Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Uh I wasn't quite six but it was uh let's see

May June July August finally.

Okay. Ready? All right. Good afternoon, good evening everyone. It is 6 o'clock and this is the Tuesday, August 12th, 2025 planning commission meeting for the city of Oak Harbor. Um, our roll call. We have three commissioners present with Kevin Wilson V uh Kevin Wilson absent and our exeicio member Jim Whisner absent as well. Um, moving right along, uh, we have our June 10th, 2025 meeting minutes. I'll give you all a chance to look over those to see if there's any corrections that you have. Um, otherwise, when you're ready, I will take a motion to approve the minutes for June 10. I make a motion to approve the minutes from June 10th as written.

I second. All right. Moved by Bradley, second by Fry. Um, all those in favor signifies by saying I. I. Motion passes.

All right. Moving right along. This is our time for public comment. So during this time uh citizens may comment on subjects of interest on the agenda or not on the agenda. Um to ensure your comments are recorded properly, please uh state your name clearly into a microphone. Uh individual comments will be limited to 3 minutes and uh if you want to submit comments in advance, you can go to www. www.ocarbor.gov/public back/public comment and they'll be displayed as we um as we get into those uh written comments. Um do we want to start with We'll start with our public comments that were received. We had a few uh and they're on the screen and we will uh look at those now. Okay. Thank you very much for submitting your comments. For anyone in the room or online, uh, now is an opportunity. Uh, I don't see anyone online, so take it away.

Hello. Thank you. uh for having me. My name is Jeff Ward. I live at 891 Southeast Jensen Street. Uh about a stone throw that way. Um uh today I'd like to talk to you about in general potential options to help us increase density within city limits. And I just want to preface this with it with um this is just my own internal research and I'm sorry if anything is in here is wrong. It is totally my fault. If I miss things, it is totally my fault. Um, you know, so please take all of this with a grain of salt uh and and hopefully some humility. Um, so in general, I'd like to say the that the plan commission, the city, um, planners have done a great job of addressing zoning issues and regulatory issues to make available options for density within the city. But I think that there's a potential area that we could improve um in a non-regulatory way. And that is by advoc advocacy. And what I've laid out here, I gave you all a packet that kind of lays out in far more words than I'm hopefully going to use here. um some case studies with you know local cities not totally comparable but trying to find some case studies that talk about advocacy programs and specifically advocacy for things like ADUs and uh multif family tax exemptions and things of that nature that showed real promise in the cities that they were implemented in to increase internal density over you know scales of years and and decades. Um, again, I don't want to go too much into what's in the packet there because I only have a minute and a half. But with these, I think that there's a a pretty good chance that we can make up some internal density that might have otherwise gotten outside of the city. Um, so I I'll leave it at that with a whole minute and 15 seconds to spare.

Uh, you know, and if there's any questions for me, other than that, I'll you know, sit and watch the rest of the meeting. Thank you very much. And KC, you have a copy of this. Okay, very cool. Thank you so much. I really we really appreciate you, you know, spending the time to do such such good investigative work. Um, okay. So, with that, I think, um, not seeing anybody else online or in the room, going once, going twice, three times, we'll move away from public comment. Thank you all for your participation. Um we have a couple of discussion items tonight. The first is a discussion about the countywide planning policy update which will be presented by our principal planner C Kamak. Um before we jump into that, um for the record and for you all, right, my professional work, right, is in the town of Coupeville. And as these are countywide planning policies in my professional career, that's a thing I work on. And so in order to ensure that like separation of professional and personal advocacy, um I will be stepping away from the meeting and just listening in while everyone else on the planning commission handles the rest of the discussion. So with that, I'll turn it over to vice to the vice chair and CAC, take it away. Good evening. Kak, principal planner. um here to present or give you an update on our comprehensive plan update and our recent work with Island County in trying to establish our targets and do our 20-year update. So, this is just an update trying to keep uh all the boards and commissions uh uh that's involved in

the comprehensive plan up to date on what's going on so that you're aware. Um we're not asking for an action or recommendation at tonight's meeting. We're just providing you with the information on um what's happening at the comp plan level. So um as you all uh are aware that the city and the county entered a mediation process u basically to determine or finalize the target numbers. Um if you uh remember um in the countywide planning policies um the county um and all the cities combined uh determined how the allocations should be done in Island County uh how much housing should be allocated to Oak Harbor, how much to Coupeville and how much to Langley and how much to the rest of the county. And in that process uh we wanted to reverse historical trends uh because most of the development historically was going in the county. almost 60% of uh Island County's population growth was going in the county and um because of the need for affordable housing and the provision of services uh for these housing exist mainly in urban dense areas uh the island county um and its jurisdictions decided that we should reverse this trend because services available in the cities and not in the counties and the uh overall distribution also required us to uh all jurisdictions to um plan for housing for various income levels. Um and so this uh forced uh a lot of the uh allocations to urban areas because that's where services are, that's where transit is, that's where you have most of your uh water, sewer facilities that can support that type of development. So the countywide planning

policies allocated almost 60% of what Island County's growth will be over the 20 years to Oak Harbor and its UG. And I think that was the key um kind of clause that uh has uh created a lot of challenges in normally in other counties and jurisdictions. what uh the allocations would look like is that a city not its UG would get the allocations. So if Oak Harbor city limits were given an allocation then we control all of the regulations uh that can account for that. However, since it was assigned to the UG, which includes unincorporated UG areas, which is mainly uh controlled or the authority lays with the county, we needed to have a partnership with the county because their zoning and their development rules apply in the UG. So, there's a balancing act that we have to do with the county to determine who plans for the UG and how much can be accommodated in that UG. So that is the key difference between our jurisdiction and other counties. In other counties, it's sometimes straightforward that they've allocated it to the city and then the city has to find a way uh because they've accepted a certain number in their jurisdiction, they can plan to do the resonings and the development regulations to meet that target. For us, it was somewhat of an anomaly. We control what's in the city, but we do not know exactly what that number should be. So that's why we produced the first lands capacity analysis which followed the uh countywide planning policy procedures. So we have in the countywide planning policy how you should what market factors you should use, how you calculate density in multif family areas, how you calculate density in single family areas. And so the we hired

a consultant to make sure that we follow these steps somewhat of a third party doing this work for us. um to establish how much capacity we have. So in the first uh in in the documents and these have been provided to the planning commission and it's available online. We have a lands capacity analysis that followed the countywide planning policy procedures and determined what capacity we have with our existing regulations and the the number and I don't have the numbers exactly but it was about 2500 to 2700 of the 5500 that was allocated. Now the second step that you have to do after you find out how much capacity you have given the existing regulations is can you make changes in order to accommodate more and Okar did that um increased height regulations identified five or six areas that can accommodate more density and in those options and calculations we recalculated how much capacity and added about a thousand or so units that's uh to uh the with the changes that we can potentially consider. So those are the land use options memo. So we have the lands capacity analysis memo and then we have a land use options memo. Both of these documents are online and have been provided to the commission. Um so this is our effort in meeting the state requirements. We followed the steps of doing the analysis as per the countywide planning policies and then also did the extra work of um changing the development regulations, changing density requirements. All of our zoning uh districts R1, R2, R3, and R4 have higher densities. At least we're proposing higher densities. We haven't adopted them yet, but proposing higher densities um than what we currently

allow. So that allows for more massing to happen in areas like downtown or in our multif family areas. Today you may see a a three-story building and tomorrow regulations when adopted can potentially accommodate a five or a six-story building because of the regulation change which means we can accommodate more units. You can see that these development regulations can change how Oak Harbor is going to look in the future. And going from three-story buildings to six stories is a big change. accommodating 3,000 units which is um uh a population that's almost growth of 50% of the city over the next over the 20 years is a large change. So with these documents we presented this to the county in order to determine whether the remaining uh units can be accommodated in the county or in the UG so to speak and we have to start that discussion with the county on how do we do that? How do we do the planning in the UG? How do we make sure what densities could be accommodated in the UG? And then how can we if if if that cannot be accommodated in the existing U.J, then should we consider expansions. So in these discussions um there was I think a difference in perspective from the county and the city in how we view the UG or who plans for it or what documents need to be produced in order to support this development in the UG and this perspective difference has created uh um some disagreements that led to the mediation. So, we were in mediation and we were trying to establish these numbers. Um, and um, in the middle of the mediation, the county decided that they were instead of following through with the mediation and seeing where it goes, uh, decided to

amend the countywide planning policy. And I think it is we think it's due to a couple reasons. Number one, uh it's timeconuming to go through mediation to look at planning in the county and all the development regulations that you have to do as a county to calculate for the options that you want to accommodate. Um and so they probably wanted to make sure that they meet their uh timelines in terms of adoption of the comp plan and the mediation and subsequent processes could have potentially added time which um uh they seem which may be an uh one of the considerations in their decision. Um and um so um and secondly, I think there was a difference in perspectives when we were looking at UG areas. Um so it there's a Tim, if you can pull up a the PDF map, I can um kind of briefly um show you what I think um could have been a a difference in perspective um in terms of considering UG. So this is a land use map um the current land use map of the city and as you can see um if I can get the laser pointer.

Can you guys see one for you guys?

Yes. All right. Thank you. All right. So this is the existing uh land use uh map for the city and the land use map for the city is different from the zoning map of the city. The zoning um is a more implementation tool and it applies only to the city. So if you look at a city zoning map you will see colors only for the city limits and the areas that are in the UG not inside the city will not have any colors because the city has only zoning authority for inside the city limits. Land use is a kind of umbrella designation which we use for planning purposes. So for example all the yellow areas is designated as lowdensity residential. These lowdensity residential umbrella can uh incorporates three zoning districts R1, R2 and R3. So when you look at the zoning map these yellow areas are further divided into these three zones. That's how the implementation happens. So in the land use map you can see the state allows us to designate or plan for what type of density we would have in our UG. That's the only authority that we have is in the future when they come into the city what do we expect that to be and we do that by designating a land use designation. That's the only authority we have in the city to plan for outside of the UG. Of course we with with this designation we can then plan for infrastructure. So that's a requirement of the state. So when we look at a water system plan and a sewer system plan and we do the planning when we're sizing let's say a

sewer line along Swantown we u make sure that that size is adequate to serve the UG. So our current infrastructure plan has um options on how to serve the land in the existing UG. So our utility plans take into account for that. But we don't have any zoning authority here. So our UG or existing UG which is all of these areas the pocket pocket areas and these outsight areas are categorized by two types of development. One is they already developed and see all the Hillcrest properties all the islands already have single family development. Now the city doesn't view these areas as growth potential areas because how much units can you accommodate in them even if they're annexed into the city? They don't have infrastructure. They don't have city infrastructure and it's very expensive and very um planning intensive to bring those areas into the city and fund the infrastructure that's needed because they're all on septic systems served by current septic systems and all of their systems are functioning at various levels. They're not all expected to fail at the same time. And so the need for collective annexation into the city is hard to gauge. They will only come based on septic system failures and so on and they'll fail one at a time. So in order to bring the whole area into the city and to provide service is an extensive planning process. Plus it's cost prohibitive because you have to finance all the infrastructure extensions and everybody has to connect to it which which you can imagine how

long that would take. So from the city's perspective these areas have very minimum potential to accommodate the 5,500 or so units or the 1,700 units that were supposed to accommodate in the next 20 years. Even if we start planning now, the lots won't come online till 10, 15 years because you have to first fund it, have to find the money for it, and then you have to build it and everybody has to connect to it and only then will all these lands become available for redevelopment. So, we don't view this area as being a priority to accommodate the target for 20 years. There's long-term capacity. I mean eventually all of these properties should come into the city and when they do come into the city there are lots lot large enough to accommodate higher intense development. Um with the current zoning they can accommodate up to four units and some of these lots are probably big enough that they can do that but again are they available in the next 20 years? That's the big question and they're probably not. So the city has not focused on these areas as being potential areas for the 20-year growth. However, the county and the state have requirements to first consider those areas before we consider expansions. And this is I think where the perspective difference lies. and we are in continuous conversation with them to try and find the middle ground in terms of how we plan for the for the for the numbers that were supposed to plan for. So this is an ongoing discussion. It's not over yet, but I think that is one of the main perspective differences that's uh forcing the county or at least uh having them decide to go with this amendment to the policies. Okar would like to focus on these areas.

These are this is the three areas. Now we have industrial area here. We have no residential capacity there. It's in a high noise area and uh we don't want to support housing closer to the Navy base. Uh you can see these uh uh uh noise zones demarked on here and anything above the 70 to 75 decibel range uh does not support uh uh residential or we wouldn't like to support residential and the base doesn't want to support residential. These are the big impacts that uh basis considered when they look at closures and so on and this is what happened in the early '90s and when they put NAS would be on the closure list there's a lot of people that went from here to lobby to get it off the list and from then on we've established a lot of guidelines to make sure that we don't encroach upon the base so that we can support the base here because it's one of the biggest economic generators in the region. So that's why the northeast 16th line has been established so that you don't have residential to the north. So even though these areas are in the UG um the we don't see any residential capacity there and the limited residential is actually pretty far away. Um and we don't see anticipate getting uh anything there in the next 20 years. So this area is doesn't count really towards the growth. These are already developed areas and we don't see them contributing towards our 20-year growth. And the only areas that we think can contribute are in the southern area. And our suggestion to the county would be to annex those areas immediately. Bring them into the city. And if they're in the city, we can do the calculations for lands capacity and assigned zoning and urban densities and so on. and we can we can try and accommodate as many units as

possible. So, we have to get to that point. We're still in conversations with the county in terms of how do we achieve that, but the county is, I think, a little reluctant because the state and the county want to see what happens to these developed areas prior to this. And so we have to go through this discussion trying to convince them that we don't see the county and the state to to say that we don't see potential here. We only see potential here and this area is not sufficient to accommodate the 1700 and so odd units. Therefore, we should consider expansion. So these are the steps that we are yet to take with the county. We're still stuck in trying to address some of these developed areas. And I think that's where the perspective difference lies and that's why the county is suggesting this uh amendment and the amendment basically is relieving the county of considering the 1,700 units that are not accommodated in the city. And we feel that um that we should uh we have a number right now. We have a a a sort of puzzle in front of us right now that we're all working on and this is the best time to do it. If we take this number out, then there's no incentive to do it after the planning period and by the time the next update cycle comes around, we would have already lost ground in terms of trying to provide affordable housing and we'll be playing catching up. will be behind in our planning efforts and trying to just adjust the numbers so that you don't have to plan for it actually doesn't serve affordability or for the provision of various types of housing in the Okaba UG. So

this is just our uh first take on what the county is uh suggesting. The these haven't gone formally in front of the plan uh in front of the county commission. The process by which a countywide planning policy amendment is made is the county would first propose the changes and then they would take action at the commission level and then every jurisdiction um Okaro, Coupeville and Langley has to ratify um this countywide planning policy and we're not there yet. So if the county uh takes action on this or decides to take action on this then we will come back to the planning commission for a formal recommendation on the amendment. But today I just wanted to share that this is what is happening um at the county level and we are still continuing to work uh with the with the county. Our suggestion would be to to make because there's joint interest in these areas. The county has their perspective on what should happen even in the undeveloped areas and we have a different perspective. Uh we would like to see maybe a third party come in and do the planning for the UG one if we we don't have a UG plan. We're just working off of the countywide planning policies. We're trying to meet the requirements and yet we are seeing uh things in different perspective. If we establish a sort of a UG plan then we'll have a plan for however long we want in perpetuity to amend the plan to change the plan. We'll have something on paper that both jurisdictions can work for from here on out for every update. So, but first we need to come up with a plan which maybe a third party can do with a neutral kind of outlook. They can take the county's input, they can take

the city's input, they can balance both of the perspectives and they can offer options for for both jurisdictions to consider and if we find a middle ground, we can adopt a UG plan and go forward with it. We are testing this idea with the state. We're asking can we if we take on something like this should it be done within this comp plan cycle or can we make some statements in each of our comp plans to say that we will consider this. Does that meet the state requirements? There are a lot of questions that we're trying to bet at this time and so uh we are yet to meet with the we we had an initial meeting with the department of commerce a couple weeks ago and because of the length of questions and the complexity of the questions um they've asked us for written comments and questions so that they can respond to us in a written format. So we're generating all of the maps and all the concepts that we think will apply here and we're going to share that with the state. they will then respond to us. Then maybe we can use that response to to to share with the county to see because the county is also being required by the state uh to do uh to do some planning for the for the UG that they are uh that that requires a a collaboration with the city and we're not there we're not seeing in the same perspective. So, there's a three-way um kind of a discussion going on and we're hoping to kind of close the loop uh with Department of Commerce and see if we can bring everybody to the same plane of understanding, determine what we need to do to move forward. Uh we definitely want to take the opportunity to uh use this update process to set the groundwork at least for UG planning way into the future so that future updates don't have to go through the same cycle

that we do through every update process. So we're hoping to kind of not kick the can down the road. We really want to address this. I think it's a public service to address these issues right now because there is a need and everybody in the state of Washington knows that uh we're short on housing. In fact, the entire country has a shortage of affordable housing and it's a uh it's a an issue every state and every community is dealing with, but we're dealing with it uh a lot more here in Western Washington. And we're required by the state and the GMA uh to look at these issues. And these are difficult issues and I think now is the time to plan for it and that we should continue to work with it on the county. So that's our current um kind of perspective and stance on that. So just wanted to update the commission uh with that and so with that I'll stop and take any questions or comments that you may have.

Thanks Mr. Kak. I appreciate your time. Do any commissioners have any comments or questions? Yeah. Thank you very much for the presentation. And I just have one real quick question. Um, you did a like you were talking about the already developed areas and the septic systems and failing different times and how that kind of just doesn't make sense yet. You said the county says that we're supposed to consider those areas first. What satisfies that consider those areas that is Yeah. Is it just having a conversation about it and saying it doesn't make financial sense? Like what satisfies considering those areas first?

Yes. And that's we're trying to clarify those what are the documents and what is the information that we can provide that will meet the litmos test that you know and because if their expectations are here and if we provide information here we're still having a gap. So these are things that we are still under discussion. One of the things I think that they have asked for is for um us to actually include projects or plans for infrastructure extensions into these areas and that's a very challenging thing to do. We don't have any project that's outside the city. we how do we assign public dollars to provide infrastructure to an area that's not in our jurisdiction, right? So, it's not an easy thing to do. We don't have the funding to do so and it has to be a private public partnership in terms of how we do it. Which means we have to involve all the people in these areas in order to come up with the best financing plan. And you can see how those discussions will go if we start that discussion. So there has to be a prime time to try and do that. The best time would be when most of those infrastructure is failing and the property owners have an incentive to extend the infrastructure. If they don't have their systems failing, there's no reason for any of those people to enter into any discussions with the city, especially financial obligations. So yes, we are trying to find out because for us we don't know what is the document. We cannot in our CF in our CIP just plan for infrastructure extensions in this area without knowing if there'll be connections or not and how do we fund it? Who's going to fund it? And we can kind of think that we can

get grant money to do it, but grants are not guaranteed in the 20-year planning process. So even if we show infrastructure extensions into these areas, it's just a exercise to meet the requirements and not still realize the density that and and allocations we need to plan for. So we're trying to be realistic and really try and accommodate this growth with practical planning. But there's the requirements of the law and there's the practical approach. And I think we're still trying to find the middle ground in terms of what we need to do. Okay. Thank you.

Are there any other questions or comments? I'll ask you one simple one. How does this affect our comp plan for 2025 or do we need an extension?

Good question. And I was going to finish my uh talk today on what's coming up. So we are going to move ahead with our comprehensive plan policy analysis. So we have several elements I want to say 12 to 13 elements in our comprehensive plan. Uh I'll just name some of them. We have land use, we have transportation, we have planning, uh parks and recreation, we have urban design, economic development, sewer and utilities, environment. Uh so uh urban growth are an actual element where we have policy. So we have a lot of policies and we are going to be coming forward to the planning commission with draft policies for the 20 uh for for changing with the update starting next month. So we will have about four or five elements in September and we'll have some elements come forward in October. We'll save the land use and the UG one for the November discussion because we'll have some ideas to float. And then in this in the in the next three months uh we'll also have a meeting of the oak pack. If you remember we started our comprehensive plan and it was it's almost a year since we had the first meeting and this whole discussion has taken several months has delayed our efforts by about a good 6 months and so uh we have to get back on track get the oak meeting. We're hoping to have an Oakpack meeting either uh in the second or third week in September and then we'll have another Oakpack meeting probably in November or December. So, we're going to try and move ahead with at least the 3,500 units that we have said that we can accommodate through our lands capacity analysis and our land use options and we're going to try and move our uh our plan forward. I've also mentioned to the planning commission that we have to undertake an EIS, an environmental impact statement. Now, we've actually gone out for RFPs and we're evaluating proposals, but we've

got that on hold as well because of all of this discussion to determine what the scope of our EIS is going to be. If we're going to just do only our city update, then we limit the EIS only to the city limits. If there's a chance that some of these UG areas can come into the city or if we have to start planning for that then we have to add that into the EIS as well. And EIS is will be a process that will run parallel to some of the comp plan policies that we're doing. So we do anticipate if we take on the EIS that we will need an extension. We will go into June of 2026. Um, so already with our current schedule, I think we'll bleed into 2026 a little bit. Um, but we believe that um, good planning uh, supersedes just meeting deadlines. We don't want to sacrifice good planning and good public service just to make sure that we meet the deadline. um because two or three months delay does not actually impact very much the city's ability to continue doing its effort. the um uh the issues that can come are pretty much related to grant dollars that mostly the department of commerce or the state agencies will have. Um unless we are very dependent on getting some grant money in that first 3 to 6 months, I think we can we can accommodate a slight delay as long as there's the public benefit and public service that comes out of that is uh much more beneficial.

Perfect. Thank you. No other comments or questions. Once, twice. Sold. At this time, I'd like to ask Chairman Eglebrick to please join us back up on the dis. I'll turn it back over to him at this time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, K. Okay. So, moving on to our next uh discussion item is our department update um which CAC I'm I'm told that you will be um introducing as well.

Yes. Um this is the uh our department report u the update on on what the planning commission has taken actions on. I don't have I don't have anything to necessarily add to the report, but um I will note that uh a couple items that the planning commission forwarded to the city council uh that went to July 1st was uh the public hearing was extended till September 2nd because we got some public comment. We're taking some time to just make sure that we address uh some of those public comments and um they should be ready for the September 2nd meeting. So other than that, I don't have an update, but uh if you have any questions, happy to take them.

Okay, cool. Any questions from either of you? Okay, cool. I don't the only thing I I guess a comment more than anything is for the vacancies that are going on. How are are you finding any luck with applicants or are you advertising anywhere in in particular for the the three staff vacancies or Oh,

yeah. Oh, um staff vacancies. We are currently um in the process of uh looking for the director position. Uh we've had candidates and we've had interviews. Um I think uh they're very close to finalizing um a candidate. So depending on uh who accepts or who they offer it to and um and the time that they take to relocate or come here, we're hoping September uh we'll have uh the director position filled, but uh Sabrina and HR would have a better idea of that. Um in terms of um other positions we um uh we also had uh Nolan Grunka who was our associate planner uh leave and we are actually going to wait till we have a director on board before we go out for that position. So that'll be probably a couple months more before we have that decision.

Thank you. Very good. Okay, any last questions? Cool. All right. So, with that, um, that's the rest of our discussion items. So, we'll move on to member comments. If either of you have anything in particular you'd like to say, go for it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, I just wanted to take this time to extend out to the public that the planning commission is volunteer volunteers. We're all volunteers here. And uh we have three vacant seats and you can gain a lot of information from this planning commission. Your voice can be heard. Uh you can give provide input for what you feel the public needs and also by paying attention to the comments from the public and discussing topics with the public. uh you're their voice and if you can if you ever wanted to get into the public uh uh

services this is a great place to start and we are looking for people to fill these seats. Um, as you can tell, there's three of us here tonight. There's four of us. And if one of us would have called out, it would have been postponed. So, cuz we wouldn't have had a quorum. But I I encourage you to get involved because it's beneficial for the public, for more voices and more minds to be thoughtful on the processes that go on. uh we can't think of everything, but we try our hardest to make sure that we think of everything that the public might come up with so that we can help the planners provide the best quality product available to the public and the citizens of Oak Harbor. So, I'm going to stop there, but uh if you're interested, please go to the city website there. You can you can upload your resume and apply there. and uh you don't need a degree, just have a heart and a mind that is wanting to make Okar a better place. With that, Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Thank you. Anything from you? All right. Well, that's about it for us. So, our next scheduled meeting will be September 9th, 2025. Same place, same time. And with that, I will take a motion to adjurnn. Make a motion we adjourn the meeting. Thank you. I second. Moved by Fry, second by Bradley. All those in favor signify by saying I.