Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

just checking really quickly if there's audio in the room or if my speakers are working Andy can you hear me I can hear you now better do you hear me yes ma'am okay fantastic e e e

e e e okay are you are you recording now or all right we are ready to rock and roll all right I'd like to call to order the 422nd regular Planning Commission meeting at 7:01 January 21 2025 will the clerk uh do roll call please yes sir commission member Brown I'm present commission member tan

present commission member sanano present commission member Valerio present commission member Peters present commission member steer present and commission member rice Swig present we do have a quorum wonderful uh do we have any public comment this evening um somebody on Zoom has their hand raised I'm going to allow Tim to talk Tim we please identify your place of residence and your last name oh oh my name is Tim that that that's about it I I'm Tim guys uh I I'm happy to be here I live on College Avenue the like the the like the state of the trees in this [ __ ] are just like I don't know it's got me mad like this town needs better trees that's all noted is there any other public comment I just got muted by the host um whoever did that [ __ ] you um let's watch our langu please stop muting me don't [ __ ] with me all right let me talk about myself so

I am I am I am I sorry uh okay I removed him is there anybody else who would like to speak being none we can move on all right let's move on uh to the consent agenda so um so everybody had a chance to look at the minutes from last meeting or should I say is there anyone who has not had a chance to look at the minutes from the last meeting uh hearing nothing if we'd like to go ahead and approve the consent agenda which is the approval of last month's meeting and tonight's agenda um all in favor say I do we need a motion first oh sorry would somebody like to make an a motion I would love to move to approve the consent agenda do we have a second second all in favor oh say your name please oh sorry it was Angie that motion to approve Kirby Brown second thank you those in favor I with your name please oh no name okay any he opposed it appears that it carries all right so at this point I think I will turn it over to you Mr Rickard uh thank you everyone uh the

first thing on the agenda is just a real quick introduction of our three new planning Commissioners we have Claudia santiano um Victor Valerio and Brandon stepper thank you all for um volunteering your time uh to participate we've got the next coming year and a half is going to be really interesting and you guys signed on to some fun stuff uh we'll be we'll be updating our conference of plan so I really appreciate you guys um volunteering and engaging with with um with us um that's I will uh I will encourage while we do offer the um the remote attendance option I going forward um when we really start to get into the plan the conference of plan amendment process I would encourage people if they can attend in person especially when we um if we end up having our consultant here in person but um anyhow just a little I like to have people in person if if at all possible I understand our lives are busy and and attending remotely is very convenient um but just okay there's my Soap Box on that and that's all I have for that agenda item we want to move on to um 3 point oh no we have elections of officers would be the next um looks next section 3.0 to and I'll so uh just real quickly briefly we have uh every year we do elections of officers around this time we ended up um having late last year because we had some uh planning Commissioners resign uh we ended up having to go

through this process again and Kirby Brown agreed to be the the chair and Todd Rice Swig um as was is our vice chair uh Kirby um while his term was rather short uh has purchased a home in Waitsburg and he will be leaving us after this meeting um and so we need to fill the both the chair position and we should also uh opt to elect a new Vice chair I mean it can be T Todd um Mr iwig if if everyone's so wishes but um so so the process would be to have a discussion anybody wants to volunteer that's great um uh you would or otherwise um a commissioner would nominate someone to be the chair preferably someone that has a little bit of experience running meetings but that's all right if if they don't so they they will give you uh a script to follow if you're not used to it does Todd have any interest in stepping up to chair uh I I really don't I chair another uh uh Council um and my schedule in the summer gets can get very problematic uh in that with Fire season I may be gone for extended periods of time I am happy to stay in the vice chair role if we we don't have anyone that wants to fill that I would prefer not to fill the chair role what are the duties of the chair and vice chair um primarily it's you know calling the meeting to order um when we have a hearing you know

you're you're running the hearing um if we're taking public comments like on our comp plan eventually we'll get to a hearing process um and you you run meeting but there's no extra activities required outside of the meeting it's it's mainly just keeping us in order moving from one agenda item to the next and um crowd control telling people to keep their language watch their language you know yeah handed I think she pardon uh Claudia had her handr that was Claudia everybody's awfully quiet I'd be willing to be chair this is Peters Angie Peters I that Angie CH what was that do we have a second do we have a second all second all in favor I I hi any opposed congratulations and and Kirby were you the one that seconded that motion that was me Victor oh that was Victor okay thank you wonderful thank you for being willing to do that and the vi chair feels in when the chair is not um present is that right correct I'll be willing to be a second to

Todd would anybody like to nominate her so clarification she said second to Todd oh oh oh we we only need um one Vice chair so Claudia if you're interested in being a vice chair then you would be um second place to miss Peters Goa I I thought maybe Todd could stay on and when he can't be there then if a ice chair was needed then I could step in I you I like backups that's good so the vice chair is is really their only responsibility is if if the chair is gone or has vacated the premise uh Claudia given Todd's potential conflicts with fire schedule would you be interested in just being the chair rather than Ser the vice chair rather than serving as a backup not having um I don't have experience on any of this committees I think maybe I just want to like observe for a while or you know stay as a member and and then see if that's okay totally fair um hearing that I would nominate Todd to continue in the vice chair role second all in favor I I I I any opposed y me um I would and it's it's it's hard to remember but when uh my understanding is when we're making a uh nomination or motion and when we're SE seconding we need to make sure we know say our name so they can keep track of that thank you Todd yeah that that's

helpful for um getting the minutes accurate if you're making motions or seting motions if you could sometimes you just they just pop your your your name pops up on the screen real quick but we don't always catch that so especially when you're deaf like me yeah all right I believe that concludes the election of our officers um which then means we move on to uh 3.03 which would be Mr Rickard again our countywide planning policy update thank you okay so three of you are new and so you probably have not seen this document before um and we are so far along in the adoption process of this that I unfortunately cannot take the time to to fully immerse you in the lovely content of this document but I will give you a brief background on the process that we went through and hopefully that makes you feel a little bit more comfortable about what I'm asking you to do this evening um so the candy wi planning policies are an overarching document that that is a requirement under the State of Washington's growth management act essentially um and this document helps guide counties and the cities within the counties on how to amend their comprehensive plans in a nutshell um so our the original countywi planning policies was adopted in 1994 I believe and then it was amended once in 200 5 a really small minor amendment that had to do with the port of Walla Wala mainly

um so it this document is so out that was so out of date that it was decided amongst the the county staff and the count you know the County Commissioners and the elected officials in the cities of College Place Walla Wala um Prescott and Waitsburg that we get together and amend the countywide the the original countywide planning policies document and so we've been we we jointly hired a consultant we formed a technical advisory committee the TAC um which consisted of representatives from each of the jurisdictions for college place we had myself um mayor Hernandez and City administrator Mike R rosatello um representing the city portion of the TAC um and we went through over a year-long process of of reviewing each section and bringing bits and pieces back to the Planning Commission um bringing pieces of that to the coun city council to update them on the process that we were going through and towards the end of last year in the fall I brought the what I thought was the final document to to the Planning Commission um for asking the Planning Commission to make a recommendation to to move to the city council to move it forward um U and get move it forward so that the County Commissioners could adopt the final version of it we got a little bit ahead of the process so you we did end up getting a a recommendation um with a minor Amendment um uh Miss Peters made a recommendation to amend that uh add a goal and policy to the transportation section and and

that was um that was accepted by the TAC and also by the County Commissioners there were also two chapters at the end of the document um that were completely considerably reformatted and uh the chapters were actually flopped um in order uh nine became 10 and 10 became nine and but there mainly have to do with the future amendments of the comprehensive plan and also the formation of a um uh what they call it uh an implementation advisory committee or something like that I that's not the exact terminology but the gist of it is is that going forward this document is not just going to sit on a shelf we're going to we after it's adopted by the the uh the county um the jurisdictions will will um have represent Representatives on this um this committee that will annually review the document annually meet discuss what sort of changes might be needed and then bring those forward as necessary um so that's that's where we're at with the document uh um it has it has been so at the end of December the board of County Commissioners um so let me step back just a second at the in the in early December the TAC uh unanimously voted to recommend that the board County Commissioners um move the the draft document forward um and present it request that it be sent to the uh cities

for for um ratification and so that's where we're at right now so the the board of County Commissioners um at their um meeting date was that at their December 23rd meeting in 2024 they unanimously voted to approve sending the final draft um to the respective cities for ratification and we have 90 days to ratify um the board board of County Commissioners actions so what that means is essentially is that the documents pretty much locked in place um we either it's an up or down vote that the council needs to provide um either ratifying it or rejecting it and then they would the council would have to provide a um a written statement of what what they're rejecting it um and then that would go to the County Commissioners um the cities of city of Wala um they have already taken it to their Planning Commission earlier this month and got a recommendation to their city council to ratify it and they held one they held a workshop I think last week and this week there the the city of wall is expected to ratify it and send that to to the the board of County Commissioners we're we're in the same boat right here I'm requesting that you recommend ratification a motion to affirm the efforts of the the project management team and recommend the final draft um be presented to the city council for ratification so that's if you have questions I mean

we can get into the document um but that's that's kind of where we're at um so any questions at this point any questions about what I just said and and then maybe after after that um if there's no questions about what I just said then if there are any questions followup questions about the document itself maybe I we can help out there U this is Claudia can you tell me then the what you're asking is for to ratify the document and the document is calling for um part of it is uh for an Advisory Group to continue the work that has been already started yes that is part of it part of the part of it is creation of an advisor group that'll make sure that the contents of the document stay up to date um the next step for also that Advisory Group will um uh work together to create um the uh methodologies that we will use to determine how much growth how much Urban growth area is allocated to the cities um how much percentage of the of the population allocations will get um things of that nature so it's the next that that Advisory Group will be key in in the the early stages of the comprehensive plan process did that answer your question Miss Santiago s yeah yeah thank you sorry yeah you're good I have a question John yeah um how often does a state require us to do this uh my recollection is that there

was not a requirement to update the countywide planning policies it was more of a the staff basically from the various jurisdictions said we need we need more guidance well it was and it was very outdated yeah okay so this just for clarifying this group helps us move forward to keep it more current and pertinent so we're not having to go through a major revamp in 15 or 20 years correct yeah anybody have any additional questions for Mr Rickard so the the ask from this member is to approve this document so that it can move forward to the next stage what is the next stage the the next stage is um based on your recommendation I will take it to the city council for and the city council would be asked asked to to ratify the document and send it basically in that stating that they're in agreeance with what's in the document and send that on to the County Commissioners for final adoption of the document if I'm looking at this is Claudia if I'm looking at the slides um the the slides uh let's see I don't know if there's a number I guess slide number 10 approval process we're on the first step and we're asking then so you this document needs to be ratified so that we can move on to the next to step number two is that right so you're looking at that um yes essentially yeah we're we're we're at step

two step two second timer really aren't we step yes step two second time around we we already did get a recommendation back in in September from the from the commiss Planning Commission but um they're the last two chapters were basically adjusted oh okay so it has been kind of recommended already it's just the um the mod modifications on chapter 9 and 10 are the ones that we're reviewing now yeah yes okay gotcha and so then so we're in step two once it goes to uh from here then it goes to step three to um approval by the cities and the board of County Commissioners so part of step two is your re because you're a recommending body to the city council your recommendation goes to the city council for actual ratification um and that so they'll create there'll be a resolution created that resolution will be sent to the board of County Commissioners and the board of County Commissioners there that is step three they are the ones that will do the final adoption of the document because it's while we all worked on it and we're all within you know we all of our jurisdictions provided feedback and input the document itself is is required to be adopted by the county so it's they're the lead Agency on on it um they so you're I do have a quick question um more from my understanding so if I'm getting too into the weeds just tell me that but um the count as I understand it the countywide planning policies are a requirement of the growth management act

um so does that then make them necessary to update every 10 years or is there a different RCW you that would provide guidance on that so the our comprehensive plans are what's required to be updated every 10 years under the growth management act the and I it's been a while since I looked at it but my understanding is that the countywide planning policies were that first step back in the early 90s when when we were required to start doing comprehensive plans um and then I think the idea was that we're supposed to kind of check back in with that document and keep it updated over the years and that just kind of never happened um does the I'm first supportive of the updates but does this document does it technically have to exist if we now live under the comprehensive plan and the growth management Act I don't have the answer to that okay that I think it's I believe it gives us framework so we have the different entities that historically not always gives us framework to make those decisions forward so while I don't believe it's required that it allows us to meet the goals that are required I think that's well said um I would agree with that um I think that whoever was speaking was not miked um I I might have gotten about 70% of it via the captions and so I'm going to tell you what I think I heard and you let me know

if that's correct that while it may not necessarily be correct or required it does allow you to meet the goals set within the comprehensive plan so it's a helpful guidance document that way yeah yeah and my my bad I had the bike off yeah it allow it gives us a framework to work through the challenges to meet that comprehensive plan so um while not everybody may be in agreement it get it helps us work through that process fantastic thank you that context is really helpful if nobody has any other questions um I guess we could uh look look for a motion to approve or disapprove recommending this to the city council I move that we approve this and move it over to city council this is Claudia second this is Angie we do have a prepared recommended action if if you would like to utilize that um it's in the agenda item under recommended action I will okay uh motion to affirm the efforts of the PMT and recommend the final draft be presented to the city council for ratification second this is all in favor I I I are there any opposed looks like it is carried and recommended to move forward in the process thank you everyone I really appreciate the conversation and questions so closing items do we have any closing

items oh yeah I guess I didn't introduce Michael um Meritt our new um senior planner uh he he comes from two years of experience with the county but also um I think eight years of additional um planning um back in Ohio so eight to somewhere along yeah so um really happy to have him on board it's nice to have um somebody that speaks planner besides myself here at the office um it's a it's a challenging language sometimes so um looking forward to to continuing to work with him welcome uh welcome to not only your job but to the right side of the country or the appropriate side of the country I should say um that's all I have um nothing really exciting to report on um our permit activities is already ticked up by actually I will mention that um we have seven new residential housing applications that have been submitted since the first of the year um for houses within the Villages of Garrison Creek that Final Phase um 12 so that's exciting because we only issued one new house start last year so yeah lots of other permits we had a lot of uh apartment activity last year and uh commercial stuff and yeah so we've been busy but did the uh the project over by the water tanks

did that go by the wayside no we're still talking to them that's the uh the The Villages at Fort walawala off of Whitman that 180 unit complex they're they're still communicating with us um they had some restructuring of their Partnerships and so it's not dead yet good any new interest from outside businesses that you can speak to or is it um Mike has been in conversation with quite a few different businesses um over the last year um there's some Hotel still interested in the area um some retailers um nothing I think Walmart is considering a gas station but I haven't seen anything um but not anything I can really talk about yeah wonderful refresh my memory do I need a motion to call it to yes I have a I have a question this is Claudia with me being a new um member in this committee is there any um like reading I can do or anything to be better prepared for next time or what kinds of items are we reviewing in this group and what kind of information should we like be aware of um to make better like informed decisions sure um we can get you some resources I can send you links to our compr our existing comprehensive plan um you know our zoning code development regulations you can look those things over um the comp plan's going to be the the big thing that we're overhauling um in the coming year so having a good

understanding of what what's in our current comp plan and if there's any areas that where you see deficiencies or just having a good understanding of it would be beneficial so that when we go forward and we start talking about certain sections of it you it's you know you're familiar and um did you have anything to add I saw you I was just going to know this is Michael the new senior planner if you have any questions uh when you're reviewing those documents um you can certainly reach out to me I'm learning them as well and uh probably need to continue to review them so maybe what I'll ask Michael to do is actually um put together an email to all of the Commissioners with links to relevant documents and that'll be a good exercise for him to familiarize himself with with what's out there um we are working with jub engineers and uh planning um on our conference of plan they they'll be leading us through the process they have two planners that um we'll be working with closely um yeah great thank you so much yep thank you good question so generally our meetings aren't terribly long sometimes they run a little longer but um sometimes and they're usually relatively Pleasant yeah yes that was I think a bot or I'm not sure that was what happened earlier with in the public comment section I I was starting to get the sense that that was going to happen that was weird um that doesn't normally happen that's happened a few times at our Council meetings but I don't think it's happened at any of the other boards and commission meetings that I'm aware of so that's the first

for us yeah um thank you uh Mary Elizabeth for um quickly getting that person removed from the meeting that's how he's inter tracking you're very welcome um there's anything else yeah an hour is usually a minimum amount of time that we'll have our meetings um sometimes depending on our our prior consultant Greg Dorne had a away with words and great guy and he did he did some good work for us but sometimes our meetings would go on for a long time um so but as we get into the comp plan I my plan is to have our consultant meet with us monthly so that we don't end end up having two thre hour meetings talking about topics that you know and rehashing stuff I I prefer to have monthly meetings so that we can um so that information is still fresh from one meeting to the next because you know 30 days going by you can tend to kind of forget about what's going on so wonderful well if City staff doesn't have anything else and nobody else has any questions or comment do I do I hear a motion for us to uh close the meeting all motion to close the meeting who who motioned and who seconded I second Claudia commissioner Brown here I motioned to close wonderful uh thank you for uh your

time sorry you're moving away to another city yeah thank thank you Kirby for the brief amount of time we had with you um it was enjoyable yeah my pleasure I do uh that's the downside is I was looking forward to I wanted to stay in college place but this is where we found a place that met our needs and price point and uh well maybe I'll be able to serve over here we'll see wonderful um any opposed to us going being done hearing nothing um I I say the motion carries and we can close the meeting at 7:39 again January 21st 2025 thank you everyone thank you good night thank you for