General Legislative Session - public_hearing

Okay. So how much County council is called to order for our public hearings today is Tuesday, September 15th, 2026 at 6 PM. We're meeting at the Lake Stevens boys and girls club on Lake shore drive and also remotely. And I'll read a script for providing testimony today. And then our clerks will take role. So we'll take public testimony beginning in person. And then remotely we'll open up testimony on each item individually and zoom clip on the hand icon or raise your hand. If you find them by phone, press star nine, raise your hand. and star 60. You each speak one in three minutes to speak, and please start your testimony with your name and city presence. Next, let's roll call. Chair Dunn.

Here. Vice Chair Lowe.

Present.

Council Member Neary.

Here.

Council Member Meade.

Here.

Council Member Ederson.

Here. Chair, I have five members present. Thank you. We have two action items tonight. Do you want to, we'll write them both in? Sure. Okay. But there's two presentations. Two. Okay. There's two. So we'll go ahead and read both items in to the record.

Council considers Ordinance 26-041 relating to the Growth Management Act amending the population, housing, and employment growth targets in Appendix B and the Urban Growth Area Map in Southwest Snohomish County Municipal Urban Growth Area Map in Appendix A of the countywide planning policies for Snohomish County to establish 2044 reconciling growth targets. And Council considers Ordinance 26-042 Leading for management adopting amendments to some of his kind of our comprehensive plan.

Good evening chair and Council members for the record that they'll come to staff the proposed ordinance was first heard at August 19 to us was initially like to get staff. Those elements with them in the population of the unemployment growth targets and then they see of urban growth area map and Southwest and those kind of useful urban growth area map and then they say of the county-wide plan policies for some of the county to establish the 2044 reconcile for targets. As you can review the 20 comprehensive plan updates from jurisdictions and found that there were no discrepancies to reconcile between city targets adopted by cities and the county's adopted targets for cities. SCT did find five key differences in the county's adopted targets and the initial targets in the county-wide planning policy. There are several unincorporated UGA's in municipal urban road areas. The proposed process is to repeal and amend portions of the CPPs and to establish the reconciled road targets, the 20-year road allocations under RCW 36.78.210. Requested actions for announcement take public testimony for considering the ordinance. This concludes my staff report. I'm available for any questions along with Stephen Toy and Frank Slusser of PBS.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm Steve Torrey, principal demographer with Planning and Development Services. And I'm here with Frank Slusser, senior planner also with PBS. I'll be describing the proposed reconciliation amendments to the countywide planning policies recently recommended by Sunwich County Tomorrow. Frank will first describe the Appendix A math amendments, also recommended by Sunwich County Tomorrow, and I'll describe the Appendix B reconciled military amendments recommended by Sunwich County Tomorrow. So specifically, the proposed ordinance adopts amendments to the NUCIA and the Subordinated

I'll hand it over to Frank.

Thank you, Steve. I'm the board director, Frank Slussard, senior planner with Snohomish County. And I'll be speaking to the amendments to Appendix A. Just a quick overview of the proposed amendments to the maps in Appendix A of the countywide planning policies as recommended unanimously by the SCT steering committee. on March 25th, 2026. I will also explain the process for amendments to the Miss Lord and growth area map, the Nougat map, then I'll hand it back to Steve to discuss the Phoenix C. The first map in the Phoenix A is the urban growth area or UGA map. The recommendation from Snohomish County Tomorrow Steering Committee is to update the map to be consistent with the UGAs that were adopted by the County Council and the County Hall County's comprehensive plan. The purpose of this map is to provide a geographic representation of the UGA boundaries that correspond to the recommended reconciled growth targets proposed in Appendix B of the County Redefined Policies. The siting map in Appendix A of the CQPs is the Municipal Urban Growth Areas map or the Mooga map, which shows which areas within the Southwest urban growth area are expected to be annexed by specific cities. The Muga map in the countywide planning policies is the official Muga map, and it can only be updated with agreement of affected cities, a recommendation by the Snohomish County Tomorrow Standing Committee, and then action by the County Council. The amendments recommended by SCT would update the Muga designations for areas that were added to the Southwest UGA as part of the 2024 update of the County Comprehensive Plan. These include amendments in the proximity of Woodway, to include full incorporated area of Woodway within the Southwest UGA and to add the Deepwater Pier southwest edge of the Woodway Mooga. The other revisions affect the east edge of the Southwest UGA near 43rd Avenue Southeast. This area was added to the UGA as part of the 2024 update. The county plan adopted this area to be shown as the proposed Bothell Mooga. However, the city of Bothell opposed addition of this area to the Bothell Mooga. Subsequently, county staff has reached out to pre-planning staff to initiate consultation with them. They have just started work on an annexation strategy and are not ready to make a decision on moving boundary changes at this moment, but may be in the near future. Under policy DP-22 of the countywide planning policies, moving for a city can only be amended with agreement of that city. Once there's agreement with some change tomorrow, certainly can provide a recommendation to the County Council for consideration. The absence agreement of city, the proposal is to show the area as the Southwest expansion area with an asterisk and a note at the bottom of the legend stating that negotiations for city affiliation are ongoing. This approach is supported by Mill Creek planning staff. This way, the county can continue consultation with cities on a Mooga amendment in that area, consistent with the approach outlined in U.P. 22 of the CPPs for designation of a Mooga in conjunction with expansion of the outer boundary of the southwest UGA. And meanwhile, the Mooga map can be brought up to date to provide the geographic basis for the proposed rent and self-growth targets. On March 25th, 2026, the SCT steering committee took action to recommend the official map be revised as proposed, and that was a unanimous recommendation. It has now been forwarded to the County Council for consideration. And now I'll hand it back over to Steve to discuss the amendments to the Appendix B.

Thanks Frank. So the overview of the SUT target reconciliation process, that will address the summary of the proposed reconciled bill target amendments, recommended also unanimously by the Stone's College of Arts, certainly on March 22nd. And note that the proposed amendments do include a small number of corrections for rounding errors made after the Stone's College of Arts moral recommendation. So a little bit of the background, the Canada policies at GF5 and Appendix C call for this review and reconciliation of any discrepancies and adopted growth targets contained in updated city and county comprehensive plans using the SCT process. The SCT recommendation was consistent with the Growth Management Act, the Multi-County Plan Policies, and the Sync Continuities. And once recommended by SCT, the County Council reviews the recommendation and subsequently adopts reconciled targets into the County's Group. A little bit of a background history. This is the fourth time that SCT growth target reconciliation process has been conducted after the adoption of local GMA plans in the county. It started in 1995, followed by 2006, then 2016, and now 2026. So for the current reconciliation process, a review of the 2024 plan updates for all the cities in the county showed that there were no discrepancies to reconcile between the city targets adopted by cities and the county's adopted targets for those cities. There were, however, differences in the county's adopted targets and the initial CPP targets for several unincorporated UGAs and MOGAs which need to be reconciled. The basis for those differences or some of the unincorporated UGAs and MOGAs were the result of capacity changes associated with updated future land use plan designations, development regulations, UGA boundaries adopted by the County Council at the time of the County's plan update in December 2024. It also addressed corrections to critical area features used in the capacity analysis in some of the unincorporated UGAs, the use of updated pending residential project information in some unincorporated UGAs, and a shift of unincorporated urban residential growth from areas with insufficient capacity to areas with adequate capacity due to higher than originally anticipated housing growth targets provided by the State Department of Commerce. And finally, shifts of unincorporated urban employment growth from areas with insufficient capacity to areas with adequate capacity. The SDT recommended reconciled growth target tables for movers also include a separate growth target associated with the unincorporated Southwest Energy Expansion Area adopted in the County's plan. These growth targets are shown on a new row in the mover tables labeled Southwest Energy Expansion Area, unincorporated, Growth in this area have been previously included in the awful unincorporated moving target that is Frank previously described the city of Buffalo was ultimately not interested in including the serious part of their in the sport of the very so as a result this revised approach was recommended by us. The proposed ordinance replaces the existing initial 2044 population also in front of the target tables for you to use and move this independent speed of the county policies with the city recommended reconcile the 2044 both target tables. And the bottom line result of reconciliation with regard to the regional growth strategy contained in the Puget Sound Regional Council's Vision 2050 regional plan, which was used to allocate growth during the 2044 plan update is that there's no significant shifts in the growth shares across Vision 2050 regional geographies as a result of reconciliation. And you can see that a shift of only 110 to 1% and countywide population growth share from 18 communes to urban high-appropriate areas occurred, showing up in the orange, two orange lines, and that with regard to the employment changes shown in the bottom portion of the graph, there were no changes at all in the growth shares by region on chart between the initial and rank itself employment growth target shares. So at this point, any questions that you may have with Brent and I were trying to address?

Questions on Ordinance 26-041? We read both items into the record, so we can take testimony or we can move forward with second presentation. Any comments? Do we want to vote on that one after another? We'll go ahead and since we read it in, we'll do the next staff report and then open up testimony on both items.

Thank you, Chair Dunn. The proposed ordinance 26-042 was first heard at the ARC 17 TLF. The timing date said that we didn't propose. It was initiated by PBS staff, who would advise the men in the population who wanted housing to be a lane whose elements of dependency, the housing element, housing's analysis related to the 2024 for a management and comprehensive plan. Snohomish County Department of Planning and Development Services has completed their final review evaluations of county initiative GMACP. Planning Commission held their public hearing on June 23rd, 2026 to receive public testimony. They deliberated and voted on the proposed amendments with recommendations to approve the amendments within this ordinance. They requested actions for council Stakeholder test my priority, considering the ordinance that is the goods. My staff report and they'll bring questions tonight. We also have Steven here. So I'm burned here to get a brief presentation regarding those proposed amendments.

You know, good evening for record. Shannon Berg planner with long range planning and PDS. I'm walking through the 2026 county initiative conference plan amendments times. Little bit of background, so the county can only amend their comprehensive plans no more than once per year, and that's state law. This year, there's only amendments proposed by PDS, and the bulk of these amendments incorporate the results of the CPP Appendix A and B amendments that you just heard from Frank and Steve on to make sure our plan is consistent with those CPPs. So there's five proposed PDS amendments. The first three have to deal with the SCT target reconciliation process. So the amendments to the public employment element, the housing element, and the land use elements. The fourth proposed amendment is to repeal and replace the land use element maps one through six. And then the fifth one is just a correction to some descriptive information in Appendix C, the housing needs analysis. The first amendment is the population employment to include the Reconciled 2044 population employment targets recommended by SCT. through the target reconciliation process that Steve just walked through. The second is the same, but for the housing targets, the Reconciled 2044 housing targets recommended by SCT. And then there's text amendments to the land use element to reflect the change from the 2020 population base here of 604 people that were in the rural area being moved to the Sluga expansion area. Then the repeal and replace of land use maps one through six. These changes would reflect areas no longer under county jurisdiction, so annexations or tribal trust status. We also included four technical map corrections to make sure our continent maps are shown accurately. There were three new properties reported into tribal trust, all for the Stittla Palm tribe in the Arlington area. There were three small city annexations finalized. One in Monroe, one in Lake Stevens, and one in Parcel and Mount Lake Terrace. This is the land use element map for us. This is the MUGA map in the comp plan. So the amendment is to match the map that Frank described, the official CBP MUGA map. And those, just a quick recap of those amendments. So in the Woodway area, to remove the proposed and crosshatch symbology, to show the full incorporated woodway and the deep bar pier within the woodway MUGA. Also the previously shown proposed Bothell MUGA is being changed to be labeled the SWGA expansion area. Again, with that note in the legend that negotiations are ongoing for city affiliation. And this is a housekeeping amendment to make sure that LE map four in the comp plan is consistent with the official MUGA map and secret piece. So these next four slides show proposed technical amendments for future land use destinations or UGA boundaries to be shown accurately on the land use maps. So the assessor's office updates their cadastral, parcel, and city boundary layers for improved accuracy periodically. And that sometimes leaves our UGA and future land use destination layers out of alignment. So these four proposals are just to make those mapping edits. So we're showing jurisdictions correctly. So the first one is on the north side of Gold Bar on the Wallace River. The proposal is just to amend the UGA boundary and the future land use designation so it's aligned with the City of Sultan on parcel boundaries where it should be. Similar to the north end of Stanwood, so the amendment would raise the Stanwood UGA to be aligned with the parcel boundaries and the City of Stanwood's city boundary. And then in the south part of Stanwood, this amendment is for the future land use designation only. So proposal would be to align that ULDR designation slightly to the west so it's flush with the city of Stanwood where it shouldn't be. And then the last one is in the southern part of Mill Creek. So the proposal is just to align the Mill Creek movement boundary and the future land use layer so it's aligned with the city of Mill Creek along the parcel edge. And then the last one, It's just a descriptive correction to the density assumptions that were used in the land capacity analysis for the multifamily high density corridor along Highway 99. So the 2024 comp plan update process was the early phase of public participation for this project. And then a quick recap on the timeline. Planning Commission was briefed in May. They held a public hearing. In June, our Council was briefed last month at GLS. And then tonight we have the public hearing. And just a reminder of why we're having an evening because Solange County code requires that anytime we make amendments to the comp plan, it has to be an 8-day meeting. And that concludes my presentation. I'm available for any questions. Any questions from Council?

Okay, if there's no questions, we will open up public testimony on both of these items. So if you'd like to provide testimony on ordinance 26-041 or 26-042, you can stand and be recognized. And if you're online, please raise your hand. So one more call for any questions. I'm not seeing any hands raised. So we'll close testimony on these items.

I'm trying to counsel for the first time I would approve of what it's 26 that's 0.1.

And I would be seconded to approve ordinance we success or one is there any discussion. I'm carrying on we will have a roll call vote.

I sure love yes, I'm sorry, yes, I was never hearing. I think he's in attendance. Also we're hearing.

Sorry, I got kicked off there.

Council Member Peterson? Yes. Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Yeah, can you hear us, Nate? Council Member Neering?

Yes. Can you hear me okay?

Yes. So we just had the vote. Okay, great. So Ordinance 26.041 passes 5-0. Next, we'll consider Item 2.

I move ordinance 26-042. Second.

I move and second it to approve ordinance 26-042. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor please, or hearing none, we'll have a roll call vote.

Vice Chair Lowe? Yes. Council Member Meade? Yes. Council Member Nehring?

Yes.

Council Member Peterson?

Aye. Chair Dunn? Yes. So ordinance 26-042 passes 5-0. That concludes our agenda and council will adjourn for the day.