Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We'll call the September Ridgefield Planning Commission meeting to order. If everyone could please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. We can do the roll call.

Present. Thank you, and we do have a new member of the Planning Commission, and we'll do his oath of office now. You can just come to the front.

Thank you, and welcome to the commission, Mr. Hornbeck, and we look forward to working with you as we proceed. Ms. Lust, are there any late changes to the agenda?

With that, then we can move into the first public comment period for the evening. So now is the time for public comment. Anyone requesting to speak to the commission may do so at this time. If you have not provided notice in advance to speak during the public comment period, please use the raise hand feature if you're on Zoom and the clerk will send you permission to unmute your microphone so you're able to make your comments. For controls over the phone, press star nine for raise hand and press star six to mute and unmute. And then of course, if you're in the audience, you may come forward to

Thank you. Is there anybody else wishing to make a public comment at this time?

Thank you. Is there anybody else wishing to make a public comment at this time?

thank you is there anybody else wishing to make a public comment at this time anybody on zoom or on the phone not seeing anybody we will close this public comment period move on to the consent agenda if we have a motion regarding the minutes from the last meeting i'll make a motion i will second We have a motion. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Move on to business, and we'll turn the time over to Ms. Lust for the Envision Ridgefield 2045 presentation.

I got a couple questions. There's some discussion in there about coordination with the county on annexation. Things that haven't been annexed in, but trying to properly plan specifically for infrastructure in those islands. Is there some sort of interlocal agreement between the county and the city on some of that planning? That's the first part of the question. And then the second part of the question is, does the city have any ability to exert any sort of extraterritorial jurisdiction over the county parcels for land use planning beyond just the comprehensive plan?

Oh, yeah, with the extraterritorial jurisdiction. So the ability to say, hey, Clark County, we know this is going to get annexed in eventually. Can we be the ones that plan for this area pre-annexation? So...

Until you say, I want to annex, and then you'll have to plan for that. So if you want to add an ADU or a pool or a second unit and subdivide until such time that you indicate that you want annexation... that still remains with the county from their planning team. That's correct. Okay. You mentioned right-of-way. My experience is with annexations, the right-of-way is one of the hardest things. And you mentioned something about the importance for trying to get something on both sides of the street when you're coming in with annexation as one of the policies. is that is that strictly so that you

Perfect. Okay, that's... That was one of the hardest things. I was doing the research on where did that right-of-way originally come from. Okay. And then I had one more question. Apologies. Fiscal impact studies. Do you guys require fiscal impact studies for annexations?

Okay. I know that that's one of the things that helps from a future planning standpoint, specifically on public safety. I think it's a little bit less of an issue in Washington because of the UGB issue. And the planning that we have to do here, I have seen it required in other areas where you can get unfettered kind of growth, and you have to sort of prove that you're not going to cause a fiscal strain on the jurisdiction. Not saying that we should consider that here. It is a little bit of an added detail of work that kind of gets done with concurrency at the project level, but it might be som

Just to follow up on that my questions were very very similar, but there is a section a six talks about coordination with schools and I think that there is certainly a Financial strain that gets put on the district and so I'm wondering just in the description there It says the city will coordinate with bridgefield school district on annexation requests the school district can continue to meet its service standards What does coordinate mean in this context? Does it have to do with? the school district letting the city know where the district thinks the next school should be built or Pushing bac

Does the school district talk with the city? It's okay if you don't know this, but does the school district talk with the city about approximate locations of where they'd like to build a new school?

Well, I think that land might have been donated also so that the next one might not be done okay and then sort of back what was said earlier regarding large annexations and maybe a neighbor wouldn't want to annex in does the city have any strategy for how to, at some point, absorb those islands? For example, if there was like a donut hole type area, what is the city's strategy moving forward? Because it's not in here, right? I mean, obviously, there is something that happens, but there's not a written strategy here.

I actually thought about this too because I was well first of all I had the question the bottom of that page 97 and going to the top it says larger annexations will be generally preferable because of service efficiencies and to keep neighborhoods and communities intact and in my head I went to the scenario that we've just been discussing and thought should we have language that says something like annexations that address adding unannexed areas within annexed areas should be also prioritized. Because I don't know what you mean by large. Larger, does that mean like five acres, 10 acres, 20 acre

Yeah, I think one of my issues with having it be property-driven, which I firmly still believe that that should be the primary source of annexations, but we have a lot of infrastructure planning. We have a lot of... you know, housing needs that are being met by some of the lands that are in these areas and, you know, trail connectivity, things like that, like all this stuff that we've been talking about with all these other elements. Um, At some point, if you have these islands, it makes it almost impossible to achieve some of those things without annexation. And so almost feel like we probabl

Commissioner Moreland, you have something, some comments or questions?

Two questions, please. Good evening, commissioners and Ms. Luss. First question is, under annexation, have we ever used the alternative petition method? It's mentioned, but I get the feeling that it's rarely used, but I was just curious as to whether we've ever used it in Ridgefield.

Okay, thank you. Second question relates to what is the primary driver for annexation? Would you say it's tactical where a one property owner approaches the city or is it more strategic? And what I mean by that is in a past conversation I had with the city manager, I was a little bit surprised when he told me that the city's growth will be to the north and not to the south or to the east, which kind of tells me that, well, at least it leads me to believe that that's more a strategic driven process. So could you comment on, I guess, whether annexation within the city limits or the UGA is more t

Okay, so more tactical than strategic. Thank you, ma'am.

I had one more question. I just want to understand this because this is new for me. So when they do petition, they are going to be compensated at 60% of the property value?

I'm circling back to some sort of policy language. I think we might talk about this a little bit more when we get to the public outreach section, but I think that I think that some sort of policy language might I'm uncomfortable maybe with the city having a, here's how we want to have someone annex in. I'm not sure how I feel about that quite yet. But I'm also hesitant of the city, the example of someone has a property and it'd be great to have a road through there or trails through there. It would really benefit the greater city. I'm hesitant to have that annexed be sort of city policy or dis

Just racking my brain still on the 60%, kind of getting back to what Commissioner Flynn was talking about. So if you have 10 property owners and six are cool with annexing and there's the other four that are caught in the middle, essentially, then... everybody gets annexed if council says okay based on my understanding of that correct and that is a revised code of washington number um that this yeah the city uses so just to play dill's advocate uh commissioner flim we the concern was having people sort of being brought in unwillingly almost, is almost what I heard you were saying. And I feel l

Yeah, or pressured from the city itself. To do something, to sell or to allow for some development on their property. I'm not comfortable with the pressure coming from the city itself.

The only thing, as we were talking and I was looking through this, A2 seems out of place or not an actual policy of the city. Is that something that we'd probably look at striking? It seems like we do provide services and we're not going to say, oh, if you want services from the city, you need to join or too bad kind of situation. Or is that going to be the policy? Because like we were talking, the donut hole, for instance, where we provide services through like the police. It seems like we would be open to providing services if it makes sense.

Yeah, that's kind of gangster style right there. Unincorporated areas should annex or commit to annexation or we'll break your legs.

That's pretty much how cities have used annexations, I think, for a long time, right? You're unincorporated, you don't get any services. But yeah, I think having something that says through some sort of interlocal agreement or some other agreement... That way at least we take what we're actually doing out there.

Any other thoughts or comments on the annexation section? Back to you, Ms. Lust.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I generally agree with Ms. Lust about the critical areas ordinance being more or less consistent with the existing policies. But we did hear public comment from Ms. Stemp, and I think there's a couple good things that were in there. We are actively discussing our trail corridors and planning for trail corridors, which most are wide enough that could double up is, as wildlife corridors. We have lots of protections for some of our waterways already in both local ordinances and state law. So I think that that helps for things like salmon. So I think it wouldn't hurt us to have

Any other thoughts or questions from any of the commissioners?

Please. I have a couple. One is on the descriptive part. This is page 44 when it talks about limiting adverse impacts. It says the city has adopted engineering standards that are consistent with the 1992 Puget Sound water quality manual. And I just wondered, that sounds like a long time ago, and I wondered if there's anything more recent that updates that that should be looked at and included, because we keep learning more and more, I guess, is what my big thought is, and I would like us to be up to date.

Okay. sustainability which is on page 47 um it talks about city incorporating environmentally friendly green building principles practices into design and the operation of city facilities city funded projects and infrastructure to the fullest extent possible i wondered if we could just make that a full end stop and possibly remove the other part because when you say consistent with wise management of scarce public financial resources it immediately gives us and out, and I think that's one of the things we need to start to be very firm on. We want this to happen, and we don't need to keep sayin

Any other questions or comments from the commissioners?

I would love to hear from the rest of the commissioners.

Thank you Mr. Chair. Ms. Luss on the end of 45 and beginning on I guess 46 The paragraphs discuss the Shoreline Master Program. And in lieu of the comments and concerns by the residents, is it correct to say that the Port Authority cannot adopt legally the provisions of the Shoreline Management Act? Is that correct?

Correct. That's my understanding as well. So would it also be correct then that the port's land, and I'm not trying to put you on the stand here, but is it also correct that the port's land along Lake River falls under the city's jurisdiction and any development or future development or construction on its property must comply with the city shoreline regs and review processes. Would that be correct?

Thank you. Also on page 46, under wildlife habitats, it indicates Ridgefield will work with others in the region to develop and implement recovery plans for threatened salmon species. My question is, well, I guess it's twofold. One, who are others? And second, how do we measure progress? In other words, if we're trying to protect priority habitats, how do we know that we're improving the quality of those habitats over time?

Well, I guess my question is, do we periodically receive progress reports from those agencies? no okay so i would like to suggest somehow that we request that so that the city can measure over time whether we're actually improving these priority habitats or whether they are continually becoming degraded to the point where there are no priority species left in those habitats.

Thank you. On page 47, before we get to the paragraph on policies, we're talking about source control to keep pollutants in the environment out of the environment. water treatment to remove pollutants from water. And we go on to talk about managing that. And I guess, oh, I'm sorry. I'll ignore that one. And we jump to page, I guess it's page 48. Under EN5 habitat, I don't care for the verbiage where it says link fish and wildlife habitat areas to form contiguous networks. I don't like that word networks. It's nebulous and it implies technology. I have a proposal to replace that with restore ec

Thank you. Under EN 10, trees and other vegetation, I do have a concern about the verbiage minimum. I don't know what that means. And I'm sure probably the vast majority of people do not know what that means either. So I don't know if it's possible to quantify or just strike the word minimum and leave and landscaping standards.

Okay, thank you. Under EN 13, are we... Practicing density transfers now?

Okay, thank you. The last comment that I have relates to EN 15 building practices. develop a system of regulatory approaches and incentives to encourage green building, including reduced fees, streamlined permitting and more. I just wanna make a comment that there are, I'll give you two examples. The city of Chicago has the largest acreage of green roofs in the US. The city of Portland is not far behind. And they have, at least the city of Chicago, has a dedicated review team for sustainable futures such as green roofs. That dedicated review team can cut the permit approval from 90 to 100 days

I'll go real quick here. I just think too often the framing around trees and plants is how they relate to animals or development. And I'd like to see just a little more focus on, you know, sometimes a tree is good enough. We don't need to worry about if there's a fish that swims by. Sometimes the tree is a tree and we love it. So just, I think that framing of it, even the section that talks about Trees, just a little bit, it mentions two, I think, types of trees, but the section is called Fish and Wildlife Habitat. And that's what it focuses on. It's 300 words, and there's four of those words

I think trees are good enough. That's all.

Just one quick question. So under the EN9 policy, my understanding of that is that the policy idea there is to implement the Shoreline Master Program into the code. Is that correct? Or at least correctly integrated into the code?

If there is a conflict between development code and the plan, which one controls?

And then I will note that we do have the city's heritage tree program that we could also use. It's a great program. I don't think it is used enough. So if there's a tree, a particular tree that anyone particularly loves, it can be put on the list. So that's one good way to save a particular tree. So any other thoughts or comments from any of the commissioners on this section? Please.

Any other thoughts or comments from the commissioners on this section? Back to you, Miss Lust.

Thank you. Any comments or questions from the commissioners?

Yeah. Okay, PI3, communication, talks about how... involving the public, the city's gonna use publications, mailings, broadcast, I'm not even sure what that word means, print media, social media, et cetera. And then it says keep pace with involving technologies, non-traditional means, all that. This was all written before like Ridgefield Roundtable and that kind of a thing. But I kind of think we've run into problems in the past of trying to do it online. and not getting enough feedback. And so I think that boots on the ground are really important, not just sending folks a postcard saying we'r

Any other thoughts or comments from any of the commissioners?

Thank you. Any other thoughts or comments from any of the questioners? Okay, we'll go back to you, Ms. Lust.

Perfect. Thank you very much. So now then we'll go to our second public comment period for the evening. Anyone requesting to speak to the commission may do so at this time. If you have not provided notice in advance to speak during the public comment period, please use the raise hand feature if you're on the Zoom. The clerk will send you permission to unmute your microphone so you're able to make your comments. For controls over the phone, press star nine for raise hand and press star six to mute and unmute. Comments will be limited to three minutes. If you're in the audience, obviously you ca

Thank you. Is there anybody else wishing to make a public comment at this time? It looks like we do have one on Zoom. Go ahead.

Thank you. Is there anybody else wishing to make a public comment at this time, either in the audience or on zoom? Not seeing anybody, we will close the second public comment period. And we'll go to staff reports.

Thank you. We'll go to reports from the commission. Maybe we can start at this end. Commissioner Rakusek.

Thank you, Vice Chair Flynn. This is your free time. You can say anything you want right now. Commissioner Hornbeck, welcome. Good to have you here. And city staff, thank you for this evening, for prepping us, and school is back, which means if the city wants to do a fundraiser, there's a lot of people speeding on Hillhurst right now, and so we could put four or five officers out there and raise a million dollars a day, maybe. Could be more. I don't know. I don't know. It's nuts. But with school comes the Lady Spuds soccer team, and so there's two home games next week, Tuesday and Thursday, 7

Yeah, so first things first, great job to staff. The last three chapters of this, a big deal. We've functionally reached the finish line. I'm sure there's a little bit more left to go. This is a huge lift, and you guys put a lot of work into it, so good job. A lot of people in the audience may not see the amount of sleepless nights that Ms. Les probably put into this project. We're just here to... to comment on it and criticize more than anything. So really appreciate the hard work for you and your staff. Great job. Also, welcome, Commissioner Hornbeck. I'm glad to have you on board. And then

I just want to also welcome our new commissioner tonight. And again, appreciate state appreciation for the members of the public that continue to come and let us know what you're thinking and what you want from our community and really appreciate hearing what you have to say. And I also am very grateful for the city staff for all the work you do to make our jobs easy. Thank you.

Michael, we're happy to have you on board. And a thousand thanks as always to Claire or Ms. Lust and her staff. It's not easy developing a massive document and then you have individuals that it may come across trying to criticize the language of the document, but hopefully it's to make the document a better document for all the citizens of the city. So thank you again to you, Ms. Loss and your staff.

Thank you. And I'll echo that. Thanks as well to you, Ms. Lust and Ms. Moore, for being here, spending your evenings with us and walking us through this process, not only tonight, but over the last several years. And a huge thank you to everyone here who is in the audience and on Zoom who's participating. many more meetings where it's been an empty chairs. And so it's always great to see people here and people that are willing to come and make public comments and participate. Always welcome and always glad to hear what you have to say. And that I don't have much else to say. Again, welcome to