Planning Commission - public_hearing

Okay, it is recording.

All right. You can hear us? Okay, great. All right, this is Commissioner Matlock calling a meeting to order as of 6.30 p.m., 6.32 p.m. on August 5th, 2026. I'd like to call to a meeting to order and have a roll call. So, Commissioner Fitzgibbon? Present. Commissioner Pereira?

Present.

Commissioner White. Present. Commissioner Coulomb. Present. And I'm Commissioner Matlock. And we are missing Commissioner Beavers and Commissioner Thiel, who are both excused. So next on the agenda will be the opportunity for public comment on non-agenda items. Can we have someone from the public here? Sherry Cooper is in the audience. Sherry Cooper, would you like to comment on a non-agenda item?

No, I'm good, thank you.

Okay, are there any other people present for public comment? There are not. Seeing none, I close public comments. We move to the approval of the minutes from the July 1st, 2026 meeting of the Planning Commission.

Motion to approve.

Motion to approve by Commissioner Kulan.

Second.

Second by Commissioner White. On favor?

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Okay, approval is unanimous. Next on the agenda is the introduction of the public hearing and potential recommendation for NBMC 18.16 parking regulations. Okay.

Great, thank you. And then I will do the introduction and then we can open up the public hearing. As of now, we have not received any comments. The SEPA is still open. And so by the time, before that time that it closes, we might receive some comments. There's an option if the Planning Commission is ready to make amendments tonight, you're welcome to, but we can also bring it back so we can see how that goes. And then any comments received, we would address. So the idea with these amendments are to align with new state requirements, really focused on residential, development. And so there's a number of House bills, Senate bills, and that was turned into RCW, Revised Code of Washington laws that we are required to be in compliance with. And so there are a lot of other things that staff would like to address in this code, and we've plugged in a few. But generally, the direction from council was do what you need to do in general. We've got a lot of workload and a lot on our plate. And for example, we added in some biking, new biking standards, but we'd love to tear apart a lot more of it, but it's more of a time and a workload and just, does it need to be done? Is it required? Or let's just focus on what we need to do and come back to it. Similar probably to the sign code, but these are requirements. So I can go through them and then we can go through the code itself, which is shown in track changes. And so a couple of the highlights on page five of the packet that were in the planning commission staff report, there is a requirement to limit the number of stalls required for sleeping units or co-living housing. And that's an overdue one, but again, pretty simple one. A lot of these are very minor, so the next one was a limitation on the size of parking spaces. 8 foot by 20 for residential again and not requiring parking. If there's a violation with a tree code that would doesn't come up very often, I guess, but it's it's a new layer that will look at if it does. And so that takes care of B and then C is also been on the books for some time. We're a little bit past due and the point of these is that if you don't have it in your code, it defaults to the state requirement anyways. So C is related to you're not required to have new parking for residential units when you have an existing building. So Again, probably pretty unlikely. We might see something here, but let's just say like the building where the downtown theater is and the downstairs, if that was remodeled into units, it's an existing building, residential. You do not have to put new parking in or an old hotel or something, which would probably have its own parking, but And the intent is really to encourage housing to provide flexibility for parking. Let's see here. C is that's that's what we just went over. Then D is affordable housing to not require off street parking. So for affordable housing. There's also passive housing requirements, modular construction or mass timber construction. And again, we haven't seen the mass timber here in North Bend, but I mean, that could be a big, you're talking about how that could be a big impact. There's some big buildings that are mass timber, but it has to be for the affordable housing portion only. So, and then Caitlin worked on a number of amendments for the bicycle parking. She looked at like six other cities. What's the standard? What are we seeing? And our intent with that was just to come up with something that works for us, continue to support all of our bike trail expansions. And if we're getting a new building put in, if it's a Safeway or it's a downtown building or it's something else, anything, is that they've thought about putting a bike rack in. If there's residential, you have some residential standards for bike racks. You know, some of them go as far as like you need charging for these new, you know, e-bikes and things like that. So we tried to keep it pretty simple at this point. And we can talk more about that when we get to the if you guys want to when we get to that section. So let's see a couple other things to know. It looks like page 18. We added in a separation of sports fields versus public swimming pool. Sports fields, we looked at again, some of the standards that we're seeing, and we thought that the 20 per field was a better metric than the benches or seats that you're anticipating. So again, we'd probably like to do more edits here, but it was a time and necessity of just cleaning up some of the things And then one final thing, I guess, is loading areas for commercial industrial multifamily. We deleted a bunch of that section and we just referred to, you know, it's come up at the middle fork, which is just a master site plan where they want to do some smaller industrial where it might be like out at Preston where it's individual businesses and they just use like a box truck. They're not using a semi truck. So they don't need huge loading areas. So the, our dimensions were kind of specific to that and it can be scaled depending on the use. And so if they can meet fire turnaround and they can maneuver the trucks that they're going to need for their business, for the building they build, then we should.

And we need something in the market that we don't necessarily need to regulate.

Yeah. So, yeah, those are the main things. So. Are there any comments or questions on? Well, we did have one more thing. Sorry. There's not pages on what I printed out. It's one of the first pages for a change in use exemption for like a downtown. We've run into this. This was kind of a cleanup. We're on a. Well, so. When a use is existing business or something is changing, they're either expanding or they're enlarging, it could be internal to the building, like a daycare that's just adding another classroom within a building that already exists. We were trying to build in a little bit more flexibility for when additional parking is triggered. So that's the intent of that.

What was the paragraph on?

18-040.

A lot of my patients are from expansion, enlargement or change in use and exceptions.

Birds are way off. That's page five for me now.

Yes.

The PDF package page, well, it's something different than just that.

I'm going to have to link up with you after this. I'd love to.

Oh, are you going? Yeah. Are you going into Civic Plus and then opening individual probably files?

That's right.

And an email.

Okay.

There's two ways to view it. Directly into the document. We can use it on the PDF of the packet.

Hopefully, yeah, you should be able to click into the PDF as well. And then I've, that is what is attached to your meeting invite in Outlook. But let me know if there's something I need to do. The packet should be posted as well to Civic Plus.

But, yeah, so. All right, so Commissioner White.

Yeah, I have sort of a big picture question regarding workloads and whatnot. Do we potentially just want to deal with the amendments that are putting us in compliance with state law changes tonight because I feel like we could end up getting bogged down in the bicycle stuff. And I feel like that could be signed amendment type stuff. I feel like if we start getting into that, it kind of makes this whole thing potentially difficult to approve for recommendation.

We have it open, so it is a good time to address it. I would hope that we would be able to get to it at this meeting and the next meeting maybe.

Okay, yeah, I just wanted to throw it out there. I mean, with all the new bicycle stuff, I mean, that's where most of my comments and I feel like will hopefully spur more discussion and potential changes. And so just wanted to throw that out there that maybe we should mix that from speaking so that.

I mean, yeah, I think now's the time if it.

state law department stuff passed i think with the state obligations to deal with these the ones that are overdue are not high priority issues where we have like a pending application that this is going to make a difference for so i think we can wrap in the bike stuff as we do this as well all right that's it any other comments in general before we proceed any other comments thank you white

I think you could open the public hearing now. I would like to open the public hearing on this agenda item. For NBMC 18.6 parking regulations, do you have comments from the public on this? I don't see any.

Nobody's in attendance.

Yes, Ms. Cooper is in attendance.

No, I'm good. Thank you.

Okay. uh or we have another member of the public here yes a non-voting member um any other comments from the public or i'll close this uh section of the public comments that's 644 looks like comments from the commissioners they're pretty standard i mean i'm not sure i'm just curious uh

what's the passing ordinance requiring private property owners to have bike parking? It looks like it's only five minutes or above.

Can you identify yourself?

Commissioner Kulan.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for that. Yeah, I was just curious. Is that pretty common across cities?

It's becoming more and more common. It's a way to incentivize, ensuring that if somebody wants the bicycle to the location, it's easy enough to do, that there's some basic facility that they can put their bike at.

So, private residence?

For multi-private residences, this applies to multifamily, so that the facility is...

They may be living at the multifamily. So, it's not like we're requiring a store to provide And we might be separated, but yeah, that was just, I was curious about that. It sounds like it's pretty common these days. Anyone building a multifamily unit, five families are required by the city to also have bike parking.

Yeah, you are familiar with living in multifamily housing like I did when I was younger. The bikes are often up on the deck, which makes it difficult to actually use the bike because you're carrying it and

Stuff that goes with that. May I start and just go through stuff?

Mm-hmm. Page 11.

Americans with Disabilities Act should be capitalized.

You're wrong. Page 11 of the individual.

No, it's 1153. I see it OK. 020 that's that. You have printed this. Continuing page 16.

which is 18.16.090 table in regards to the spaces required for the multifamily housing outside the DC zone. This is to align with the RCW. We have comments to share not be more than three spaces in depth. I guess the RCW, I don't think said that. I think it says what was here. We probably should not be more than two. So I was just curious why that got changed.

Parking spaces in tandem must count towards meeting the minimum required parking space. For this purpose, tandem is defined as having two or more vehicles, one in front of or behind the other. So two, we're requiring two per dwelling unit. Where spaces are provided in a garage, parking shall not be more than.

And I guess why the limitation? I don't actually, I don't fully understand what, I mean, it's just two parking spaces.

Yeah, I think, yeah. No, so it's when you've got, oftentimes you've got a deep garage and you'll, like a condo scenario is calling you to take part one, pulling the other, that's tandem, but you have to pull out the back one before you can get the other one. Yeah. Yeah.

So do we think it is providing that it needs to be three in depth or is two sufficient? It says tandem is defined as having two or more vehicles, one in front or behind of the other with a single means of, it kind of depends on the situation too, because there's a driveway and that could be a space. And so it's more of a, can you move around?

Yeah. And I guess part of me just then was wondering why the limitation on shall not be more than X number of spaces in depth in that table. I mean, I don't know if there's.

We don't have the exact RCW. Oh, maybe that's the italic.

Yeah.

That is taken from an RCW. Interpretation.

Two or more.

So was this suggested then to go back and make sure that's clarified with what I see?

The stuff in the comment here is directly from the RCW. That's how many basic I was regarding the table for that part. There's a limitation as far as how many vehicles to be parked in a tandem spot. And I was just curious, I guess, why the limitation? Do we care about it? If the idea is condo and the owners parked four cars there, it's what counts.

So if you say you need to have two spaces for that condo, you can't have. Well, I guess it doesn't necessarily matter if the requirement is two per unit. The three in depth, I guess, doesn't really make a difference anyway. Yeah, you're just saying that you can't have more than two, you know, one behind the other you.

So a lot of times then somebody will want if it's like the one off of. It's a family housing, so this would be the three unit off across from the library. So they had two in the garage and then one on the driveway. So it's do you get to count that third spot? It's kind of a question interpretation. Do you guys know it's curious the way we have it then and give some more flexibility? It allows you to have that flexibility. But then the definition says with a single mean of egress or egress, if it's a two-guard garage, but you've got tandem only on one side, you know, I guess, yeah, it's an interpretation. ORCW.

I don't know.

We will make sure that I guess. Everybody on the team is is comfortable with the interpretation, and if we yeah, yeah, it's either two or three. Yeah, we should go on with what's there.

I was just caught my eye. I was curious. Thanks. My next comments don't come down until the bicycle section, so anybody else have any Brian now to the owner now?

Yeah.

Right, bicycles.

Page 25 of 53 and B, exemptions. 1B. I guess I'd like to see 1B removed. The non-residential uses that are unintended to, unattended or do not have on-site staff, such as but not limited to gas stations parking lots without valet service, self-service laundromats. I guess I don't see why those would be exempted from having short-term bicycle parking. My idea here is I'd like to see bicycle parking expanded, so having exemptions goes against what I would like to see as far as the city encouraging more bicycling.

Yeah, so this includes short-term and long-term So I would see where long-term is not necessary.

The long-term is intended for the employee. Right.

Non-residential uses, I mean, could we change it to say that are not long-term in nature or leave some flexibility for us to make that determination? It's like, well, I'm not. It's over four hours for long-term.

Or should the exemptions be split into short-term and long-term sections?

Yeah, then it goes into short-term parking standards and long-term.

And what grade was this one? 25.

53 of the package.

Section 18.16.120, bicycle parking.

Great, thanks. Section B, exemptions. I agree. It's probably better to take it out and then.

However, we may want some sort of exemptions for things that are people generally just don't like to. Yeah, a gas station convenience store. Yeah, yeah.

Like a standalone parking lot.

Well, I mean, that actually leads me to another comment later on. Like, for example, Meadowbrook Farm Park actually has a bike out there, you know, with the facility where we had the employee appropriation thing two years ago. There are no bike racks out there. And they're, like, shackled to, you know, like, the post. And that's basically a parking lot. And then there are a couple parking lots kind of along that trail with, yeah, cars and stuff. And there are no bikes. And so... I don't know if that falls under the park idea or if that's those kind of parking lots. But again, trying to encourage more biking, even if someone isn't going to specifically ride their bike to a parking lot, it doesn't make any sense. But if the parking lot is near things that they want to visit, it would be great.

And it does say short-term, you know, accessible to the public at large. That's my viewpoint.

Is that qualified, though, as a park? versus the non-residential use? The what? The Meadowbrook? Meadowbrook, yeah. I think a park.

Probably.

Parks are open space. Right. So do we do have a requirement for parks for the bicycle park?

Yes. Yeah, that's later on.

Yeah. So we could just expand that exemption to say long-term parking for non-residential uses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's not long, it'll be long term parking for non residential uses that are unattended or do not have on site staff.

Such as, and then there are others were not listing. I wouldn't think you'd want long-term parking in a parking lot anyways. Probably not going to want to leave your bike there. And I wonder if it might be helpful to add a G that just says other uses.

Give some discretion, you know, if we... everything, but just to say other uses as determined by the director or something.

Other uses where parking is or bicycle parking would be. Invisible or very unlikely to be used.

Some general catch all would help us probably if we didn't anticipate everything you know.

OK. Other uses where bicycle parking.

Is determined.

Sorry, how does this affect existing buildings?

Nothing.

They'll never have to update to make this thing legal now? I was just curious on the requirement for lighting for a bike rack. It's not as big a deal if you have a new build. I mean, it requires electrical work and all that, but I guess if you're planning that into a new construction anyway, retrofit lighting for a bike rack.

Continuing on, I guess mine, that's okay. Page 26D, long-term bicycle parking standards, 1E. The residential uses shall provide access to a power source for electrical vehicle charging. One power source shall be provided for every 10 bike parking stalls. What's the rationale for tying these together?

And that a lot of bike use these days is electric. So.

Tying the one for 10 or well, yeah, it's just for electrical vehicle charging.

OK, OK, yes, yes, I think that's what it meant.

OK, thanks. That definitely.

OK, yeah, I didn't catch that.

Yeah, that's right.

Gotcha.

And then I my next question relates to page. I guess it's kind of a general question about what's the rationale between determining number of stalls per employees versus square footage for things? And how many stalls per seat? Like, for example, the theater, North Bend Theater, do we have a rough idea of how many seats are in there? More than 100? So that would require 10 bike racks? 200 bike stalls? 20 bike stalls? That seems like a lot. I don't know. It was just a general question about... how it was decided at the beginning.

Caitlin looked at a number of examples for this, so I think she wasn't just pointing it out to me.

I guess, yeah, she told us it was really industry standard, kind of what she was seeing. I think, again, let's think about how it fits us, and it's good to probably use some examples of retail like the Bartell. Old Bartell is, I think, around 12,000 square feet, so that would be Short term, one stall per 5,000, you know, that's three if you round up. And then same with the long term. And that might be for an employee, or I guess I says, or one stall per 10 employees. That seems to fit. I kind of agree with you on the theaters.

That could be, it seems like too much. However, if you get a group of kids going to the table.

Yeah, that's the point. And really, that's probably two bike racks.

Yeah. You think?

So.

So, yeah, we don't have to go through line by line or anything. I just, unless somebody wants to, I just, yeah, we initially thought about how to sign on.

Mm-hmm.

So.

And then professional office with or without walk-in customer service, one per 5,000. Those motels one for 20. I think if it's I think for something like this too, if there's an ability to just build in some flexibility. So we're not tied to. Having to implement something that doesn't make sense. That's always good. I mean retail, I guess retails pretty customer facing, so that makes sense.

And going back to Chris's question, I mean, so this stuff, I mean, we have all these existing businesses. I mean, it does not have any impact on them. And that's based off of their, like, building's existence. It's not a new, lease isn't a new existing location downtown. They're a new business, but it's not a new building, so they don't ever have to make these adjustments. So, I mean, with that being the case, I mean, Personally, I think leaving the table is going to have an impact.

Here is the public park. One stall, yeah, for 10,000 square feet of net lot area.

And the table towards the bottom.

Yeah. And that might be, I assume, there would be separate governance by Mountside or Metro Park. Because that's kind of, they manage that. And I assume they have their own policies on bike parking, things like that.

Yeah, if they're getting us, if they're getting a permit with the city, though, the city would trump that, like the, we reviewed the side view admin building, and I'm not remembering if they have a bike rack over there, hopefully. I think they did, as an option, you know, optional, but.

If you have suggestions on bike racks, like for Brook Farm, though, that's one of the items that Parks Commission wants to consider with their small park improvement budget this year. We've got a request already for a bike rack at, um, Tanner wouldn't work, so you could put one in Metapark Farm too. That might be a good idea. Thanks.

That's all I have.

Thank you. My computer died, so I apologize. But yeah, I don't know. The only thing that makes me kind of miss some pretty mandating private areas, one of the questions that popped up is providing a requirement for charging electrical bicycles. So who pays for the electricity? That would be the apartment complex or the on the reception. And then are they now in responsible for a rake day and who can come off the street and plug into there?

It's within a locked facility. So that the long-term bike parking in a residential unit is within a locked space.

It's only for the people, but commercial would be available to the public.

I can imagine the apartment over Disney. have to absorb the cost they could also charge a fee for the people who are yeah they could in the lease or whatever you want to park a bike in a common area that we have so you have to pay we'd stay out of that if you don't want another porch any other questions from any other commissioners on this part of the or edits or anything um Thank you, Commissioner. It's quite cool.

Not funny. Okay. All right. Did you guys want to see this again or next month? Or how are you feeling?

I can personally be comfortable with making the amendments proposed. Taking our comments. Okay. So I'm going to ask for a motion then to approve this agenda item for the recommendations for NBMC 18.16 parking regulations.

With additional edits made.

With additional edits made and amended information. All commissioners in favor, say aye.

Aye. Who made the motion?

I'll make the motion. Sorry, I'm so sorry. I was making the motion.

Can I do it now? Yeah, you can. I don't want to do that.

Okay, Commissioner White made the motion. Second. I'll second. Okay, Commissioner Kulon seconded. All in favor say aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

It's unanimous.

Okay. So if there are comments received after this time before it goes on the council or those two guys for an FYI, they might be on the SEPA itself or just informational. And if they want to bring it back and discuss again or pass comments on the council committee, you're welcome to. So thank you.

All right. All right. so at 705 we are going to move to the second item of our agenda here the 2026 amendments to capital facilities element of the comprehensive plan all right and jimmy for the minutes you're taking over from here okay okay all right yeah so um

A couple of different purposes why we're opening the capital facilities element. One of them is back in the docket process that we had at the beginning of the year. That's why we tried and provided comments on a number of elements of our comprehensive plan, and this was one of them. The other, the real big reason though, is that we've got a new police services contract and we want to make sure that we're accurately reflecting the information pertinent to that contract in our capital facilities element. So with those two reasons, we open it up. And as we've opened it up, we've addressed additional more minor edits to a number of system plans that we've updated or intend to update, provided some additional policy edits, and then some additional description of, like in our municipal building section, describing the North Bend branch office of the King County Sheriff's Office, which used to be the CBD annex. All right. Um, so with that, it's a fairly straightforward amendment. Um, you've got all the red line changes shown here and, uh, let's maybe turn it back to you guys. See what questions are coming up. And this is just an introduction. Um, we'll take whatever amendments you guys have tonight, and then we're going to be bringing back to your next meeting for public here.

Okay. Let's open it up for the commissioners to comment. Will you comment? Please state your name so that the transcript gets it accurately. Comments.

Oh come on, it's not as interesting as parking.

Informational, very informational, very informational.

Yeah, it was not aware that we actually had this much detail. Right, there are no. Suggestions or ideas you have to bring him to the public hearing and that's all we find this. OK, yeah. I guess we're finished with that. Agenda item so. I will call the meeting to adjournment at 7 08. Thanks everyone. One small change on the minutes. Oh, okay. I couldn't figure out why that word was bottled.

It's a jerk. Oh, thank you. Yeah. It's not a big deal. Okay.

I can take it since you're going to be.

Okay.

Mike. I'm listening to you. I can actually. I just. Thank you. Bye-bye.

I should have it all in there, but I can take your notes. Yep. And I'd. Started writing it, but I didn't get it. Okay. I don't have it. It's the last one. Let's give this back to you. But yeah.

Well, you know what? I don't need that. Okay. Yeah.

Because I'm cheating. It's my company. And when I left. Nice. Thank you both.

Yeah.

Have a good night.

I probably should get another cheaper one because it's like.

Mike, I did have a question. We did the affordable housing thing.