Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

at some point.

Thanks.

to then open the public hearing right and the regular you open the public hearing and then you'll suspend that one and open it back to them actually right there's two different public comment periods well just yes and i have to remind people that this is not to do with public hearing later things on the topic for today okay but yeah All right. We're going to go ahead and call the meeting for May 27th to order at six o'clock. Roll call. Everyone is here except for Judy and Chair Gadman. Myself as vice chair will be filling in today.

Alan, would you please read the lane acknowledgement? I'd be honored. We, the city of Lacey, are on ancestral land of the tribal people of the Treaty of Medicine Creek, including the Nisqually Indian Tribe and the Scloxon Island Tribe. We acknowledge and remember those tribal people not recognized today who were absorbed or relocated to other tribes for survival. We recognize the ancestors and the descendants who are still here. We recognize and respect the tribal people of the Treaty of Medicine Creek as the traditional stewards of this land since time immemorial and their role today in taking care of these lands in perpetuity. We recognize and have the responsibility to call attention to the histories of dispossession, force removal, and abridged treaty rights that allowed our nation state and city to develop as they have today. We recommend that community members read the Medicine Creek Treaty of 1854. Thank you.

Next, we'll move on to approval of the agenda and the consent agenda items. I'm looking for a motion to approve the consent agenda.

So moved.

Second. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion passes. Similarly, looking for an approval of the May 13th, 2026 meeting minutes. So moved.

Second.

All approved? Aye. All opposed? All abstaining? The record show that Judith is now here. Okay, next is our public comment. As a reminder, this is our public comment just for our general agenda meeting, not to be confused with the public hearing. So if you have any public comments pertaining to anything else, now would be the time. I see no one in the room. And no one registered. And I see no one registered. Great. Commissioner's report. Does anyone have anything that they'd like to share, starting with Alan?

On the 25th through the 28th, June, we have the wall that heals that will be coming to Chambers Prairie. And the opening ceremonies will be at 6 p.m. on the 25th that day. We also have an escort ride on the 23rd to escort the truck into Chambers Prairie that day. Set up on the 24th and then we'll be closing it down and break down on the 28th at 2 p.m. come out and dissipate.

Thank you. Kieran? No. Spencer? Jennifer. Perfect. All right. Department report. Yeah, nothing on the department report for today. Perfect. All right. With that, I'm going to suspend the current Lacey Planning Commission meeting, and I will start the public hearing regarding LMC amendments for daycare centers, parking, and conversion of existing buildings. Wonderful.

Are you going to make a comment? No.

So, again, we're here for the public hearing. And I see no one registered in person or online for the public hearing.

Correct. I'll run through a quick presentation on the topics that we're covering tonight. And then afterward, I'll hand it back over to you guys. But as Robert referenced earlier, this is related to parking, daycare center, and the conversion of existing building related amendments. We brought this to you guys a month or so ago. So this would look relatively familiar. But we will run through it for the purposes of this public hearing. Within your staff report, you should have links to all the bills that we're going to run through, as well as the draft Lacey Municipal Code proposed edits to align our existing code with those legislative amendments. So yeah, I'll run through this. And then if you have any questions, feel free to let me know and we'll go from there. But again, so the childcare centers, parking updates, and conversion of existing buildings are on our docket for 2026. They are items two, three, and eight. So that's why we're advancing them as part of this work session or work program, I should say. And again, we're primarily doing advancing these topics to remain in compliance with recent legislation that has passed. We will or would potentially be preempted in June if we don't get around to fully adopting them. So we're on track for that timeline. But whether we incorporate them into our code or not at the state level, they will kind of dictate that. There we go. So the first one I wanted to talk about was Senate Bill 5509 that has to do with childcare centers, specifically as it relates to zoning. So this is a bill that essentially requires municipalities to permit childcare centers outright in all of our existing zoning designations with the caveat of industrial zones and open space institutional zones. In large part, this is a use that we already do allow in pretty much all of our zones, including open space institutional. That said, it does require some language updates in a few of our chapters just to better call that out and be in alignment with that. So that's that bill. As far as on the parking front, there are two different primary bills that we were taking a look at through this cycle. The first one being Senate Bill 6015, which had to do with minimum parking requirements for specifically residential uses. And then the second one being Senate Bill 5184. And this is a larger kind of comprehensive parking reform and modernization act. And these are the titles that were given as part of those bills. and that's what we're doing. But as far as some additional details on what's contained within those two bills, it places some limitations on the maximum amount of parking that we can require for certain uses. That's primarily referenced within our parking table, within our draft documents. That's a lot of the work that we did, kind of adjusting those numbers for those assigned uses. So that's part of the packet. It does not impact any of the regulations related to Americans with Disabilities Act, so that all remains consistent before and after these bills, so nothing changing there. And then it does change some of the allowances for religious organizations. Our code is currently silent on that, so that wasn't something that we really needed to dig into as part of this update, but calling that out here. And then it also called out a few specific scenarios where we're not allowed to require any parking. And again, that's not to say that developers or property owners, builders can't on their own go and provide parking. It's just that the city is not allowed to require them to do it. There's a distinction being made there. So those uses include residences under 1,200 square feet, commercial spaces under 3,000 square feet, affordable housing, senior housing, child care centers, ground level non-residential space in mixed use buildings, or buildings that are undergoing a change of use. So those are the examples there. And then moving into the conversion of existing buildings. This largely has to do with the conversion of existing buildings from non-residential to residential uses. There are two different bills that are in play here. The House Bill 1042, which really speaks to the conversion of existing commercial and mixed-use buildings to multifamily housing. And then House Bill 1183, which has to do with the energy efficiency of buildings when conversions are taking place. Again, all of the details that we're proposing are in your packet. The chapters that are directly impacted or that we're proposing updates to to bring ourselves into alignment with these requirements are up on the screen here. So Title 11 development procedures, specifically conditional uses and permits. So that has to do with child care centers specifically for light industrial, which is something that we had to add as part of these bills. So it's a conditional use. It's not an outright use, but that's why you see that one in there. Title 14 building and construction chapters, design review, specifically the definition section of the design review. We had to update and add a few definitions as part of that chapter. Standards for parking lot construction. That was another one that takes parking legislation. And then the majority of the updates that are taking place as part of this exist within Title 16, which is our zoning chapter. Again, that touches things like general provisions, our definitions chapter, a little bit more information in our daycare facilities chapter. And then it does go through and actually touch all of our different zoning designations to make sure that they are Daycare centers are now permitted use within each one of those chapters. So it's kind of a lengthy document, but really that's just a thing that we're doing over and over again that you'll see there. And then 1672 is our off-street parking and loading. And that's where you'll see the number of parking stalls for different types of use that's being updated, which is the primary change taking place there. But with that, that's kind of a summary of everything that we're looking at tonight. As far as where we're at in the process, we're at the public hearing tonight. Next steps, I'll be handing it back over to you guys where you'll have the opportunity to either make a recommendation or ask for more opportunities to review the content that we provided, at which point then we would bring it back to you again at a future date for that potential recommendation. Whenever you guys do make the recommendation, it'll get elevated to city council at that point, where then they will have the opportunity to work it through their system.

They'll have a work session, they'll review it, and then at a future date, they would then adopt it.

But yeah, with that, that's the end of my presentation. Happy to answer any questions or yeah, go from there.

Questions from the planning commission? Spencer? Spencer?

Yes, so when I was looking through that, I did notice that in several of the sections, there were specifically enumerated areas. I'm thinking about, let me switch to my notes real fast here. 14-23-02-02, or I'm sorry, 02-0, which references, oh geez, it's hard to do this on this tablet. I'm not used to it, apologies. it is the now of course i don't have it pulled up anymore all right so it is in the definitions when it's talking about key multimodal intersections and then zones with pedestrian emphasis there's specific zones labeled in that would that require a future code change or is there any benefit to Doing an attribution all relationship to another document that could be maybe easily easily updated Sorry, I don't know that I Okay, so similar to when we reference the county codes by reference rather than directly copy and pasting them, is there any benefit to not listing these zones specifically in here and then having a separate document That is pedestrian zones or zones with pedestrian emphasis and then it listed there, because it would be easier to modify if the city changes or is this something that's fairly immutable or not changing often enough to make that worthwhile.

yeah so. yeah so right. Right now, we have about five or six definitions that all largely overlap that have to have to do with key multimodal intersections and corridors and pedestrian oriented spaces. So one of the things that we took advantage of as part of this update process was to consolidate some of those and eliminate some of the redundancy that does currently exist within our definitions. And The reason we're doing that is one of the bills states that residential uses can go anywhere that is not a designated pedestrian corridor. So there was some specific language in one of the bills that came along that essentially opens up all of our commercial districts and all of our zoning to residential development without any kind of oversight or ability for us to say, no, that this should be like a second story use or these corners should be preserved since they're prominently located in a largely commercial area for commercial purposes, that kind of thing. So why we're bringing these definitions into this update is to ensure that we still have that flexibility and control instead of just giving kind of a blanket idea statement that you can go build residential anywhere. So it would essentially undo a lot of our zoning designations, whether or not they're commercial mixed use or residential. So it's just making sure that we still have that control. I will say that This is a bit of a stop gap right now. Reason being is that we actually have our pedestrian and bicycle plan update is coming in about a year and a half. So as part of that, we are definitely going to do a deeper dive on where these districts are and what makes sense. But given the timeline that we're currently in, this is the stop gap measure that we've identified that will at least get us to that point so that by the time we get to the pedestrian bicycle plan, we'll have some clear adjustments. looking at and have the opportunity to kind of really unpack that a little bit more and figure out what zones make sense or if we want to take more of a corridor approach or a zone approach or maybe even like a street hierarchy approach of arterials collectors that kind of thing or some blend of the three but for the purposes of this and where we're at with our kind of the code how it's written currently this was identified as the best interim strategy that makes sense

Thank you for the clarification. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

All right. I think I heard one other person maybe.

Just on any of these, what was the deadline that the state set? And obviously, if we didn't approve them, the state would preempt us, correct? Yeah, end of June is the timeline that we're working on. So it is a tighter timeline for this one. And it does touch on some things that we are looking forward to, but just given the amount of effort that we want to spend on those things to make sure we get them right, this is kind of our interim approach until we have the opportunity to really kind of dive in on those.

Any other points? Perfect. Thank you, Hans. I will now suspend the public hearing and I will restart our planning session meeting scheduled for May 27th. Point of order, if we wanted to make that recommendation, would that happen today and would it happen under new business?

You would have the opportunity to either recommend the drafts as currently written to the council for their review or Or you have the opportunity to ask staff to take a look at specific areas that you want more information on. And then we could bring those back to you at a future planning commission date, depending on what your preferences are.

Perfect.

Well, since we have no new business or old business, would we like to entertain either of the options that Hans just listed out for us?

I would move that we approve the amendments as listed in our packet.

Looking for a second.

Second.

All in favor of approving the amendment as written? Aye. Aye. All opposed? All abstaining? Motion passes. So we will go ahead and move forward with the amendments as written to counsel for the review. As a reminder, no new business, no old business. Our communication announcement, the next planning commission meeting is June 10th. This is the fastest I've ever gotten through a meeting. I keep worrying that I missed something. And during that, we will be having a public hearing on the 10th for the six-year transportation improvement plan. And then working through a couple. So we have a little bit of a more robust schedule for the June 10th meeting. If you have any issues attending that, please let city staff know ahead of time so we can make sure that we have more. With that, I will adjourn our planning commission meeting at 6 20 p.m thank you so much great job robert thank you jeff never comes back it'll be quick i'm worried i felt like jeff set me up like the test no you did great bye everybody have a wonderful evening