearing my councilmates here i'm thinking about how like some of the traffic calming work is super important around the idea of if you could reduce the speed far enough on a on a very narrow street right like like a fairly narrow situation, then the need for a sidewalk isn't as high as one that is wide and you have faster traffic coming in, right? And so that's an idea I have in the back of my mind quite often when I'm thinking about sidewalks. I'm also thinking about what some of the public comments said around, you know, as it being a public good, and that for some people it is, not to be life and death about things, but it is important for folks that have to roll around the community. Particularly, I also, I think heavily about where our bus stops are. I know that our downtown is a destination, we have a lot of foot traffic there, but I also think about folks that frequent our bus system, And they get off into a neighborhood from their bus and the sidewalk situation is so dangerous. They have to ride and they have to roll in the street. Right. And that street may be overbuilt and maybe on our transportation master plan in the future, but is a, is a deep concern. So I'm glad that traffic comment gets brought up because that is the other side of it too. When it comes to the idea of, The choice between a hybrid and the city taking responsibility, I don't like the idea of us just letting property owners be the only ones responsible. That's out of the question. Ultimately, to me, it feels like there's two options in front of us. The large property owners is interesting because I agree with the Planning Commission that if we ended up making the large property owners responsible, there is a chance that that could be passed on. to the tenants of an apartment building or something like that. But I am aware of that. I had a little bit of, let me ask a question about for the city. If we were to, if someone had a, wanted to get sidewalk repair done within the next couple of years, and it's not on the list, and they're looking at the cost of private installation, and they say, could I just pay the city to do it? Would that put us in legal responsibility if we did that? If we said that if we could do it at a lower rate than what it would be in the private market, would that be a risk to us?

Not necessarily. You could get sign-offs for us to be able to do repair. I think the bigger issue, and I'll let this team speak to it, might be capacity. If you look at the four-person crew and they're working on the highest priorities, they're not going to have capacity to spin off and then go fix this person's sidewalk on their behalf even if they were willing to pay us. I think that's really the drawback. If you had a crew that theoretically, if you had one crew that was dedicated to priority and you had another crew that was dedicated to going to fix on an on-call basis, but I still don't know how you'd prioritize those calls as they come in. Like, whose do you fix now? Right? So I don't know. It would probably need some more conversation.

There's just one other element that I think is really important, and that is fairness. Fairness of who gets repaired first. Because... On top of that, there's another, some sidewalks are so bad that they're literally kind of like blocking the sidewalk. And so I'm sure the study that was done by the city probably identified how extreme certain areas, but I'm hoping that we can kind of look at these extremely bad sidewalks in a certain order. They'll be in the older part of the neighborhood. It's a city, I assume, although I don't know, you know. But this issue of fairness, I just, it's really important to me that however we approach this, that it's somewhat equitable citywide, that it's not just certain parts of the city and that the entire, that the benefit is spread, you know.

My assumption on this is the crew's out working now based on some priority, but based on the policy choice that you make today. So for example, if you pick a hybrid versus full responsibility, so if the city would take full responsibility, that may change the priorities in terms of how you would go after sidewalk repair versus if it's a hybrid. So that might be helpful to this conversation is based on which approach, how would the crews prioritize the work?

Sophie Simpson, transportation director. I mean, I think at this point, we're still focusing on the street tree corridors, which is the way we've described the materials in downtown. We've heard from the public. There's a lot of logic to shifting to the pedestrian destinations. I think that if the crew continues to do work, that will be the direction that we We take, if that is supported by the full council, ship from street tree corridors to pedestrian destinations. So I'm not sure I'm fully answering your question, Jay, but the crew can work under a hybrid scenario or a full city scenario, full city taking on the full responsibility. The crew's gonna work under both of those scenarios.

I'm just trying to, Paul's question is around I'll try to get into this again. So you guys can help me if I'm not getting it right. But if the state is responsible for everything and we start with the worst first approach, so you start with the worst first, it may not be a pedestrian corridor, it may not be a street corridor. It would just be, I'm going to go to the, I'm going to look at the sidewalk inventory. I'm going to go to the worst sidewalk. I'm going to start there and I'm going to work in order from there, right? Versus an approach that said, I'm going to prioritize pedestrian or street or If the city was in a hybrid, then there may be worse areas that are for smaller homes that remain their responsibility. So then we start over here and we do different sets of sidewalk repair. I think that's, is that somewhat true? I'm not trying to complicate it. I'm just trying to get at Paul's question about.

I think that there is enough repair that If the idea is that we're trying to address the worst locations, we will address the worst locations near pedestrian destinations. And that's planned to you. So I don't know if that answers your question. Michelle and Max, please.

And if it's helpful, we do have a map of those common pedestrian destinations that was included in the story map. It does include schools and transit stops. So I can pull it up here if that's at all helpful.

Can I ask one more attempt at clarifying this? that in those scenarios of who has responsibility, we had talked about having larger property, large commercial and multifamily properties. So if, if, if we take away that responsibility, does it add, um, does that divert? Um, and that's, that's a different hierarchy. And, and would we try to follow development goals or the, um, the amount of foot traffic to a retail or large multifamily complex, and would they jump up the, that's the other wondering I had about if we chose a different priority, how might it impact the schedule or the list?

I think what we would do, what I had thought, please, I need to ask, is I thought that those locations, we would pursue those locations and they would be subtracted from the common pedestrian destination. So I would not be sending the crew out for obvious reasons. They would be responsible for fixing their sidewalks. And then we would go ahead and prioritize the crew minus those locations. Is that fair?

I do kind of want to answer the base question. I think citizens need to have skin in the game on who pays. Homeowners, landowners, those people that have those properties need to have some skin in the game. Currently, they're responsible for all of it, or at least if they have certain kinds of property, they're responsible for all of it. I'm willing to consider something that would be kind of a hybrid of 50-50 or something with the city. I don't think the city can afford to fix all the sidewalks in a manner that the public would want to demand. I don't think that's realistic. Convince me if I'm wrong. It just seems that we're probably talking about certainly tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars. I can't scale the cost. But I do think that citizens and the property owners need to have some skin in the game to just ensure that they're going to take care of that sidewalk while they are living in those places or adjacent to them. So I'm not sure exactly. That could mean a lot of different things. I don't think it has to be 100%, but that there needs to be a certain responsibility. Now, theoretically, I guess you could... If someone was negligent with their sidewalk, the city could do the repair and place a partial assessment or something on that. We could pass an ordinance to do something like that. That would be controversial, probably. But if they've put a semi-truck over their sidewalk and it's broken and it's heaving now and... They planted trees next to the sidewalk in this evening. I think citizens need to bear some responsibility. If a developer has developed a property and they put trees in front of every house, when the homeowner bought that house, those trees were there. They need to have some responsibility. Do they need to have the full responsibility? I'm willing to say a shared responsibility would make sense.

I think on that, I will say a little bit of a counterpoint to that is we often find seniors, first-time homebuyers, struggling to be able to like oh i just bought this home i've been saving to get a home especially in this market they buy a home and they're like wait a minute the person who owned it before didn't do it right or the developer put the the wrong trees in and sold all that properties is now not responsible right that that happens um and so i think if we're talking about like an equitable way of thinking about this i i almost feel like um If, if there was a way to prove like low income, right. Or that they cannot, they couldn't afford it. Right. That's why I had the idea or the thought around, um, uh, uh, I'm interested in the idea of if you did a second crew by chance, and that second crew was a, uh, a lower rate than would it be in the market. And they would just pay into that. But to Jay's point, it's like, how do you decide who that other list is going to be? How do you serve that, right? All of a sudden, you have a huge list that develops. So for me, I think that starting out, yeah. So it's like if we took full responsibility, and we were the only ones doing it, I mean, technically a private developer, a property owner could just still do it under a full system, right? They could just go out and do it themselves. But if we took full responsibility, it would take 200 years easily.

Well, once we took full responsibility, there will be a large percentage of property owners who are doing it who say, oh, that's the city's responsibility. I do believe that you would lose a lot of people doing it on their own. At that point, that's just what I believe.

Tim, do you have any sense of, I don't run into private sidewalk repairs very often. Sometimes if there's a side sewer issue or something, do you have a sense permit-wise how often people are putting in their own replacement sidewalks? Yeah, sorry.

Mark did.

Oh, you looked at this. Well, he did his own. Oh, you did yours. You're a good citizen.

My neighbors who are doctors did not get a permit. I'm quite sure. They just, they did it.

They didn't throw them under the bus on TV. Yeah. Or we could run, we could build our own systems here.

I was just, just for, just to understand Paul's suggestion, I was just trying to, I don't know what, what level of, um, other than sort of, um, as part of redevelopment, um, what level of repair I I'm wondering about, um, Like there's a couple of places I've walked where the neighbors came out to talk to me because the plates have completely heaved and they're on a quiet residential street. So they're just not on the priority, even though they're a dark red in the map. So in both cases, they're elderly folks who are living there who have their own mobility issues. It means somebody has to help them get up and over the curb to get out. Have we considered relaxing the edge standards or creating an alternative? Can they go to asphalt, dirt path, the plastic grid with gravel in it? Is there something that's less expensive and better than rebuilding the road bed and putting in a concrete or pervious sidewalk panel? is that, and I don't even know if it's really less expensive. I, I'm not, I'm not sure, but I'm, I'm wondering if there's anything we offer, whether it's assistance, like, you know, a grant fund or splitting the cost kinds of for low income people or, but, but is there, is there another approach that would allow us to, to get at these, just the, the, the worst spots we were describing that don't match our, our current priority mapping, but,

certainly would help the people on that block can we give up the heads don't do that no i might just say and actually this might be a good question for sarah too but i guess if i had a worry about you know something temporary even an asphalt or something different is then it's going to show up later as another maintenance issue that gets created because it's not sustainable over the long term versus making a permanent fix that we can walk away from and sarah's crew knows they could scratch that off the list for years to come and so i think in this scenario we've i think this team kicked that around for a while about if you were going to help property owners, you know, then you'd create some grant fund of some sort, right? That's another approach to get it kind of Paul's suggestion, because it would be hard, again, capacity-wise for us to go out and split the costs, try to do the work for them. It'd be more, hey, code enforcement says you need to fix your sidewalk. we'll participate 50%. Here's a grant program that you can apply to, to get the money. Maybe you have income criteria. Maybe you don't. I think there's lots of ways you could, you could do that. But I think if you're going to do that, that would be the way you would do it is to create some separate fund and allow people to tap into it to offset the cost of fixing their sidewalks. And then it would take it out of kind of Sarah's teams trying to manage the repairs and take in the money and all of that.

If I can ask a related question, what do we know about, I mean, putting the new panel is the obvious part. And I watched the new crew do an awesome job at 7th and Franklin, one panel in and out in one morning. That was great, but it was because the roadbed underneath it was still intact. But if that's undermined or there's roots to be pruned, do we have a sense of how much especially because so many of these are street tree issues. How much, I just, I don't know if somebody can talk about the difference in the scope or the cost of a project if you have to deal with preparing the bed again before you lay down a sidewalk plate.

I can do that. I'm Sarah Green, transportation operator.

You want to come a little closer so that I'm not sure how far it goes. Thank you.

Come on up, Sarah. That's the second time I've done that.

I think that the base is going to be repaired no matter what. We're pulling out a sidewalk. We're going to make sure that the base is right for the new concrete going in so that there isn't future defects. Asphalt the same. We've done a few asphalt repairs. sidewalk repairs, going over trees to not damage the roots, to not root prune. It's not a permanent fix. It also then leads to defects in the downtown area. It's not ideal because you're at times tracking that tar that heats up during the summer. But the We replace a sidewalk just as our standards would require a contractor to replace it.

Sure. And I'm just thinking if a homeowner or a nonprofit, if we're trying to get to the worst places, it sounds like it can easily turn into a bigger project than putting a set of two by fours up as a little form. And so that's what I'm trying to think about is, especially if it's a tree related issue, it can quickly become a more

complicated solution right not knowing whether or not we can actually root prune until you're out there is hard because then we've already you know dug up a portion of the sidewalk at that point but a straightforward sidewalk panel replacement without a tree can be done in a matter of a couple days versus a week or longer depending on if we had to have a tree crew come in and move that tree And we've got a lot of tree related.

Paul and I got to watch the impressive crew doing a one morning replacement. It was just one plate, but they were in and out. Yeah, that's great. Thank you, Sarah. I appreciate that.

Additional thoughts? Because this will come back in study session. So this will help staff narrow it or add to it.

I just think, I just reiterate, I think that citizens need to have some skin in the game on their property or it just creates more of an ownership in the sidewalk itself also.

How do you feel about the fix upon sale idea?

The fix upon sale idea? Well, I mean, that's, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm a little worried about unforeseen consequences. I guess if there was a cap on, on, on, on an expenditure, $5,000 or something, you know, um, it could be, I don't know how bad, how bad it could be really bad. It could be really cheap. Yeah, that's right. Um, I having some fix upon sale it is not out of you know I might support something like that but I do there are certain examples where low income persons you know low income person who hasn't done anything to their sidewalks for 50 years it's grandma going to assisted living and she's trying to sell her place and it's a you know, $30,000 sidewalk repair. I'm not really comfortable obligating a citizen to that, even though they should probably be responsible.

I think that perhaps that's something about the whole grant program or something along those lines is my thought around something like that. Um, because, uh, it depends on the situation. It depends on the income of the person selling the home. It depends on who's, because I, I do fear that when people buy a new home, they're finally buying a home and they move in and they're like, Oh great. Now I have to deal with this. Right.

So, yeah. Remember, most of the people who sell homes are senior citizens.

That's just something we have to keep in mind. Just to underscore, my one strong concern is the line in the staff report that says that all sidewalk repair funds come from this TBD sales tax. that um and it's it's that issue of supplanting i don't want um this to be the complete street or sidewalk and bike path element of of other road projects um because as we saw it can do three or four of those and then we go into negative forecast for the next several years on the um on the proposal and i would rather that we had a couple million a year spread out in the world um for several years so so that but and i i and i i respect the the wisdom of the approach of you know hitting the the most trafficked places and the key destinations um but um I don't support using this 10th of a percent sales tax to try to fill in what's been hard to accumulate for those arterial projects.

Do we have everything you need from this?

Have we helped at all?

There's two questions in here. Yeah. Where should the city focus its resources?

Well, I, I, I personally believe that we need to do the worst first. And, um, and that is kind of probably a bit of all over, you know, uh, but, um, places that, uh, the sidewalk is so bad that it's really not a sidewalk anymore. But it's good as such. So worst first, I am concerned personally about the thing that I said to begin with. Sidewalk repairs near schools in particular are important to me just because many, many, many schools have no sidewalks. And we're not talking about putting new sidewalks in, but I'd like to see kids walking to school have the safest sidewalk possible.

So my question to you was, do you support staff's recommendation? Do you want to modify the recommendation? Do you have other direction and other questions to explore? And so I heard Council Member Barrett, you have said a couple of times that you strongly support sidewalk repair around schools. And that is included in the Common Sidewalk Archipelago of Common Terrestrial Destinations. And then also, so you know, they are also ranked highly in the program to fill up the Sidewalks, which is, of course, a separate program. So that's a piece of this. And then I've also heard some interest in possible ground program. So that I think I would fall in other direction and possibly questions to explore. And then just as a reminder, the policy recommendation was the shared responsibility that the city crew fixes near public pedestrian destinations, that the sidewalk repair program and the capital facilities plan continues. I'm not hearing any concerns around that. We need concerns around fixing your. Say that again. around. destinations. the destinations around the maps. That's basically trying to ensure that we're getting, we're fixing sidewalks where people are walking the most.

Is that most tied to the planning commission's recommendation? It's a change in the approach, right?

Yes. Moving away from the street tree corridors and trying to repair where people are most likely to walk. There is some overlap between the street tree corridors And it also gets at some of these issues about what about neighborhoods, because there's a lot of schools in neighborhoods, for example. And it gets at these issues around bus stops. So that's what we're trying to do is more logically tie where the repairs would be occurring to where people need to walk.

I think the way that Chair Quentin said, walking and rolling destinations, but we've got to find a balance between spreading it around broadly and the most used stretches of road. But I want to make sure that we're including that spread around element that would be grants, grinding, possibly traffic calming, that that's an element alongside sidewalk replacement moving along. But I think we're just going to have to find a balance to include some of that spread around while continuing to also have a focus on the most used sidewalks and routes.

And then pursuing this large property owner's idea responsible for fixing their sidewalks. Not sure we heard direction either way or not.

Well, we heard concern from Council Member Barron and from Greg. And I also, I mean, to get in the weeds a little bit, large property owner can mean somebody who owns a third of downtown in many separate parcels, or somebody who owns a three-ring binder full of rental houses in my neighborhood, or it can mean just large parcels. And large parcels are easier to define, but in terms of equity, I... I'm not sure that it works to focus on strip malls and apartment complexes being the definition of large property. Tax the rich.

Yeah. I think along those lines, too, is it's hard to define what the economic status of that parcel is, the owner of that parcel.

I will say, in many instances, the city can be the owner of those parcels. In some instances, it's parks. In some And we did hear some concerns about that. There is, I think there's not a clear understanding that school budgets, like city budget, school budgets are, there are capital budgets and then there's budgets for instructions. And so some of the questions that we asked around this, we did talk about that. And the sort of people who are concerned about there was a perception that we could be taking money from instructions from, from instruction to pay for sidewalks. I'm not sure that's actually the case, but I'm not an expert in school. Luckily it would be building maintenance instead. An interest in that. I feel like I should mention that.

Yeah. Which kind of, yeah. repeat that which you said yeah and I'm is that yes I don't think we should assess large property owners or yes I think we should I'm

It would be fine if we assessed apartment buildings, for instance. Although there is that risk that they pass this on. That's going to be a lot of people using a small sidewalk area. I'm just thinking of somebody up in East Olympia who owns an acre of land that is undeveloped. They're not necessarily richy-rich people, but they've lived on that property for 40 years, and that's their home. I mean, that's the debate that goes on in my head. One other thing, we don't need to go down this path, but this equity issue, the city has required one side of the street to have sidewalks and the other side of the street not, in many, many new developments. That's kind of a standard now, isn't it?

That's very clear. be clear that that is our approach to our construction of sidewalks on streets that are missing on both sides then we come back and ensure that our program is putting a sidewalk in on that east one side yeah with new private development frontage requirement well i know i appreciate that but

It's equity is kind of what I'm saying. The person is responsible for the sidewalk that was required by the city and the other side wasn't, but they pay. It's just whatever.

If I may, our question to you is if this is something that you'd like us to pursue in terms of learning more information about this. What I thought was in terms of exploring this is that Um, it is really a practical question. Um, how much progress would we be able to make? And that's really what we're trying to do is, um, figure out how we can meet public's expectations of, um, making progress on sidewalk repair. And if there are property owners that have a lot of frontage, so to get to that question is how do you define a large property owner? And that is a property owner that has X number of feet of frontage with a sidewalk. Then we can certainly do a query. We can find out how many property owners there are in the city. How does this break down? How many of them are in the city? We don't even know. How many of them are other government entities. How many of them are the state? How many of them are the school district? How many of them are multifamily property owners? So this is work that we could do in advance of the study session coming up in July. And we could come back with that information and share it with the full council. And so our question to you is, is that work that you would like for us to do? I would say yes.

because it isn't clear, at least to me, I would need a clear picture by looking at that.

Would this include tall, large buildings like downtown?

I don't know that we could get that from the analysis. We would be using parcel data, and I don't know that that's in the parcel data.

So at this point, we would continue to have the city have responsibility for downtown?

So trying to get you to maybe across the finish line on this a little bit. So I think there's a couple of different things that I've heard. So one approach is the city takes full responsibility for sidewalks. And then within that, there's a couple of choice points. One is we're just a worst first approach, right? The other is this common pedestrian destinations approach. And then there's a variation of that, which is a common destinations approach. And maybe we're bringing on a grinder team or something else to kind of spread out some additional maintenance, right? So there's kind of one, I think, choice point. The other is that you have the shared responsibility within that. prioritizing kind of the walk and roll as kind of planning commission mentioned this common pedestrian destinations and then whether you have another crew or not for grinding is another question and then do you offer some sort of a within that shared responsibility approach a grant program that would allow folks that need to fix their sidewalks an opportunity to get some match yeah I think those are kind of the two different buckets of, as I've heard your conversation, they kind of fit in two different places. Because the large property owner responsibility doesn't, if you want the city to take full responsibility, then we don't need to worry about that conversation about large property owners responsible for fixing their sidewalks, unless you want to say we're responsible for everything but those, right? So there's a few buckets of decision points here. And I think it really starts with shared or full city responsibility and then from there we can then go from there and i'm not sure i'm not sure i've heard consensus either way yet whether it's the city taking responsibility there's a shared responsibility well and i'm and i'm and i'm i'm i'm i'm for shared okay yeah for sure among those two the the third one was just continuing as we are and

having the property owner continue to, there is that, there is that option.

Well, I think given the state of downtown sidewalks and that we're trying to prioritize all these different places, that has to be part of the decision. And that's really where we started several years ago about a point of sale conversation. And frankly, when a parcel sells downtown, it tends to be redeveloped. It gets curb and sidewalk anyhow as the frontage improvements for the redevelopment. But are we still talking about the city taking, we currently take full responsibility for downtown and have sort of informally for several decades. We didn't change a policy, but the practice has been that way. And so that's a question because as we take this project on, making sure that people, once they get to downtown, can move around downtown is also a high priority. And so I don't want us to be silent on that issue. equal question and that to me about the shared responsibility we chose some time ago to decide that it was not the downtown businesses responsibility to maintain the sidewalk as a cities but we also haven't had the capacity to maintain the sidewalks so

If we, so let me clarify your question of this. So if we move towards shared responsibility, I'm hearing a little bit of concern about the downtown.

And would we begin sending those code enforcement letters or doing the replacement and billing people who have not had that expectation for a very long time? Because in fairness, I can't imagine doing the east side and west side nodes and sharing the cost and not having any assessment. Yeah.

There was a public comment about trying to do all, not just doing one, which is difficult with limited budget. But I think that to that point, it would be if we did decide to choose one of the options that's more into the neighborhoods and we move away from doing purely downtown, what would that do cost-wise? Like with downtown, would we not see the same levels of support for downtown? Would that happen?

How much of the 500,000 grinding? Because we started grinding before the 500,000s to get bad spots downtown. Are we investing the majority of that 500,000 downtown? Because I'm seeing the grinding show up in other places, including around schools.

Yeah, we're getting that work. It goes down in the downtown street tree court, or is that where the staff are? That's where Loserios, Cruzeville, Biffin, where it is here.

Oh, person who's thought for your whole career about how to address downtown sidewalks. If we were going to share the responsibility, could you imagine including downtown property owners?

You know, in our recommendation, Michelle, if you don't mind talking to it, let's just talk through how does it get addressed?

It means that downtown would get addressed with Sarah's crew working on high priority destinations, pedestrian destinations, some of which will be downtown, some will be outside of the downtown. So yes, some work will continue downtown. If we continue with this GFD work, similarly, we're gonna address some high priority destinations downtown. It doesn't mean that we're gonna address downtown uniformly. But we are going to address the worst type of damage near pedestrian destinations downtown, just as we would in neighborhoods. The worst damage near pedestrian destinations.

And then this shared responsibility question.

In our approach to shared responsibility, if there's a large property owner downtown, that qualifies under whatever criteria we establish, which for just discussion purposes, say it's 200 feet. And a lot of the downtown would get addressed with the state office buildings with any of the bigger property owners. Similarly, outside of the downtown, the same would occur. If a property sold, then that downtown property would be addressed. I think it's important to note that we're not saying that the burden of a point of sale falls on the seller. That's a point at which those costs are negotiated between a buyer and a seller. So I don't know if I'm answering your question, Clark, but I think what you're saying is you would be addressing downtown just as you would be addressing the neighborhoods, but you would be looking at high severity problems as well as pedestrian destinations. those would rise to the surface throughout the city.

I'll let this go in just a second, but my, my conflict about it seems fair. And we talked about point and sale several years ago, the shared responsibility. And we're also talking about adaptive reuse of existing buildings and, and not requiring full frontage improvements because that's a major expense to what level of tenant build out somebody might do to readapt, to reuse an existing building. And so on one hand, we're trying to encourage more activity downtown. and considering not requiring some improvements. And on the other hand, we have in order to be fair and address sidewalks, we're considering assessing properties to tell them that their sidewalk is out of compliance. And so that's why it's a conflict for me.

It ain't easy. No.

Can Mark talk for a minute about, sorry, you raised a point about how we're funding some of the projects. And I thought it'd be good for Mark just to weigh in and talk about that for a minute.

Yeah.

See, I want to address your concerns. So we're only using that funding for sidewalk repair and projects that are solely focused on active transportation, pedestrian, bicycle, transit, walking, rolling, all those things. So I want to put you at ease. And if we need to meet separately and kind of walk through the projects, for example, the boulevard sidewalk in there is not a reconstruction of Boulevard Road.

It is to put a piece of sidewalk where there's no sidewalk on Boulevard Road.

So it is just a sidewalk project. Now, granted, when we do sidewalk, we have to address stormwater and other things. a phones road project or a clean streets project where we're redoing the road, a capital way project or a phone road or any of those types. So I want to make sure that we think we're following council's intent on how that money was to be used. And like I said, we'd be glad to sit down with you or any of the other council members and just make sure because I don't want to be, and Sophie and the team don't want to be putting projects in there We'll set around that and if there's any clarity that we need to explain the projects a little better to make sure they're not

Thank you. And I acknowledge, so I misspoke, but the sticker shock at having three, you know, between a million and a half and $2 million projects, and then not being able to get out to widely dispersed grinding or that's the tension that I'm feeling, especially as in that CFP forecast, we were in negative, negative money having to find other resources to maintain the four-person crew in those out years. And so that's my concern about spending the balance we've built up on larger projects. But you're right, I misspoke. It's not alongside of a street rebuild. I apologize.

And we'll fix that. That's from the 2026 CFP from last year. So we see that negative occurring. The point I think that's really important to make is, yes, there's a $5 million balance in that fund. But when we're building brand new sidewalks or bread, expensive.

They're million dollar projects. So we have to save that money over multiple years to get enough to use it.

So that's why we have a fund balance now. What we'll fix in this next CMP and the council will be able to see that is we're going to projects don't always go as quickly as we'd like them to. So we're going to probably push some projects out. We may rebalance some things. We may bring in other money potentially. So there's a lot of logistics to that that

presentation.

Our priority will be, just to give a little bit of methodology, we will fund the operational part of the sidewalk repair first out of that TBD sales, because that's a commitment we brought on staff, we brought on equipment, that's our commitment to do that. Then what's left of that, the other $2 million that comes in every year, we will balance that to fund the

active transportation projects.

So that's kind of the methodology staff uses to do that. But I want to make sure the council is comfortable with the projects we're picking. And I just want to offer we'd be glad to go through the scope and make sure one-on-one or however you want to do that or anyone else for that matter.

Thank you. I appreciate it. I apologize for making you all uncomfortable. I'm still on a personal growth journey, you know, trying not to come in swinging so hard.

While I'm talking, I just take a little bit of liberty. I want to emphasize that based on the public comment and just some grinding, we consider grinding a sidewalk to be a temporary repair. Yes, it fixes any concern. There are some limitations on what we can drive on the sidewalks, like if they really can't drive it, they can't offer smoke for accessibility standards.

So sometimes they're so bad we can't drive them.

But we consider that a temporary repair because our experience is, yes, depending on how most of those are tossed by trees, depending on how active that tree is or how aggressive it is, You know, some of those grinds have been bad in a year or two. And some last five or 10 years. It just depends on what's happening. So we consider that to be a different kind of, I don't want to speak for Thera, but we will continue to do grinding with this sidewalk crew. So I'm not feeling like we need a separate crew just to do grinding. We would be back at those spots again in a five to 10 year period at least. not sooner. So we, Sarah already does grinding work across the city, even before she had a sidewalk. So I'm assuming not only is that sidewalk repair replacing concrete panels with concrete, they're also going to be out there doing some grinding work as well. So we're going to balance both of those out. So we can get some grinding done. That'll help us make some progress, but we're going to be very strategic about that because we're going to have to go back. It's not a program.

That helps me. Yes. And there was an expense that when Jay and I met last, he understood that we were going to purchase one of those hydraulic plate sucker lifter kinds of machines. I didn't see it listed alongside the equipment purchases. Is that in the works?

Not actively. We have over the years looked at that. Right, right. It's a strategy. It's another tool we could use, but right now I think we're really focused on... There's probably some applications for it, but I'll just use my sidewalk as an example. We took up the sidewalk and there was roots that had to be dug out of that sidewalk that were as tall as this. And I've got pictures of it. And so there can be so much stuff under there that it isn't just as simple as, you know, getting out on the roof like that. And sometimes it's so obtrusive that you might as well replace the path. So, but it is a tool we can further look into.

Thank you. Just appreciate the clarification. I'm ready to stand down if you're ready to finalize our recommendation. I'm ready.

Shell, what other parts do you need information from us on?

What is your recommendation? That we flesh this out a little bit? Yes.

for the cost-sharing piece. The shared responsibility approach. Awesome.

Thank you very much. And if I may, on a personal note, you are going to be receiving a briefing today, the very last briefing from Joyce Phillips and CPD. And I just want you all to know that when I was in high school, that's when I heard that I was going to be in high school. You should talk to Joyce Phillips because she is a winner. I really respect her. And it's been an absolute joy and pleasure to work with Joyce. And I've appreciated her mentorship and her friendship over the years. And she's given so much to this organization. We've been very, very lucky to have her. So lucky you that you get to work with her last year.

Thank you.

But first. But first, we have a discussion on the 2026 legislative update relating to affordable housing.

Come on down.

Come on down. Okay.

For those of you who attended the Regional Housing Council yesterday, a lot of this information will be pretty familiar to you. So there's a few different elements, but some of it will be a repeat, so apologies for that. Okay, so I will just be providing some highlights on housing-related legislation in 2026. So first of all, I'll just go over a proposed federal bill that's working its way through the process right now. So the 21st Century Road to Housing. What's in your packet is what was passed in March by the Senate. But just last week, the House amended the bill. And so they made a few changes. So there could still be some changes coming, or the Senate could pass the House bill as it is. So hard to say at this point. But I will just highlight some of the proposals that were proposed bills. And I want to just note that the bill itself doesn't appropriate any additional funding. So you'll hear about a lot of pilot programs or grant funding.

no appropriations within the bill itself.

So some of the highlights that were in both the Senate and House versions of the bill included that HUD can prioritize housing projects that are located in or near Opportunity Zones for competitive grant funding for housing preservation and construction. And I know that's something that our team is currently looking into is opportunity zones. And a pilot program is authorized to offer grants and forgivable loans for home repair needs, accessibility modifications and health hazards. So that would be a grant program for low-income homeowners and a forgivable loan program for small landlords who rent affordable homes. housing units to tenants. It would add construction of affordable housing as an eligible activity for community development block grant funds. And it would allow communities to spend up to 20% of their CDBG funding for that purpose. A HUD pilot program is authorized in the bill that would issue competitive grants to assist state, local, and tribal governments with implementing their regional housing planning and community development activities. An additional pilot program was established within the Home Investment Partnerships Program to convert vacant and abandoned buildings into housing. And then it made some changes to the home program, including streamlining environmental reviews, making community land trusts eligible to receive that funding, changing the eligibility for homeownership activities, allowing households up to 100% to be eligible to receive benefits of that program. And then additionally, there's a part of the bill that prohibits large institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes. Next slide.

Can you just say a little bit more?

Yeah.

It doesn't... The single family thing? ...to broadly prohibit a REIT from purchasing any single family homes?

I think they're defining it as if an investor owns 350 homes, they would be prohibited from purchasing any additional single family homes. Okay. And that includes the way that they're defining single-family homes is two or fewer units. All right, so moving on, before we get into the legislative session, I just wanted to highlight in December 2025, Governor Bob Ferguson signed Executive Order 2512, which creates a task force to explore and develop recommendations for a new a state level housing agency. And so we expect a report from that task force in November of this year with their recommendations. And I believe they've met twice and their recordings of those sessions are available on the Department of Commerce's website.

Is that broadly about housing production or is that about public investment housing?

Yeah, so I think the idea is right now a lot of our housing is within Department of Commerce and the Washington State Housing Finance Commission. So it would create a new agency that would entirely be focused on affordable housing, whether that's ownership, rental, kind of creating a specific agency to address housing issues. Next slide. So just to recap, some of Olympia's legislative priorities for this last session were to ensure that some of the funding was maintained at previous levels and not reduced during this tough financial season. And the specific projects and programs that we advocated for were maintained during this session. And then we also had some changes through SB6027, which I'll highlight in just a moment. But it provides us some greater flexibility in how we can spend our local fund dollars. Next slide. So in the capital budget, it included $123 million in funding for the housing trust fund. And an additional $15 million in the operating budget was specifically for permanent supportive housing operators who may have lost or had reduced funding awards from HUD continuum of care funds. So kind of recognizing where there have been gaps in federal funding and having the state step in to help out those providers. So SB 6027 allows jurisdictions to use funds to support the operations and maintenance of not just new construction of affordable housing, but existing projects. And it also allows jurisdictions to use funds for the rehabilitation of existing affordable housing units. And then additionally, it provides some flexibility to provide rental assistance funding within local home funds. And then House Bill 2442 provides some increased flexibility for real estate excise tax. So local governments may use rate two revenues for abating nuisance properties And then starting in January of 2027, cities or counties are authorized to impose a new 1 10th of 1% sales and use tax to provide services assisting children and families. So that includes things like childcare, before and after school programs, workforce capacity building, shelter and rental assistance. Next slide. And there were several bills this session kind of getting at housing supply and intended to increase housing development. So I'm not going to go over each one of these bills today, but I'll just provide some highlights. And there's an additional kind of summary of each of these in the packet that you received with the staff report. And so House Bill 2266 is intended to reduce barriers for citing supportive transitional emergency housing and shelters by allowing these housing types in most areas, except for those areas owned for industrial use. So jurisdictions may not require more owner standards for these types of housing than other lodge or residential uses of the same zone. And then House Bill 1974 authorizes cities and counties to establish land banking authorities to assemble and prepare land for development of affordable housing. And they can hold that land tax exempt And they can also improve the land or clear title or undertake other things that would make it easier for a developer who's developing affordable housing to start that process without the burden of those pre-development activities. And then... Senate Bill 6091 requires that residential properties are publicly marketed and not listed exclusively through a listing agent's network. So that basically just provides prospective homebuyers a more fair chance if they're competing against investors for residential property. Next slide. And then a couple of landlord tenant updates. So Senate Bill 6237 was passed after we had our major flooding event in Western Washington in December. So this law would basically require landlords to provide information to tenants about whether the property is in a flood hazard area and where they can find information about the risks to the property that they're renting. as well as some information that the tenant might want to consider about getting additional insurance to protect their belongings. So that will apply to new leases after December 31st of this year. And then Senate Bill 6200 provides tenants and manufacturers residents the right to install cooling devices in their housing units. And the law does provide some exceptions, such as if a unit already has a heat pump or other cooling device installed. And then it also prohibits landlords from requiring a fee for the user installation of that device. So this is very similar to An ordinance, this last bill, Senate Bill 6200, is very similar to an ordinance that was passed by Olympia City Council in 2024. So the language in our code under 582140 is fairly similar to the bill that was passed this year at the legislature. And so for consistency and clarity, the council could decide to just match the language in our code so that it exactly reflects what's in the state law. Or we could just remove this section of our code and defer instead to state law. And Steph has conferred with our legal department and legal agreed with either of those two options being acceptable. just basically it's a policy decision whether or not you would prefer to do one or the other. Next slide. And then just hopefully before I wrap up, I did want to note, based on this committee's address, something that you've expressed interest in is addressing investment financing. So I'm just highlighting a couple of bills that did fail this year in the legislature but were in So Senate Bill 5496 was introduced first in 2025 and came back this year. But that would limit business entities who own more than 100 single family residential properties from acquiring any additional property. So very similar to what is being discussed now at the federal level, it's just a smaller and a lower threshold for that 100 homes versus 350 homes. And then House Bill 1768 is a similar idea, but for manufactured home communities. So this bill would limit business entities that own more than five manufactured housing communities or 200 manufactured housing lots from purchasing any additional properties.

great and thanks for your time and uh happy to answer any questions okay okay just one thing one of the things that krista mentioned which is cenobo 6200 which is the cooling devices or metal units one thing to consider is that's fairly new for us it's a fairly new piece of omc language that we that we wrote and it might make sense for now to rewrite ours to match rather than take it out because it might cause confusion that we just put it in and then we take it out. Yeah. If you get back to tracking what's happening at the state level, it might make sense for us to just match the language and leave it for now because it's so new. But that's just something for you to consider.

Yeah. Yeah, I'd support that. I think I would support just rewriting it because keeping it in there because people also look at our code.

Yeah.

if they're in a situation and if they don't see it in there, they may not assume that the state is doing it. So, yeah.

Yeah.

Cool. That was an easy decision.

So I just have one wondering about the faith community density bonus. Is that something? I know early on in the Olympia Commons Land Stewardship Group, they met with you and your team. Is this something that's been communicated to that? It's a group of faith communities in town who have large pieces of land and are wondering what to do next. I just don't know if they have this update about this passing.

I think Jacinda was involved in the meeting with them. Get a contact through Jacinda and share that update. This is just kind of a slight update change from a bill that was previously um passed so before it was just um allowing uh it would be 100 affordable units and now it's just a mixed income so i'm not sure whether they were aware of the previous one either so that's something we can just

Yes, at the risk of going down a bunny hole. I think it is a real specific interest because it was difficult to pencil. Well, as you know, through your whole career, it's difficult to pencil out at 100% affordable. But if there's a combination of a density bonus and it can be mixed 20% to 50% or whatever they're saying, that could be an opportunity to make another run at that.

Yeah.

Thank you, and thank you for offering us the congressional update with a straight face. That was nice. I appreciate that.

Any thoughts, Paul?

No, I thank you for that.

It's a great rundown. I mentioned at Regional Housing Council last night that the HB 1974, the land banking is very interesting, particularly from a regional standpoint or through some of our folks. And I do have to respond to your email about the other meeting that's coming up. It's on my list. I will get back to you on that. But the agenda is, on that one but for for some of our non-profit developers in the community that focus around affordability that makes a lot of sense so i'm i'm very curious about that one i can look into the your question further about another rfc would be an entity that could do that because it is yeah because it's

There is some language in the bill around like two counties, contiguous counties entering into an interlocal agreement to establish land making, but it didn't say two contiguous cities.

And then, of course, the condominium insurance law reforms, something that is very needed because that is cited quite often for construction purposes. And I keep, I've been seeing so much about the stacked flats thing from urbanist groups. So I'll be curious to see if we start to see those in the community in the next year. I'd really, and I'd be curious if it starts to see that development.

So, yeah.

That's it for me.

Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, we possibly take two minutes while we're resetting. That's fine. Thank you. Sprint. Sprint.

I think it's like that.

Two crews, one panel.

I do. I took him to his first movie the other day. This was him last night. I feel like you party too hard, buddy. yeah we took him to go see a movie oh my god he was like what's going on what is he now oh he is 14 months yeah he's flying by my baby turns 30 this sunday oh you know what he wanted to play these the He doesn't want to play with his toys. He wants to play with these. He has around the corner piles of toys.

I got this, Dad.

This is just like... Just trying to stack things. And this is me trying to work on stuff, and he's just trying to give Josephine the dog. Nice. Yeah.

My dog literally did eat my son's homework one time. I had to write a note to the teacher. She really did eat it. Oh my gosh, he's so big.

He's like, I'm hanging out with mom.

He's like a baby.

He's getting big fast.

Casey, want to come on up?

There's still good seats up here. It's fine.

So I dissipate pictures.

Oh, good. Good. Good. Speaking of babies, after we saw you, we drove out to Westport. And it was just a little break, just one day. But we watched Mama Sea Lion take her baby and run him up on the edge of the beach. And the baby nursed, and then she nudged it back out.

That's amazing. It was incredible.

Yeah. Right. I'm sure they have seals anyhow in Navarra, right? Maybe not sea lions. You'll find out. All right. You ready for 47? 47 presentations. Hey, number one.

We're going to really, really do. All right.

Hey, I have to like back in order or something.

Yeah.

All right.

So approval of the recommendation code and then Joyce Phillips.

Well, thank you very much. I'm Joyce Phillips. We are here today to give you a briefing on the proposed 2026 code amendments and to share the planning commission's recommendation. This is a group of 47 separate proposals that amend Title 10, which is vehicles and traffic, Title 16, buildings and construction, Title 17, subdivisions, and Title 18, the unified development. So unfortunately, this set of amendments is rather lengthy. And that's because during the comprehensive plan periodic update process that took three years worth of time, we did not run any unnecessary code amendments. We focused on the comprehensive plan update and those related code amendments. And we have kind of a list of three sets of amendments. legislative sessions to get through and a list of, we keep a list of things that the planners or other city staff would like us to clarify, clean up language or make corrections, those types of things. So we keep this list and I opened it up and it got a little bit long over those three years. So it is kind of a long list. But we did do the middle housing requirements last year, and we did those that were associated with the comprehensive plan update. This is sort of everything that's . A few of these are requirements from the state, and a couple of those have requirements to be adopted by June 26. So we didn't want to like, you know, sit on our coattails and not get this done. So we do have two types of proposals. Most of them are proposed by staff, planners, the historic preservation officer, and fire department. And then we do have some that are specific to address those state requirements around something, a type of subdivision called lot splitting, where we allow daycare centers, some information around encroachments and to set back the building height, and then also some provisions we have to address or provide for when we're currently converting existing buildings into residential units. So the primary purpose of these amendments are proposed to just address those issues that have come up over time, provide that clarity for better language, correct code citations, maybe change the heading, just make it more clear. We also tried to flag language that the public identified as being confusing, so we can always try to be more specific later in what we're talking about. We did prepare a companion document to help you walk through the review.

And it was trying to say, this is proposal number one. Let's make sure we're talking about the same proposal.

This is where the request came from, which department. or type of staff, or if it's a state requirement, then kind of identify what the purpose of the proposed outfall would be.

So hopefully that answers a lot of questions for both you and for the public that reviewed this.

I'm going to talk a little bit about the proposals in a slightly different order, though, just because I'm going to try to kind of group them into where they came from. And then when I presented them in order, I tried to present them in the room which they appeared in the OMC itself. So I'm going to twist it around a little bit. So proposals two through six are at the request of the fire department staff, and they're related to fire code. So things like fire access, when certain fire code provisions are required, and things like that. Proposals 21 through 31 are at the request of our historic preservation staff. Those are related to historic preservation and the Heritage Commission. I think they're pretty straightforward. Proposals 7, 12, 14, 18, 34, 38, and 47 are to address the new state requirements. And then in proposals 12 and 38, it was the same code section, and a portion of those are to address state requirements and a portion was meant to address issues that staff had requested. And I don't believe that any of these really are major or significant, but I'm happy to provide more detail around any of the proposed amendments. I really am going to try to quickly highlight the purpose of each amendment over the next few slides. I didn't want to just shove a whole packet of requests towards any reviewing in body. So I tried to do this with the planning commission and members of the public that were tracking this particular set of proposals as well. So proposed to address the state requirements. I think these are the amendments that are probably the most substantive, but they're also the ones that are really designed to specifically address the state requirements. I didn't try to go you know, beyond those amendments. Number seven in our list of proposals is to address lot splitting, which is a new type of two lot subdivision that can be processed simultaneously with federal housing applications, or it can be just run as a standalone two lot short plat. Proposal number 12 is around child daycare centers. They are required to allow them as a permitted use in all rest zone districts. I believe that one was as minor as changing a C from a conditional use permit in one zone to a B, and pretty minor. Number 14 is around addressing specific requirements for new housing units when they're proposed within existing buildings. Proposal number 18 is about when we are required to allow an increase in the maximum building height, and then also limiting requirements for facade modulation and Building upper story step-backs. Proposal number 34 is to address some very specific requirements for residential parking standards. Just when I thought I would never have to amend the parking code again. Proposal number 38 is about things that we are required to allow for projects when existing buildings are being converted into housing units. And that's primarily around like minor encroachments into setbacks to allow for additional insulation, things like that. Proposal number 47 is sort of the sister requirement to allowing daycare centers in all residential zones. We also have to allow them in all commercial zoning districts as well. So I think those are relatively minor and fairly specific. So we were just essentially inserting the state requirement into our code. For proposals by staff, the fire department was proposing numbers two through six and then 21 through 31 by our historic preservation officer. The fire department provisions were to address some new definitions or modifications to definitions, some fire access requirements, and then to clarify when certain fire safety and alarm provisions applied. and then the amendments regarding historic preservation really about updating the purpose of intent language adding some specific language around the heritage commission and then clarifying the duties responsibilities and to add some current citations all right now i have four slides to cover those that are requested by staff and this is really meaningful HAB-Masyn Moyer- And let's see most of these, we would never actually run as a code amendment in and of itself, but it's kind of worth going through the process when we consolidate them, and so we do try to run these types of amendments every year or two. HAB-Masyn Moyer- i'll go through these rather quickly, but please do feel free to ask questions if you have any questions about any of these. Proposal number one is around parking enforcement. And this one was the last one we had on the list from Leonard Bauer. So it took us a while to get to this one. But it was about treating all residential districts the same way around parking enforcement. And our code only called out a couple of residential zoning districts.

Probably from long ago, we didn't have as many residential zoning districts as we have.

Proposal number eight is about adding renewable energy and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to our purpose statements. Proposal number nine is about treating shall and must as requirements in the code. So we're basically adding must because sometimes our code says must and sometimes it says shall. We wanted to acknowledge that in both cases, those are requirements, whereas things like may or should, that's a little more permissive or encouraging.

Additional.

Proposal number 10 is about consolidated site plans for properties that have more than one zoning district that might apply, which is very rare, but it does occur sometimes. And so when that happens, the property would be reviewed based on the consolidated site plan, unless the property is being divided. Let's see, number 11 is around adding some new definitions to the code. Number 12 is about a clarification from the middle housing towards the end of the process during the legal review after the planning commission, we added a definition of large multifamily. So we're just clarifying that and large multifamily is when you have seven or more units. So generally that kind of that first tier single family middle housing, large multifamily. And so we wanted to clarify that large multifamily is allowed in the, um, moderate and higher density zones, whereas middle housing is allowed in all of the zones. Number 13 is around hospice care and removing the maximum number of people that can be cared for and instead relying on the state license that's issued for those. I'll go a little faster. Number 15 is about clarifying that temporary surface parking provisions will apply only when it was previously approved. the parking area, not something that was just sort of showed up and asked to be honored, I guess. Number 16 is about hard surface bonuses and making, clarifying that submerged lands do not count towards the developable area of the lot. Number 17 is about cleaning up the table in the commercial chapter to address some of the things around increasing the readability, addressing the category for large multifamily, and making changes to it to match the format of the related table in the residential chapter. Proposal number 19 is about hard surface coverages allowances and making sure that the commercial properties have the opportunity to get those increases when they can meet certain criteria in addition to those like the residential zones have. Number 20 is about requiring the 10 foot maximum front yard setback in the high density corridors to only apply along the design review corridors or on the streets that are designated as the arterials. Generally the high density corridors front those streets but occasionally they'll snag an extra street or two and then it can be a challenge to apply those same standards to a street that really isn't

Can I check my understanding on this one? I went to read the code, and it's under a commercial chapter. So this is about commercial buildings where we're trying to encourage them to be up against the sidewalk and saying that if they're off of the arterial, but still within that high-density corridor, that they wouldn't be required to be right against the sidewalk.

They could be sent back a little bit further.

Thank you.

Like some of the streets around the hospital. Oh, sure. St. Pete's, Minton Road has that. It's applied to... some of the other properties. I'm trying to think of some of the ones that are a property behind, like if they don't have direct frontage on a street, but the front yard setback says you have to do X, Y, and Z, but they aren't even on the corridor.

Right, it was just, it was the word yard that threw me off, but it's a commercial chapter. So I guess a commercial building can have a front yard, even if it's 10 foot wide.

Thank you. Number 32 is around requiring landscaping plans. to include underground utility lines. It's always kind of a good thing to know when you're looking at that, especially if you're looking at tree perfection measures at the same time. So showing that along with any equipment and irrigation plans if they're applicable. Number 33 is around clarifying that parking exemptions. When we're talking about parking exemptions, we're talking about those that are listed in the parking chapter. Number 35 is expanding parking exemptions in the downtown We want to make sure we're keeping our bicycle parking requirements intact. Number 36 is about meeting bicycle parking standards.

Yeah.

Okay. I was like, wait, what question?

That's a good one.

Number 36 is about meeting the bicycle parking standards when bicycle parking is provided, even when it's not required bicycle parking. Number 37 is pointing out that there are other provisions that apply regarding fences and hedges in some locations. So pointing out the downtown design district and the urban villages were in that section that talks about fencing. Number 38 is about changes to mechanical equipment location and height provisions. Number 39 is around construction noise. Number 40 is about each lot. We have a preference that each lot have some straight frontage. So even when they won't have the whole lot width. So we just noted it as a preference and that ties to some of the language in the eds as well is my understanding.

I'm almost done.

Proposal number 41. So we have some standards for sizes of signs. And then we say that these are the signs that require permits and some There's a section that says you have to meet the size standards, but you don't need to actually get a building permit. And we thought it would be appropriate to put painted signs on that section where you have to meet the size requirements, but you don't actually need to get a building permit. I think that's fair. Number 42 is around allowing two signs when there are two full rights of way. Number 43 is about design review for large multifamily. It's kind of a cleanup of some of the language we have there. And then noting that it's not required when it's not possible from the street. Number 44 is also about design review applicability. Number 45 is around land use review is waived or not required. When that is the case, that design review will be conducted by staff instead of the design review board. And then 46 is when level design review is required, staff will follow the timelines in the administration section of our code. So we took all of this to the Planning Commission and they did conduct a public hearing and deliberated out on the proposal at its meeting on April 6th. Ultimately, the commission is recommending approval of the proposed amendments as written, but they didn't have a recommendation from the city council to consider. And that's not the city considered revisiting the policies that restrict the provision of ground floor housing units in some areas. that we do that later this year. And this is something that is part of Senate Bill 6026, and that has some other upcoming requirements for us to address. So when we look at that, it talks about the requirements of ground floor commercial. And so looking at those things together and that the analysis be informed by the recent vacancy study. I feel like I did not get that out very well, but the planning commission's recommendation letter is included in your packets. I don't know if Greg is still available or not, but I think that they also recognized that there are a lot of that talks about ground floor retail versus residential units, but they wanted that to be part of the conversation.

May I comment here, Chair? So I also was struck by that. And when we had our legislative report, we had some conversation about this. And it also made me think of Leonard Bauer in that as he was proposing form-based rather than use-based codes, that if we still had the pedestrian scale design review guidelines, then I just, I think moving to eliminate the retail commercial requirement and have demand drive how they use the first floor of the building. I'm just really interested in our pursuing that. So I just wanted to flag that, that it's more important to me that those first floors are occupied somehow. And that really is what makes the pedestrian scape work.

we did also bring into that conversation the work that happened with the downtown strategy and the downtown design guidelines. The fact that we really did pull back fairly significantly on where we do require from where we were 10 years ago. So we talked a little bit about that. We talked about the vibrancy of the downtown streets and the interaction of the streets. And just the other thing we talked about was that While we don't always allow ground floor housing units, we do allow for things like the lobby or some of the other things that are associated with the residential units to be on the ground floor. It was a nice conversation. I'm glad. There's a lot there.

I do want to say, I agree with you, Clark. I have real questions about requiring HAB-Jacques Juilland- Retail and ground floor when we need more housing, you know, I just, I'd like to have a further discussion about that.

HAB-Jacques Juilland- One thing the vacancy steady recommended is instead of going from one to the other is HAB-Jacques Juilland- So that we're designing the background for for commercial that could be happy to buy residential That we're not giving it up because there is a lot of research about the benefits of ground floor commercial versus residential for vibrancy of downtown. At residential everywhere, you're basically going to have a streetscape that isn't really alive much. You're not going to draw pedestrian activity. As Joyce mentioned, the city has really brought back that requirement. It's really identified towards the east street corner of downtown. need to do anything to conform to the state requirement or in compliance. So really it's about our policy moving forward. And so our recommendation would be to take kind of a strategic approach and look at maybe the live work unit requirement versus abandoning the concept of retail. Because we've seen some projects like Walker John recently had some vacant spaces filled with basically a school or a restaurant cooking school. So we know over time that space did fill that can help activate that section of the street. So we just kind of like to look at this kind of a strategic approach. And also in terms of this year, it'd be great, but we do have some higher priorities to get done this year, including the curricular ordinance that's due at the end of the year versus the, you know, this topic could be pushed to next year as a work program item. That'd be my recommendation.

And I'm just grateful that you're engaged and that you had the Planning Commission have a conversation on it. Because I do think, I mean, none of us want to have another set of bare steel studs sit around for a decade.

Plus, the vacancy study is going to be presented to the Planning Commission in a couple of weeks. Good.

We didn't have the results of it. The other thing that I think is important to note is we do allow an extra floor in a lot of locations if that floor is for residential units. So we're not trying to do it at the expense of residents. So it's kind of, it's not one simple thing. It's a yes or no. There's a lot. That is everything I have. Happy to answer any questions. Sort of not the most fun as far as like a last presentation to give.

It's not like the comp plan or the CAO that we're going to bring forward.

And also one piece that's in your event. So that's a big step. So we're looking to see why it is next. And I won't have to do it.

I'm very excited about that. The other day, someone gave me one of these stickers that says end all parking mandates. I've been carrying around with me.

I had a specific question about that. Make all residential parking zones the same. Does that mean that people would no longer need a permit in South Capitol Lincoln because they would be different from other zones?

It's just regarding how we treat parking enforcement in residential zones. Right now, we call that a couple of the zones. And I mean zoning districts, not parking zones. And so we're just saying treat all residential parking zones all parking enforcement the same in all residential zoning districts. The parking requirements may be different.

But we wouldn't enforce any more in South Capitol now than we do in the far west side.

It would be if we were doing parking enforcement in R4 to 8 or R6 to 12, they would be treated the same if the parking infraction or issue were the same.

So I still don't understand, since we have areas where we issue residential parking permits, mostly from the library up to Lincoln School, but we don't have those in other similarly zoned neighborhoods.

Let me take a swing at this. So if they were the same zoning type of district, then it would apply.

So if we had an issue around, I believe my understanding of the origin of this request was it was around trying to get, and it stems back from years ago. Like if we were dealing with someone needing to remove an RV that was parked on the street, we would treat that issue the same, regardless of what type of residential zoning district they were in. The parking standards could be different in different parking zones, but the zoning district itself wouldn't say, we're going to treat you one way over here and a different way over there. I still feel like I didn't answer that question.

I'm just going to look and see if we had... No, it's R612 up there in Lincoln School. They shouldn't be treated differently anymore then.

Staff recommendation number nine, shall and must. It occurred to me that when codes are written, sometimes it is may or may, or in other instances, shall. And so it kind of made me wonder about the will of the passage of the ordinance. I mean, I've always understood may to be may and shall to be shall. And it seems to me that this is a pretty radical departure from the meaning of some ordinances if we just universally replaced may with shall and must.

It's actually more to get at the way the state writes its legislation. They use shall and must as requirements. And I'm not going to... It's depending on which person is reviewing the draft ordinance. Some people will change some of the shells, depending on how it's used to must instead of shall to to a land use planner looking at implementing the code at the front counter. If it says shall or must. It's a requirement. We don't have a lot of flexibility if it says should or may. We have a little bit of flexibility to see and so. It's just clarifying that our code, and depending on the newer... Don't you want that flexibility, though? Sometimes. Sometimes we don't.

That's always been my impression. The planning department wanted as much flexibility as it could have, you know, to...

Sometimes. And so, like, for example, when we're applying critical areas ordinances and we have to apply the protective measures from a wetland buffer... depending on the category of the wetland, it will tell us what that wetland buffer is. That's almost always going to be a must, unless there are some places where you can do something different. If you have a wetland biologist that says your wetland mitigation plan will achieve the same or better mitigation measures than if you applied the standard buffer. So, I mean, there are some cases where we definitely want it to be a shall or a must. Especially if we have to address best available science and state requirements.

Forgive me if I misunderstood. I was kind of under the impression you were just changing all maize to shall or must. That's not the case.

So we technically, most of our code is written with shall. Some of the newer versions are being created to say must. And depending on how the word is used. And so we just want to clarify that. that shall or must is always a requirement. And before it said shall is, basically it said shall is a requirement, and now we're saying shall or must is a requirement.

Shall is more of the old-fashioned term, but we're seeing must is more or, in fact, our legal department prefers must over shall. You're just equating the two. They're the same.

Just plain talk.

Because it gives discretion to... you know, to meet the requirement or not. So it's better to have a shall than to have provisions for deviation from that with exceptions. It's much more clear than it should in the development standard. We typically do not use it.

And actually, that's why a lot of the newer stuff you're seeing come out of the state legislature, especially around things like design review. It's like clear and objective standards. They don't want you to have too much wiggle room because then there might, there's more I already met your requirement. You're not there yet. And so it's like, these are the things you have to do, or, you know, or you either have to, or you don't have to. It's fine.

Thank you. Thank you. Of all the things you've raised, that was the one. I got it.

Okay. Just to get back to the residential parking for a moment, because it's actually specifically under truck and trailer parking in residential areas in the OMC. And so I would just want, before it comes to council for approval, reassurance that we're not redefining residential area to apply more broadly to parking. So it's just specific for this truck and trailer parking.

And then we probably want to redefine truck also.

Okay.

Because it says a truck is any motor vehicle designed primarily for the transportation of property. And there's so many people using them as a car.

I'm sure Casey will take care of that for you.

Cool. If you cover that chapter. basically eliminating any of the sub designations of residential and saying this applies to all residential districts. So it is.

I see that all residential uses pursuant to title 18. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I just, so my, my broader concern hopefully just doesn't come into play that this is only about our other favorite topic, which is on street parking of trailers and large vehicles. So trying to avoid the harm. Potentially. It's really just a language cleanup. Okay. It's actually not a change in policy. It's not a change in policy.

Okay.

It's looking at designations that we don't even have anymore.

Thank you, Casey. Thank you.

It was a Leonard Bauer, it needs to be fair kind of thing.

Before we move on, I wanted to see if Greg Whitten wanted to speak a little bit since we kind of moved past that, but I wanted to, I saw him in there.

Hi, Greg.

I mostly just wanted Joyce to know that I was watching her presentation. She felt honored by the, or I could honor her with that, but yeah, you captured it, Joyce. We had a good talk about that section. Thank you. Thank you, Greg.

Any other thoughts? No, no.

concerns? Just, I have benefited so much from Joyce's work. And I also just think she's swell.

I would say you guys have a great and a planning commission staff.

Yes.

And a director. And a city manager.

We'll be in good hands.

Yes, Chair, that's all I need.

I borrow.

I do want to praise Joyce. Joyce, you know, I was one of these people who just watched from anonymously from home, you know, and watched, you know, your presentations on the comprehensive plan, for instance, you know, and anyway, I regret not having the opportunity to work with you longer. I think it's time to enjoy the window, but best of wishes to you. Yeah, that's cool.

I will say the first time I met you, Joyce, I was at Evergreen and I was studying some planning books because for some reason half the books are at Evergreen's library and half of them are not. I contacted the planning department, came up into the archive room and you were like, we can make copies of these if you want. You're going through it and stuff and helping me along, trying to narrow down the scope of my project I was working on, and I really appreciate the support all these years.

I love helping students. It's one of my favorite things. I just passed along an internship announcement to a student I met with last week. Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, thanks, y'all.

Beautiful.

I need a motion.

Can I get a motion? I'll move to adopt the recommendations of the planning commission for the amendments to our city code. Is that a correct motion?

Second. All in favor say aye.

Aye. Thank you.

Joyce has done a number of these code changes over the years. working with our staff, and I think it's really part of her legacy here because she really made Olympia's code more user-friendly over the last 11 years. Olympia had a tradition of being a very hard code to work with, since it was created in the early 90s. I just think, and this needs to be recognized, a lot of Joyce's work is hyperbolic stuff, the middle housing, the prompt plan update, the shoreline update. But these sound rather mundane, but these make a big difference at the counter. Oh, yeah. So it's really important to recognize that. It sounds, you know, going through these changes are all different things, but together they're big.

Thank you, guys.

It's going to be really hard, but I'm going to leave without crying. I'll save the tears for tomorrow. I've got one more day.

That's it. And there's a farewell next week.

Yes. I have it on my calendar. Yeah, we've got it. Staff, any updates?

Yeah, just a reminder, we have a school meeting with Land Use on June 11th. That would be 5.30 and 7 to discuss tenant operating purchase with some stakeholders. And then the next regular meeting is June 25th. Um, I need to meet with chair Vanderpool on the agenda. We need to use items around, but we can talk about that. We do have enough for a meeting. Um, I do have a request. So we normally start at four. We have an all department retreat offsite that day ends at three 30. So I was wondering if we could start at four 30 instead of four o'clock.

Sure. That's fine. Sure. Sure. Any updates from councilmates, city manager? Nope. I guess my only thought is that I always get so much excited about the code amendments that I would always be interested in the future in a process around allowing the planning commission to help us with more and more of that. Allowing them to take recommendations and whatnot. That's just a thought I've been thinking about as we're going through it. That's it. All in favor? Aye.

Thank you.