Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Excellent. To begin tonight's meeting, I'd like to ask the clerk to call the roll.

The Planning Commission is an advisory board made up of volunteers appointed by the City Council. The purpose of the Planning Commission is to provide recommendations to City Council regarding changes to the City's comprehensive plan, land use updates, block grant allocations, and zoning code. The Planning Commission is tasked with considering the long-term growth and development of the community, the impact of land use decisions on the community, livability, economic opportunity, housing affordability, public services, and the environment. I'd like to remind the audience that tonight's procee

All right. And Commissioner Waits has seconded. All those in favor? All right. Any opposed? All right. Approval of the meeting minutes has passed unanimously. All right. Old business, we have no old business on the agenda, so we'll jump right in the public hearing section of the agenda, and it's the Tri-Cities Home Consortium Citizen Participation Plan, and I assume that might be Ms. Webb.

Excellent, thank you. Are there any questions from the commissioners? One of the things I was going to ask is can you clarify the connection between this and, say, CDBG, which are both HUD, or is there any connection, no connection, there's no relevance to CDBG?

So this is required to be able to do the CDBG administration. Okay, that's what I wanted to clarify. Commissioners, any questions or feedback? There it goes. Now it's working. It sounds like the set of things was a good set of update recommendations, but I'll turn it over to Commissioner Jones, who has some questions or feedback.

Thank you. Can we go back to that first screen where it talked about the elimination of certain COVID things? Thank you. Question for Kristen. When I was reading this earlier, there was a word in here that I saw and I should have circled at the time and I didn't and now I wish I would have, but it said something about mega COVID restrictions or some odd word attached to COVID restrictions. And I wish I would have marked it. I usually do. Yeah. Yeah. Mega waiver. Can you please explain what the mega waiver is?

did you find that all right we all know know what a mega waiver is All right, are there any other questions or feedback for staff on the citizen consortium participation plan or citizen participation plan? All right, hearing none, I think we will open up the public hearing. And again, the public hearing is an opportunity to get your comments and feedback into the record. I'll make the call once. We have nobody in the audience, but I'll make the call once for anyone that wants to testify in the public hearing. Make the call twice. And finally, make the call three times and confirm that we have

It's actually on the header page that's a PASCO header page, not in the plan itself. Move the Planning Commission to recommend that City Council approve the updated tri-cities home consortium citizen participation plan as presented All right, it's been moved by Commissioner waits seconded by Commissioner Jones all in favor say aye aye any opposed All right the motion to recommend the City Council for approval has passed unanimously. Thank you. I All right, we have no more public hearing items, so we'll move on to the workshop item, which is middle housing discussion, and I assume that's going

We were told that Marysville had figured this out and you'd solve the problem.

Well, I had a question on one of the pictures there, and maybe I didn't hear it right. I thought that you said that with one building and then you could have another in the back of it or what have you. So how does that work with the emergency access, like the fire and that? Because I know that there's been a concern or issues in the past in some different settings where there wasn't room for the fire truck to turn around, to get access to turn around, et cetera.

And the one other question, and I think I asked this before and you probably did address it, but when we talked about preventing single family zones, So if you have a piece of property, like that's an acre, 0.6, or what have you, you don't have to put these three or four or five different dwellings on it. If you want to put a single family home on it, you can. Correct. We just can't prevent it.

I don't understand that part. Can you elaborate on that part?

Other question? Go ahead. You can turn on your light.

Thank you. Are, would those be units be, if there's a second unit on the piece of land, would those be rented from the person that owns the land then? Or could they sell it?

Okay. And then when we were talking about loopholes back in the beginning is I, you know, we, we of course have to do this, but is there a timeframe that this has to be implemented or do we have plenty of time to study it and look at it before we have to do it?

Yes, this is kind of a crazy out there observation, but When it talks about, thank you, the, let me find my spot, alternative compliance and so forth, the different bullet points on that. Would any of the area that's close to the river shore be considered possibly in that exemption? Where I'm going with this is if something happens to the dam then there's going to be flooding down there. And it's a possibility, especially in the way of the world now. I mean, the dam, is that not right, Jerry? If the dam was breached in some way, much of that area would be underwater. I live on the river but th

I think it probably depends on whether it's considered a FEMA flood Plain air, yes, or not. If it isn't, you're probably out of luck.

Great. Well, thank you. I appreciate that you're going over with this. You know, I think it's such a, you know, I think it's one of those topics where if we really are upset about it, we should elect different people in Olympia. It's not a local problem. We're just being imposed on the local problem, right? And so But I think that probably many of us and probably on the council as well is take a very measured conservative approach. I love your advice around make it, if we have to do it, make it really nice with design standards and so that when we do build these things or are forced to build t

So I think that would be my feedback and I'll open it up for others as well.

I had one thing on that because I concur with what you're saying totally and now that we're kind of this fervor of the building, I think it's important to, think you mentioned this maybe some of this will be market driven as well I mean the sky doesn't go to heaven and I think it's important for the city also to make sure that they have staffing for building inspectors and so forth because there are some issues that are happening right now that should be addressed without naming specifics, there's some housing similar to, one of these pictures may represent it, I don't know, but they had garag

I think that we are pretty successful with grants I can tell you that they probably have way too many because we've become addicted to them And that's the problem right and but that's honestly not our decision That's City Council's decision and we just make recommendations But you know if I was making recommendations to the council I was like stop being so addicted to grants because it's the crack cocaine that gets cities to relinquish their local control and rights.

Commissioner Jones and then Commissioner Waitz.

Thank you. Can we get, is it possible to get an answer to Chairman Cochran's question? To say what is the consequence of not doing it?

Right, but is there possibly more specific answer? Like not doing it means not getting one grant, two grants, three grants, four?

I mean, that's what we need to know. I mean, it's fair to know when you ask a question, it's good to know the answer. Holding football is a 10-yard penalty. So we need to know what the answer to this question is, and then that helps respond to what a next step is.

Yeah. think director Miller was spot-on just like giving us education on the grants the city has would give you the number and just you know it'll be a big number okay

All right, any other questions or feedback? Thank you so much for this. I know it's a hot topic and it's a difficult topic. And like I said, I don't know that we can solve it unless we have different people in Olympia, so.

And I will say that... sometimes eastern washington cities are willing to pick a fight with olympia so i i'm probably never going to recommend that but i will take your input and you guys but the council needs to back me up on that and if they don't i'm it's their call not mine so Well, thank you for that and any any other old business any other director items for you?

Summer off is always nice, but yeah, I think, you know, the main thing for those extra meetings is ensuring we can get a quorum if we need to make decisions.

Mr. Chairman, I very much agree. I would like to try to, if anything passed two hours and I lose my effectiveness, if I have any at all, after two hours, I'm not much good to anybody. Mrs. Jones could confirm that, so I would like to see us keep it at two hours.

Yeah, well, let's just see what the schedule shows next meeting, and we can give her feedback based on that.

Awesome, well, I'll add my congratulations on the birth of your son coming, and then also thanks to Rosa Torres for her service and commitment to serving our community. With that, if there are no more comments or questions, I'd recommend a motion to adjourn. Second? Second. All right, it's been moved and seconded. The meeting is adjourned at 7.32 p.m. Thank you, everyone.