City Council - workshop

So it's 4 o'clock, so we'll call this study session to order. We're all here, so I'm going to pass it over to Ms. Lust.

Thank you, Mayor Potem. This afternoon, we will be spending some time going back through four of the comprehensive plan elements. You have seen these at previous study sessions, provided feedback, but it's been kind of a while for some of them. So before we get into the formal process of bringing these back through Planning Commission and Council for public hearings and adoption, I am giving both Planning Commission and Council the opportunity, just without any pressure of recommendations or decisions or public hearings, going back through once more and seeing if there's any additional feedback or direction that staff would take into account. to form final graphs. Okay, I'll try. So the four elements that we'll be looking at this evening after just a brief introduction for the benefit of anyone who's joining us are economic development, public facilities, parks and recreation, and arts, culture, and history. And then we'll briefly touch on next steps. So in your packet, you have a draft version of each of these elements. Hopefully you've had a chance to review. The draft is the same that Planning Commission saw. The slides that I'll go through, which are also in the packet, do have notes in some places indicating where Planning Commission had feedback.

And were we all supposed to bring a packet? No.

OK. So this is not news, but to catch us in our context here, that cities and counties are required to update their planning and growth management plans. That is the process we are in. There are required elements, land use, housing, capital facilities, utilities, transportation, economic development, parts and rec, and climate change. And then cities and counties can adopt optional elements too as they see fit to complete their 20-year plan. All right, we are somewhere on the right side of the timeline, which is great. Refining our plan elements, we are working on finalizing SEPA. Now that the county has issued their final SEPA determination, we're going to be starting our notification process to commerce soon. and then getting into public hearings with the goal of adoption later this year. Goals for this afternoon, like I mentioned earlier, getting feedback on these revised draft goals and policies to support a final draft that will go through public hearings prior to adoption. Okay. So the first of the four elements we are looking at, and just as a heads up, I'll kind of have two slides for each element. I'll talk for a tiny bit, then hand it over to you to discuss and make any comments on the specific goals and policies you've seen in the packet or ideas you have to enhance what we're working on. So economic development as an overview, this is part of a Crucial objective of the plan is to support jobs and housing balance and fiscal sustainability. We've seen, unsurprisingly, a ton of job growth over the past decade and a half, and it's projected to continue growing through 2045, adding over 9,000 new jobs over the course of that planning horizon. As you all know, both jobs and housing have kind of been a math exercise we've been going through to balance allocation and capacity. With jobs, we're just about right on point with Council's preferred land use scheme. Surplus capacity of 188 jobs indicating adequate employment land capacity, but not a big cushion there. So we need to work strategically with what we have to make sure that that capacity is used efficiently. I guess to take a pause, do folks have the elements that were in the packet? Okay.

All I had was the third page. The copies that I had in my packet.

Okay.

All right.

So how I put together the presentation was instead of putting all the goals and policies on the slides, I focused on what planning commission commented on, so I'm hoping that works and it's still okay. So in addition to everything in the draft, planning commission had a few comments. Be constructive about economic development, thinking about impact fee reductions or other incentives to support infill development, including safe improvements, They had some good discussion about creating policy language that would support third places, especially for remote workers. I'm thinking I think commercial type developments came up in that conversation that are close to neighborhoods. And then also had some good conversation about considering policy to support, explicitly support existing small scale ag businesses. All right, let's pause there and I welcome any discussion on economic development goals and policies, including planning commitments feedback, but anything you saw or read in the draft that you want to comment on, please feel free.

This is more of a question. Our impact fees, are we in line with surrounding communities? Would you suggest, do we need to look at them either to increase or decrease?

Yeah, so I know Mr. Johnson took us through a pretty comprehensive impact fee a couple of weeks ago.

It is.

Yeah. And at that time, I think we're on the higher side for school impact fees more comparable for other ones, is that correct?

Correct. For park and transportation, we're relatively, in our comps, we're somewhere in the high middle. Schools, we have some of the highest school impact fees in the state. But what we recognize, though, is that the reason that those impact fees are higher for schools is because of the growth that we've seen and the needs we have for capital facilities that if you pass a bond that pays for capital facilities, then you don't need impact fees for them. So if we were somehow more able to pass bonds, then those impact fees would go down and ultimately go away. For businesses, that doesn't apply though. For businesses, they don't pay park or school impact fees, they just pay traffic impact fees. They do pay sewer The hookup charges, the water system development charges, the sewer system development charges are a little, they're on the high end for all of us in Ridgefield. So that piece of it is one that I know that council has raised and that the sewer district is aware of that we want to make sure it doesn't become a barrier to bringing business. But that one, that tends to be one of the highest fees for businesses to come that becomes a barrier of some sorts is the sewer district hookups. And those are ones we don't control directly. Those are a pastor.

Do we get any pushback from potential new businesses or other forms of industry, I guess, that would cause us to be concerned?

Sure. Yeah, I mean, I think you've heard some of it. So council has already taken proactive steps to develop programs that give businesses flexibility with regards to fees. You've already created fee reduction programs and a fee exemption program for small businesses throughout the community, as well as allowing payment plans on them. So you already have taken some actions to help what primarily most significantly impacts small businesses. So you already have addressed some of those concerns, but certainly there's something that as we're looking at policies for economic development, It is certainly something that we can take into account is our fee structure and assuring that our fee structure does not become a hindrance, a barrier to bringing business. That's certainly something we can make sure is in the policy.

Thank you.

Claire, would you mind, I guess, diving a little deeper on what the discussion looked like from the Planning Commission about maybe policies that support like impact fee reduction for infill development, like where, I'd love to know more about the thought process with why infill development would, you know, I guess qualify for a fee reduction.

Sure. If I recall correctly, that conversation was largely driven by one member, just to be fair to that. But I think the focus was on thinking about pieces of property like this one, where it's in an already developed area. Is it being used, or is it being used to its highest and best purpose? And thinking about what it looks like going forward to when those properties are identified to facilitate development or redevelopment.

I've got a question on that one, Cliff. infill this piece of property and still accommodate parking.

So this piece of property is an example of infill development that's already occurred. Yeah, so the building we're in.

Okay, I thought I was infilling this piece additionally.

But I mean, we could talk about that piece that we own. And I guess that's the scenario I go through in my mind where, you know, really trying to understand where they're, recommendation comes from because if somebody comes in and they're like hey I want to build there I mean it's I would love to encourage that I would love for them to do an awesome thing when I think about how do I create a nexus between somebody wanting to do that and incentivizing somebody to do something cool and reducing impact fees yeah I mean everybody wants to pay less fees but should that be less fees than You know, other parts of the city that are also doing great things that are, you know what I mean? Like, that's where I'm, I guess, stumbling a little bit. So I want to know.

little bit more about what the thought process was for why we grant that to infill like the person right next to us but not maybe other parts of the city so we generally we already have we have fee reductions in place and have been for years since before I got here there was a fee reduction and exemption program for downtown redevelopment so I didn't really speak to it as infill It was downtown redevelopment and looking at our downtown core and how do we actually promote redevelopment of this area specifically. So that program has existed with fee reductions, impact fee reductions and development review fee exemptions that's existed for a long time. More recently, this council said, why kind of to your point, why would it just be here if these are most affecting small businesses Shouldn't we think about small businesses throughout the community that might be negatively impacted for being able to start a business here? So that's where council ended up expanding that to a larger geographic area, but again, still focused on small businesses as opposed to just downtown redevelopment.

Yeah, I mean, I guess downtown redevelopment makes a little bit more sense because that's a targeted area. Infill could be all sorts of different properties throughout the condition. I don't want to go too far off the path. I just wanted to understand what their conversation looked like a little bit more.

On the previous slide, where did we get the work-from-home allowance number from?

That is from the county, and we have a bit of a difference of opinion, I would say, in what the work-from-home allowance should be. I think their model still uses 4%, which is very low. I think as we have, and we have to acknowledge that that's what the county is using and the number that they show for us. But I think as we have worked on actual goal and policy language, we've assumed a higher percentage to drive some of those ideas. Additional ones too, such as Planning Commission's idea about focusing a little more on third spaces.

Okay, because that seemed really low. It is.

We've pushed back on the county and saying like this 4% is archaic. This is pre-COVID. Not even just pre-COVID. It's 10 years before that. And they have not been receptive to updating it to a more current standard. But again, the good news for us is that there is no minimum or maximum. There is no... problem about having surplus of jobs acres that only becomes an issue as we're talking about housing versus jobs so when we're talking about housing versus jobs allocation them undercutting like the underestimating the number of jobs because we have a higher percentage that are going to be work from home doesn't affect the map which is why we can talk about it still today is that the this part of it is not affected by the map that they ultimately generate

Isn't there, does the port have a project going, I want to say, kind of by Discovery Drive that's supposed to be for like work from home, like office space, like a workspace? Sort of.

They've talked about it being like micro industry. So if you think about like a thousand to five thousand square foot Suites. Yeah, that is more for like micro industry an easy example of it is the overpass art that we had that we commissioned the artists that did the metal art for the overpass art they talked a lot about how Micro industry is the way that they had their space is 2,500 square feet to produce all of these amazing art pieces Not just because that's all the score, but that's all they need. So yeah, they're able to actually use it like co-op space and So I think the port is thinking of something similar to that.

How is that, I guess, considered for zone? Is it just considered a commercial property? Or does it have a different kind of like jobs per acre allocation?

I believe those properties are in employment zones. Which does have a lower jobs per acre than commercial.

I mean, I'm familiar with the term, obviously, like the third place, but for work-from-home people, it's kind of the second place, right? But it's like, is there somewhere in between, like those types of spaces where somebody that works from home, but hey, sometimes I want to be able to get away, you know, and just hunker down in an office without distractions, right? When we talk about it, those types of businesses are popping up.

No. And we talk about it more when we're talking about the mixed use overlays that we use is the mixed use overlays that tend to create those third places, because then you're looking at as part of that mixed use master plan, do they have conference room spaces? Do they have coffee shops? Do they have those third places that are not home or work with that? And like you said, it's more of a second place for people who are working from home, but having those other spaces available. Okay.

When we talk about the third spaces for working from home, do we primarily focus on men in industry versus women in industry who may have children at home with them and what those spaces may look like?

Yeah, that's a great question. I don't think we've thought through implementation of those spaces yet.

I think it should be captured some way when we talk about these spaces and who would use them, and maximizing capacity, looking at all scopes, not just male-dominated workplaces.

Is there anything else right now on economic development? Any of the policies you saw in the draft that you feel need attention? Next is public facilities. The required element under GMA to infer concurrency. And it does work together with our adopted capital facilities plan for stormwater general facilities as well, including city-owned buildings. Those capital facilities plans were adopted in 2024 and 2025. We're working on some minor revisions just to make sure they're keeping up with the comp plan and still complementing each other. The ones Council previously adopted are, for the most part, staying the same. And of course, ties under growth management because the need to match demand for infrastructure and services with growth. So again, a whole bank of draft goals and policies that are generally written to complement the adopted capital facilities plan. So kind of pairing language we see in one document with the other to make sure they're consistent with one another. Planning Commission had one kind of clerical piece of feedback that is a quick fix. And then they had some discussion around whether we should consider policy language specifically supporting green roofs. And that came up again last night when we talked about the climate element with them, too. It seems to be a topic of interest. And how that can be part of a development that makes up, perhaps, for increased impervious service elsewhere.

Do we know what the issue was with the Clark Regional West Water District? What were the signs that the charges did not increase?

Oh, they're there. This is just showing they all wanted to just clean up the language.

Oh, okay.

Okay. Yeah. So not major.

I've got one question. And it bothers me somewhat. Consider policy language supporting Green Road, potentially paired incentives to improve service relations. A lot of the developments where you set the intelligence service down, you get narrower streets, and that makes for problems with driving through them. The ones with wider streets are a lot nicer in my experience. and the ones with the little narrow streets and you have to dodge this car and go back and forth. So is that a desired effect? That's my question.

So that would be something we can consider, but it's for the transportation element, not for the public facilities. The public facilities, we're talking about primarily buildings, storm ponds, our water system. those pieces of it. But that's certainly something that we can take into account for the transportation element, for sure. I mean, we can take this into account for the public facilities. This may not be a policy language that you're interested in for public facilities. And that's fair, too. This is just something that that was planning commission feedback.

I was going to say, why would we even have that around public facilities?

I think it just it was something that came out of the planning commission conversations. but it doesn't mean it needs to be something that you necessarily move forward with. It's up to you.

Could there be unintended consequences with the green roofs and who can, who does that, like narrowing the scope of construction or materials and making things more expensive? I mean, I know we need to have like a climate aspect to it, but what are some kind of consequences that could come from that when it's sort of already expensive?

Probably all of them. I don't know. What concept is the green roof? Is that Moscow now?

Basically. I mean, basically it's a living room. But it's something that you actually try to make a living roof versus you just don't take care of it. But yeah, there are a lot of different examples of living roofs.

With the porch effort to put the solar on the roof of their building out here and then the result of that roof will create, I think, $19,000 a year that will go to help reduce other people's electric bills.

So one of the things to that point, one of the things that we have heard from council over time is for public facilities, focus on providing opportunity for solar on the roofs. That's something that we've heard over time. For Public Works Operations Center, it's something that not in the first phase of the development of the energy efficiency project that we're doing, but certainly as a follow-up phase, there's conversation about the opportunity for thin film or photovoltaic cells on that roof, and that you could do something similar to what the port is doing. So there has been a priority historically, and I don't want to say historically, over the past 10 years, from council to include something about... green infrastructure in public facility roofing, not really focused on green roofs or that aspect of it, but just making sure that it's plumbed so that any of the public facilities that we're creating have the opportunity to have some sort of green infrastructure built into it. I can tell you that the Community and Recreation Center is actually designed to be able to accommodate solar on the roof if we so choose at a future, it's not part of this phase. But if there was money that came, kind of like how the port's working with CPU, if there was money available, we could do it.

I think that last piece there, I'm comfortable with that. Maybe a little bit of a tweak. You know, I would say prioritizing green infrastructure in public facilities because, like you sort of meant, it's a moving target, right? There's all sorts of different concepts that kind of come and go in that space. Some options work in certain locations, some don't. But I also, I don't know, I think that our community culture is... is in line with if we're going to be building something new, because that's something that we look at, right? Oh, well, you know, we're not just, hey, let's build a standard building. What kind of green infrastructure or green elements would make sense with the budget, the location, the use, and all that? So I would say prioritizing green infrastructure, because it doesn't necessarily tie us to one specific solution, but it also speaks to... being of value that we have.

Is that something that resonates with kind of? Yeah. Okay. You can definitely take that into account and put that in there.

Perfect. Anything else either on these topics or mainly one topic that planning commission brought up or any of the goals and policy language from the draft that So again, this is a mandatory element of the comp plan that also has a complimentary capital facilities plan. And then in the case of Parks and Rec, we also have the post plan. So there are a lot of planning documents that we are trying to work together with our other divisions to make sure that the goal and policy language and projects being supported in the CFP and directions in the post plan are complementary to one another. This is our highest level of policy language for Parks and Recreation is in the complement element. As with other elements, growth is driving demand. Definitely a topic we've heard a lot about in our plan is connectivity, access to parks and recreation, equity geographically throughout the city of opportunities to access recreation. Trails, of course, a big topic of conversation. people in the room talking about comp plan. It's an easy and productive thing to focus conversations on. People are experiencing it day to day more than some of these other concepts. That, next slide.

Question, quickly. Could you help me understand where our underserved areas are in Richfield?

Oh, that one.

Oh, yeah. So a lot of exactly there for people have said some people anecdotally said, yeah.

But as that develops, that will potentially take care of itself.

Yeah, there are. I don't think we do.

I don't think it's a problem.

Am I mistaken? On each side are not developers required to establish X number of percent for parks and whatever. What part of the new park are they responsible for? Again, just for my own information.

Yeah, so residential development, which there are fewer of on the east side, less uniform than on the west side. Yes, they're required to have the 25% set aside, including parks and open space. If there is a park or trail in the vicinity of the project in the capital facility plan, then we work with the developer to construct that facility that has been required through the CSC. Typically, those are larger projects than are done park impact fee creditable. Yeah, what does make the east side unique in terms of thinking about providing that park infrastructure is the CFP does identify areas of need for parks and trails over there, but the mechanism might look a little different because they aren't necessarily in areas where there's going to be a residential development where we have that enhanced requirement.

So right now, I'm thinking we have Greeley Park. And what else do we have over there?

Greeley is really the only area that has a significant average.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Yeah. So definitely something to be thinking about as we think about a lot of the developable lands in the city have been around Clark College. And Council on the Preferred Land Use Alternative has identified that as an excuse areas that people are living and working in.

Well, until we build out Horne's Corner, there's not really a great facility for the folks that live in apartments.

No, right.

Those apartments.

Yeah.

It gets me derailed more. Yeah, the townhomes on the east side there, where they have

Uh, but there's a trail system, but most of the open spaces, but you know, beautiful wetlands, but in the middle, that's not really able to be active.

And I believe if you go further down Royal in what the Northwest corner of Royal 15th, I mean, there's a little park there, but not on the, I don't think in any other, there's like a playground. You know, I think that they get, you know, if you look at, like, metrics and data, like how close they are, a lot of them get, they get a lot of credit for being served because of their proximity to the work. But, you know, in practicality, like, yeah, kids aren't riding their bike up Royal to go to the playground. Right. Mm-hmm.

Does that maybe speak to a need for policy directions to be looking at ways to improve park and trail infrastructure in areas that already developed?

I mean, geographic equity was a piece that, when I was on Park Support, we talked about quite a bit. Because I think a lot of times the layout of our city makes it a lot of times challenging. Like I said, you know, yeah, there may be a quarter mile from the RORC, but it's not reality accessible at this point. Well, and there's no playground equipment at the RORC anyway.

Yeah, there is like... Yeah, outside of the middle school. Between 4 and 5 and Field 2. Between Field 2 and Fields 4 and 5 on the outer...

piece like closest to the middle school there's a play there's a player oh okay okay but you know yeah again a kid that lives in seven worlds no right going there so no yeah no there's probably a need for several parts could that be medicine through specific development

We ask them to put in a playground within parks, and then we can go there. It's not just us picking different places to put a playground, but we can do it that way.

It's certainly something agreement-wise. We do have requirements for parks and open space for mixed use, but just for the residential component. Is it 25% of the residential component? Correct. But because it's tighter and there's less acreage, it's not by unit. So the way we do the calculations by acre, so we're looking at the residential as a component. If it's a smaller site with a lot more density, then the area we're talking about is much smaller. And again, should we be adjusting our policies to be providing for the space based on the number of humans, the number of kids and families that are going to be there versus the number of acres, which is the way we've done it on our PUD for a single family.

And the code isn't restricted as to what kind of amenities you have to have. Right. Right. We don't have language requiring that it's a playground, but that's something that can be addressed here.

Yeah, because we do have the policy in the single family PUD. It's half of it has to be active versus passive. on that but but not specifically what if that is but having something really focusing on active play for those apartment areas yeah that's certainly a policy do we have any idea at all as to what percent of the population of legacy and sarah would be children anecdotally We have information that comes from the owners and managers of the property themselves. We also have information from the school district because of bus stops. So they can tell you how many kids are actually coming from those. I can tell you Legacy Trails has very few. I think last time I checked, it was like seven or eight kids. And a lot of that has to do with that they're primarily their studio and then bed. They have some two bedrooms, but not many. And same thing with Acero. Acero is very heavy on studios and ones and not as much on two and there's no threes. And so that's, you just don't get as many kids coming out of those apartment complexes.

Well, and one, one of the apartments, Acero, the gated, they have a pool. So they have some, you know, space.

And a big open area in between the buildings. Like they have a big, kind of open area in between the buildings and the pool and the rec center. Legacy has a little rec center, not nearly. But we did require in the latest phase of Legacy, there was an area that they said that they would set aside for a player.

I was going to follow up with that because I did recall speaking about them putting in a playground structure in the new phase. So I think that will be Yeah, I just don't recall talking about that for their east side. There were, like, for the MAJ Boston.

Oh, for MAJ Boston. Yeah, I don't recall speaking about that.

Fair.

Yeah, no, I think we talked about the ability to get to it from the elementary school mostly. Right.

I don't think there's anything on, like, the current one that's the little strip that I don't think there was any sort of... Oh, there is.

So MAJ is doing that one for Royal Ridge. So Royal Ridge, we did have a requirement that they had a play area. And remember, there was a whole conversation about would it be secure?

And then we tried to incorporate the silo.

Exactly.

Well, so like this conversation, when Judy and I went to Sanderling Park, It was something that came up, and Mayor, I guess, as well, where their clubhouse and pool is fantastic. Oh, yeah. And, you know, we started thinking, like, okay, how does that count towards, like, the parks, trails, and open schools piece? You know what I mean? From, like, an impact feed. And that was just sort of a curiosity I had, because... access is limited. But we also, on the other hand, acknowledge that, you know, you put a neighborhood park in, the vast majority of the people using it are people that live in that neighborhood, right? And so, you know, whether you're talking about an apartment complex, you're talking about a neighborhood like San Juan Park, it's like, do we give any sort of like credit or partial credit for them developing that sort of recreational area, even if it's not a public space?

No, because we do have to, legally, we have to have a public interest in it. And those are the conversations we've had with having at least a public access easement. And so we have worked out deals where we've said, okay, the HOA can own it. The HOA can be primarily focused on that. But we need to have public access. And as long as we can get a public access easement, that is in perpetuity, then we can provide credits for that. If we don't have at least that interest, we can't. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. And it has to be on the project list as well. Sure.

Sure. But I mean, again, at a policy level, creating mechanisms to incentivize developers, whether it be single-family, multi-family, or otherwise, to be building active play spaces for kids and families, that's something that, at a policy level, is something we absolutely can integrate into what we're doing here. And I think it would get to kind of what you're saying is, like, maybe it's not that. Maybe it's not the PIV credits. But there's other mechanisms. We have other incentives that we can provide that would pass legal muster.

Yeah. and the crossing across Ellen Creek to get over to the obstacle, the community park. So they're being required to put that bridge over there so people can cross the wetlands.

I agree. I had not realized that we did not require a play area in apartments. So I guess I think that that's something that we really should require. Apartments are small enough without having any place for kids to go outside and do something.

Well, that's the thing. We specify an acreage for parks and open space, but we don't have specificity on anything about that. Anything that says, oh, yeah, it actually needs to be a place they can play, not just a blank.

Yeah, yeah.

Should have some play equipment in it.

And again, that's something that we can add in as a policy partner. Yeah. But I guess my question is, because I'm not disagreeing. I want the kids to have a place to play. But if it's a complex that is not really... Clearly, they're not developing themselves to really attract a lot of families if it's studios or bedrooms, right? If they are otherwise paying piffs towards a city-owned facility that is accessible... Would we rather that land be used for just general open space as opposed to a play area? I don't know.

I think that's why it goes back to my comment about these being done in development agreements. We're looking at each one that's coming in and what makes sense for the area that it's going in. Instead of doing a blanket policy, we could address this through those development agreements.

I agree. Let us suppose we develop a 55 and over community. Yeah. And require them to have a playground. Hey, maybe.

Some guys like to look down the slide. Yes. Well, yeah. I do like that. A sensory playground. Yeah, we can... maybe back that up with some policy language that doesn't get too descriptive. Yeah. It's broad enough to allow for out, like, in a living apartment. Right. Not to say that they don't want to fight. Right. But then, yeah, that policy can still be in place to drive conversations around. Yeah.

And just to the point of the 55 and older community, going back to that development agreement, if they are allowed, so some 55 and older allow you to have visitors under the age of 18 for X amount of time, we might consider wanting a playground there so that grandparents can go play at the park with their grandchildren and not have any mobility or transportation issues. Yeah. So I think just strengthening that point of individual.

Yeah.

What Clyde wants is a sandbox so he can play with his tonka toys.

No, literally we take the boys to the HOA park at Taverner Ridge almost every time they're out. I mean, it's their favorite, you know, they love to go there. Yeah.

Well, I think, I'm sorry. Oh, go ahead. several years ago allowed the Y to do swim lessons in their swimming pool.

Yeah, they did. That's right.

Yeah, they did. I think they still have that. They did it last year as well. Yeah, where they do a summer partnership of making sure that kids are at least water safe. You know, they're in their apartment complex. Is it a lap pool?

No. No, it's a recreational. But you can get wet. But you can get wet. All right.

All right. Planting Commission can have Any recommendations for changes for parks and rec goal and policy? There was one thing we were thinking about as we were reviving this, though, which is that Council has had conversations about how to prioritize parks when we're thinking about budget and kind of maybe missing some language that would address that, because conversations that I have heard have been focused on hearing about one pro-pirate has been a very interesting project. So that's a new suggestion that we're talking about, whether Council would want policy language like that in this element.

I do like the idea of this. I just would want to be careful with the language so that if something happens to a park where maybe we're fixing it, but we had a little bit of extra budget that we could add something new that this policy wouldn't prevent that from happening.

Yeah, I like them, though. I like to see us spending some of them. OK. Great.

Any other thoughts around that? OK. Last topic for this afternoon is arts, culture, and heritage. This is not one of the mandatory elements, but one we thought would be valued by the community. Yeah, particularly in, you know, previous discussions with Council thinking about how it interacts with downtown, as well as the rest of the city. All right, so some key points in the draft arts, culture, and heritage policies include supporting community identity, sense of place, and economic vitality, enhancing community engagement and quality of life, Leveraging our existing networks of community partnerships and organizations around arts and culture. The concept that comes up again and again of the growth the city is experiencing increasing demand to preserve what is the city's core identity and balancing those two forces as much as possible. And then visibility and access to arts and culture, things, activities, et cetera. So planning commission had some good conversation around this topic. This has got a little specific to parking, but I think, yeah, worth noting that it really gets to the idea of access, right, to arts and culture if a lot of the cities arts and cultural spaces and events are downtown, thinking about what barriers are there to people really accessing those things. The topic came up, the second bullet here is thinking about when you're identifying historic resources, being cautious not to be punitive around things like improvements to historic buildings and policies. And then the third bullet is another kind of wordsmithing. I don't have anything to add to these specific policies.

However, I'm going to go off on a little story time. When we went down to visit Brownsville, Oregon, it is a tiny little town, 1200 people there, I believe. They had in their tiny downtown, like Ridgefield, this incredible museum. And everything in this museum was donated by the community. And they talked about... the native history that was there, to the tribe that was there, anything, family, pictures, books, all of it. And that would be an incredible thing to have here at some point. It would bring the community together and have people come together to kind of share about their family or the history of Richfield or pictures. Yeah, I know we've kind of talked about that before to a degree, but when I was speaking to the woman who was working there, they generate a lot of out-of-town business just for that. Museums, people want to see it. Also, there was a stand-by meeting with film there, so there was a lot of sentiment with that. But for that being such a small town, the amount of people that come into town to see the museum, it was really incredible.

There's a lot of conversation with Ridgefield Main Street as one of the people that would be able to help facilitate stuff like that or partner with.

That's a good idea. We talked one time about the potential of the current City Hall potentially becoming a museum.

Are you all aware that Megan Dudley has got a whole huge group of people working on this? Yes, for the multicultural, for the RMI. on the museum planning and all that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I was in a Ridgeford Main Street meeting last night and they were talking about all the, they're like, we're working with a company called Valley Cove and they're blowing up old, like, pictures that people have brought in and they're going to have a whole thing at the Greeley building.

This is a, but that's a pop-up. That's a temporary set up in the Greeley building that will ultimately, it'll come online before the multicultural festival and be up through that timeframe, but it's not, it's not a permanent.

No, I understand that. But I mean, we don't want to have three or four different things all working, pulling, trying to pull the same information, right?

No, understood. There's also, I mean, there's a, there's also a whole nother group that is like a historic society group in Ridgefield. I forget their, who their leads are in that, but like there's a Ridgefield historical society. And then we work a lot with the Clark County historical society. So like this is, but more at a policy level, it's like, it's us just kind of establishing the overarching policy and then figuring out, yeah, who to work with. Yeah, because, I mean, yeah. But they're not, but the Greeley building is not being established as a place or a space.

No, no, no, I understand that.

Yeah, yeah.

Eventually, I would think from all those sources, we could, you know, eventually pull all that information together. No question. Double it all up. No question about it.

And if we think about You know, we have this document with goals and policies, and then we're working on implementation plans as well. You know, maybe the policy language is something that's already in here that's pretty high level about place making through history and culture. And then implementation tasks become coordinating with partners to identify locations and to promote. Yeah.

And I believe last year we spoke about including the way, like the history signs at different specific locations. Like, what council is this? This is what it used to look like. This is, you know, all the uses that it had prior, just so that we can tie in before and after.

And there is something, speaking to your comment, Councillor, as far as City Hall, I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't misremembering. But there is a policy that actually does cover that, where it talks about under a goal to support the creation of space for culture, arts, and heritage, there is a policy that says when available, repurpose City Hall as a public space for arts, culture, and or heritage displays, activities, and experiences, for example, as a museum, classroom, activity space, et cetera. So it is in there as a policy, at least at a policy level for the 20-year plan.

Perfect.

Don't encapsulate Steve's office. Exactly. We'll have that be a walkthrough. Sit at the desk. Take a phone call.

Make the blinds go up and down.

Watch traffic on the TV. Exactly.

Great. Any other thoughts on arts, culture, and heritage?

Perfect timing. Great.

Well, thank you all. Appreciate it. If you are... If you do think of anything else, feel free to reach out. We will be coming back to you with some more elements. I think the next one we're going to look at is the climate element. Climate Commission looked at a lot last night and provided some more good feedback. So... on maintenance, housing, transportation, and climate. I'm going to flip some, but those are, yeah, those are some of the good elements where they're more dependent on some decisions the county's still making. So we're trying to roll them out in a way that makes sense for tenants. But that is what will be coming next.

Yeah.

If there's nothing else, bye. Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you. Oh, go ahead. A brain. I can't say what I was going to say. Anyway, I would like to see something about Harry and Jeanette somehow getting the U-Haul sign or a sign from U-Haul over closer to In-N-Out. Because a lot of people come to Ridgefield and don't realize it's the birthday of U-Haul. Something. I don't know. I'm not saying... Even on the wall.

I thought we talked about that.

Wasn't there one time a sign? There is. It's right there by, it is up there.

It's in the roundabout where you're paying attention. You're not looking at it. And I think the population is, I don't know, 115 on that sign. But something like that, you know, that would get people's attention like our roundabout bridge. and the bridge field runs about red, were noted for it a little bit. Something with the U-Haul. I'm not trying to promote the dam, but it's a part of our heritage. Yes. The U-Haul started all over the United States. So I'm just throwing it out there. I don't have an idea of where and what, but I think we should capitalize on that asset that we have before us.

You know, we can definitely talk about that as, you know, integrating policies about the physical history, you know, like wayfinding signs, the signage associated with, you know, with the history and heritage, integrating the U-Haul into that. So, yeah, we can definitely do that.

When is the county moving forward with the next step of their comp plan?

They, through their final... Environmental Impact Statement on July 24th. So that is, that does memorialize the map to an extent. The next steps are public hearings. I believe that's the first big complaint hearing they're putting a commission on.

So public hearings on the final decision that they made.

September. They're planning on September hearings, maybe one in October, but their final decision, I think their timeline had it toward the end of October?

Yeah, like October 23rd. Okay.

Yeah, because then they have to send it over to Commerce and there's a timeline for Commerce's.

They've already sent it to Commerce.

Oh, they've already sent it to Commerce. Yeah. Okay, so that's, all right, so they're already in the 60 days. So then the 60 days is included, so yeah, end of October is when they're anticipating being done.

Okay. Hopefully.

Hopefully for that.

They're under a compliance order, so. I know that they're going back to the hearings board. They should have already. Did that already happen? Very soon, if they haven't already done it, they'll be going back to the growth management hearings board to talk through their timeline and make sure that they get an extension on the compliance order from the hearings board.

Yeah, there's only two. We've got about two now.

So Mayor Pro Temit, you're meeting. Anything else that you need from us?

No. OK. Thank you.