Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. The Puyallup Planning Commission meeting for August 12th is now called to order at 630. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Thank you. Item number two is approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion? So move.

Any opposed? Thank you. Third item, approval of the minutes. This is approval of the July 8th, 2026 minutes. Do I have a motion? Motion. Do I have a second?

All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Moving on to citizen comments. The chair will call on those who have provided their names in advance. Then the chair will call for other citizens who wish to speak. For the record, please state your name, address, or city council district in which you reside. Please be advised that each speaker is limited to three minutes. The clerk will provide verbal notice when only 30 seconds remain. As a reminder, This portion of the meeting is the Planning Commission's opportunity to hear from the community and not a time to engage in debate. And we do have Tom Utterb

I'd like to ask a question, if I could, to Mr. Urbach.

So my question is, if parking is allowed, would it be Only for events that are sort of under the fair sponsorship or you mentioned, for instance, Good Sam Hospital. What happens if you have a certain number of parking spaces taken up, not related to a fair event, and then a fair event comes along and you suddenly need more parking spaces than that lot can handle? Then what do you do then?

Well, then I guess what I'm assuming is then you would perhaps block out, if you've got the spring fair coming, as for instance, for the dates of the spring fair, would you then block out the anticipated number of RV spaces for the fair so that those spaces would not be preoccupied by something else?

So the grassy field that's right next to the RV parking lot, that's fair property as well, isn't that? Except for that one property out in the corner. So maybe even in advance, if the council approves this and so on and so forth, You might even give us a heads up maybe on if there would happen to be overflow parking, where would that be specifically rather than in just any other spot?

Okay. So Commissioner DeGroote, I'm going to actually address that. A lot of that grassy area is off limits because it's critical area or buffer. So I think that they're limited to a certain amount of spots that they can. There is no overflow option there.

I have one more question or a couple. So now that we're opening it up for more people to use the RV for like the hospital staying and other situations, what is going to be like the timeframe for people staying there? Is it going to be like seven to so many weeks or, I mean... Go ahead.

Anyone else? Commissioner Landon, is your flag up?

There's extra flags. It just came that way.

Okay. If I could ask just one more question. I noticed that in the proposed changes, we have, and given that we're talking about that orange lot there, there are references in terms of both length of stay. And in terms of where's the other I'm looking for its length of say a number of vehicles. And it refers to the overlay for RS or RM. And I'm wondering, since that orange lot or the RV lot right now is entirely within an RS8. I mean, why do we have this or that?

So forgive me. I feel like this is probably a question better suited to the city. So I think we should move on if that's okay. Anyone else? Okay, so if there are no further comments, we will be moving on to the next agenda item. And that is Work Sessions 5A.

Any comments or questions from the dais? I think we're good to continue.

Did you want to have some? Okay, so Commissioner degree would like to have a comment.

So this is for my clarification. So I understand that this is, we're talking about two kinds of parking. One is general vehicle parking. Okay. So and that's where when we mentioned the hospital, I think we're talking about like the blue lot or something like that, that could be used, I'm assuming for that kind of thing.

No, I'm talking about if it's non RV parking that that that would be allowed. not connected to an event in some of these other lots. That's what it looked like during your presentation. Am I correct?

Okay, yeah, I'm a big fan of not having those lots at empty. The other issue that comes to mind is the silver lot and the idea of using that for things other than parking, like for events or something. And I think that the residents living around that property should get fair warning about of what can be coming down the pike, because that's like a zoning change. And that could have a significant effect on some people's quality of life, let's say. So I would strongly urge that before that kind of step is taken, that there is a real communication with the community about that. Thank you.

And I just have a couple of picky things. On page eight, under 2047-005, description and purpose. The last sentence... Where does it start? Wow, that's a run-on sentence. The FPO overlay... Can we just take out overlay and all of those? There's a few of them in there. ...are intended to allow certain events... Uses are no more disruptive to existing residential uses than is necessary as consistent with the comprehensive... Who decides what's necessary? I'm very... stressed by those kind of vague words. So I don't know if there's a better way to put that. I certainly don't have a suggestion. I

One other thing that there seems to be an inconsistency about setbacks. So if you look at PMC 20.37, establishes required development performance standards. Number one under that is landscaped setbacks saying there shall be a 25 foot landscape yard setback along all fair zone boundaries that are common with any RSRM or PDR. And I know that's been taken out zoned property. Now on the other hand, in 2047, Um, uh, it says that the, uh, uh, boundary shall be 15 feet and, uh, landscape set back. This is 20 47, 0 2 0. Um, number one, and it comes up back again at number three. And so the, it seems t

The 37? Yeah. Yeah, 37 is, I don't have the big number. The following uses are permitted in the fare zone is one heading. That's not going to be in your packet. Our packet. It's not in our packet. It's in the.

Just a question. As we increase more use of these off-site parking, it has the potential of having a lot more events going on with the fair. So I'm a little concerned about the residents that live around there, like lighting, parking for the neighborhood that lives there. Also, increased traffic on a continuous basis. I think it's pretty annoying when you're used to one level and all of a sudden it increases. So I'm just curious what's going to be done so that every night or all through the winter or whatever, I'm exaggerating, I know, but that the neighbors don't have to deal with this extrem

Okay. It's going to increase, I'm sure. I mean, I'm sure that the fair footprint and the fair employees want to increase it. That's just more revenue for them. But again, you've got to take care of the people that are there right now, the residents, because they're going to have concerns.

So have we done an outreach in these certain areas that since we want to change these to the neighbors and everything, like kind of what he was saying?

Anyone else? Okay, now I think we're good to go.

By my account, We should now be to five B and that's phase two zoning code and map amendments, please.

Vice Chair. Thank you much. Um, yeah, my question is, could you dive a little more deeply into design review overlay. In other words, what does that mean, what are the consequences, maybe a little more detail on that. Why, why have a design review overlay, for instance.

The question to follow up on what was asked. So, Is it going to be criteria for the developer's architect to know exactly what a design is and their standards?

And Commissioner, just so you know, this is in every jurisdiction, every single jurisdiction and specifically like historic districts and things like that have very specific elevation requirements, variations in elevations, how many different materials you have to have on a facade. You know, there are a lot of things that doesn't specifically it's not like an HOA that says you can only paint in these colors, but it definitely provides very clear guidelines when you're designing. Commissioner Crosby. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Another question, different topic. On the professional office zone.

Thank you. The professional office zone that's being eliminated, that category, just following up from before I asked the question, are the businesses in that area going to be notified that that's been changed? Yeah. Okay. That's all. Thank you.

So as we're talking about the Shaw Road, is there going to be any infrastructure planning that comes with any of this if we're changing any to the UCX and all that? Because it's going to get more bottlenecked once we start putting more stuff in there. So that is a major problem with Puyallup with all our intersections. So I still would like to see some plans that go with all these zoning changes as we build more.

Okay. Well, that kind of doesn't help, but I just feel like that we're not paying any attention to our infrastructure when it comes to all this. And that's what I hear everywhere is all our failing intersections. And we don't, we are always playing catch up and, I don't want to play catch up in 2044 when we're totally bottlenecked and then we have to rush and get things fixed. So I'd rather do it now and think about that so we don't have to answer these questions back in the day. Yeah.

Developers also are on the hook for traffic impact fees, and a lot of that goes direct, I mean, all of it goes directly back into the community. And also street improvements, not just the streets, but the entire frontage improvement usually is on the developer as well, putting in curbs, putting in landscape strips, doing all of that lighting, the whole bit is part of that package. So it's not just our budget that's on the hook. And believe me, I don't always agree with the traffic impact fees. I think that they are incredibly prohibitive for small projects. But I mean, there are funds there th

Yeah, even though I hear from the constituents all the time, I think the city can concentrate a little bit better on our infrastructure problem because that is the only major thing I keep hearing especially in that area, is our infrastructure. Are we gonna do anything about our infrastructure as we build?

Well, and I think also the parking overlay and opening up these lots on items that are not specifically fair adjacent does then, I think as was mentioned already, we're used to the traffic. I mean, I live a block from the fair now. I'm used to it during September. I'm used to it during February and the odd days when graduation is going on or whatever else. I don't want it all year round because all these other parking lots are now open and the fair can be doing other things. So, I mean, I do think that's a concern.

I think that would be a great idea. But probably not in September.

Thank you. I keep forgetting to do that. So Shaw Road from Maine all the way to the top of the hill is backed up. And so if you're going to add new development there, there's just, he's not going to be able to pay, any developer's not going to be able to pay for widening Shaw Road all the way up to the top of the hill. So it's a timing thing. And so if it's approved, it's just going to get worse. So if the development is approved in those lots, he's not going to pay for everything. And now you're stuck with even more traffic. And if you put a light where you're talking about putting a light th

Brett KenCairn, Since we're speaking about Shaw road i'll take it back to one of my common comments we still live next to a active volcano, that is, was our zone, and that is one of the few evacuation routes out of the city. maybe we can't get grants for improving due to residential traffic. But if we looked at it as a community safety issue, we're not going to be able to get up that hill. There are very few ways out of downtown. And at that end, well, if you're trying to make it up there, it just won't happen. So we have that going on. But I think the rest, it could be said that's true for ma

I think one of the things to think about is the very expensive project of adding lanes to Shaw Road down the hill. is realistically, it's going to move the bottleneck from 12th Avenue South to 23rd Avenue South. It's just going to move it. It's a huge amount of money to be spending on not really solving the problem the same way that turnpockets and traffic lights don't solve the problem. The problem is number of cars on a road. And the problem is there aren't enough roads. It's a very simple idea. It's really simple. Instead of adding more lanes, you need to disperse the traffic. You need more

Yes. On that note, what Dave was talking about, just like that cul-de-sac thing that you have project up there on this side of Shaw Road where you're building two cul-de-sacs and you're extending it and you're making a walkway, which that would be a good access emergency route, just like he was saying, to where we're only making that a three-quarters where we could make that a whole street go through. I know some of the neighborhoods probably don't like it, but I think that would be a good planning to the east and west roads, like Dave was talking, that we can work on that even better to get o

Anyone else? Well, thank you all. And that is moving us to staff report, if you had already given it.

So now that Kendall's gone, we do have questions. Who do we address them to?

Would it be appropriate now to take a poll and see about a second meeting in September then?

Anybody thoughts? I feel like it's a great idea instead of doing one super long one. Anyone else?

I think we're all in agreement then that we would like to add that second meeting. Does it need to be an official motion?

Perfect. And then I believe that moves us on to Commissioner comments. Commissioner Barney, anything today?

Well, the same thing. I'm just on this infrastructure everybody's talking about, so we don't play catch-up mode with our roads and capacity with all our failing intersections. We need help on our infrastructure planning.

Well, if we're going to talk infrastructure, I think, you know, it goes both ways. I think we have streets that need calming measures and specifically when I think about like 23rd that I live off of. But, you know, I think connectivity is the key, not necessarily capacity. There's lots of, there's very limited ways up and down or across a lot of these areas. I think that's probably the constraint. I'm not sure what the planning commission's role will be in any of that, if anything. But yeah, those are interesting topics. So thanks for people bringing them up.

Thank you. Commissioner Merton, anything this evening?

Just one last. I was with the Fredrickson Planning Commission, I don't know, about nine, ten years ago. And what we were told was develop, develop, develop. We're going to put in all these industrial areas. It's going to bring awesome jobs. And, you know, this is the way to go. What we got instead were warehouses and awful traffic. If you've tried to drive on Canyon in the last three or four years, you know what I'm talking about. That's what I don't want to see happen with Puyallup. Zoning has a lot to do with it, and we're seeing more and more, as you said, the state getting in front of thin

Vice Chair? Nothing at this time. And I'm going to take us completely away from all of this. On August 30th, the last Sunday of the month, at Old Town Dock, which is the first dock as you enter Reston Way, from 9.15 until 12.15, there is a dive cleanup, a group of divers from... I believe it's underwater sports in Tacoma as well as some of their other chapters. We'll be diving in the Sound and bringing up a whole bunch of bottles and PVC pipe and anything else that doesn't belong in the Sound. We need volunteers for the ground crew because when they bring that up there's a lot of critters in t