Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. This is the Puyallup Planning Commission meeting for 02/11/2026. Call to order at 06:30PM. Clerk, will you please call the road?

Commissioner Sealy? Here. Commissioner DeGroat? Excuse. Commissioner Martin?

Here.

Commissioner Landon?

Here.

Vice chair Taylor? Here. Chair Jonesville?

Here.

Thank you. We have a quorum.

Thank you. The next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda. Everyone's had the time to look that over. I'll entertain a motion to approve. So motion. I'll second. I'll All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? I think that that passes. The next item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from 01/28/2026. All those have had a chance to look over those minutes. I'll entertain a motion to approve.

I'll make a motion to approve.

And can I have a second? Second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Is commissioner I'm sorry. Just for a second. Is commissioner Martin online?

Yes. I am online.

Oh, okay. I couldn't hear you voting, so I was just making sure.

Thank you.

You're welcome. On the commissioner I'm sorry. The next item on the agenda is citizen comments. This meeting also has a public hearing, but we're gonna do citizen comments first. So the way that citizen comments works here is that I will call on all those who have provided their names in advance, and then I will call on other citizens that wish to speak.

When you approach the podium, for the record, if you could please state your name, address, or city council district. And please be advised that each speaker has a limit of three minutes. While you're speaking, the clerk will provide a verbal notice of thirty seconds remaining. And after those thirty seconds expire, we will need to stop you from speaking so that other people can take their turns. As a reminder, this portion of the meeting is so that the planning commission can hear the citizens' feedbacks and, concerns from the community, and there's not a time to engage in debate. Do I have comments that have been submitted?

I did not receive any, in advance to sign up to speak.

Okay. Is there anyone in the audience who wishes to speak as citizen comments? Okay. If you can come on up and give us your name.

And so wanted to pass this out to you guys for a visual aid.

Okay.

Thank

you. Thank you.

Real quick. That will take me over my time. That is a

A map of the growth boundary. The front page is all the growth boundary within the state, and then the the second one is essentially Pierce County South so you can see what the buildable lands actually look like in the state. And be generous on the time because this is a means at all. My name is Isaac Stocks. One three one five a hundred and sixth Street, Puyallup, Washington. Okay. And we're ready to start now. Alright. My name is Isaac. I'm a local homebuilder and developer located in Puyallup.

I'm here to talk about the growth management act. It was first adopted in 1990 and requires fast growing cities, counties, and to develop comprehensive plans to manage their population growth. On the state's website, they have the GMA's 15 goals, and I wanna focus on the top four top four. Urban growth, reducing sprawl, transportation, and housing, specifically planning for and accommodating housing affordable to all economic segments. As you can see, buildable lands are confined to our urban centers.

Outside the growth boundaries, zoning allows just one home per five, ten, and 20 acres. That means the land inside our urban area is not just valuable, it's finite. Puyallup is becoming a true urban center, and we must start treating our buildable land as a limited resource. If we don't, housing costs will continue to outpace wages. And when that happens, our residents don't just struggle.

They leave the area, which weakens our workforce, schools, and community fabric. The planning commission should be directed to examine every regular regulation that affects housing production, every code, every buffer, every critical area designation, every fee, not because protections don't matter, they do, but because we must understand the collective impact of these policies on housing supply and affordability. The state of Washington is dramatically reducing barriers to housing construction, which we which whether we agree every approach is good or not, those changes are coming. And if the city doesn't think ahead proactively, we risk being steamrolled by state mandates. We should be leading and not reacting.

We often hear that developers simply need to build more homes. Let's look at some data. The Phoenix market MSA has about 4,800,000 people. They built roughly 47,000 housing units last year. The Denver Metro has 3,000,000 people. They built roughly thirty nine

Thirty seconds?

Last year. Our metro has 4,500,000 people, and we built roughly half of that, only 20,000 units. This supply gap shows up in our rents and home prices. The average rent in Puyallup is $2,495 per month, nearly $30,000 a year. The average home price in Pierce County is above 600,000. With 10% down, the all in monthly payment is about $4,200. That's $50,000 a year. Year. To qualify for a mortgage, a household needs an income of

Madam chair, the speaker has reached 3,000,000

thousand dollars assuming little or no debt. Think Yes.

You're at the end of your time.

Understood. Thank you.

Thank you. We will be opening the floor back up during public comp for the public hearing. Okay. Does anyone else in the audience would you like to come up and speak? Seeing that there are no further comments, I'm gonna move on to the next agenda item, which is our public hearing for tonight. This next agenda item is, the middle housing code amendments, and we are going to have a presentation from our planning manager, Katie Baker, first, and then opening the public hearing after.

Yes. That's correct. Thank you, madam chair. Katie Baker in the planning division. So I do have a very brief presentation for you. And then, as your chair said, you'll open the public hearing, and then, we're looking for your deliberation questions, discussion, and hopefully a recommendation tonight. So this is the sorry. I need to screen share. Forget.

Okay.

So this is the public hearing on middle housing code amendments. This is something we've, the planning commission has had one major work session on, at the end of last year. I think it was December your December meeting of 2025. But we've talked about middle housing quite a lot in the last few years throughout the comprehensive plan update. We've updated the commission and the public on, a variety of state legislation that has been adopted over the last few years that, directs cities to adopt certain, certain minimum thresholds usually in most circumstances.

So one of these is House Bill eleven ten that we refer to as middle housing law, and this requires that all predominantly residential zones, in cities throughout Washington State, must allow for middle housing. And depending on the size of the city, there are some specifics that I'll get to in a moment. But we do need to allow for at least six of the nine types of middle housing. There's a definition on the screen in front of you, but essentially, it is, housing that is, larger than a single family home but not so large as a multifamily apartment complex. So these are homes that range from duplexes up to six plexes, townhouses, stacked flats, courtyard apartments, and cottage housing.

Those are the specific types and, kind of structures that are included within that definition. So on the screen, you can see some visual examples of the variety of these types. Of course, there is some overlap. You could have a four unit building that is a fourplex as well as a four unit townhome structure. So there's some kind of overlap in some of the terminology, but these things can look a variety of styles.

But, essentially, it's that middle housing type between single family homes and apartments. City Of Puyallup is considered a tier two jurisdiction due to our population size. And so for that, our requirements are to allow at least two units per lot for all properties within a quarter mile of a major transit stop. And for us, that's the Sounder Station downtown. We have to allow up to four units per lot.

And if a developer chooses to build one at least one unit as affordable, so income restricted, deed restricted affordable unit, they can build up to four units, outside of that even outside of that quarter mile, station buffer. There are other requirements in terms of parking. That's that's probably the other big one besides the number of units and the type of housing. So this legislation, had to be adopted by cities by June 30. Because of the time that the comprehensive plan update was taking and staff capacity, we were getting into a little bit of a crunch with that adoption deadline.

And so the city council adopted an interim ordinance to be compliant with the minimum state regulations and put that into place so that we met that deadline while we finished working with them on the comprehensive plan update and then could come back and spend time working on this permanent ordinance and work it through the planning commission. What the council did in that interim ordinance was to adopt a new code section, temporarily for that interim period to meet the minimum compliance. So that, that code section allows for two middle housing units per lot in all single family RS zones and up to four units if at least one unit is affordable. And I just wanted to note that we do have another predominantly residential zone, the RM zones. Those zones already allow for middle housing.

So that's why our focus in the code is specifically on the RS zone chapter. So we allow duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, stacked flats, townhouses, and cottage housing. So we do meet the allowing at least six of the nine types in that interim ordinance. Ordinance. But I did wanna clarify that some of those types can only be built where that unit density is allowed, so if four units are allowed within proximity to transit or if one unit is affordable.

So I also wanted to clarify that, middle housing can be limited on portions of lots with critical areas. The city council, as part of this interim legislation, did adopt a it's essentially a prohibition of these regulations in the volcanic hazard area, or sometimes we refer to that as the lahar zone. So that's essentially the bulk of the valley floor. I have a map here. They did it's a little hard to explain, but, essentially, they established this prohibition in the volcanic hazard area except for areas within, I believe, it's a half a mile of the base of the hill or essentially the north and south edge of the volcanic hazard area.

So, essentially, the area in kind of that pinkish red is prohibited from applying these middle housing regulations. The area in green and any area outside of the green, non colored on that map, would be allowed to apply the middle housing regulations. So this is something that the council did as part of this interim ordinance, and it is carried forward in the regulations before you tonight. I did wanna add that during this interim period and and kind of in dealing with this prohibition, because our the RS code chapter that we've had and the regulations for middle housing that we've historically had in the city, those have still been in place. So property owners within this prohibition area have still been able to utilize our old regulations.

But as we move forward, if this remains in place, it will all be adopted as one code chapter. And so only the new regulations that get adopted are what would apply moving forward. So now I wanted to just go through a bit of what is before you tonight for your consideration and recommendation. As I've mentioned a few times, I think the the city council policy direction was that the interim zoning regulations should be used as a basis for the permanent regulations. So, as we've talked about here, that's what staff has has drafted and brought forward to you.

We are also, packaging some cleanup items with this as well. We did need to add a number of middle housing terms to our definitions chapter. You'll see that we're also taking the opportunity to restructure our definitions chapter a bit, just making it easier to to kind of add terms in the future to the alphabetization. We made a few minor tweaks throughout to some definitions that were a little onerous, but most of the changes in there are pertaining to the middle housing items. So the bulk of the middle housing changes and requirements do live in the RS Zone chapter.

That's 20.2. So we've established regulations that allow for up to two units on any lot that have the allowances for four units if one is affordable or within proximity of the sounder station. As I mentioned, it does currently maintain the Lahar Zone exception for the middle housing allowances applying. We also took this opportunity to streamline the cottage housing regulations. That for about the last, twelve twelve or fifteen years, something like that, we've had a standalone cottage housing chapter.

It started out as a demonstration ordinance. We did make it permanent a handful of years ago, but it's a little funny that it kind of lives on its own chapter. And because middle housing includes cottage housing as a type, we felt it was just easier than having kind of competing potentially contradictory regulations. We would just streamline those and keep them all contained in the RS zone chapter. So that's you'll see a lot of additions in twenty point twenty that deal with cottage housing and then a complete strike through of twenty point twenty one, which is the current cottage housing chapter.

And then we also addressed the parking regulations and requirements pertaining to middle housing. So that is a very brief overview. I'm, of course, happy after the public hearing to answer any more detailed questions you might have, but we are asking for you to hold the public hearing tonight and deliberate and hopefully make a recommendation. The staff recommendation is to forward a recommendation of approval to the city council, and I look forward to answering any questions you have as we move forward.

Thanks for your presentation, Katie. I'm gonna open the public hearing now at 06:48PM. And I'm gonna go over the rules of the public hearing again, because we just opened it. I'm gonna call on those who have provided their names in advance, and then I will call on any other people in the audience who wish to come up to the podium and speak. For the record, when you come up to the podium to speak, please state your name, your address, or your city council district, in which you reside.

Please be advised that each person is allowed three minutes to speak, and the clerk is going to provide a verbal warning at thirty seconds to those three minutes. When the three minutes are up, I do have to ask you to stop speaking. As a reminder, this portion of the meeting is for the planning commission to hear the public's opinions and hear comments from the community, and it's not time to engage and debate. So I'm going to go ahead and open it up. Do we have anyone who has provided names in advance?

We did not get any in advance this evening.

Okay. If you guys don't mind, I'm actually going to ask Isaac to come up first because he was finishing his statement, and then we'll keep on moving. Isaac, do you wanna continue? Thank you.

You guys got the bulk of the last one. This is what is the most important part here. So Isaac Stocks, 1315 706th, Peop, Washington. I'm here tonight to respectfully challenge you to be more supportive of the state direction on housing and to reconsider the city council's recent decision regarding middle housing. When I spoke previously, my goal was to highlight the scale of the housing challenges we face as a state.

The current interim zoning control, controls approved by council, not by the planning commission, specifically the decision to remove much of the valley floor for middle housing eligibility under the volcanic hazard area designation runs directly counter to the Growth Management Act's core goals. Let's set fear aside and look at facts. In '9 in 1980, Mount St. Helens only had one seismograph monitoring it. March 16, first signs of activity, small earthquakes began.

Mount St. Helens monitoring was increased to 10 seismograph stations, five tilt meter stations measuring ground deformation, 14 reflector type target targets measuring changes in the mountain shape, six gravity stations to monitor magma movement. April, a red zone was established and mandatory evacuations were in place. May 18, a month after, we had, a month later, we had the explosive eruption. As of 2023, Mount Rainier is monitored by approximately 40 real time stations along with modern satellite imaging, GPS de, deformation tracking, lahar detection systems, and coordinated emergency management protocols.

My question is, do we trust in our geologists, seismologists, emergency management professionals to provide adequate warning to evacuate in a worst case lahar scenario. Public policy should be grounded in evidence, not worst case hypotheticals. If we allow low probability catastrophic scenarios to eliminate large portions of buildable land, we will guarantee a continuing housing shortage, rising prices, and displacement of working families. We need to align our local policies with the state housing goals and promote promote urban density where infrastructure already exists. I urge the planning commission to take a hard look at whether this volcanic hazard overlay truly advances the goals of the Growth Management Act or undermines them.

As you guys saw on the map that I showed you, that boundary has not changed since 1990, and it

is not going to change Thirty seconds.

Thank you.

Thank you, Isaac. Anyone else in the audience would like to speak during the public hearing? K. Seeing that there are no further comments, I'm gonna go ahead and close the public hearing now at 06:52PM. And I'm closing that for public comments, and the commission will now proceed with their discussion and recommendations.

Blacks? Anyone? Okay. Vice Chair Taylor, kick us off.

So first, I just wanna thank you, Isaac, for your very thorough research. I mean clearly a lot of time goes into what you do and your well thought out process. And just a little bit of my personal history, when I was a kid my mom worked for the National Hazard Center in Boulder, Colorado, and they studied and kept track of floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, you know, what have you. And from a very early on, I mean, was some of my first memories was putting together the newsletter that they put out and doing collating and stapling for like 50¢ an hour for my mom. So this is something that I feel like I have sort of an overall knowledge of throughout my lifespan.

And I feel like one advantage we have to being by a volcano is that it is monitorable. You know, you can't predict tornadoes. You can't predict hurricanes. You can't you can somewhat predict floods. But I I agree with you. I feel like eliminating the entire valley floor is is an overreach. And I would like to see further discussion about that instead of just a blanket statement that we really hadn't discussed much at all on the commission, at least to my recollection. So thank you for your time, and and I concur.

Commissioner Silley?

I have a couple, but I'll follow-up to what our vice chair talked about. I've been on the planning commission on and off for about twenty years. The Lahar critical areas, the flood zones, we've brought this up numerous times to council. And yet we've gone through. We've put all the apartments in over off Main Street.

We put the new apartments in right there by Pioneer and Shaw. We have two proposals for apartments for one by the police station, one behind this building. And so the city as a whole has basically said those critical areas don't really apply. People know they're living in the valley. People know that they're having there's potential, but we're not gonna apply those otherwise, it stops the development, and that was a big thing.

Development's gonna be stopping in the valley. Now they're coming through and come up with this new little plan that basically says, we're sort of ignoring it because we're still gonna have apartments. We're still approving large scale residential areas and now taking away the middle housing and ADUs, which is a little bit easier to try to evacuate than the large scale apartments. They talk about, well, they'll they should be near corridors. Well, I don't know.

We'll get lots of notice whether people leave or not. We've already seen throughout worldwide. People don't leave. So we're gonna we're gonna have some deaths. We just have to recognize it.

Things that have changed since I originally worked extensively in the GIS systems is the core of engineers and FEMA and the UW have gotten together, and it kinda changed where that lahar zone is. It's dropped down a bit than where it used to be. It used to be a lot higher. We have added those 40 stations to try to register so that we have better warning systems for everybody. But think about what we've done.

We've built city hall. When in the comp plan, it talked about critical buildings would not be put in a lahar zone or in a critical area zone, but we built city hall. And now all of a sudden, we have a police station that they were trying to get past that all of a sudden their their thoughts were, hey. We need to move that out of the lahar, but we don't need to move anything else. Just that police station to try to say how strategically valuable it was to be up on the hill. But city hall wasn't at the time they did that. The senior center wasn't there when we did that. So and the due proposals weren't there when they've done that. They've all kinda said, okay. We'll skip over that.

It doesn't apply to them. K? The flood zones, they have the city, I think, is still talking with FEMA about what the flood zone should look like down in the valley. That's been since 9095, '98 when they were to show the new best available science that you know, where the floodplains are gonna be, but yet they allowed the entire apartment complexes there over on East Main to build. They've allowed warehouses to go in over there.

So for the city, it suddenly say, oh, we are concerned. There has to be an underlying cause, an underlying effect because it's just eliminating some things here, and it's now pushing all middle housing, mostly ADUs up the hill. It's no longer being spread throughout the city, which now says, okay. We have two different models that we're gonna be operating under. And I don't think that's justifiable for the entire community.

I don't think that's justifiable for the South Hill as compared to Downtown Puyallup. And I think this city council was incorrect in assuming that they were gonna use the thing of saying, as long as we can show that we can get people out in a timely fashion, if they're along corridors, it doesn't matter. You've got all the schools down here that have to try to go up the hills. You got everybody else down here that's trying to get out, not just those residents, and so it's not gonna change. And the only thing I would suggest is that we make sure that we do not allow additional senior housing, being resident homes for assisted living, that type of thing, down in the valley because those people cannot get out and walk.

And so now you're trying to remove hundreds of people with the roads completely clogged. And as we know, as it's been done many times, these roads will be clogged in about ten minutes. You will not be able to go up and down the roads in a car, so everybody will be walking. So I agree with you totally. I appreciate that.

I totally agree with what the master builders have sent in and believe the city is looking to create themselves a potential lawsuit on this if they carry through. And I don't think we would need our tax dollars spent that way. If you've ignored it now for at least twenty five years, why all of a sudden is it highly critical when we've got better infrastructure, better scientific methods to tell when a particular heart is coming through? So, I don't know if anybody else has comments on that. I have some other questions, but that I wanted to carry on while she had it. So if somebody else would like to ask some questions, go ahead.

Since it seems like we're talking about the I'm just gonna call them the forties of the document. If we wanna continue talking about the Lahar ban on the forties, then we can go back through on our general comments on other portions of document, if that's okay. Commissioner Landon.

I feel like that was very well said. Commissioner Sealy, thanks for saying that. I think I would just like to add that, I mean, the way they implemented this concern to me clearly seems like some sort of scapegoat on the topic. And if we wanted to have a conversation on either resilience and emergency response within the city, I think there's a need for that as well, but this isn't how we should go about doing that. There's some more reasonable steps to take on this, like required notification to either home buyers or renters of the hazard to make sure that it's clear and that those risks are communicated and let the people make their choice on where they wanna be.

I think what commissioner Sealy points out is, like, with there's some people that we shouldn't allow them to make the choice, like people who don't have who have mobility concerns. And those people can't be expected to make that walk. And that's really what we're talking about here is the walk, not people driving to get out. So or developing walk maps. This is a common approach for other hazards and commonly done in tsunami zones.

In some ways, this isn't that much different in terms of the science approaches we could take to looking at this. So we could improve this and get better understanding of this, but I don't think that that half mile buffer zone captures captures the hazards very well either. So we could take a better approach at this if they're earnest about that concern, but this isn't it either. So thank you.

Since we're talking about the horizon and the valley floor and the band that has been placed on middle housing in that area, I mean, I will echo everything that these folks have said. We all have quite a bit of understanding up here as far as risk and mitigation and environmental impacts between the four of us, I would say at least. I find it to be unnecessarily restrictive. That absolutely feels like a scapegoat, and it's not really based on reason science are just since at all. I found the policies to be not at all adequate for what we need to get to the heart of what h b eleven ten was about.

And some of the things included in it are not based on policies or the comp plan that was put forth by this commission. So I don't agree with any of that. I've said plenty on the subject before. I don't know if you're going to get the recommendation that you are asking for from those of us that are up here, right now for that portion, at least. I'm sure that I mean, I can see notes up here, so I'm sure that there are some other portions that we wanna talk about also, but, that's where I am sitting.

And I would like to apologize. Commissioner Martin, are you still there? I can't actually see your hand or know when you are asking to speak. But if

I am. And I'll I'll I'll

If you if you'd like to

interject as needed. Okay. You know my feelings on this.

I've Yes.

I've spoken at length and clearly that I do believe that building in Lahar zone is a poor idea. I do support what the council has proposed, and I don't see that I'll be able to change anyone's opinions on that.

Understood. Is there anything else you wanted to add on that, commissioner Martin?

No. Thank you.

You're welcome. Yeah. So, I mean, I think that we've all spoke on what we feel about the the ban on the valley floor. I'm going to turn our attention back towards the front of the document. If we could go through any other red lines that you guys have, we can make our way back through.

And once we hit the forties again, if you have any lingering thoughts, you can interject those again. Do I have flags? You can go ahead and kick us off, commissioner Sealy. Alright. I just have

a couple for some of it for clarification purposes to make sure. So on page 17, and it's under dwellings, multiple families, we're changing the end going from seven down to three. That's a it looked like we had a gap there. So I'm assuming that you guys saw that and made a change there.

Yes. Yes. So going to seven was something that we had done in association with the coliving amendments, and that was a recommendation from a consultant team that had developed a model ordinance for co living. But in talking through with the other planners in terms of how we would apply these definitions, we wanted to make sure it was clear in the code in the definitions that really there's there's some overlap of definitions and that's okay. So, you know, there's obviously single family homes, middle housing is its own definition, but to some extent there's overlaps with single family and duplex uses.

There is some overlap with multifamily because you can have townhomes that might meet middle housing, they might meet multifamily depending on the density and the zone. And so we just wanted to make it clear that multifamily is a broad category that really is everything after duplexes, which is how it had been in our code previously.

Okay. On page 24, which is limited manufacturing industrial use, we have several concerns about what it can't do. But I noticed that we don't have anything about odors in that one where we do an heavy industrial. I'm wondering since we're looking at potentially some of the limited manufacturing is being closer to some housing that we also wanna put in there about potential orders being controlled.

Mister Seeley, if we were to add something, would you see that fitting in the second sentence about production processes may not employ extensive use of hazardous materials, chemicals, high levels of noise, or

Yes.

Strong odors or something. I don't know if there's, like, a technical terminology that I should use there, but I think we can certainly add something appropriate in there if the

I thought there was stuff maybe in heavy housing. What does it say on that one about the older? It just says, yeah, are the community you not affecting the community due to noise, odors, toxic chemicals, or other activities. So something along that point.

Over similar language. And what was that other definition you were just referencing?

That was the heavy Heavy.

Heavy. It's also mentioned in agricultural activity.

I think but in agricultural, we have we already have if it's farming, we already have some stipulations in there that the odors created by existing farm is allowable.

Yes. If the if there's especially if there's the agriculture overlay, that provides that extra layer of protection for agriculture uses. But I can certainly if the commission agrees with this amendment, I can certainly look to those other definitions to incorporate a similar terminology.

Do you want us to make a motion at the end? Or

It's just a.

It it's fine if you it's very, very clear if you do them as you go along, so that's that can be helpful.

Let's do them as we go along. Okay.

K. So propose that we add something to the limited manufacturing concerning potential or odors to the community, that type of thing.

We have a motion on the floor to add odors to the limited manufacturing, definition. All the, can I have a second on that? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. That motion passes. You can continue.

Under manufactured mobile homes.

I think I heard him say yes. Commissioner Martin?

No. I I I had nothing.

Did you vote yes on that?

Or Yes.

Would you like a little call vote? Okay.

Thank you. Voted yes. Thank you.

Under manufactured mobile homes, will oh, page number 26. Does tiny homes fit into that? Are we gonna be doing something differently potentially for

So tiny homes could meet that definition. They could meet the definition of an accessory dwelling unit, or if they don't meet either of those definitions, they would be prohibited. So the discussion that we've had at this point, and this came up a bit, maybe not at the Planning Commission, but I know it came up a bit at council when we took the ADU ordinance. Essentially, we don't restrict or we wouldn't prohibit a home from being tiny. Right?

The small size wouldn't be prohibited. So it either needs to meet being a manufactured home, in which case it needs to be placed on a permanent foundation, or it meets the definition of an accessory dwelling unit if there's already a home on the property. But, again, it would still need to be on a foundation. We really have no allowance at this time for something that stays on a mobile chassis, and and we yeah.

That's what we discussed at planning at the same time. So okay. Page forty two and forty three is the borrowing of mid mid housing and ADUs in the valley, and it's number m on page 42 and number c two on 43. I would like to make a motion that we remove those two items from, this document, based upon the information that we have and presented tonight on, where we think it's an unfair restriction to the city.

Friend friendly amendment on that. Can we do one at a time?

Sure.

Okay. Can you describe the first one, the first one is and where you wanna start?

So page 42 m, I would like to propose that we remove that portion of the document, and that's based upon the comments that we've had and the discussion about how it treats other areas of Puyallup differently for really not a good reason at all, especially when they've ignored it in the past. So and they're ignoring it in the future.

We have a motion on the floor to to remove, letter m off of page 42. 42. And the code do I have a second? Second. Just gonna pause for discussion on that.

Okay. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. I'm gonna ask for a roll call on that one, clerk.

Commissioner Sealy? Aye. Commissioner Martin?

Nay.

Commissioner Landon?

Aye.

Vice chair Taylor? Aye. Chair Jones Low? Aye. And that would pass four two one. Thank you.

On page 43, number c two, I'd like to make the same motion to remove that from the document, and it's for the same reasons of and, you know, it's it's an unfair it's unfair to the community as a whole to limit, middle housing and ADUs to the South Hill area only when there's plenty of space down here in the valley, and that's where most of this growth is gonna be occurring anyway due to the transit station.

We have a motion on the floor to remove c two off of page 43. Do I have a second on that motion? Second. Gonna pause for a flag. Anyone have any discussion? I have a motion on the second on the floor. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Opposed. Okay. That motion passes. K.

And I have one more. It's just more discussion is in page 55, we talk about fences. And, what has happened is what is happening is a positive for the for the city as that we're building sidewalks, that type of thing. But at the same time, it's raising the sidewalks up high enough so that people that have a six foot privacy fences are now down to a three to four foot fence that people walking along pretty wide right by them. If they like to raise their fence, the city is requiring that they, go to the hearing examiner.

They get detailed engineering drawings on how to raise the fence and, doing some other things that are becoming quite expensive from what I've been told. And it's caused by the city. It's not caused by a citizen. And so I don't know if it's if that's the area or, Katie, you can tell me if there's a different area where we should potentially have, instead of a hearing examiner, is being able to allow the director to make some decisions on that type of thing and waive some of those those steps, because it may not just be fences or maybe other items out there that are occurring too that has been created by a city project.

But do you wanna go first?

I can speak to that. So this is an issue. This has happened to at least a couple property owners that I can think of where the city did a a road improvement, a sidewalk improvement. It did raise the level of the adjacent of the right of way to that property. And that property owner then had to come in for a variance to be able to build a taller fence.

So this is a scenario that has occurred a couple times in recent years. And I think there are two options here. One would be probably a pretty quick fix just to the fence section that could state something like, you know, we'd probably wanna limit it to rear and side yard fences potentially, but rear and side yard fences adjacent to right of way, you know, where the right of way elevation is higher than the property can use that right of way elevation for the purpose of calculating height. So that's my off the cuff draft code there to deal with that particular situation. If we wanted to make make it broader, maybe apply to more things than fences, as commissioner Sealy mentioned, that could come into play with other issues.

Or if you just wanted to take the approach of essentially leaving the code as is, but giving kind of an out, an administrative out rather than going to the hearing examiner. I feel like that would take maybe a little more thought as to where that would go in the code. I don't know that it would go in the RS chapter per se, but maybe later in the procedural chapters. So I think my recommendation in that case would maybe be that you give staff direction to work on this, and we bring that back as part of other packages of code amendments that we're working on.

Question on what you just said. If we were to make a procedural change on that, that would already require the homeowner to have put forth and gone through with a variance application?

No. What what that essentially would do was, let's say the homeowner comes in to talk to us, how tall of a fence can I build? Mhmm. You know, the right of way is over here. And we would be able to say, typically, your six foot fence is measured from your adjacent property elevation. In this case, we can measure from the adjacent right of way, and we would make an administrative determination to do that instead of them going to the hearing examiner.

Okay.

But it would be a more formal decision, I think, in that scenario. I I do think it would help to have some direction in the fence section here. Okay. And I'll also say, again, we can do that as part of this these amendments because we do have this chapter open. But we will also be back to you later this year with you know, this is just to deal with middle housing right now.

Mhmm.

And we know that there's a lot of other changes to the RS chapter that need to happen. We've talked about zone consolidation. We could flag it to include in that later work. So you have a few options for how to handle it.

Okay. I'm gonna let the fellow commissioners go. If you don't mind, we're gonna go with commissioner Landon first, and then we'll come back to you by Cher. Sher Landon.

I think I'm in favor of having an administrative review of that just to keep that process somewhat knowing that there needs to be some review and that people aren't just going ahead and building larger things. Because I think sometimes when there's more of a won't have that review to check the elevation and tell them exactly how high it could be, and then they don't think that they need to check-in to do those things. And I think it could be worthwhile as long as we aren't making it the process onerous just to have a a check-in there to get consensus on what that height is that they're allowed to then build to and then to check that it was done correctly instead of them kind of after the fact just interpreting it on their own. So I think that could be useful as a middle ground.

Good question.

I concur. I feel like especially in those situations that commissioner Sealy was speaking on where it it's already a fence or a wall or whatever, and all of a sudden it's shorter than what its intent was or what it was permitted to be, that those things shouldn't be then required to go back in and have another permit to make it what it was permitted to be earlier because of a city decision to make some changes in street improvements. So I don't know that there needs to be language in the code for that, but I definitely agree that there needs to be some latitude and that people don't have to pull new permits in order to just, you know, correct what what has been changed.

I will just add, because you brought up the issue of additional permits. And regardless of whether we administratively make a decision or it has to go to the hearing examiner, if they're building over a six foot fence, they would be required to get a building permit for that or even actually, I think over a three three and a half. So there would still be potentially a building permit requirement even if the fence already exists, if they're making it taller than what currently exists.

It

just feels like it's on the owners it's cumbersome for the owner who's already built a fence. I mean, say I built a fence a year ago, and then there are street improvements, you know, in front of my house, then I have to get another permit to rebuild my fence. When it seems like potentially it could be something that is similar to if somebody crashes into my fence, I don't necessarily have to go and pull a brand new permit to repair it. It just seems like it's double charging the owner for something the city did, and it feels wrong.

I agree.

So, clearly, this needs some more thought.

It does.

But I do think that, you know, putting it back to your department and saying, you know, let's think this through and present some different ideas at a later date is is definitely a good course.

Yeah. Some changes would probably yeah. I would say if you're building a taller fence than what you originally had, anyway, you would have to pull a new permit You will. Anyway, because it's taller than what you it would just be a regular you're making your fence taller per bit. If it's taller than what it was meant to be the first time, you would have to pull that anyway. But, anyways but it it's still the same problem.

Like Yeah. But it would have to be structurally reviewed. Yeah. Because the height is now different than what we originally anticipated. Yeah.

You know, and and you because you're not going to eight feet, then you've got some other structural issues Yeah. That need to make sure that they're not using some flimsy boards that's gonna collapse and everything else. So I understand that. It was just, you know, the the hearing examiner cost getting construction drawings and that type of thing, that they're having to pay for for if the property owner hasn't caused the issue, the city's caused the issue to improve the the city, then the city needs to figure out how to how to say, how can we make this the most lenient that we can for that particular property owner. Mhmm. So

I can certainly appreciate that direction and that that position, and we can take that direction and work in something a little more thought out into the future RS code amendments.

Thank you. Yeah. I'll be looking forward to that. And then I had one last one. On affordable housing, and Katie's heard me couple times on this one.

We adopted impact fee reductions for ADUs, for affordable housing, that type of thing. I would like to suggest that we adopt that same type of fee structure for affordable units. So if it's an apartment complex and they have 40 units and four of those are afford affordable, then those four units pay an affordable housing impact fee just like ADUs do. And the rest of the apartments apartments pay the normal fees, impact fees that are there. You know, same thing with the duplex.

If one's affordable and one's not, then the affordable one has reduced impact fees, and the other apartment pays the normal impact fees. If we're truly are trying to get people to build affordable housing, we have to make it worthwhile, to do that. And the county council has determined in their infinite wisdom that ADUs should be substantially reduced over the normal fees that a normal home would have. And I think that should be applied to all affordable units.

Just for clarification, commissioner, expect that change to happen in this code?

We're in we're in the middle housing area.

Mhmm. Yeah.

And so we've talked about this a couple times, and it's been well, we're gonna be talking about it sometime in the future. There's a better section. If there's a better section for that, then I would say great. Move it to that section. But with it being open now, I'll I'll find out now whether it's a good section or not. Okay, Katie. You're off.

So we do have an impact fee chapter in twenty one ten, it may be, title 21. So that would be the most appropriate place. I believe that is even when we, made those changes for EDUs that you're referencing. I believe at that time, we also brought that chapter out of title 21 to you to make that change in the impact fee chapter as well. Because the middle housing code did not dictate anything regarding impact fees, we don't have that chapter as part of this package at this time.

So my recommendation would again be providing this direction and that that would be something we could consider adding as part of the impact fee chapter.

Is that gonna be looked at later this year? Is that

That, I believe, will be later this year. Yes.

I would like you to add that to your list of things to do.

I will note that, Commissioner Sealy. Thank you.

Yeah. There you go. Commissioner Sealy's made it through his list. Anyone else Starting from the beginning. Moving on down.

Commissioner Martin, do you have anything?

No. Thank you. I am listening and appreciate the dialogue.

I have a couple, Katie. And some of them might be not be changed, just some of them might just have a question on. Page 21. Scroll back up to that. Oh, I should be able to have technology.

Guest houses? Mhmm. Why why can't we have ovens in guest houses?

Because then they would be an accessory dwelling unit.

Oh, okay.

So a guesthouse is intended to be a distinctly different Okay. Definition and set of regulations.

Okay. And that's why we're having the kitchenette instead of the actual kitchen. Also Correct. In the definition of kitchen, how are you guys, planning, regulated coating the refrigerator. I saw that the refrigerator still stayed in there. How are you guys checking that?

I don't know. Okay.

I have brought that up when we were talking about the definitions of kitchen and kitchenettes. Refrigerator takes a regular outlet. Right. Refrigerators can be in drawers now. I don't really understand how you guys are putting that into code as a requirement when you're not going to be able to verify it and building. I feel like I've brought that up more than once. But, yeah, I don't I don't know how you

guys are.

I don't know if it's

How's the building inspector going to actually enforce that?

Yeah. If it's the same type of outlet, I I don't know that we can.

Okay. Because it's we have it written in our code right now as it being a requirement. Mhmm. So yeah. Is that something that you wanted me to just remind you guys to look at again, or should I be motioning to take that out? Like, how would you like to handle that? This is just a question of how that's being enforced. That would be under the case section of your twenty fifteen chapters.

I mean, essentially, it would be looked at as part of the building plans. Mhmm. And

Are you gonna, like, require it on a equipment list like you would the Well, so I just I don't I don't understand how you do it.

So a guesthouse allows a kitchenette, but not a kitchen. So we would make sure when we're reviewing the plans for a guesthouse, we would if we saw a refrigerator in there But I think I mean, a kitchenette could have a refrigerator too.

Outside of I'm not sure if it's

required to have a refrigerator.

Okay. Outside of the guest house, because you explained the whole oven thing with that. The idea that the kitchen has to have the refrigerator and that we've codified that it has to have a refrigerator, but we have no way of actually finding that out in an inspection. How's that working?

I'm not sure I know what we need to inspect to ensure that they have a kitchen, a full kitchen anywhere. What we are trying to ensure in the guesthouse definition is that they don't have a full kitchen, and so that would be inspected on a complaint basis. And really, we're only looking at the oven, not the refrigerator.

Okay.

So what we've done in the past is when we've had a complaint about an accessory dwelling unit that wasn't permitted, that wasn't allowed Mhmm. We would inspect it if allowed in. And if they had a full kitchen, then that's then we would say, yes. This does meet the definition of an accessory dwelling unit, and you either need to permit it properly or it's not allowed in this zone. But I don't know that there's any scenarios where we require there to be a full kitchen.

Okay. Next question. Oh, I'm sorry. We have to go backwards just a second to page 22. When you guys are describing building and structure height, you have changed the average of the vertical distances from an imaginary plane. You changed it from to the four corners to from the four corners. What what was the purpose of that? Guess I'm confused as to what you're trying to measure here with this shank of language.

I felt that it was more grammatically correct to say that we are measuring from the four corners rather than to the imaginary plane to four corners.

To the four corners of the structure for the total sub height. Basically, you want us to take the four corners, average them for the total sub height using the equation that you have in this picture.

Yes.

Okay. Okay. The wording's a little bit off still, I think. Okay. You guys might wanna work on that one a little bit for one a.

Page 52. Talking about MaxFar. I didn't see anywhere in our definitions where we are determining what the principal use that the principal use is residential with these new code updates? How are you guys determining that? Is it based on

Nothing's changing with that. It would just be, is the use of the property for residential, or is it a conditionally permitted use like a church or or a nonconforming use like a business?

That just happens to have a residential component to it. Is that what you're saying in that?

This is is existing code that says maximum floor area ratios are established only for properties where the principal use is residential. So there are conditionally permitted uses allowed in single family zones that are nonresidential, like a church or a pool are really common examples. This is saying that floor area ratio does not apply to those uses because they are nonresidential.

Good.

Those are all mine. Anyone else? Commissioner Martin, do you have further questions?

I do not.

K. So we've sort of reached the end of our work session topic, you guys. And we have no more flags, so I will entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion that we adopt the proposed

Commissioner Sealy, your microphone's off. Sorry about that.

I'll make a motion that we adopt the proposed document, with the changes that we've discussed, concerning the Lahar. And there was a couple, yeah, couple definitions.

Second. Okay. Second. Any discussion on that?

Chair, I I can I can support some of this? I I believe that many of the proposals are valid. I still cannot support that dropping the lahar.

Understood, commissioner Martin. So you are proposing there are changes to the definitions and clarifications you do support. However, dropping the definitions on the 40 pages in regards to the ban of, middle housing and the lahar zone you don't support.

Correct.

Clarification. Okay. Thank you. Any other discussion on this motion that has been seconded? K. I'm gonna move us to a vote. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? Opposed. And since this is going to council, we'll go ahead and do the roll call. Thank you, the clerk.

Commissioner Sealy? Aye. Commissioner Martin?

Nay.

Commissioner Landon?

Aye.

Vice chair Taylor?

Aye.

Chair Jones Lowell? Aye. Thank you. We have a four one, so that would pass.

Thank you so much. We have finished the bulk of that. So the next item on our agenda after our work session topics are going to be our staff reports. Katie, I know you're flying solo today, and thank you for The only one here.

Thank you. Thank you for your work on middle housing. Just one of many code amendment packages that will be continuing to come before this year. We just appreciate you helping move things forward to city council. We will continue this discussion with them, likely in March and into April.

So just we'll try to keep you apprised of how that conversation is going and where it's at, but please feel free to ask if I forget to update you. We are Kendall and I have been doing a lot of work and looking at the calendar. We're working with our consultants, our our whole planning team really has taken on bits and pieces of these upcoming code amendments, but we need a little bit of time to do that work. So we don't have anything for you for your next agenda. So February 25, we will be looking at canceling that meeting, and that means that tonight is your last meeting with your current chair, Jones Lowell, and commissioner Sealy.

So thank you. Thank you both for your work on this commission. Chair, you stepped in last year, I believe. You've been the chair for a year, four years on the commission. We greatly appreciate your input, the perspective you provide. You are very detailed, and I appreciate that. And you bring a perspective that we didn't really have, I think, on the commission in your field of work, and that's been really valuable through the comp plan update. So thank you. Commissioner Sealy, former chair Sealy, former vice chair Sealy, I think you've been in in every seat at this dais. You've been on the commission a very long time.

Our calculations got us up to seventeen and a half years, but we we only could go back. Our records only went back to 2001. So if you have any time before that, it's even longer.

I do.

That's an incredibly long time to volunteer, especially on the planning commission when your packets are regularly two inches thick. You've been very devoted to your community through your efforts here. We always appreciate your insight. You're also very detail oriented, and we need those eyes. So thank you. Your voice will be missed on this commission. I hope to still see you involved, and feel free to follow-up on those code amendments you suggested.

Thank you. If I can, I'd like Katie, I'd like to thank you and Chris and Kendall and Rachel and, you know, for all the work that you guys have done over the years. I did start. I had a partial term when I first came on in 1999 or something like that and then had a break in between. But I do remember giving you one of our last big projects I did my first run, which was the Van Lyrip project and Pioneer Way.

And then I leave you this year with a comp plan. So maybe that's not a good sign that I take on big projects at the end. But I do appreciate all the help through that time. I've learned a lot, and, you guys helped helped me through understanding quite a bit of quite a bit of the stuff. So please express my gratitude to your staff. Yeah. And, hopefully, you may see me in here occasionally. So we'll go that way. Thank you that for the efforts, though, that you guys have made. I

guess we can go right into commissioner. Is there anything else you want to add? Technically, there's someone who is.

Oh, well, don't you know, basically, it's it's been a very enjoyable time. It's been a very educational time. I know we've talked sometimes, but I know, like, during the Vandal erupts, we were here sometimes twice a week, sometimes till 11:00 at night, going through those plans and all and getting all that done. I would love to see more support from council in the future. I don't think that, initially, when I came on, we had a yearly council planning meeting where we could sit down with the council members and talk about what we were working on next year, what some of their ideas were.

And I would love to see that came back because I think that solved a lot of issues that we've run into recently where we'll send something to them, and they will go totally different directions or not understand what we're doing. And so I I think we've we've lost that that communication piece between the two groups. So I'd love to be able to see that come back again. And, you know, maybe the time's not right anymore, and maybe that won't happen. But I think it does allow us as commissioners to talk to council members and find out what their thoughts are, what their directions are, and let us let us express what we're thinking about for the city so that we are working together as one group instead of two separate groups.

So that's it.

Madam Chair, I think your mic was off.

Sorry. Thank you, commissioner Sealy. Commissioner Martin, you're up next for our commissioner comments.

Well, I'd just like to thank both of you. It has been a pleasure knowing you, and I as a junior member, you've both taught me a lot and provided insight into, the history and the, process, and I can't thank you enough.

Thank you, commissioner Martin. Next up is commissioner Landon.

Thank you. I think I've learned a lot from being on the council this past year. I'm not sure how I'm gonna get up to speed and match the how competent you are. And having done this for twenty plus years, I guess I shouldn't expect to, but we really appreciate it, and, it's been great working with you. And I just can't help but go back on the what we're talking about with the Lihara zone.

And I was at a conference this last week on navigating community hazards, more specifically on the coastal region, but the same concepts apply. And I think an important thing for navigating hazards and risk in the community is also building trust in the government. And I think a move like this, which is not consistent with any other areas of the code or consistent with the city's practice and where they put their critical facilities, builds trust in that process. So I think if there was appetite for, more looking at how we approach these risks and hazards, there's I think there's a lot of resources that we could tap into, especially if we wanna look more closely at the Lahar zone and get a better understanding of what that risk is and a little bit more understanding of kind of the range of risks. I think we're looking at this pretty black and white that we have a lahar event, and it goes, you know, all the way out to the ocean pretty much, or it doesn't.

So, I mean, there's gonna be some area in between, which I think would help people in their understanding of why we are allowing some things or not allowing it. And maybe by talking to these experts, we may even be discouraged. I mean, we might actually go back and think about doing less, but at least we'll have the information to be doing that. And we could do it across the board in the code and not just one area that some city council members find distasteful for whatever reason. So, I mean, we can't pick and choose like that. And so yeah. If we wanna address this, there's other means to address this. So

Thank you, commissioner Landon. Vice chair Taylor?

I think I want to piggyback on Commissioner Landon's comments. And I definitely feel like something you said earlier struck a note that, you know, if you live in a tsunami zone, there are definite evacuation zone no. Routes that are very well known and very visual. And I think that we need to step up our emergency management and our response in case of, rather than just restricting what we do in fear of. And and I think that that's probably a critical element to me, that we are prepared and we don't take it lightly.

But we also don't, you know, sit strangled by the what if notion. And then moving on, I I feel very privileged to have gotten to know both of you. And I've sat on a few different committees and and chaired a few. And this one is vocal and respectful at the same time, and everybody comes so prepared, and it's just been a joy. So thank you both.

You you really lead by example, and and that's really needed in communities like I mean, everywhere, but definitely in a community of our size that's growing and should be growing intelligently. And I I think you both brought that forward very well.

I'm I'm the last one up. So first, I will talk about what is on our, what was on our agenda today. So sort of piggybacking on what others have said, about our approach to laharzone. Yes. I I understand where where we live and where we have chosen to live, where we have the opportunity to live.

I don't think that this approach promotes transparency in what is happening with the code and with the objectives of council. And I think that one of the things that commissioner I'm sorry. Vice chair Taylor sort of touched on is it's a it's a cultural shift in how we think about our response and our resiliency to an emergency. It's not something that's going to be fixed in one code. The risk is not mitigated by only looking at one factor of it.

So I think that they're sort there's there's a lack of of wraparound in the thought process of how we are attacking this, and there needs to be a shift there, A shift so that our community is prepared to respond to it and a shift so that we can grow effectively with the knowledge that the risk is is there. So I wish I was leaving at a different time so that we can continue these conversations, but I am hopeful that the commissioners that you guys have on the and the ones that are coming will be able to continue to have thoughtful conversations about those things. I remember when I first came. I wasn't even here. I I remember when I got the email for for joining this commission.

I was actually in France, and I would wake up at 03:00 in the morning and walk to a cave to get Wi Fi so that I can join these meetings. And it has been an absolute honor. I've been up here with quite a few different commissioners. Some have stayed their whole time. Some have not.

I admire the work that each and every one of you guys do and just thank you for everything. And commissioner. I sent an email earlier to Katie and Kendall asking them so that we could get accurate numbers or as accurate as we can get numbers. The absolute immense, really, gift of time and energy and thought that you have given this community through your volunteer efforts on this board. They came up with a number of 17, but when you really think about it, you've been on this board almost since I've been in kindergarten.

And the amount of people that you have helped on this board and that you have mentored through this board is absolutely phenomenal. On on my note, I mean, it has not been an easy year for me here, and I can remember when things looked very blue for me. You reminded me to swim through this and that we can continue to make change. So I appreciate you, and I thank you for your twenty something years of experience, here. So

Thank you.

And I wanna thank the overall planning department. It has been fun to grow up with you and Kendall. I mean, you guys were just planners when we first got this together. But over the last few years, you guys have rose and grown and new planners have come in, and you are a manager now, Katie. I am I just celebrate with you guys, and I'm glad of all the work that you're doing. So thank you for letting me have my human moments.

Thank

you. Brings us to the end of this commission meeting. I'm gonna go ahead and adjourn at summer fifty six. Thank you.