Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to the June 23rd Regularly Scheduled Planning Commission Meeting. I'm the Acting Chair, Sean Manley. At this time, I'm going to ask for a roll call vote. Roll call vote.

Thank you, Sarah. Before we move to the approval of minutes, just a note about this morning's meeting. So we appreciate Commissioner Jurkovic, who served her two terms, eight years, and she was our chair. And without having a chair, nominated and elected in her place. I am the acting chair today. I have let staff know and the commission knows or some commissioners know I am unable to continue in that role, but I'm happy to chair today's meeting. At the next meeting, in order of sequence, according to our bylaws, the secretary will move into the chair role. And at the next meeting, we'll also h

And a second. Second. Thank you. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? And abstentions? All right. At this time, we have a division update. So we're going to have a legislative update and a work plan update from Planning and Public Works. And Commissioner Jurkiewicz was so good at this. I'm also going to read the disclaimer that she often will read so that we are all on the same page of what the Planning Commission does. So I know that the Planning Commission is principally an advisory board to the Pierce County Council. Actions taken by the Planning Commission on almost

Fantastic. Thank you, Alana. It does mean a lot to me and I know the rest of the Commission to be able to get those updates. I'd like to open up to any Commissioners if you have any comments or questions for Alana.

Yeah, I have one question. I said, where does, uh, HB 1181, the greenhouse gas reduction resilience elements actively sit in the current work plan and how is staff tracking our 2020, 2030 sustainability plan actions across all County plans to ensure they are executed rather than deferred.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Sure.

Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, we thank you, Elan, for your time and we're going to move to agenda item number five. What we have in front of us here is an action item. This is the 2026 amendment to the Pierce County Capital Facilities Plan. We're going to begin with a briefing. We will take public hearing during this conversation. We'll have deliberation and we'll ask for action to be able to approve or decline this action item.

Apologies, Breed. Sarah, we just think we might have a technical issue with one of my phones. I'm concerned about folks being able to hear him online. Oh, you can't? I don't know if it's working now. This one's working. I don't think Alana's is working.

Thank you so much for this time. We'll open it up to commissioners if you have questions or comments.

So, thank you for the presentation. A couple of questions. The scope of the project, can you tell us roughly what the current occupancy is of the jail? even on a percentage basis?

So is the current facility being used to its maximum capacity or in 100% capacity one way or another? At one time, I understood there was a section of it that was basically not being used.

And so the scope of this project is projected to accommodate a larger number of detainees? Or is it, I mean, I'm trying to get my bearings as far as where the projections are coming from and how you see capacity and so forth going forward as it relates to the project.

And this project will be in the same footprint, basically, that we have currently.

Yes, I wonder if the pre-design scope could consider two paired defined climate deliverables, a mitigation target for all electric net zero ready facility with heat pumps and solar and an adaptation target specifying advanced air filtration for wildfire smoke, extreme heat shielding and resilient backup powder. Because pre-design is the only window where these specifications are cheap. After that phase, they become costly change orders. These targets aren't an added burden. They represent the lowest cost lifecycle path to comply with the state clean building standard and our own 2030 sustainab

Any other questions or comments from commissioners? Seeing none, at this time, we're going to move to our public hearing. So I'll first ask, is there anybody in the audience today who would like to comment on item number five on our agenda? Seeing none, we will move to online comments. If anybody who's online currently would like to speak on the subject, please make yourself known.

This time I'll ask for any other deliberation. And if somebody would like to make a motion, they've actually already encapsulated the motion down at the bottom of our slides on Section 7, so they're looking for us to be able to amend the CFP to include this new proposal for a jail facility.

I have just one more comment. When you do look at costs and those sort of things, based on the previous comment regarding some of the climate issues and climate resilience, et cetera, and some of these additional items or alternative items, could you make sure to break those additional costs out so it's clearly identified as to what the cost would be and what the return would be if we go that way? Is that possible, please?

You know you're way early, so I can respect that. Just a footnote. Thank you.

Would anybody like to make a motion to recommend this capital facilities plan amendment? All right, seeing no motion.

Do I have a second? Seeing no second, we will move to agenda item number six, the current use open space applications. So this is again an action item along with public hearing. So at this time, we're going to ask staff to provide a briefing.

Yeah, just one moment. We're going to do a little bit of IT work. We've got a technical difficulty with a microphone.

I want to thank you, Dean. I've gone through this presentation several times in the past, and I think you did an excellent job being able to make definitions, even the acronyms.

This is going to make it easy to be able to take a look at these as an amalgamation of all the projects to be able to adopt. I just have one quick question, and we'll get other commissioners' input, but what is the total program reduction in tax basis? So as you've done this over the decades. Right. Yeah, what is our total number of dollars?

Other questions or comments from commissioners? Commissioner Burt? Yeah, we have Commissioner Burt.

Yes, for the two forest land transfers, case number 16 and 13, does this reclassification guarantee the standing forest remains permanently protected?

You're welcome. Thanks, Dean. Great presentation. Dean does a great job for us also on the Ag Commission, so I want to just tell you that I really appreciate all your work there. And I do have two questions. One of them is related to that, and they're just general questions. Oh, absolutely. But could you summarize why people are taking their lands out of ag classification and going into open space? Are we seeing further depletion of active farms? Yeah. Or is there some other reason that you're aware of?

Great. And that was the second part of the question was, How difficult is it for them to transfer out of open space into back into or into some other classification?

Last comment that I'd like to make just for the commissioners is that working with the Assessor Treasurer's Office on ag classification for land has been an exceptional experience. They work very well with these kind of offsets to try to help promoting ag open space and lessen the impact to the landowner. So there's a lot of good things going on here. So thank you, Dean.

Any other comments or questions from Commissioners? Seeing none, we will now move to public hearing on this agenda item. If anybody in the audience would like to speak, please come to the podium. Seeing none, we will move online.

All right, this time if there's any other deliberation comments or questions or if we can entertain a motion.

With none, I'll turn to vote. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? And abstentions? All right. And just to verify, we are at risk of quorum, so I just want to make sure Champagne Lewis, Commissioner Lewis, are you still with us? I saw your mic go off.

I am, and I said aye. We're moving pretty, when we ask for all in favor, we move pretty quickly. So when I turn my mic on, I would appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Got it. Thanks for checking in. All right. Our last agenda item, number seven. This is the Pierce County Unified Sewer Plan, the USB update. Begin with a briefing. This is not an action item.

Thank you so much. First question, and that was a great presentation. See, there's a lot of detail in there. So we are going to be reviewing this at the next Planning Commission meeting to review and potentially propose to council to adopt.

Other comments or questions from commissioners? I've got a couple. Thanks again for the presentation. We are bumping up against prefast. PFS, excuse me, I was having a tough moment in some commercial sites that we work on in my profession, and while it's identified by Department of Ecology, there isn't really an identified way of cleaning it up at this point. And my concern and question is that in the bio soils, if PFAS is found and you can't sell it, dispose of it, if there's no market for it, what is the plan as far as to handling that internally and where would it be stored, encapsulated?

Yeah. I was just, I mean, I'm asking for a variety of reasons, but also for any potential liability, um, as a contaminator, um, if it could be tracked back. Um, and then the last was, it sounds like there's 45.3 million gallons of capacity at the chambers facility. And you're only using about half that we're projecting real high densities in certain areas with the growth management act and the comp plan. And, um, Are you looking favorably on the capacity that exists today, the free capacity? Yeah. Or are we looking at some needs for expansion?

Well, I really commend you. You know, too many times we see siloed government taking off on their own and not considering the interconnections and interactivity that we have with other branches or other jurisdictions. So, I mean, I think that's the best use and stewardship of taxpayer money. Um, so that's, that's real good to hear. Last question. At any point, would the cascade system be converted to the more current and what I believe to be a vertical system that Tahali has implemented?

Commissioner Burke. Yes. As you spoke about, the high level of hydrogen sulfide in the biogas forced us to repair our boilers, but it also forced us to flare 60 to 90% of our produced biogas. The hydrogen sulfide removal system that is currently unspecified and unfunded. And I would like us to look for, recommend a sustainable low life cycle impact scrubbing method, something like the biological scrubbing, and avoid any hazardous waste stream from consumable media when we do our scrubbing.

All right. With no further questions or comments from Commissioner, this concludes our USP presentation. Thank you so much, Steve. Thanks. I'm not aware of any other business. Sarah, do you have any other business for us to consider today?

Great. Well, that concludes our meeting, ma'am. Thank you so much for all attending.