Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We

have here today.

Yeah. It's a crowd.

Kevin, are we ready? Alright. I'll use the magic gavel. Alright. 06:30, Thursday, 05/07/2026. Call the Planning Commission to order. And so we'll start with roll. John Bachman.

Here. Susan Sikara. Here.

She's speaking into the mic. It says right here so we all remember. I'll say it's Fabienne. Here. And Mike Bresco here. And Isham Alquad here. And we have two excused absences this evening, Ajay Shakrapani and Maazli Poonawala. Okay. And then the next thing is agenda for this evening. Any modifications to the agenda?

Okay. Seeing none, consider the agenda approved by common consent and minutes from the April 16 meeting. Any modifications to those? So those approved. Alright. First off is public comment. This is three minutes public comment. We will also have a public comment at the end of our business which will be five minutes for the agenda related items. So public comment now could be really any topic. So anybody interested in speaking? Don't fight over the We

only told her to speak. We'll talk about the EPO docket lane. City council that I'll give to you guys too. Do I have three? Okay.

Good evening, Planning Commissioners. Paul Stickney, Samamish. I've got four pages of handouts here, two I gave to city council. And if you watch the Tuesday meeting in my second public comment, I sort of mused. I said, I wish I could control time and have half an hour that only took three minutes.

There's a lot to talk about with this that I'm just going to basically gloss over what these pages are. I've been very consistent and clear and on a steady tact of being assertive that I feel that as a community we really need to add market rate housing to our comp plan and we can do that. We don't have to wait for the next cycle. That's what's on the first page here is five ks plus A is okay. So I've been talking about five ks market rate over 20 of mostly housing from 500 to a million five for stages of life and generation.

I put that in purple because it's a regal color. It's noble, and it's the right thing to do based on internal needs. Plus A is in orange. It's not red, but part of it's red. Doing AMI bands from zero to 30 is tough.

Doing AMI bands from 30 to fifty and fifty to 80 is a little easier, hence orange. And the okay is green because the roughly 7,000 different and diverse housing types that are not single family only yield the equivalent in traffic of about seventeen fifty single family homes over twenty years, which is less than a third of the single family homes that have been built in Sammamish over the last twenty five. On page two of this is the cruxes, what to do to make this happen in one page. We can talk about that. The next page is an alternative to impact fees, where I'm suggesting on the transportation impact, we come up with eight square footage scalable rates.

We can meet and talk about this. On page two was a comment I gave to the council the week before on what the issues were with the current blended rate that simply charge every single house the same amount, or they don't generate anywhere near the same traffic. It's not equitable. On the next page, there are two pages of some analysis I turned into city council about the blended rate and what the numbers really mean. And on the last page, I'm showing you two pages from a traffic study done in Sammamish in '23 where traffic was modeled, measured, and show the trip generation rates are extremely low for the different types of housing.

So we should meet and talk about this if any of you want. It's just a lot of information. Okay. I'll be back.

Thank you. Who set a warning, Paul? James

Eastman, East Lake Samana's Parkway. I won't be back, so I'm gonna have to fit it in for three minutes. But I've found myself up here a few years ago talking about this docket, and I think a lot of you are here, probably here, and I'm glad to see that Evan and Miriam are also still around. That's nice because they're very helpful in getting me through the docket process probably three and a half years ago. And as part of that, I originally went over what I was looking to do and I brought it forward as creating a sub area plan for my property.

And I was told that my 100 acres wasn't big enough for a sub area plan and that it was more like a neighborhood center and I should change it. So I changed it and I think some of you remember that it came up in the meeting that we we didn't know then and we still don't know now what a neighborhood center even is. We referenced it in our comp plan, but yeah, it's to be determined. So as part of getting that docket approved through you guys and then through City Council, you guys were very helpful. You wrote me a letter saying, hey, let's this Eastman guy has got 100 acres, like let's go ahead and try to get to that in 2025.

It's a good opportunity to look at his land and whole and see what the issues are and what we can fix and where we can cluster and just treat the property as a whole. Well, it's midway through 2026 and here we are revising chapter 21 a, which or 24 a. Sorry. Thanks, Paul. So we're revising it and there's been a lot of people that have made it through that first part of the docket.

Mary's had some go through in 2019 that are never brought forward. So I don't think 24 a is a problem. I think the problem is getting things to the dais and city council. And as far as the neighborhood plan versus neighborhood center, there is an RCW, Mary pointed out to me, that allows neighborhood plans to come forward at any given time. I am asking city council to modify 24 a to say that neighborhood centers could also come through at any given time because that's I had originally asked for a neighborhood plan.

I am a neighborhood center right now on the comp plan, and it's twenty twenty six point five, and I'm still waiting to come forward. But time does start to run out. My property taxes have more than doubled in the past couple of years. So I am gonna have to develop here at some time. I think the best way to do it is to do it as a whole. I'm not scared of the public process. A lot of time with developers, we like to paint them as a certain picture and put them in a certain box. But I'm willing to come up here and meet with everybody and look at it as a whole and just decide what's best to do. So I look forward to you guys changing this tonight. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, James. Mary, how did I know?

Good evening, excuse me, Planning Commission. I'm Mary Wichter, twenty five years in Sammamish. I am going to speak to the agenda because there are some things I want to clarify. First, as James just spoke and I had looked in the packet and a couple places the wonderful work that Miriam and company had done, it says that there's an RCW with exceptions. So I was like, what does it mean by exceptions?

So I looked it up, clicked on it, it's RCW36Dot70ADot130Sub2SubASubI and through v, and it shows that sub area plans, so like normally you can't change the comp plan except once every ten years, and then you have an annual docket so you can only do it once per year, but sub area plans have a revised Code of Washington exception so that they can can happen more than once is what it says. So I had mentioned to James, I said you know you were a sub area plan and then now your neighborhood center and nobody really knows what those are. If the RCW has the exemption for sub area plan, why don't you see if the city can give you an exemption for neighborhood centers so we can try to make them actually work? So that would be my suggestion and he got the right idea but he didn't use the terms. So sub areas are exempted already for RCW.

We want neighborhood centers to kinda have the same thing because they're so new. They're in the comp plan. Nobody's done them, and you might not land on the right spot. So having them where they can morph, I think, is a really good idea, not only for the city but also to help James out, and he does own a 100 acres in the city that are almost vacant. The other things I wanted to go through is there's some things that like area wide future future land use map or area wide zoning.

Might be good if you do a definition for area wide because I was really glad that you deleted the numbers of three and six and all that, but area wide I'm not sure how big that is or what that means. And then there's an I think it's essentially closed that you can delete dockets and if you're an essentially closed, what does that mean? Because I have in city TDRs, that's where the outside TDRs have all been bought up from King County to send them into the city and we want in city TDRs so where we're not supposed to build that the staff says is unbuildable that those could go and give density to somewhere else. It's a great docket. I was told we had to wait for the 2024 comp plan.

So in 2019, it passed. We've been waiting. And then I was told by David Pyle that, well, we really need to get the density right in town center. So that docket's been sitting 02/2526. I'm at seven years, and now there's code that says, well, at five years, they can boot you out. And I'm like, I'm worried about that because sometimes it does take a long time, and the reason you keep seeing me over and over is it takes a really long time to get some code changes and then stuff and projects and staff and budgeting and everything. So anyway, that's some of my email. I did read the packet four times tonight because the only way that you can get changes done to the comp plan or to city development regs is through the docketing process. Thank you.

Thanks Mary. Evan, anybody online? Alright. So that is the end of this evening's public comment that's wide open. Miriam, you have a presentation for us on title 24A.

Yes, we do.

All right.

Okay. Good evening Planning Commission. I'm Miriam Leitner, Planning Manager for Community Development. And I'm joined tonight with by Jackie Belial, our management analyst. And tonight, we're gonna focus on a review of the proposed amendments to SMC title 24 a, which governs the process for updating the city's comprehensive plan and the development regulations.

Tonight, I'm gonna provide a little background on how the updates were developed, and then Jackie will give an overview of the changes. After this, we're gonna answer some of the questions submitted in advance by the planning commission, and it will cover quickly next steps for the project and then open things up for discussion to hear your feedback and any remaining questions about the draft. So we're gonna start with just a few pieces of background about title 24 a. As a refresher, we wanted to quickly compare title 24 a and title 21, the city's development regulations. Title 21 directs this development in the city.

This includes land use, zoning, critical areas, and more. All development in the city is subject to title 21. If you wanna make changes to title 21, then you have to follow the processes in title 24 a as state law requires that changes to the development regulations be docketed. Title 24 a provides the process the city must follow to update both the comprehensive plan and the development regulations. We also briefly wanted to share our process for developing the draft code that you see tonight.

Staff identified areas where further clarification was needed or where issues had arisen after implementing the code for five years. We also pulled code from Issaquah, Redmond, Kirkland, Covington, Bellevue, Mercer Island, New Castle, Maple Valley, and Snoqualmie and reached out to MRSC to learn what other cities are doing and identify best practices. We had introductory meetings with both the Planning Commission and the City Council to provide an overview of key issues we hope to address through these updates. And after considering the Planning Commission's comments in April, the legal review of the draft and review from the city manager's office, well as parks and public works, We're now bringing the draft forward for your input. We're planning to have the public hearing for the planning commission on this draft on May 21 and then move to the review with city council in June and July.

So I'll now hand it over to Jackie who's gonna go over at a high level the items that were proposed.

Thank you. So as Mary mentioned, we are gonna go over a lot of the high level changes in this presentation. The matrix that was included with the packet includes every single change made, including restructuring, rephrasing, along with the red line version that you saw. So in the presentation, we'll focus on the substantive changes. If there are questions about restructuring or rephrasing, we're happy to take those tonight as well.

We're just gonna highlight the major ones up here. So in the general provisions section, the most substantive changes that were made were that we combined the periodic update section and the annual review section into one section called amendment frequency. And then also during the years that we are doing a periodic update, which is every ten years, the annual review will be combined into the periodic update. In the annual amendment section, we added specific language to codify how the public, staff, city council members, and planning commissioners can submit docket requests. These groups have always had the ability to submit docket requests.

That has not changed. We are just codifying what that process looks like. The annual deadline, we did choose to keep the same, but we chose to change the application turnaround time to be ninety days instead of thirty, which we had a long discussion on here. We made the pre app conference for future land use map amendments optional. This is a cost to the applicant, so making it optional does help with some of the cost of this process.

And we codified additional options for the council rather than just not docketing an item. For example, instead of choosing not to dock it, they could choose to add the item to an existing work plan item. And then we extended the three year limitation on resubmitting a docket request to be for both docket request types. And previously, it was just for site specific land use map amendments. The title of this section was corrected to amendment proposals, and we combined the text amendment proposal process and the site specific land use map amendment proposal process just into one process just for efficiency.

There are a lot of repetitive sections. And then we added some clarifying language that the amendment proposals are reviewed based on staff analysis, which is done using the criteria specified in this chapter. And we added a section to address outstanding amendment proposals, which includes reviewing proposals that are more than five years old and giving the council options like removing items that are outdated or redundant or designated that they be added to the next comprehensive plan periodic update. And then this section just had some restructuring and consolidation. There's no changes.

And then the noticing in public participation section, we did replace a chunk of this section that's pulled from the RCW by just referencing the RCW. And we added language requiring a public participation plan be created and reviewed by council when a proposed amendment is going through the process. We changed the requirement to post notices on social media to requiring that the notices be post on the city's website. And we asked legal to help write some language for us regarding the email notifications as we heard that that was something that was important to keep. But we were able to ask legal to reword it for us to keep the city less open to risk.

So those are the major changes that you'll have seen. So we can come back to these. Miriam's gonna go over some of the questions that you all had so that we can address those first. But we can always if you have questions on these, we can always come back to these slides later.

Okay, so we're going to jump into the questions that were received by the deadline. The first question is why isn't the future land use map an option for docket requests or amendments? And this is because the future land use map is part of the comprehensive plan, so any changes to the future land use map such as site specific land use map amendments are considered amendments to the comprehensive plan and that's why they're not noted separately. The second question is about what we track related to docket requests and how we define outcomes and success. Staff currently tracks when a request was submitted, if it gets docketed and the date and number of the corresponding resolution.

We then track whether an amendment application is submitted, whether it's approved and the date and number of the corresponding resolution for that. I think defining success and other outcomes is really challenging here because as I mentioned at our last meeting, timing can vary dramatically depending on the type of amendment, the work plan, and the legislative review calendars, but also because the decisions that ultimately get made are at the discretion of the City Council. The third question is whether a flowchart showing the process from start to finish can be added. Yes, staff is recommending though that this be done on the city's website rather than put into code for a few reasons. The first is that it would create inconsistency with the rest of the municipal code which is primarily text based, and the second is that there are additional charges when we add graphics tables and photos to the code.

Staff have also found that most of our community members are using the docket website rather than going into the code and reading the code. Additionally, posting it on the website allows us to make changes a little bit more easily. If we put it in the code we'd have to go through a docketing process just to update the graphic and we anticipate it's likely that we'll need to do this as the city is working toward compliance with updated ADA regulations. Okay. Sorry.

Finally, there's a question about adding an option for the City Council to postpone a decision to a docket request to wait for something like an environmental impact study of an area. And we don't think this is necessary and that's because the docket request is simply to decide whether further evaluation are considered and warranted. The Planning Commission and the council wouldn't conduct this level of review until we get to the amendment application. So as we develop our work plan and the timing of various items, we do consider studies and projects that might affect other items on our work plan and try to align and phase things accordingly. So for example, the legislative review a site specific land use map amendment for Building 120 which has been docketed is going to begin after the building site assessment phase one of their project has been completed and that way the information is going to be available to the Planning Commission and the City Council as you all consider the change in designation on the future land use map.

Okay, the next question asks about whether Title 24A allows the Planning Commission to review and provide recommendations on transportation related policies, programs and methodologies when they're tied to the comp plan or comp plan consistency. The answer is that title 24 a only relates to the comp plan and the implementing development regulations. So if there were a proposed comprehensive plan amendment relating to transportation that was based on policies programs and methodologies, then the Planning Commission could review those policies programs and methodologies in the context of assumptions on which the comp plan amendment was based. But the Planning Commission does not have authority to review policies programs or methodologies related to transportation outside the scope of a comp plan amendment or a development regulation amendment. In terms of consistency, the Planning Commission should review proposed transportation related comp plan amendments or proposed transportation related development regulation amendments for consistency with the city's existing comprehensive plan.

There was also a question about whether title 24 a allows the Planning Commission to initiate a comp plan amendment related to transportation policy and the answer is yes, as currently drafted it does so long as there's a majority vote and it follows the outline process. Another question that came in was whether staff capacity alone could prevent a comp plan amendment from moving forward and the short answer is yes because what goes on the docket and what does not is entirely within the discretion and the purview of the city council. The decision criteria in title 24 a, including staff time and other factors are intended to support decision making, but ultimately the council and the city manager have to decide what can be accomplished with the available resources and how to prioritize items staff will be asked to work on. So staff capacity is often a key consideration in all of this. The final question is whether title 24 a should expressly recognize transportation and the other items listed on screen as components of the comp plan consistency review.

Ultimately,

is

a matter for City Council to decide, but we did want to point out just a few things. The first is that the Growth Management Act obligates cities to balance all elements of comprehensive plan. Also title 24A applies to all of the elements in the comprehensive plan as well as the implementing development regulations in title 21. Legal has some concerns that calling out a specific element like transportation would imply that consistency with other elements is less important, which contradicts the intent of the Growth Management Act. Regarding the comprehensive plan consistency review, legal feels this is covered through the analysis that's required in 24A.

Okay. So we're gonna wrap up with next steps and then open it up for discussion. Oh, okay. Sorry. We had a little moment.

The Planning Commission public hearing is scheduled for May 21 as I mentioned. After this, we will draft or sorry, the draft will go to the City Council in June and July. I believe our current dates for City Council review are June 9 and July 21. So with that, we wanted to open the floor for your questions on any code sections or other title 24A topics you'd like further clarification on. We'd also like to know whether there are any major changes or modifications that the Planning Commission would like to make a motion on so that they can be incorporated into the final draft before the public hearing. Thank you.

So just let me clarify. So you've received comments on the red line. We're going to receive some comments and have this evening and written comments. We may have some. So if what would require a motion then because there's there's a lot of input that you've received that you're gonna fact and some of them are typos, some of them you know, so clarify what would require a motion.

I would say if there's anything you heard in public comment that you guys would like to make a motion on, there's also the option to further discuss it on the twenty first as well. If there's anything in your review that seemed like a glaring error beyond just a typo, if there's something substantive that's missing, those kind of things would be good to have now so we can incorporate them in the draft. But again, we can also incorporate them as amendments during the public hearing.

And then just somewhat further clarification. So you had in the next steps, the first step was to finalize. So I assume that's gonna be pulling in some of the comments to, you know, and so much of the red line that we have now will be accepted, but then there will be some blue lines or green lines or redder lines or something I that will be

think things that are more minor edits or cleanup will just integrate into the code. If there are items that feel more substantive, we'll separate those out and make them part of a presentation so that you guys can go through and say, yes, we want to add that to our amendments Yeah, or

thank you. Helpful clarifications. Alright, should we go around the table? John, do you have additional questions or comments?

I guess always. First, great work. This was really clean and easy to get through and comprehensive. My only comment, and I'm sorry I didn't get written comments in earlier, mirrors Ms. Wichter and Mr. Eastman's comment about area what is area wide? Is that city wide? I was concerned that subareas and neighborhood centers wouldn't be available through a docket process. So I don't know if that's just a little bit of editing or if we need a motion to that, but that's my only only comment or concern.

Yeah. I think what we can do is come back on the twenty first with the proposed definition that you guys can then modify.

Think, Suda?

Miriam, can you go back to the questions?

The commissioner questions? Yes.

Okay. Because I forgot what I asked.

Think yours was

One more. Yeah. I really like the idea of having the process on the website instead of here. That makes total sense. The second question I have is, like, having the defining the outcomes or success. It's not to find out, like, you know, did it go through or not, but to have, like, you know, if it didn't go through a docket, right, you have a reason, whether it's city council saying no or something, but it would help you, right, to so that's the only reason why. If not, like, how are we helping people who are submitting the dockets? Right? So that's why I was asking, like, you know, for historical purposes too.

Yeah, thank you. That's helpful. I think in my mind, one of the areas I think we could use some improvement. We do a great job when people submit docket requests and applications were very responsive. I think the challenge is when there's adjustments to our work plan and because we're such a small team, oftentimes our communication and follow-up after things are approved or after the application comes in is lacking a little bit. So I think maybe something maybe trying to define some metrics and refining our process on the administrative side around communication.

It doesn't have to be a huge one. Maybe just a comment section at the end of it. Pass, fail, why? That's it.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Can you go to Slide number seven, please? There's a reference to the first one, remove reference to the King County urban growth capacity study. Can you elaborate on it? What is this all about? So

the urban growth capacity study is a data exercise. So it's guided from King County and we simply pull data from our permitting system and look at what has been built during a certain time period. Also what our capacity is across based on certain criteria that King County has designed. So the thought there was it's really an administrative process. It ultimately, the capacity portion of it eventually informs the discussions and the negotiations around growth targets.

But at least in my brain, they're very separate. One is a data exercise, the other is more policy related. So it didn't feel super relevant here for docket requests specifically.

Yeah. But when you when you read the sentence, it looks like that somebody gets the impression that you removed it but added instead of that, you added Washington State environmental policy.

That

is a confusing part. And then the third one, the Department of Ecology. What's the relationship between the study and the Department of Ecology?

Yeah. So you may wanna read sentence. We did we did at the Washington State Policy Act and the Washington State Department of Ecology. The SIPA is because it is subject to SIPA. Any docker request, anything we do with the comp plan is subject to SIPA. It's a non project. And the Washington State Department of Ecology relates to our shoreline program, so they oversee that. It wasn't that we weren't following those or considering those, but they weren't formally spelled out. As we were looking at other cities, we were like, oh, there's so many other cities that have these two things. And so we talked to legal, and they said it's probably best if you include those.

So it we would it make a sense to actually break it down into different statements or different sentences? Because there is no relationship between urban growth capacity study and Department of Ecology.

Yes. So if you look

The way it is right now, it's kind of confusing. This

is just a summary of what the change is. If you look in the code, it's quite a long list of of things. So I'd recommend later, and we can send the presentation out. You can find the code section and see the whole text.

Okay. Can you go to Slide number eight, please? Where is it? Decision criteria moved. What does that mean?

So in the First of all,

what is the decision criteria and why it was moved? Yeah. Where did it move to?

So what was confusing in title 24 a as currently adopted is there is a decision criteria section in the code, but there's also a section that's embedded in the process for docket requests that has its own decision criteria just for docket request. And it seemed a little bit silly to have it in two places and it also is hard when we're referring to this very embedded decision criteria within the context of a whole overall process.

What is decision criteria? What is the definition of decision criteria?

There's a whole there's a set of three different ones. Believe for the docket, the one that got moved, it's staff capacity, work plan, budget availability and alignment with the existing work plan.

Is it spelled out somewhere

else? Yes. Yes. So all we did was we moved it from this one section around process to the decision criteria section. So they're all together in one nice little bundle.

Can you go to Slide number nine, please? Concurrent reviewed concurrent review is required. Where was where did I see that? Was it on '9? Was it on '10? Yeah. Yeah. In second, right. Why it was concurrent review is required? This was not

Okay. It's all coming back to me. So the GMA requires concurrent review. It's not that we Concurrent

review between what and what?

Concurrent review of all amendments made within Yeah. The past So it's not that we weren't doing that. It's just that it was never part of the code, and we felt like it was an important step and it should be mentioned. So we added that in. Can

you go to Slide number 11, please? And that is the last one. What was the reason that you did not want to remove requirement to post on social media? What was the justification for it?

Yes. So primarily, it was legal risk. There was concern that leaving So we had the phrase posting on social media. And there was concern about someone could sue the city if we posted on Facebook and not on I'm not on social media. Thank you.

Instagram. It put us at risk of not complying. And so it was recommended that it be removed. I think also in talking with our communications person, there was very low interest when they did post public hearings on social media, they weren't getting a lot of engagement. But I think there's also administrative alternatives we could think about especially if we know that the item is of public interest where we could do like a monthly something in the newsletter or a monthly post on social media or wherever that just talks about the upcoming public hearings.

The last comment is that a number of occasions, I think that we talked about the docket request can be submitted anytime.

Yes.

Anytime, but would not be considered till August, right?

Right.

Is the wording now, it says anytime, so they don't have to wait till August to submit. They can submit anytime.

They can submit anytime.

Because the language is there. I didn't see any reference to it.

Okay. I don't think we changed that because I think it's already in the code. But please, as you guys are doing one final review, if you read it and you disagree, let us know, and we can amend that on the twenty first.

So it's clear what you're saying that the language is clear.

I think it's to me, it's clear, but I'm obviously biased.

Thank you for putting this together. It made it really easy to to read through it and follow it. Honestly, I read it a couple times, and I'm trying to come up with a question. I don't have a question. And the note that said just said, when I read when I read it, I understood it the way you just explained it, that they can submit it anytime, but this is the cutoff date. If you submit it one hour after that, you are out of luck. You're gonna wait for one year. And I support what Mary and James asked for earlier, but you said we can come back later for for those. Thank you.

Okay. So my turn. Well, I still I I hate to seem like I'm dense, but I'm going to here. I I am still a little bit confused. So I wanna make a change to the land use snapper zoning. When can that occur?

Okay. So I will say, I agree adding a definition for area ride rezone would be very helpful because we removed, I would call it a limitation on who could apply for a site specific land use map amendment or a future land use map amendment. The current code, I can't remember the exact language, but it's like three adjoining parcels from the same owner or six parcels maybe also adjoining from different owners and it was very confusing as you can see, I can't remember. So we removed that because it felt a little arbitrary. But I think in removing that, it also prevented a little bit of differentiation between an area wide zone and a future land use map amendment.

I will say, so a site specific slash future land use map amendment is to change the zoning on the future land use map for usually one property or a small group of properties. Historically, it's usually been one. I think we've had it one time before I got here, heard there was a group of eight properties that came through. So it's typically smaller. An area wide rezone, I would say, I don't know if it would be a sub area. I would like to talk through that more with legal and with David Pyle. So we'll follow-up on that. But I think it would be a larger area, right? It would be

Houses.

If it's the site specific, and I want to make a change to what is happening at the church across the street or something, that could be done and docketed in a year. Yep. You don't have to wait like five years.

Correct.

If you're making a broader change and if I think about the future land use map where there is broad swaths of one color and another broad and you wanna make a change to a big chunk of one of those, then that would be five years when the when the update to the comprehensive plan is routinely scheduled. Is that

Yes. With the caveat that technically the periodic updates are now ten years. There's like a five year point where

This is a kind of a review.

It's kind

of a review. We don't have details yet on what that includes.

Okay. But it's so at least five years. It could be longer. And there are also some exceptions to that that are specified. And one of the comments from James and Mary was whether we should add an exception for the neighborhood center, I think it was. Right? All of that makes sense. Like I think things that can I understand if I understand what the state was wanting to do? You don't want to change the comprehensive plan willy nilly. And the same thing with land use.

You just you need some stability in what people are looking at and planning for. And at the same time, to enable development or some flexibility for owners to have to wait long periods of time also doesn't make sense. So being very clear about what's site site specific. Been amazed all day long that the tug has stopped working or area wide I think would be absolutely essential. And we've kind of heard that.

That was and thanks for that clarification. I was frankly a little bit I was totally dense on it, definitely confused. Other than that, you know, I sent in some comments and you know, everything seems like it reads easier and makes sense And certainly it's been supported by the conversations that we've had over the past several meetings.

I did just want to mention that the comments that have come in that were very, very minor, we we do have those in a matrix and that matrix will be included as part of the I forgot the date. May 21 agenda packet. So you'll be able to see if you suggested a comma somewhere, I will address that in the matrix as well. So there were a few, I think, sections that you had suggested a word or something. So we will address those.

We have high face it. That's going to happen.

So So I have one quick comment This goes back to the concurrent review. My mind and my pea brain jumped immediately to a permit concurrent review. So adding even in your outline that you're talking about docket requests instead of permits would be clarifying.

Docket concur.

Noted. Thank you.

Okay. Other other comments?

I have a small comment. I wanna thank Mary and and mister Eastman for that because that's really important to have that I'm looking forward to hearing. And thank you so much for all the hard work. It's been awesome. Thank you.

I want to follow-up on kind of the discussion that we had with the regarding the comment that Mike made. When we're talking about distinguishing the difference between area wide zone in sub area and then site specific in the future area land use map, can we summarize the differences between all this is basically two. One is geographic area, the other one is a diversity of use. Would that these two distinguish it all that? Because that's it, either geographic area or variety of uses.

Yeah, I have to think a little more about that. But yeah, I think to me the site specific land use map amendment is more a change in density, right? Usually it relates to wanting to move up. Well now we have a quasi judicial system for the neighborhood centers or neighborhood residential, sorry. But I think oftentimes it's people who want more density, they want to build middle housing or do something like that.

The area wide rezones be The area wide rezones I need to think more about. But the sub areas are designated in our comp plan. So I think the question for me would be, are we allowing people to propose additional sub areas beyond what's proposed in our comp plan? And how would that fit within an area wide rezone or not. Because I think when we do the comp plan, we do a lot of analysis looking at capacity and if you're shifting density expectations in certain areas that we haven't accounted for, that's something that we need to be thinking through what those impacts would be.

So what would be the potential criteria that you guys are going to be looking at and hopefully sharing with us at the next meeting? What would be the criteria to establish or to define area wide zoning?

That I need to do a little more research on.

Even as far as criteria, right? So you're going to say, okay, the criteria are the following and based on that. And then kind of following up on that question, are these definitions, are they somewhat pretty much standard no matter what cities you're looking at? Or is it all basically is

in I would say there's a lot of similarity between not all the cities together, but groups of cities. Can definitely

Which one is the most common one that you

I don't know. There was definitely, there was, I'd have to go, I'd have to follow-up. There was a few where you could definitely tell that they've pulled examples from one another and are very closely related.

And I'm assuming that none of these definitions are shown or listed anywhere as far as the Growth Management Act, any state guidelines,

I have are not seen them, but I don't know that I've specifically looked for them yet. So I will definitely be looking at all of those sources when we talk about area wide would

be really a good thing to bring it up and educate us as far as as far as the differences. Because, you know, Mike was mentioning about the church Across Street. That is a very small area. Is it going to be its own sub area or is it going to be I

think in that circumstance they are eligible to apply to submit a docket request for a site specific land use map amendment. I think the issue may have been timing that it was past the annual deadline, so they'd have to wait until August, but they're eligible to do that.

Because it looks like they'll be looking at both extremes as far as size. One is a church and the other one is Mr. Eastman's property. That's such a difference as far as geographic areas. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you.

Did anything we talk about sound like it would need a motion? I don't think so.

I think we have a little homework to do before you all can make a motion.

Cool. Yeah, everybody says I like to hear that. Alright. So with that, unless there are any other comments, hopefully that's helpful. Or we get a chance to have more helpful comments through our agenda related public comments up to five minutes. Does anybody want to be the pacesetter or trendsetter with this new part of our agenda? The revised, yes. The renewed from old time. Thank you, Paul.

Good evening, Planning Commission, Paul Stickney. I'm happy to have back agenda comments again. A couple things that were said tonight, I'll just chime in on and add to the conversation. The past land use map in the two comp plans before the current one were exactly the same of how the city was zoned. There was only a docket you had to do.

I think we need to have clarity somewhere. I don't know where, but now the future land use map or Flume has a range that if you stay within that range, you don't do a docket. You just ask for an upgrade. That's not clear in this. It's a quasi judicial process.

So I think if you're stepping above what's in the range where your parcel is, then you have to do a docket. So I think that should be made clear. And I have a different point of view on the urban growth capacity study. Now, you're going to think I know this off the top of my head, that's not true. I had a copy somewhere and I've looked at it, so I didn't just have this on the fly.

The 2021 King County urban growth capacity study has four forty three pages and it is a wealth of data, residential growth, commercial growth, plans, different cities. We're part of a region. Our growth target is only targeting a share of regional growth and it never hurts to understand our comprehensive plan and our region. Internal growth that I've talked about is not the same thing, and I'll talk more about some potential sources for that because that doesn't come from the region. But I'm not going to talk about that under title 24A.

But I would say go look at the King County Urban Growth Capacity Report and see if what it has to say is of interest in informing dockets in the region because we are part of a region. It is quite amount of data. Very interesting to see what all the cities are doing. I turned in a couple of comments today, and I'll mention a couple of the things. On page seven of 32, there was language, any changes to the urban growth area.

I don't know what that means. That's not talking about us getting rural land incorporated in Sammamish, that's what I think of. I don't know what that term means. It doesn't mean anything to me. Totally unclear.

And then I felt there could be a little better language on page 10 of 32. It talks about guiding the nature and intensity of development in Sammamish. I just don't think that's quite right. I think the language should be guides the appropriate nature and density of Sammamish. Intense sounds negative to me.

Different densities are based on needs and wants and seems more accurate. That was part of my comment. I also suggested I'm all for adding ecology and SIPA. We are a environmental city, but we're out of balance on housing services and transportation relative to stages of life and future generation. I think for now, adding other resources in the sections that we're looking at as the new Department of Housing that has been elevated with the department or with the state is coming.

And that's different than commerce. It's under formation. I've been listening to their meetings and from the old Virginia Slims ad or whatever it is, they have a long way to go, maybe. But they're starting. And also I think Department of Transportation should be listed for cutting edge because these are kind of big chunks.

And I'm not trying to cite everything, but if we're going to get into some of the specifics, PSRC is there. King County is there. And then take a read through my little story narrative I sent in today about deciding to docket or decisions on docketed. Two different things. And I ran through my scenario from being experienced with this personally and going through many iterations of it.

Some language on how to deal with those two different things. Deciding if it's put on or not, and then what to do with it if it is. Take a read on this. There's a good amount of thought in this, and I think it could help the code. Alright. Appreciate the chance to speak. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Paul. Mary, looks like you're Next. On deck. Yep.

Mary Victor Samanisch, thank you again for the opportunity to speak twice like we used to be able to and up to five minutes. I don't know how long ago, but I think it's really important that everything people sent in, I know you guys are great at reviewing, really consider it because it'll get us faster in the public hearing. So in my email that I had sent, well actually I'm gonna cover this first. So I learned from Paul Stickney, the Library of Congress, the first comp plan for the city of Sammamish. So Sammamish became the city in 1999, August 31.

And then in 2003, it was the first comp plan that was adopted. And then they're supposed to occur every ten years, but we didn't get the second comp plan till 2015, and then 2024, so that was nine years. So I'm going give you a couple examples. When I started having problems in my area, I read the comp plan and I noticed Miriam had brought it up that there was a bike pathways plans thing or something that had to be followed, but it didn't exist or it was called something else. I'd have to do a whole docket just to get that changed.

Absolutely crazy, right? And then there was a very nice critical area steep slope map with no legend and no data. So we got that information, but we couldn't get it put into the document. So I knew, and two people at the city knew, but nobody else knew. And then the third one was there was some sort of glaring error or data that was wrong, and you can't get it updated.

So I read a lot of storm water code over the years and the King County Service Water Design Manual, which used to be 300 pages, it's over a thousand. They use what's called an errata sheet, so you just put if it's already published and it's not something fundamentally wrong, the errata sheet's just a little matrix like you do, and that can just be updated. And then that way it sticks with it because we're not paper copies anymore, we're online and people that are reading it, you look for like the major changes or the errata sheet. And if you don't like errata, you can use addendum, but addendum usually means like adding something so you consider both of those, but literally it's a one page sheet that you put in your code and it would just help clarify if there's any changes. So I hope that you would do that and I'd said that before, but I really want it now.

In the cycle there's a couple things. If something goes over three years, I didn't like that wording, and if something goes over five years, I didn't like that. If you've gone through the process of a docket and you're hanging out to do things, the only way that it's really good is if it happens to align with a work plan item, they'll say, oh well we've had these suggestions from example Mary Johnson who had a lot of the tree stuff, they said, we'll just go ahead and add it, but that work plan item hasn't come forward, but maybe with the new council it will and the tree code got adopted in 2015 and then there hasn't been any changes in the urban forestry management plan. So the best way to get stuff in is to suggest it, have staff like it and it goes rolled into the work plan, but you have to maybe dock it to do that. And then if you have a separate docket like the in city TDRs, which everyone likes, everybody thinks we should do, there are unbuildable lots, but we build on them and it's just a nightmare.

That can't go away and like the septic to sewer conversions, we have a lot of septic in the city and we're supposed to be urban growth area, we're supposed to be on sewer. That is I understand coming forward later, but that's another one that's been three, four, five, six years. So it's really really hard that's why you see me stick around so long as there's little comments that happens at meetings and you have to keep the stuff rolling forward. So I'm really interested and you I know it's a couple pages you have to look through, but if you look through every one and then you guys are really good thinkers, let's make changes that make sense because this code is so foundational and so fundamental to be able to have even a small change. A small change shouldn't take that long, but it does.

So if they're just small errors, let's use the errata sheet, and then if there's a way it can get rolled into work plan, great. I love the idea of having the flowchart and put that on the website because it's very confusing, and you can literally submit stuff anytime. When we first did this with Miriam, I said, you know, I wake up at 03:30 in the morning with a crazy idea. I type it in. Boom.

It's there. I don't know if there's an actual form because a lot of times my job form never actually makes it to Miriam, so I usually have to email it. So I don't know that there's a form, but you should be able to take it from any person, any time, any format. And if it's not for and some may but might might need to be morphed to make a real docket, but I just think everybody has an opportunity to make the city run better and have the code run better and make everybody's jobs easier and make what we work better. So that's what I see this process and again, I thank you for listening to me and the discussions that we had before the meeting and take my online input And thank you for agreeing about the sub area plans and the neighborhood centers for James because I think that's super important. Thanks.

Thank you, Mary. And the email that you sent had so much detail. Very, very helpful. So I wanna recognize you for that. All you too. Yeah. Mary's is more line by line on the card. Very, very detailed. James, you're gonna come back up. You're good? All right. Evan? Nobody out there? Nobody out there? All right. I guess at that point, we should just talk briefly about calendar. We know the twenty first public hearing, fingers crossed. Anything else?

Sorry, I forgot to mention one thing quickly. We're gonna keep the jot form that you can use for edits open until 8AM? 8AM on Monday morning. So if you feel like doing another read through and want to use that to get more specific, please feel free to do so.

Nice. On June 4, we're slated to revisit those council identified, code issues, kind of the narrow focus on looking at the criteria based rezone criteria, and then the the few cases of exemptions for the affordable housing program. So those are coming back to the commission. June 18, we currently have as to be determined, but I could see us moving quickly into a public hearing on those code issues doing a back to back kind of like we're doing here. And then we'll see what July brings.

Awesome. So we've got our calendar, everything else. Are there any objections to adjourning this meeting? No No objections. Seeing none, we are adjourned. Thank you all.

Thank you. That's the record.

That that's the record. So much. I can answer.

Yeah. The there are alternatives. Synchro is the most popular, most common tool, but there are a couple different alternatives. And there's also microsimulation, which is a more advanced approach, which takes a lot more time and effort

and