Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

to be quiet. I'm going to order [Music] October 25th and we are going to start with United States of America stands nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all the Okay. [Music]

Thank you. Okay. Comment. [Music] on an item that is not on agenda. You're welcome. If you'd like to come up to you, please introduce yourself.

Hi, thank you. What do you rate your mic? So, please speak without Mr. Go ahead, please.

Oh, good. [Music] Thank you. All right. Go ahead. Introduce yourself. West Thompson, a long time resident in Manchester and I'm very interested in what's happening there with the Roseburg property. The Roseburg property went through the surplus land act and is now been made available for development. It was a posted thing for the landing for many years and the landing asked for people's input. I don't know what ever happened to that but I understand people are coming and presenting ideas and I would like very much to know and I would like to let the whole community know that that is now for sale and for development and I just think I'll get input before a plan is all made up and presented. So, I'd like to know, I've been going to the city, sending emails, asking Kim, asking Todd, where are the people coming when your presentation? And I can't seem to get an answer.

And yet, I see things like additional um land use element. I see these little comments in here.

Code updates. Do these code updates have anything to do with the projection of what's happening? I don't know if there's forethought in some of the things I'm reading. Do you understand? So, I'd like very much to know why these people that are making a projection or she said when I spoke with Kim that people and I don't know where that is and why that's happening and I would like the whole community to have a voice. quote I've given you a notice asking could I be notified when and where and who are these people that is somebody could make me aware of that. Thank you.

Thank you. So just you can't act on something that you've been discuss but we do um take it into consideration we have staff here. So thank you comments. Um, good evening, but just something that's not on the agenda. And seeing no takers, we're going to move on to item number three, which is our consent agenda. Um, questions if there are no um changes to our July 15th meeting. Um agenda otherwise we can take a look if there's any and so if these are if they're agreeable I would move to approve the cons the number four consent agenda for the minutes of July 15 2025 the regular meeting Second favor I should pass unless it unless is going to be done.

Can I just suggest that everybody make sure they talk solidly into the microphones because it's not I'm not hearing very well. Hello.

Well, is that better? Well, you have to you have to share so that's a little harder. I know. Okay. Anyway, so next is our brief director and uh Okay. Okay. Thank you. Uh first item of housekeeping. I think there's an unused mic at the end of the table here if I want to grab that. Okay. Okay. In that case, well, let's get started. I am Ken. I am your new city. I started here in August. I believe we have no meeting in August. Um, no meeting in September. So, this is the first meeting that I'm in front of the planning commission. I'm very happy to be here. Um, through this briefing update, we'll talk a little bit about what's on the long-term planning agenda. what's on my desk in terms of long-term planning. So, if you look through your staff report, you'll see that the recent uh the recent adoption of the housing element to raise some changes that are now being required and some of these changes are first the land use element. There are some trickle down effects from the housing element being adopted that we now have to update the land use element in the general plan and also aside from that is there are also some zoning ordinance upgrades that have to be undertaken. So on a high level those were included in your stock report. Last month if we worked we were going to be talking about uh what changes were necessary within the land use element. At the time the city had consulted with um an alpha called land west partners. They were the ones that helped us with the um housing elements. Um they were on board to help us with the land use element updates. And but a month ago we

we had a budgeting for our consultants to help us do that. Fast forward a month um there there was a misunderstanding there are no more grant dollars to have a consultant help us with this effort. So instead of going through the must do, shall do, could do. Um, I think what we're going to do now is your planning department is going to tackle all of that inhouse um as soon as we can get around to it bases and and prioritize it with everything else that's happening. So, that's kind of what's changed between last month and this month is instead of having to get on board to help us post some of these news element updates, we are now tackling everything in house. So, we'll help myself and we'll make the updates. Um, Aside from that, let me see. So the the attachment a that you have in your staff report is a list of those things that have to happen in your non-use element. If there are any comments or suggest suggestions, anything else you might want to see in there, now would be the time to talk about it. So I can fold it into the workflow with things that we have to do to get this updated. So that is the plan use element. Um there are some highle updates in here for some other element updates. those we'll tackle after the mayor's element is done. Um the other high priority item is the zoning ordinance. So zoning ordinance is divided into text updates and zoning map update. So adopting the housing element will will draw some of these zoning code text updates which are also listed in here. Um, one thing I did want to mention on the long range agenda is the fact that it's kind of having a new come in on the in the department is there's an opportunity to sift through what's already on the desk and what other folks before me have started

working on. So, one of the things that has come to my attention recently is the fact that there are quite a handful of parcels within the city that are miszone is maybe a harsh term. The bottom line is that some of these zoning designations are not consistent with what was updated in the general plan in 2007. And as folks are coming forward saying, hey, why does why doesn't this match up? I'm kind of discovering, I don't know, it doesn't match up. And in the absence of knowing, I think the best course of action is just to rectify that. So, um, the city manager We're making a list of all of these discrepancies that we're finding and instead of having applicants come forward and asking them to do a de a developer initiated zoning code amendment, we're just going to go ahead and do that in house and it's going to be an administrative here's a list of general plan designations, here's a list of zoning designations, here's where they don't match. And in one effort, I think staff's going to take the time to go through and figure out how to make it match as part of an effort that they'll bring forward. If they don't have public process, it has to go through the planet and then to the city council, but we're not going to ask any individual parcel in order to pay for that because it wasn't their mistake. It was it was ours. So, we're going to fix that. Um, if there are any property owners out there who who think that they may have a piece of property that's missed, um, bring that to our attention now so that we can add that to our list. But we do want to clean it up and and make it right as part of the zoning map update. So, that's the map. Um, I don't know what else I wanted to share with you. I guess I'll just open it up. I I'll end here and and open it up for

clarification questions and we can go from there. Okay. Um, start with you. Did you have some comment questions for Kim? I don't have any right now. Okay, I like all. No questions right now. No questions yet. Okay. Well, guess what? I'm guessing questions. Did you um give some examples of some of the popups there? Is it a trend like what have you noticed?

I don't know if there's a trend per se, but but one piece of property that comes to mind because um Bob Hayen came in and spoke with me a couple of weeks ago. Um he owns a parallel that's just south of where the hospital is on P Street. It's historically railroad property and it's right in the middle of the city. But if you look at the zoning designation or you look at the general plan land use designation, it has one color that parcel is is white. So what that means if we forgot to include it in digital plan update and then also because of that forgot to fold it into the zoning map update. So right now there is no zoning. There is no designation. The south bings are going to be that is a mistake. We're going to look at the surrounding parcels. Figure out what was intended. In this case it's pretty clearcut. It's surrounded by R3 adjacent to R3. It makes sense. There's R3 right around it. So that's a no-brainer. Um also for the companies that we have identified, it's very clear what the correct course of action is and if there's a situation where we don't know we figure it out and a lot of that has to do with what's existing in the surrounding parcels and in the neighborhood what makes sense and we'll go from there.

Great. Thank you. All right. In the second one, um, one of the, um, tasks has to do with the common conversion ordinance. And three years ago, which I can't come up with, but a few, we did come up with the common conversion ordinance. So, I'm wondering where we must not currently have um, and kind of thinking about I don't have any but is potentially a rental unit that's been converted to [Music] a rental stock but a column is also potentially an entrylevel ownership opportunity where people can start building equity. So like what kind of framework should we be thinking about and what do we have so far? Um so I think there are two ways that we can look at this. I think one of the ways we can look at this is picking up that condominium conversion ordinance. So much time has passed between then and now that it it's worth our while to look at it fresh and see what we can do about putting an ordinance in place. Um I'm also finding that separately people who own apartment units in town now who are on their own accord coming to the city and saying hey what is the process to convert these apartments from what we have now to multif family condominiums. Um, obviously they have to be retrofitted to condo standards if they're not already, but it's a it's a process of walking through these property owners. You know, there's a

condo map that has to be created. So, you have to to draw up a condom map, get that reported, proctor or engineer, get it through the planning commission, city council. There is a process. So, as folks are coming forward, city staff is talking to anyone who's interested in doing that so we can help convert some of these apartment units into town homes, condominiums for sale properties that other people can then buy into that would be a more affordable rate than than perhaps a single family home. So, that is happening. Okay. So, it's really just making sure our ordinance fits current practice.

Yeah. And and and a lot of it also is like a a public service. There's a there's a PSA element to that also is letting everybody understand what the tools are in order to do that. Okay. So, it's not a discourage encourage situation in that at all. Are we is there like creating hurdles for that or I'll go back and take a look at what the draft ordinance from because I think a draft was created. Um I'd have to go back and take a look at what that language is, but I think ultimately the goal would be to figure out how to encourage and or facilitate conversion of these units. So that that is an option.

I mean I can imagine it is it is an expensive proposition to bring it up to code for and doing the property and all that. Yeah. A hurdle. All right. By all means, please. So, will this because you've had a fairly detailed conversation with Melanie, will this come back to the planning commission in a form that is the finished description of what this is if there's an ordinance that comes back? Absolutely. Yes. Once upon a time, the big hurdle was was fire improvements. They require fire in apartments now. Oh, yeah. The walls Fires are changing by the minute.

There are some discussions at the state level to alleviate some of those fire requirements based on designations within the city. So that's a separate discussion. Um that's that's a separate effort that's happening internally within city is how do we how do we redesate some of these fire the firewise stuff? How how do we get into redesating some of these fire like the fire severity zones? The fire not not exactly severity zones but there's there's a way to there's a way to update fire standards in terms of you know it's I will get back to you I'm drawing a blank I will get back to you but there are there are changes happening at the state level that could that could help alleviate some of those roadblocks

one of the roadblocks another I've worked in was also we don't have to now because we don't have multitory structure really whether the equipment

right that also has to do with access so we'll we'll look into into that at the staff level and see what we can do about putting all those pieces together to to encourage more

okay so that kind of the goal that that's creating so you lose rental stock but you gain like opportun to build equity. That's public about that. Yes. Okay. Anything else, commissioners? Um for now. So, um we've got some folks here. I um if any, it's not a public hearing, but if you'd like to speak to us about this agenda item, you are more than welcome to come up and give us your two cents. So, let us know who you are and um you got three minutes. Aloha. Aloha.

Welcome. Welcome. Thank you. Back in action. So, um for tonight's topic is just general planning, uh future planning. A lot of housing things going on. There's zoning and land element use. Can you state your name?

Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, please. Uh, my name's AFA AFA AFA. I live right here by the KOA. There's apartments over there in the culac uplay. And uh, last time we were here, we're talking about the Yah movement. Yes. To expedite affordable housing, put tiny houses on wheels and press it through with the council and it super successful. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Super gratitude. Uh, the element about equity. We've been invited to SISU housing alliance. We've been invited to other circles that's talking about futures of NASA and they really like the equity element of paying off your tiny house on wheels and then having it so that we can move into a general plan where affordable housing is affordable. And so, uh, a lot of people like that part and they love the SQA and they love, you know, just everything that you guys did. Everybody that we told this to really appreciate your work. So, thank you. Um, I just want to throw this out there that our future plan of the general plan and the zoning and the land use is that it has to be tailored for the people that live here. And so, I've read through these things and it makes it expedite for developers to be able to do things uh like buy right or you know, pick a zoning and you can build, you know, whatever it is, you can get it passed pretty quickly. And, um, My only issue is that if it passes the price range of about 250,000, it is not affordable. That's the bottom line. We can expedite town homes. We can expedite landings. We can expedite 10 flex. We can expedite all the zonings. we can explain and clean up everything and make it a lot easier and faster for developers to come through with or without any com uh public comment or color or grass or all those things. But if it's 550,000 like

the average medium price range of Mount Shasta, then it defeats the whole purpose. And so the first phase of the YAM movement was to get tiny houses on wheels for something that's a next step easy affordability process which we already have a manufacturing going on in Mloud. Now we just need to go into the purchasing stages and then infrastructure and work with the city. Sorry. But then the next phase of the yacht movement is assisting the planning and the city council into figuring out a huge Rubik's cube, which is the price of $250,000 housing or less because our average medium income per person as an individual in Mount Chester is 34,000. If you have a partner, you don't. If you do, that's 70k. That's not a lot of money. If you had basic housing, you just times it by three. That's 210,000. It's been about three minutes. So, appreciation. Thank you for all you guys do. And uh with this new future general plan, my little two cents is we can figure out a way to price it and hold the price somehow. We need to figure that out. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Wait, wait, wait till you get the mic, please. And and let us know your name first again for the tape.

Hi, I'm TZ facilitating conversion apartments to condo. So, I visited my friend in Denver and she had an apartment house and she was able to buy the whole corner and it's hers and she owns it. I think that's what you're talking about. People being able to buy an apartment or join to another building. Is that what we're talking about here? When you talk about facilitate conversion of apartments to condo, I want to know if I understand.

Sure. Uh we're talking about um we we're talking about uh developers and property owners who have um for example maybe a 10unit apartment complex. Typically those apartment complexes, you know, the units within the apartment complexes would be for rent only, right?

So if that if that property owner were to convert those into condominiums, those condominiums then could be um listed for sale by unit. So you could buy unit A as opposed to just renting unit A. So that would be another option for folks to be able to buy something within the city and earn equity to what Commissioner was saying. So they'd be buying a part of they would be buying a a condominium unit. Yeah. Within an existing complex,

right? So basically like Sunday morning, they have that street or that little apartment complex called Sunday morning on Smith Street. Yeah. An a Yeah. A and that kind of thing could be turned into little is that kind of I mean I'm trying to understand where this might happen. Also, one of the questions I want to ask is the old hospital Laurest or whatever it was burn can that be turned into some sort of apartments. Um I think you know so we're gonna this isn't really a back and forth kind of a deal right now. Um appreciate your comments and your interest though. Absolutely.

Thank you. Anybody else? Okay, thank you. Um, so commissioners, do we have any um well and maybe also Kim? So going forward, I guess from us, you would like to know where you want like generally it looks like, you know, we need to make this happen and to be compliant with our general plan. Um, and really now over the course of the next year, we're going to plug away at this, we're going to chip away at making these updates. And so, you know, as as we're with as we're out and about within the community and we're hearing folks say what their wishes and wants are, I want to be able to have that opportunity to collate those thoughts here. And if there's if there's a way to implement those ideas, if there if there's a way to hold them into the general plan lane use element update sometime in this next year would be would be the way to do that.

And like an example like what to kind of prime the pump if you will, what kinds of things might people be thinking about?

You know, housing. So, you know, since I walked in here in August, um there's not a day or two that goes by that that there's a discussion about housing, housing supply, housing, um housing product type, having different forms of housing. Finding homes on wheels is a great example, but there are also other ways that we can accommodate housing. There are many communities that have um maybe forplexes or paired homes or um you know quad homes. There are many different product types that exist in other places that that work in terms of you know lowercase a affordable housing things that we don't have here but perhaps could introduce here and maybe if we had some goals and policies in place to encourage those uses it would help bring in some of the folks who want to develop them.

Great. Yeah. Go ahead. So in that condominium conversation part of problem with the conversion and making it so that it becomes uh to buy housing is we lose rental housing and so it's very

right whatever that means you know what I mean it's it's difficult because we don't want to lose our rental housing because most people don't have a down payment to make a purchase even if it's below you know they don't have it but they might be able to come up So, um, that's the biggest I mean I think that's what was part of that condo original condo ordinance, right? Yeah. Yeah. Was concern people that have been here for a long time who've been here done this and so we remember vaguely

I mean yeah you remember you get to remember a lot more. So just to make sure that we understand That's also an issue in the condo um conversion equation,

right? I I think that's definitely a component of it. I think the bigger picture is we need to figure out how to accommodate housing supply and then underneath supply, we can break it down into rental supply, purchase supply, those kinds of things. But I think the the overarching sentiment that I've been hearing for the last few months is we just need more opportunities to have housing. Whether or not we rent them or buy them, we just need to have that opportunity in this town, but not single family large. I think we're kind of okay. Our sovereign 32s, we're kind of good on the 32s, the M and fours and whatevers. It's the smaller smaller

just just more I think there there's a lot of room to to incorporate different types of housing. So, we're starting the discussion with the tiny homes on wheels and I think um going forward we'll we'll start looking at other ways we could accommodate housing. So, you know, as we go through this next year of land use element update, there could be ways we incentivize some of these efforts by putting in the appropriate goals and policies. Well, we did when we did our um design when we updated our design standards for our objective design standards, one of the things we did include was not just, you know, the tiny homes on wheels, but we were looking at the courtyard and those kinds of things. So, we did put some get some of that in place recently.

I think that's a great start. Um Cindy, I was in looking at what's here. I didn't see community land trust as one of the options for moving forward with affordable housing. Is that on the table? I will add that to my list. Okay. Thank you. Do do you know about community land trust? Yes. On on a high level. Yes. Good. Thank you. Good.

There's also in parts of town there are some remaining narrow lots that are still on the books. Um at one time that's policy or not

a bunch of little narrow lots. Yeah, I agree. Retaining those Streets.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's tough. Yeah. I think um north north of Mloud too. I think there's

you know appreciate comments portability. come down to building costs usually equates to size. So we can encourage more homes going smaller to help with that affordability. It's just part of the equation right now. Thank you. You brought up an example by the hospital.

Oh, Bob Hammond's adjacent to the hospital. No, it's it's further south. I think it's it's a bit further south. It's next. It's adjacent to the service. It's where the apple tree and the blackberry bushes are. We have those everywhere. Yeah. All right, commissioners. Anything else? Kim, anything else on this or shall we? I assume we're proceeding. Okay. In some fashion. I don't think there's any you don't need action.

Yeah, we will proceed in some fashion. I'll provide updates as we go along and then we can pivot in the future as necessary. But I just wanted to make sure that you know the that the planning commission and the public understood at a high level what the long range planning tasks were that we're undertaking that we're working on. There's a lot for you. There's a lot for planning staff of one. There's a lot. Right. Can we get like interns? Can you get an intern to help? I don't know. That would be great. I would welcome if there's anybody out there who wants to be a planning intern. I would welcome that opportunity to we had those civic civil

we had civic spark fellows a couple of them one stayed for a couple of years while Juliana was here are you familiar with civic spark spark right I don't recall they did live I think they lived here in town they found housing but anyway if you're familiar with civic spark and the fellows that they out into the world to get planning.

Okay. But I think I think the goal is to make planning cool so more of us want to do this. Great. Well, they were they were enthusiastic. I think one of the projects they worked on was a storm water a storm water dock. You might see one of those on the shelf there somewhere. Okay. definitely did a storm water project. Okay. So, it's pretty recent. All right. As things go.

Sure. Okay. Well, um that's it then for item five. Um item number six is commission and staff comments. Um how about if I let you go first, Kim? Um I don't even know where to start. There are so many updates. Um I guess I'll throw it back to the commission. Let's let's start with your comments and questions and then maybe we'll we'll have a dialogue of where I could interject with some staff comments for Okay, we're starting to go through this. No, we're done with that item. We're now at commission and staff comments

because that attachment was part of the specifics for the other. Okay. So, Cindy Lee, you want to start with you? I'm I'm gonna wait for a bit while I look a little more. Okay. Alan, did you have any comments? Comments? Maybe we're not looking at attachment anymore. No, that was that was item five. I don't have any comments.

Right. That was um or a lot of things we can ask questions about. So, well, I do there was interest at one time in the hospital property up there. Yeah, I mean that would be something to see what Yeah. What's the stage status of that the former old hospital? Uh the the old hospital, the one that burned. Yeah. So, that's still under private ownership. I think there's discussion internally about how the city can acquire that parcel to redevelop it.

Does is that because there's no too expensive for private. I'd rather the city not do it that somehow there's not enough development demand for somebody that's in the middle of housing. Yeah. Well, I think it's it's not it's not a piece of property that's listed for sale. It's not on the market. Nobody knows that it's available to purchase and develop on. Um is the owner just like is that right? I don't know. Yeah. So, there are discussions about the city, how the city might be able to to put something together to redevelop that in the future. Okay, that would be lovely. That would be lovely.

Anything else, Alan? Okay, Mike, you have to do something. Oh, I do have I do have a comment. Tomorrow is a big cleanup behind the theater. Clean and safe, the not real but real little group, me is looking for volunteers to come help pick up the garbage that's back there. So, um, anybody that wants to volunteer and come out at 10 o'clock in the morning with your gloves and your sturdy shoes and put things in bags that I have is welcome to join me. There's people out there, but I'm going to put it out there for even more.

10 until when? 10 until whenever. If you only want to work half an hour, that's fine. That's still a half an hour of trash. From folks living back there, something. I don't know. It's just it hasn't been done in a while because I have not been a very active uh leader and uh so it's but it got brought to my attention and there's enough people that are interested in helping do it before the rain. Thank you.

Thank you. Few things. Um been curious about it's been a long time since we've had a an update on the cannabis licenses that we put out years ago. Um are they still filled? This business is still in business. Um do you know anything about them and how they're operating?

As far as I know, all of the licenses that are available for allocation by the city are all being used. So, we don't have any open licenses that no one's taking advantage of. Um, more recently, there's there have been some property or business ownership changes. So, we're getting new applications in. They're not new businesses, but a former operator may be leaving town and a new operator is coming in. So, there's paperwork involved with paperwork, application fees, background checks, that kind of thing. But we're at our capacity in terms of how many permits we allow and they're all open and valid. Okay. Thanks.

Sure. Um I also wanted to acknowledge um the city's newsletter that they've been sending out and I appreciate that because though I come to these meetings, I'm not really, you know, going to the city council meetings. It's nice to know uh what's going on on that level.

Thank you. That is the brainchild or um pet project for our city clerk and Rachel has put a lot of a lot of hours into that and the last two newsletters that that have gone out have all been because Rachel organized it all. So, thank you for the feedback. I will pass that along to her. But that's something that we hope that we can continue on a monthly basis. Um if there's anything wants to know about that the city can help with, we can certainly put it into the newsletter, spread the word, that kind of thing. So, do you know how many uh emails that goes out to? How many people?

I don't. I can find out, but there's a list there's a list that the city's been using. So, whoever Rachel had access to, whoever's just provided us their emails over time, they're on the list. Um, if you're curious, I'm curious, too. I could find out how many of those out, too. Yeah. And are we free to forward those to interest? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Kudos to Rachel. I'll pass it on.

And finally, I I would like to acknowledge uh Vicky Gold who passed about a week ago as a you know, a very strong advocate for Mount Chasta and our natural environment, our water, small town character. uh she's going to be missed by many people. She gave us a lot of, you know, thoughtful feedback over many, many years, much longer than than I've been commissioner. So,

the way that it was announced was that Vicki got her wings. Yeah. And that's her language. Indeed. So, thank you, Vicki. There's going to be a memorial for her, I believe, on November 8th, right in this venue. Thanks. Anything else? That's it. Uh, yeah. So, I if you could I'm an update on Dano people. I know there's a lot of buzz. It's a big deal, big construction project in town. So um you have an update how that project's going?

Yes, I do. So there is work happening. There have been so the Danco project um permits permits are building permits have been pulled. They are working on it now. Um some of the guys out there who are breaking ground have encountered unexpectedly encountered water. So there have been a couple of unexpectedly unexpectedly

air quotes unexpectedly um encountered water. So there have been some some starts and stops and pauses with the construction team. Um our city staff is on top of guiding that development to move along. there's there's some gap in construction management best practices um that we're working to resolve so that they can keep going. If I might be so bold, they learned a lot in building the Premier West uh no banner building when they excavated there. The plans had to be just to Yeah. Everything was simply So that's happening again here.

Yeah. Well, I mean, what I'm getting at is they did come up with a method of sealed deep piles that worked. At least that's what I piles are typically open. I think that their solution here on this site is to do layers of rock and fabric. I noticed that happening, but well, their engineers are, you know, engineers great. No, that's great. I hope it works. Yeah, I do have one little question. Yeah.

When you were mentioning the cannabis uh businesses, I have never heard how much money it actually brings us. I will add that to my homework because all the years that it's been there's been no, you know, it might go to the city council, but it doesn't never come here. And so, We worked so hard on that. We'd like to know whether it was meant or not. Yeah, I I will find out.

Yeah, there are construction efforts where they're tracking soil out onto the street. It's cleaned up this evening. I was happy to see that. We've so what's great about our community is um I love and appreciate that people who walk by who see you know infractions on BMPs they give us a call and say hey it's the end of the workday they didn't sweep up we can follow up on that and make sure that they don't do that the next day so they know better. They know that all of these everything should be buttoned up at the end of the day every day. Um and if they don't do it, we'll know about it.

So yeah. Yeah. Less scrutiny. Um also there's a lot of work on the city street lately. What's the you know what that's Yeah. There there I have a message in with Ken, our public works director. There's a whole list of things that he and his team are working on. So I'm going to come back to you next month with a full summary of these street improvements just so that we all know what's going on. You know, used to have a newspaper and I mean we have a newsletter now and like right but um yeah things that are going on that things that we may have been involved with early on it's kind of nice to see it's nice to see yeah what happens to them so

and on that note if there are other things that you're curious about let me know also and I can chase down those answers for our next meeting thank you Sure lovely so I think um now you can go staff comments and if it bleeds into future agenda items, we'll let that

Okay. So, one thing I wanted to talk about real quick was the Raid building on Lake. Um, so Ryaid is out. That building is empty. Uh, the city has received quite a few phone calls from interested parties, people who want to come in either redevelop it, reuse it for something else, either commercial use or maybe splitting it up and doing multif family. But there there are people who notice who are paying attention and are coming to ask us. So we're going to try to facilitate maybe next steps of redevelopment at the writing site possibly. And what is the zoning there? Is it

It's commercial. Yeah, it's it's our C2 very permissive zoning. So housing could go in there. Housing could go into commercial. Yes. Yes. So but the the phone calls are coming in. So, we're fielding the phone calls. Um, so that's it's exciting. It's exciting to know that there are folks out there who are seeing development opportunity and who are picking up the phone and inquiring with the city. So, we'll have those meetings. And could we lean on the It was the art center. It's the vacant building on the other side of the Burger King from the old ride aid. It's been sitting there vacant for two decades maybe now. Oh, at least.

So, you know, the city's getting inquiries there and people want to develop. If we could lean on the land owner there that lets that building in that prime location sit vacant for decades. Um it's being used for storage. We'll call that vacant.

It's it's kind of a nuisance in how they're dealing with it. I think the you know the landscape the it's just letting it look it's kind of a blade there. So anyway, keep going. Okay. And then the last Oh yeah. What is happening down at the landing since we asked about these other That is a good segue into my last item.

Yeah. So my last comment item and especially I I appreciate TZ still being here. Thank you. um because you can benefit from from the answer, but I wanted to give a briefing on the landing. So, the landing is that old mill site. Um there there is discussion um about development finally on that site now that it's been cleaned up. It's a brownfield site. It's finally clean. In fact, um there is leftover grant money from the EPA for the city to make next steps in terms of how we redevelop this site. So, um, it's a property that the city owns and if if the city at any time decides that there's surplus property, the state makes us go through the surplus lands act and offer the property up and say, "Hey, dear world, the city may not need this property." Is there anybody out there in the universe who may want to come in with a development proposal that includes a capital A affordable housing component so that we can accommodate capital A affordable housing as we as we unload this piece of property. So, back in June, the previous planning director Jeff Mitchum um issued a letter like a it was a notice of um availability letter that went out in June saying, "Dear world, we have the landing property available. If anybody wants to talk to the city about affordable housing, let's talk because under the Surplus Lands Act, priority goes to anybody who wants to do affordable housing." So, at the end of that 60-day period, there was actually one developer, one one local developer who responded. And with that one response, there is a negotiation period of 90 days

that the city is in the middle. We're in the middle of our 90 days right now in negotiations with that land developer to see if we could cancel something that includes capital A affordable housing. So, we're within that 90-day window right now. If we can't come to some terms and agreements, then the city will then have satisfied the requirements of SLA and then the property can be opened up and available for sale at that point. But we have to go through this process first of trying to see if we can find somebody who wants to help us out by putting in affordable housing. So, that's what's happening right now. We're in the middle of that 90day period. So, that's one thing that's happening on the landing site. Separately, because there's leftover money from EPA for that brownfield cleanup, um we've got some dollars that we can dedicate towards what we're going to call a master plan. Um a master plan. So, the city would like to have a master plan put over the landing project site so that we can identify as a city our hoped, wishes, and desires in terms of what we want to see there. Not just affordable housing, but anything else we might want to see as a city. So this is the beginning of a very largecale discussion of master land use planning and it's going to be an effort that includes any interested parties within the city. Anybody who lives here, part of the community who wants to see something developed there. Um it's going to be a process that includes public engagement all along the way and it's going to be the city's plan to move forward with. So what about all the planning we've done there so far?

Those will be folded into what we're going to do going forward. But so offici Yeah. So officially, you know, um

there's there's traction there's there's traction now on on the landing and hopefully if not this developer, the property will be able to be sold to somebody who wants to do something. And if the city has a master plan in place, Then there's a piece of paper that says, "Whoever you are, this is what we want." And the this is what we want is going to be authored by those of us here through a a a lengthy public engagement process. So that is the goal and that's on your plate, too. We're adding that to my plate. Yes. But, you know, that's a big thing. Um, it's it's it's exciting. It's exciting to be a part of because this is going to be the beginning of a coordinated effort to put in the highest and best use for that piece of property and it's going to be for people coming up I5 that is the gateway to the city and there's so many cool things we can do and now is the time to start thinking about what we want as a city putting it on paper and working with folks to make that happen through a series of of years coming As Melanie said, there has been planning efforts on that site. I don't know how available they are these days and I think the community members have been involved in the past. So having that at least acknowledged so

absolutely is part of that. Um also not everybody seems to realize there's a portion of that property on that east side of Mount Chast. There is. So the land Yeah. So what we call the landing is a series of parcels on the west side, but there is also some property on the east side as well. Yeah. And that could work as single family housing. It could or higher than single family housing. And then how much? It's on a slope and it's in the trees housing connected to bike trails. And how how many of the acres are up with the

I don't know the number off the top of my head, but it's it's a chunk.

Thank you. That was 44.4.

Okay. Yeah. 44 acres from the audience. But that's that's a lot of room to to do something with. besides just a trail head. Yeah, besides just trail head. It's a great trail head. Yeah. So, that's that that was the only thing I wanted to touch on was just discussions that are happening around the landing and that there there's going to be a coordinated effort that involves everybody so that we can get something that we all want to see. Thank you for making public engagement a priority. I love public engagement. You're welcome.

Great. Any there anything else coming down the pike? Any projects? Any you pick like the next few meetings? Any what we're doing? Uh the next Yeah. So we can lead into we can lead into future agenda items. Item number seven. Item number seven.

Um officially the uh police chief has handed me a draft copy. I I wrote noise element on here. It's actually not. It's it's a noise organs that he's working. that he's drafting. I have to sit down and read through it to figure out what it is, but it's going to have to go through the planning commission for your review before it goes to council. So, I'm going to wrap my arms around that hopefully in the next month, bring it back to the planning commission in November, but that's going to be a noise ordinance update from our police chief. Um, separately, there's a safety element update that Jeff Mitchum was working on over the summer that he had almost buttoned up. Um, I has to do with the local hazards mitigation plan that's been adopted countywide and we just need to connect that to the city's safety element. So that's just a a functional paperwork thing. Um if I have that ready for next month that will also come at you in November. Um I don't see having any project related items. There are a lot of discussions with folks about submitting applications to do projects, but I don't have any permits on my desk that are open to bring forward um to the planning commission just yet. But there are lots of people doing things in town. So hopefully when applications come in, they'll come through here. So as they come in, I'll I'll let you know.

Did you say the police chief is doing the noise? Yes. Why is that? I think it it has to do with with um noise decel ordinance. So it isn't the noise element at all. This is a whole Yeah. Not noise element at all. It's noise ordinance noise standards coming from complaints or need to enforce possibly. I don't know to be honest. I have not had the time to read through the draft ordinance yet. But we get to see it. Yeah. Lovely. It's been on the we've been talking about ways for decades. Also,

there are lots of things that we can chip away at. Yeah. I mean, tonight we we talked about, you know, planning is divided into current workload and long range planning. So, current planning is is the conditional use permits and the cannabis permits and those things that come through. Um, we didn't any of that. We'll talk about that a different night, but this evening was really on just the long range stuff. All the stuff that drops down from the general plan and the zoning and that's the chunk that that we're talking about tonight. There there's a lot of work to do.

There's so much on the on our plate here. Are there going to be some more special meetings? Are there going to be is it always just going to be once a month or there's so much here? I think for right now once a month to meet once a month is is adequate but between the once a month there's a lot of work to do because we've also done things where we you know split out and have subcommittee work on things like the cannabis ordinance right that was um right heavy lifting the subcommittee

objective design standards. That was another subcommittee. So, here's the other thing is objective design standards were adopted for residential purposes only, right? There's a whole other section for commercial that we haven't even tackled yet. So, right. And do do we want to because there's so hard. Yeah. But it's also this, you know, people have to say, well, what is, you know, mountain what is a mountain village? You know it when you see it, right? Yeah, that's that's been a Yeah, tough one. Okay. Anything else?

Well, that's our first meeting with Tim Fowler, our new planning director. Thank you. Thank you for um Tuesday, October 21st, 2025. All right. Maybe December.