Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, this meeting is now called to order. Welcome to the August 17th, 2026 Planning Commission meeting. We'll begin with the roll call. Casey, will you please call the roll?

Great, thank you, Casey. Our first order of business is approval of tonight's agenda. Do I have a motion, and can the motion maker please state their name? So moved, Daniel.

It's been moved by Daniel and seconded by Jessica to approve the agenda for the August 17th Planning Commission meeting. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All right. Any opposed say nay? Any abstentions? All right. The agenda has been approved as submitted. Moving on to approval of the minutes from the July 20th, 2026 Planning Commission meeting. Is there a motion?

It has been moved by Jason and seconded by Jessica to approve the minutes from the July 20, 2026 planning commission meeting. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Any abstentions? The minutes are approved. One abstention in the room, Chair. One abstention in the room, okay. On to public comment. This portion of the meeting is an opportunity for members of the audience to speak on any items related to city business, including items on the agenda, except those items for which the Commission held a public hearing, but has not yet completed its deliberations and issued a recomme

Thank you, Gordon. If anyone else would like to give a public comment, please raise your hand. Otherwise, we will move on. I'm not seeing anybody in the room, Casey. Great, then we'll move on to staff announcements.

Great, then we'll move on to business items.

Do we get Greg out? Has there been a coup?

I'll hold my comments in the later. I'm out of my three minutes, right? Okay, tonight's first business item 6A is a public hearing regarding home-based business in the Olympia Municipal Code Amendments. David Ginther, Senior Long Range Planner in the Community Development Department is here to present on the topic. David.

Thank you, David. um does anyone have any real quick uh clarifications they'd like to ask now otherwise we can discuss more after the public hearing let me make sure i have everything here nobody uh okay then let us move on to the public hearing and i will open the public

And I will open the public hearing at 7.01 p.m. Oh, sorry, I didn't... Short change to a quick paragraph. So we'll invite public members to provide comments and we'll limit to three minutes. I will identify two to three speakers. When your name is called, the host will unmute the microphone. You'll then need to unmute your microphone before you start speaking. We will interrupt you and ask you to quickly finish your comments if they didn't be on three minutes. Okay. I'm not going to reopen it. I'm just right at the top. So we started at 7.01. And we'll start with folks that are in the room and

All right, great. And then we'll move online. And if you'd like to comment or testify at the public hearing, please hit the raise your hand button and we'll let you in. We'll start with Paul Bittar and then go to Gordon White.

Thanks, Paul. So next up is Gordon White, followed by Heather Burgess.

Thank you, Gordon. Next will be Heather Burgess followed by Doug Ma.

Thank you, Heather. Up next, Julia Gorton, followed by Linda Kunz.

Sorry, the hand went down. Let's go with Doug. Let me get that going here real quick.

Thank you, Doug. Now we'll move on to Julia Gordon. Followed by Linda Kunz.

all without any rational connection to land use and i respectfully urge the commission to reject them thank you thank you julia up next will be linda coons and if you would like to testify at the public hearing please raise your hand hit the raise hand button

Thank you. Up next will be Holly Gedbach.

Thank you, Holly. If there are other folks online that would like to testify, please raise your hand now. All right, not seeing any additional hands, then I will close the public hearing at 7.31 p.m. Okay, now is our time for the planning commissioners, if we'd like to discuss what we've heard, have questions for David, and any other thoughts or comments about the the proposed amendments. Go ahead, Daniel.

Yeah. Thank you for the presentation, David. I think last time we heard about this, I think we heard, I think there was a question on like the scale of this. And I think that there's maybe some, like you're going to follow up about this. Do you remember that? And do you have any more information to talk about like the scale of like how many businesses are like, operating in the South cap neighborhood or like how many in Olympia overall, do you remember this conversation?

I think it's right at the... Right at the end of list of changes. There's a research and information requested section.

Other questions for David? David, one question I had, and it came up in public comment, is the issue of principal resident. And I may be glossing over some of the edits, but it seems like that was a requirement in the original code. Am I incorrect in that?

residence but that is proposed to be put into the affidavit okay and then so the to me the one of the main changes there is that instead of the permit holder which we haven't required permits for some time it becomes the business license holder and so if someone had a registered business at their residence, but was not, but also, you know, had an office and for whatever reason they wanted to register at home, how would, um, would that be a home-based business, uh, to the city if they worked somewhere else, but, but registered the business at home? That's really a question for, um,

No. So it's definitely a business. So they have a business license. Okay. I'm partly thinking of enforcement, but they don't work. You know, they have a office somewhere else. And so for whatever reason they registered, they didn't register at the office. I don't know why, but yeah, Like that to me is not a home-based business, even though it's registered at the home because none of the work is happening at the home.

Casey, remind me of our options for tonight. We can recommend as is, recommend with revisions or not recommend. Is that right?

So if there are changes after it went to land use?

Yeah. Uh, so I would welcome, um, I would welcome a, uh, motion either to recommend, recommend with revisions or recommend not to adopt that we can continue to, um, hold our discussion under, and we can always table that to a later date. If we need more time, or if people want to comment on whether they feel like they need more time, we can do that before we make any motions. Go ahead, Aaron.

Hey. You know, for what it's worth, I could think that maybe a temperature check might be helpful in this case. I know I want to do that. For a number of reasons, I'm not feeling good with the maintenance. As is. I'm having a hard time even imagining what modifications would put me personally into the okay zone. So temperature check, I personally would recommend not to adopt.

I would suggest that you make a motion to recommend not to adopt and then see if there's a second we can talk about it. i will make a motion to not adopt the amendments uh so aaron is making a motion uh or a recommendation not to adopt is there a second second uh so aaron has made the motion to recommend not to adopt and samir has seconded are there uh discussions or amendments

Sorry, I had a hard time hearing Aaron. Did you say that you want amendments or you don't want amendments?

Sorry, it's hard to hear you. Recommendation not to adopt. So that doesn't have any amendments. We can revise that motion or make recommendations and change it to a...

I heard the motion. I'm asking, Aaron, you're saying there's nothing that will... I couldn't hear the first part of what you said before the motion. You said you want amendments or you said you don't want any amendments?

Yeah, good point. Good question. I'm having a hard time imagining what kind of amendments would even take me into the yes zone. I have a... I have some pretty serious fundamental qualms, disagreements with the direction, with the strategy itself of these amendments. Got it. I don't know if tweaks would do it for me.

Are there any... I certainly share some of those feelings. Do you have specific areas and or do other folks have... points that they'd like to bring up as kind of like specific discussion points. Go ahead, Samir.

OK, yeah, I mean, I can see that there still needs to be some more work on this. And I think what I'm trying to understand in this moment is it seems like we need to update the amendments anyways, because it's outdated, I think was one of the things that came up in the last meeting. And so the amendment should reflect the actual intent along with the comprehensive plan. to address the specific issues of the South Capitol area. Is there a South Capitol subarea development plan for that? And so that we can focus on the larger comprehensive plan for our amendments?

I think I'm just in agreement all around. I mean, I guess a couple of questions or points. So for example, right now with the current residential zoning, In South Capitol, if there was an empty lot or a house for sale that somebody wanted to tear down, they could not tear it down and build an office building, correct? And that's not on the table? And there's no current movement in the City of Olympia to prohibit someone from purchasing a house that they're only going to live in for two weeks or one week or one day of the year, correct?

okay thank you do other people have comments I guess I just wonder if anybody has like proposed alternatives of like what would we want to suggest instead like I can imagine if in a comment letter you if the plan commissioner recommends like not to approve I'm assuming there'd be some explanation of like what we, like what led us there, like what we want instead. So I guess I'm just like wondering what, if anybody has thoughts, Aaron, kind of looking at you just since you made the motion, but don't want to put you on the spot, but like, just wondering if you had other thoughts.

Yeah, I don't mind speaking to it once we get to it. Raphael can go ahead. No rush.

Yeah, I guess, um, Turn it to more like I guess the edit side of adjustments to it, because I know the focus being on outdated language make it much easier from like an entrepreneurial side for them to operate. I guess one thing that came to mind is possibly just removing the proposed remote work definition from Title 18. I know David mentioned finance had already identified that remote work does not map cleanly onto business licensing requirements. And then since some remote activity, I guess, may require a license and some may not, I guess that supports like keeping business licensing in, wa

Yeah, Rafael, to follow up on the remote work, question i had is is if the if the activity of remote work is the same as a business that's that's registered at the home it doesn't doesn't feel fair to me that like you know i i work from home and like i'm working for some other company at home i'm not i'm not causing any more uh consternation for the neighborhood or impact on the neighborhood um than someone who's also licensed at their house um And I think I shared, Casey shared around the article where they kind of laid out some categories of remote work or of not of remote work, but of activ

Okay. So on to see the word participate is used, but I think that the intent is that it should be individuals employed. And so that way we're not having to regulate who actually comes into the business or comes into somebody's home. We can focus on who is actually employed by the business. And that would be an impact.

So it'd be like how many employees the business has.

Yeah, and whether they live in the home or not, if that is the, again, I want to check the intent, but if the intent is that people, to see the second draft home-based business amendments. And so it has the word participate. No persons other than those who live in the residence shall participate in the home-based business, but participate is a very broad word. And I think the intent is to be employed by. and maybe starting there and then discussing whether the amendment with the more specified language still meets the intent of the proposals.

Yeah, the only thing that draws to mind is if If you have a home-based business, you're the only one that works on site, but then had, you know, a hundred employees that also worked on their site, whether you'd come afoul of that. I think I, but.

Okay. So she'll be employed in the home of the home. Yeah. Right. Right. I wonder.

L, I hear what you're saying, and I'm not an employment law expert, but I guess that's why I'm kind of wondering, because I feel like I've heard with Amazon, people will say, well, you're not technically an employee of Amazon. You're a contractor or contracted by Amazon. So I'm definitely not an employment law expert. but I guess I'm just saying that I'm a little hesitant to start putting like very specific words like that into the thing just because I don't know like how they affect things. And I guess I'm a little worried that we would like put something in there that then creates like a who

i just think that if we're going to be making recommendations and these are going to be used for further complaints and it's complaint-based enforcement then we need to be specific we owe that as a protection to the homeowners and to the businesses totally hear you on being specific and offering recommendations but i just think that then maybe we should under understand what that means if you're gonna say employed by then i'm like i again like i don't know what that means if because or like i'm not an expert in like the difference between like employed by contracted by I don't know, like retai

I think the recommendation would be to just define participate better. And then I can totally let somebody else take that.

I'm yeah. I like that. I like that a little bit better of like defining participate better rather than like being like, yeah.

Yeah, it does. I know, I'm not sure it came out specifically in the comments this time around, but previous comments were talking about, you know, having multiple people have a meeting at home and if those, you know, they're all part of the same firm or some other business that hasn't come up quite as specifically. Yeah. That also doesn't seem like it's putting a lot of pressure on the neighborhood to have some meetings like that. Nor would we want to try to figure out whether they're social or business related. Other constructive points? Go ahead, Raphael.

I guess I'm thinking more back, I guess, to the lens of the small businesses, maybe also considering like that um work from home moms or even like with military spouses um not necessarily being here for a long time frame as well um that aspect too um possibly reconsidering uh that whole blanket prohibition on i guess like the non-resident participation so like um Kyle Magyera, Maybe like allowing one or perhaps like a very limited number non resident employees subject to like the parking and impact standards to somewhat provide a better balance there and then I guess. thoughts being like, if y

Gotcha. So essentially, from that perspective to removing that old 500 square foot ceiling already kind of improves flexibility from that sense, I guess, is what you're kind of saying there too.

I just think to follow up on that, it'd be really great for any numbers that are in here, like the 25%. If we could understand where they come from, definitely a rule that I'm aware of is like, there shouldn't be magic numbers because there is an intent. There is a reason why we have these rules in place. And so if we don't understand that, then we're not really connected to what it should be doing. We're just holding rules for world's sake.

Yeah, my recollection is too early for that. From the APA article I shared is that they just noted that there might be some like state or federal standards for how much square footage you could use to, or some tax considerations for that. And so there might be a jurisdiction above us that has some, but it doesn't necessarily mean we need to match it if it's limited some other way. David, you mentioned, so to me anyway, the fundamental issue is that the business activity is, you know, ancillary or secondary to the residential activity. And you mentioned that having it be the primary resident ac

Right, but I think we've discussed in the case of someone spending a lot of their time where it's sunnier in the winter or something like that, the home doesn't lose its kind of residential structure. characteristics because of that, even though I understand the kind of consternation with folks that have empty houses in their neighborhood, that can happen for a lot of reasons. Just part of it that I'm thinking about. I could imagine if you had a residence... And it was being maintained as a residence, whether there was someone living there or not. And then someone was doing some commercial act

So are you asking if somebody could live in the house but rent the accessory unit to a business to operate?

Yeah. Huh. Well, so one of the things that seems like some of the public comment and hinges on is this principal resident issue. think in both in you know kind of both sides of some of the comments and whether or not that's that's necessary to kind of like establish establish principal residence at a place to be able to run a home occupancy out of it or if you're you know if i are remote working at at uh and i guess remote working is gonna fall somewhere else but if i were uh registered registered my business at my home, but I was doing work at my friend's house because we had some complimenta

Well, I'm thinking in this case, if it's not remote work.

I'm really interested in the idea that you could own that property, but rent out the ADU essentially. And so that would be taking with enforcement, not with the home-based business license itself, but with the property instead in order to actually have enforcement so that somebody is actually living on the property and we maintain the definition of a home-based business. Is that, am I following correctly here?

Yeah, so I'm thinking if it's, I guess maybe you'd say your business is registered somewhere else, but you're, I don't know, maybe you're doing physical training in the garage or something of a friend's house. Like is that, like that activity is the same, it has the same impact as if you were doing it at your home. Right. But I understand it raises some complications because that person is maybe now renting their accessory structure to a business, even if it's a residential. But it's still maintaining. All the things that we're talking about of maintaining consistent residential aspects of the

Well, I think that's the question, right? What's the incentive there if you set up a two-person business at an address somewhere else and you're now the employee of your business and you're running it out of your home, right? You're just a remote worker.

Yeah, I guess my understanding would be if they live there, that would, that would fit comfortably under the current ordinance or the current proposed. Yes. They were. But if they didn't live there, they would not. That's correct. But if the person who lived at the house, I realize this is... But if the person that lived at the house had their own business but had an employee that worked in the accessory structure, then that would be Well, okay, I'm trying to remember whether we're allowing anybody to participate or no one to participate, but assuming you allowed a few employees to participate

That's kind of where my mindset was drifting to, too, is like if an activity produces almost like no external impact, generally regulation should be lighter there and enable that activity to continue, especially if it's supporting like the economics of the area as well. And then that mindset there becomes more on that measurable impact side. So like concerns of like the traffic, the parking, reoccurring people coming through, deliveries, the noise, structural alterations. I guess the delineation and balance between what's actually measurable. And then if you were to implement that, how would y

enforcement is harder, especially if we're going to ask. residents neighbors to be part of that complaint based system.

And I guess a refresher on this too, has there been any other focus areas? Because I know a lot of public comments have come from South Capitol. Have any other areas been affected in similar parallel to the way South Capitol has been affected?

Gotcha. Yeah, because my concern would be an overarching regulatory factor that is limited to focused on one specific area now affecting broader majority Olympia. So if there's a way to like navigate through that, I know probably not easy to address, but that's just things that come to mind, especially if it's solely focused on South Capitol.

I wasn't just I was more so talking about a lot of public comments versus actual amendments. Yeah, because I like most of. public comment to our South Capitol residents versus if there was another area making similar comments about the same issue? No.

I also just, Raphael, to your point about South Capitol, it does seem like it's a minority of the homes in South Capitol. That's what, David, thank you. I was able to find the numbers that you provided. And it's, yeah, it's like 76 home-based businesses out of 797 residences. So it's like 10%, which like in my, like in my head, what I hear is like 90% of the neighborhood is not dealing with this. And so it's like an acute issue of, But it's not like widespread, I would say. And so that helps me like contextualize of like, this seems like a important but limited issue in that neighborhood.

And to clarify on those numbers, what we're talking about right now are the registered home-based businesses, right, or not. That in no way accounts for any number of people that are just remote workers in South Capitol. That's correct, yeah.

David, do you know if, has there ever been enforcement on a residence turned into an office, which I don't know what portion of buildings it's suggested that's happened with, but has that been enforced or been attempted to be enforced ever? Because that seems like that's outside of the scope of this set of amendments, but I'd be curious if it's happened.

Okay. And do you, It also brings up the question of what the, I guess the line there would be if there is, you know, if it's not accessory to residential use, then it, you know, I guess even an empty house that was used as an office is now just being used as an office, potentially, and you could enforce that outside the kind of home-based, but if it's... I guess in thinking about creating kind of as expanded an opportunity for home-based businesses as possible, where that kind of line bumps up against like a fully commercial business. Just in how we define it in the words.

Just piggybacking off of that, Greg, I think that's my question right now is what is in the current code would make that unenforceable if those houses are being used as office spaces. I really appreciated the comment about making it, I guess, more permissive for somebody to post a potential sales opportunity. I think that is an absolute example of more modernization in the code. Things that couldn't have been accounted for even 20 years ago, honestly. But I really do wonder right now what about the current level of complaints isn't enforceable if the houses are being used as office spaces.

Thank you, David. Good information, also challenging information.

I'm hearing the same thing, Casey, and it seems like there's maybe some suggestions. One of my hiccups is just that I think in both the current ordinance and in the suggested changes is this principal residence issue that seems to have come up a lot in public comment and that I have obviously some complicated and maybe confusing thoughts about. And so I don't have like a specific recommendation and I'm kind of comfortable under this. Do not, or sorry, recommend not to adopt. And then we can give some context to that to land use and council to think about.

Yeah, agreed. Yeah, so I'd take any other points of discussion. Otherwise, we can call the vote on the minute. Go ahead, Aaron.

Yeah, hey, just a quick question to staff. I want to... understand, I don't remember anyone talking about this, the, I feel for to say, you know, unable to discuss right now, but I want to know what kind of conversations staff has had with legal about this reach. What's our understanding from them?

Understood. Thank you. And I understand the nature of that. Thanks.

Uh, and apologies. I forgot who seconded our motion today. What up this case? You remember?

Excellent. All right, then it has been, it's getting late and slow. It has been moved by Aaron and seconded by Samir to recommend do not approve for the home-based businesses ordinance amendments

Right not to adopt as proposed. Great Casey for the. Home based business Olympia municipal code amendments all those in favor. I think Raphael raised his, Raphael, do you have a question?

Yeah, just a quick question. Just to clarify, if we don't recommend, we could still provide comments on areas of focus that need to be really addressed to think about actual amendments, I guess.

Yeah, absolutely. I think we would try to put together a list of suggestions for sure. Okay, so all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Any abstentions? Okay, then I have it, the ayes have it, and we will, the motion passes. I appreciate the discussion on it. I definitely have some notes taken down from that. If there are other specific things that people want, I can draft kind of a list of those that we can send along to land use, and then we can discuss it at a future time, too, to refine it. Anything that people didn't get off their chest that they want to put on there? I'll

I'm happy to go with the group. It seems like enough people had concerns that I'm happy to vote with the group and be like, let's vote to not recommend approval. But I'm a little bit confused just on what we are recommending specifically. Instead, so I would love to see kind of like more maybe conversation about that about like what people want to propose instead because I just, I'll say I don't really have a ton of ideas. So, like, I'm interested to see what people think. kind of propose alternatively, because I don't really know what can be enforced. And I think that that's kind of the issue

to do not recommend so yes i i hear you casey and maybe if i need to call them considerations then they're considerations but i guess that's like i guess the like i want to kind of hear more from people what i already i heard the considerations voice today but i guess i just would like to hear more additional like how those are going to be in the comment letter because i guess if i i'm i'm a little confused on what we're saying to counsel with like don't recommend then it's like, why, why are we not recommending? And it's like, I don't exactly understand, but I guess that's what the comment le

So is the comment letter that we're going to send, is that something that we need to make a motion tonight that at the next meeting, or is that just something that you put together based off of what the discussion is that we've had already?

Yeah, I think we'll, we'll put something on and I can, I can actually try to summarize what I've heard and see if, if folks agree or want to, want to add some things. Well, I will try. So the.

Yeah. But I think there's certainly some, the remote work issue, and David brought this up too, that that's probably adding some additional confusion and then focusing on neighborhood impacts rather than some of the kind of behind the scenes business and relational aspects. I know we had, you know, discussion of complexities there. And then the question for me there is like, you know, at what point are you coming up to the business, you know, an actual commercial space? Yeah, I guess a lot of that to me circles around that where we have these aspects like Raphael brought up with military spous

We can move on. We don't need to summarize everything today, but I'm just voicing what I am feeling. I think the group is skeptical, and that's totally great, and we can vote as a group and be skeptical, but I don't exactly know where we're going. That's what the comment letter's for.

I would also just, uh, one quick comment. I think the, there's a lot of effort in this, uh, recommendation or the ordinance, um, amendments that, you know, it's just modernizing this ordinance to be in more in line with how it is. And I think, um, most of those recommendations were, weren't controversial and, and, uh, we would want to see that happen kind of, but we don't have on the stickier points. We don't have a strong, um, revision or recommendation. Go ahead, Raphael.

I think it's important. We kind of include the proportionality and geographics of it. So like that percentage of the numbers of the businesses that are actually impacted and then focus on like the South capital. I think it's important to have that aspect included. And then one other thought that just came to mind is more so like the thought of like the progression aspect of, I guess a low impact startup at home, growing this home business and then commercial location when I guess they're like impacts and scale warranted or say, cause I know there was a talk about Like in the past, we talked ab

See, this is, I think, where I'm a little confused because, Raphael, you just were talking about downtown businesses being empty, but are those home-based businesses downtown?

No, but from a sense of for businesses to scale and grow, a lot of startups start at home and for them to become larger businesses and actually grow. be make the income necessary to run a storefront per se. Um, a lot of them tend to start from home from that aspect. And you could be limiting those people that eventually would occupy a storefront in downtown Olympia, if that makes sense.

Yeah, that sounds great. then we will move on to our second business item. 6B is a briefing regarding the preliminary 2027 to 2032 capital facilities plan. Presenting on this topic is associate planner, Casey Shoffler of the community development department. Casey, fastest briefing ever.

Great. Thank you, Casey. Do folks have questions? Not seeing any questions. Okay. We will wait to hear more from the finance subcommittee and move on quickly to reports. Does anyone have any to report on, meeting, relevant book or article? Go ahead, Daniel.

Yes, I have a meeting that I think Planning Commission will care about. There is a couple of meetings scheduled this week being led by the city talking about the Artesian Well. The Artesian Well mosaic was recently repaired by the original mosaic artist, Jennifer Koons. The Parks Department, I think, worked with her to restore the mosaic. So not the entire site, but just the art piece. There are some focus groups, work groups being organized by the city, one today and I think another on Thursday. So attended that today. And they sound like based on whatever feedback they get from that group, t

Great. Thank you, Daniel. I'll just plug the article I mentioned in the home occupancy, the equitable zoning for home occupations from the APA.

Thanks, Casey. Then other topics. We have noted here the finance subcommittee next steps, but I think we, did we cover that to what you need, Casey? We'll do the rest.

Great. Sounds good. All right. Then next regular scheduled meeting is September 21st, 2026. And the meeting is adjourned at 9pm. Thank you, everybody.