Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

To call the North Plains Planning Commission meeting for January 14. I'm going to say order at 06:00. Please arrive if you keep order. Please get the roll call.

Thank you. Chair King? Here. Vice Chair Levante? Here. Commissioner Hatt? Here. Commissioner Ken O'Dell? Here. Commissioner Miller? Here. Commissioner Parra? Here. Commissioner Nenenkamp? Here. Your ex officio tonight is councilor Katie Reading via Zoom? Here. Thank you.

Thank you. Item number four is public comment. Time for anyone in the audience or Zoom to comment on planning commission items that are not on the agenda. Let the record show there's no one in the audience. Do we have anyone on Zoom?

No.

Alright. Set the records to show that. Move on to item number five is the approval of the minute for 12/10/2025. Were there any corrections, changes? If not, I'll entertain a motion.

Make a motion to approve the minutes for December 10.

I'll second.

It's been moved by commissioner Conradell, expected by commissioner Lavante for approval of the December 10. He's done twenty five minutes. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed?

And it's approved. First thing on finished business is to wish everyone a happy New Year. And, with that, we'll move on to the zoning design and code, visioning session. Well, I grade one for a PowerPoint presentation. Our last one that are jointly equals way overboard, so I would like to get with moving through fast and allow time for and commissioner for questions.

Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner, for your patience while we got set up there. This will be a session for you all to an open discussion, nail down exactly which subchapters of the zoning development code, the one fifty five and, like, plains municipal code you are most interested in updating over the course of the next year. This slide is just a reminder of the process as we've been through it and what we can expect in the coming months. The need for a significant CDC update was identified in December 2024.

Since then, the staff has applied for two outside funding opportunities, the TGM code assistance program and DLCD technical assistance. Both opportunities did not come through. In, January year, just a few just a week ago, you and city council had a joint work session to discuss the matter of funding, and city council provided direction to come back with a more defined scope of work and budget for the project. That brings us to today where we will be, discussing, in detail which subchapters need updating, and staff will work, amongst themselves and with consultants to narrow down more details on scope of work and budget before going back before city council with a funding request. Then we will be expecting to do project kickoff earlier this year and begin walk working through the project throughout the rest of the year.

These are our goals for tonight, and primary one being identifying subchapters to update. Secondary to that will be some light categorization. If you are in agreement about a subchapter being needed to be updated, Applying a level of urgency to that is helpful for staff. And then if there's time at the end, there's a option for you to discuss more preparations for the funding request. That said, I will leave you all to open discussion.

I'm here for any context or details that you need. I've categorized the subchapters by general type, starting with the front half of our code, which is the subchapters you see listed there, design review, general provisions, variances, amendments, temporary permits, procedures, and conditional use permits.

Which way of the allergies? Mhmm. The allergies to change the base over time. Sorry. I

think both of them work.

But if they wanna just start with, would you all be interested in seeing all of the subchapters first or just starting with one section at a time?

Don't all speak up at one.

So is it This is so you're wanting more detail than what we've provided the last few meetings?

I need to know specifically if a subchapter needs to be updated, you would like to update, or you're not interested in updating so that we can define scope of work with the consultants in 3J.

Well, I I guess I thought that's why we had been identified in prior years and needed updated.

I think you identified some, and we've discussed many somewhat offhandedly. I haven't received real consensus from the commission on exactly which subchapters you want to prioritize. I know that a lot of the zoning code ones, the the purpose of this is to go forward with a strong understanding of which ones are urgent to the commission and which ones are desired to be updated so that we can address that in

the scope of work that we develop with our consultants. Rather than converting the items that the prioritized list that we had into subchapters, and we just do the prioritization of the list that we have. And I think your expertise, you can convert them into what subchapters have to be conducted. But I'm kinda looking at if go down two pages. Sorry? If you go down two pages Pages. Right there. Blue passer. Oh, no. Sorry.

One more. This is this where is the street? Yeah. This type of thing is what we talked about. I thought you were gonna come in. You would have a list of those and say, here's the ones that we had that were in the middle of our our Venn diagram, and here's the ones that were outside that were discussed in the meeting with city council. You know, we just look at those and write down. This is number one priority, two, three, four. That's what I thought we were good to do.

We are more than welcome to do that kind of prioritization. I can pull up the Venn diagram, if that's helpful.

This is a list, so

that's fine. So my concern with using the Venn diagram that I had previously prepared for you all was that during the joint work session, some things that were not on that Venn diagram did come up. I wanted to provide you all with a comprehensive list of everything so that if something I frequently mentioned wasn't featured, you would have that in front of you.

Okay. One thing one thing that we found when we were getting together in our micro meeting was we we had a list of things that we wanted to talk about, but it just grew into one thing and another. And and I'm afraid that's what it's gonna do anyway. So if we come in and prioritize this, it's just gonna bleed into a lot of different areas and concerns about

narrowing it down to the whole thing or something. That's my concern.

Of course. Code updates. There is a bit of a concern always with if you update one subchapter that impacts another and that impacts another. Oh, there's a Suddenly in a situation where you want to update the entire code. I would like I think if we can agree or maybe you will discuss if the ideas or the subchapters and subsections previously identified as shared concerns between staff and the commission are your highest priority urgent needs.

I'm happy to put those at the top of the list and then things that were identified either by the commission or staff as sort of middle list. And then anything not mentioned during that work session, we can discard for the current project.

Let's just start with this page in red, yellow, green, like high, medium, low. And then we'll go to the page above it and do high, medium, low. That's Before before we

get into that, if you want it laid out like this I mean, we had numerated a lot of things in a list. If we can present you a list, and it's here and it's there and it's on this page and it's on that page. But if you want us to break it down into these different categories, we can do that for you too. But I don't think we're prepared to do that tonight because that's not how we're approaching it from my understanding. So our subcommittee has been working on coming up with ideas with the rest of us and added to it.

City council has added some things. And if we're gonna say pick one zone and then say, what do we need to do with that, and what do we need to do with about time standards and things, I think we will need to put it into that category. But I think right now, if you can pull any one of those, then we'll go, oh, yeah. I think there was something about that. But to get it codified together, we need to be all on the same page.

Yeah. Chair, is there a way you would like to proceed with the conversation tonight, or is there information that I can provide you that would be beneficial to your conversation tonight?

Well, I think, you know, this PowerPoint presentation is in-depth and brings out each individual section and stuff like that, and I think that's good. But, you know, it's something that I don't think the planning commission and the subcommittee were prepared, throughout the process to break it down this way. So, I mean, this is as good as any way to break it down, but I think they're gonna need a little more time to say, okay. If this is the way you want it, we'll go section by section and say, here's what we wanna look at in that section, and this is a high priority. This is the medium priority. This is the low priority.

Of course. And I think we don't necessarily staff doesn't need to break down further than subchapter. It identifying the severity of need in off street parking and loading and just saying one, two, or three in terms of level is more than adequate detail for staff to put together a scope of work. But the the real purpose tonight from staff's perspective is to identify if there are holes in our understanding before we go to the consultant for those scopes of work. If you feel that you have properly conveyed your urgency levels in the previous work session and council or commission meetings, then I am happy to take what I know from those previous meetings and convey that to the consultant.

This was intended to be an opportunity for you to clarify anything that had previously been said or if the subcommittee had had further conversations to provide any additional information before we have that conversation with consultant, which will be happening on twentieth of this month.

So now that you have all these items up here, I can see that we're gonna touch every one of them. So I can see I don't see one of these that we're not going to not touch. Some a lot more than that.

Yeah.

But, I mean, you can envision that we're gonna touch almost all aspects of what's that's

Yeah.

I don't know how the rest of the planning commission feels about that. But, I mean, you look at every item on on here, and we're gonna touch it in some some way.

Yeah. I mean, I was kind of so and this is something, Rowan, I wanted to get together with you and ask about because I think I have an understanding, but I know I'm gonna be missing stuff. But I I was kinda thinking as as the subcommittee, as we're going through stuff, it was it was my thought that we would pick out what we deemed as, you know, pretty significant, things that we need to have done sooner than later, and try to then pick other things that were low hanging fruits, if you will, that happen to be in the same the same type of notice. So versus an overall city notice versus a small area of the city, whatever it may be, to try to knock off a little bit more in one in one bite. I mean, I was kind of hoping that as we're moving forward, we can have our first package ready by May in order for, you know, review by city staff, consultant, whatever, and then come in July, hopefully, for our first hearing.

That's kind of my thought on and packaging them up and just kinda keep moving through, not trying to chew up the whole thing at once because that's not gonna work.

I I think that timeline is realistic for an urgent package, granted we receive appropriate funding from city council. I I don't think that's an unrealistic timeline for something like a, you know, a strategic urgent update to one subchapter or one section. And that's actually, let me progress to a final slide we have here. Here. This is it.

So this is a a breakdown of what we're going to be looking at with the consultant in terms of project types. So a single subchapter strategic update like you're talking about, vice chair, is a low resource project, something we can get through with staff being the primary leads and consultant help getting that through in the first half of the year is realistic versus going after a multi subchapter, something maybe that's a whole city notice or impacts two or three zones that is half or so of the city. That's going to be a moderate to high resource project that would have to be considerably more funding behind that, more time. When when you say high resource, is

it just because you have to

do more mailings? What what makes it different? So high resource, it requires more code writing. It requires more sensitivity to public engagement under goal one for the state state land use program, and there's going to be bigger impacts both in terms of land area and in terms of the implications of the changes. Something like eliminating the neighborhood community zone, which I know is a large priority for you guys, that's a high resource project.

Well, we're not gonna eliminate it. We are replacing. We are going to be updating our our zones to include future expansion.

Yep. So that type of project is a high resource project that impacts a large number of residents and requires sensitivity.

Right. And that's more moving towards the UGB expansion, so that's not an everyone priority issue.

If if might, regarding your scope of work and how to to view all this, there was some conversation at the at the joint work session I wanted to clarify. There will come a time when we will have to go through identifying we're doing a lot of work on zoning for all the new uses and and how to annex and all that and maybe rewriting for, you know, for code for specifically for annexation in

a variety of that

it is. I I wouldn't I guess what I would do is I would encourage you to remember that that's a future big project that with expansion will have to happen, and and we can handle that as a discrete big project later. And that the scope of work for you all, if if that that hopefully will free you up to focus on high priority issues within the existing city limits. But anything that we're zoning touches we're zoning need is gonna be touched upon for a future expansion areas. That's like a future big project.

And so I would encourage you not, to to not have not worry about that at this point because we'll that'll be addressed later. So to the extent that any of that is if you mentally put that into the future, kind of let that help guide what your scope here is, I guess, is what I'm saying. There seem to be some conflation over when we do what at the work session, and I just wanted to make that clear here.

Well, I just wanna bring up the, this breakdown is really good. It brings out all the good chapters, you know, and it's a great starting point. But this is almost more like a workshop kind of thing, you know, because with Bill, the subcommittee has identified everything they wanna consider and run it by the body. We we don't have a complete grasp of it. But, you know, in a workshop, you would say, okay.

Let's talk about the IPU institutional and public. And what are the issues there? And what's your concern? And, you know, and start bringing those out. But in in a presentation or a public hearing or a public meeting, I don't know if we're and like I said, I just don't think we're ready for that kind of approach right now.

As the other planning commissioner said, there's probably something in every one of these things that we could talk about, and then that's when we can identify we could identify what they are, and then we can identify their priority, you know, of how to attack it. So for us to I I'm speaking for myself for it right now. For us to just take, you know, take all these points, bullet points, basically, and say, okay. What what do we wanna change in that? I'm not ready to do that anyway.

K. Point of point. I'm sorry. I just haven't even looked at the slide. Excuse me. But then you specific. What was the city's you had Heritage Trees on there.

Heritage Trees is a subchapter we have.

But right. But what is what what is your concern to make it a priority?

I I have no It's just all. Concerns. This is a comprehensive list of our subchapters. Just meant to be a resource for you all to reference and with your discussion. This is this list is not my personal list But the

the heritage trees was on a prior list, so I'm I'm questioning what the cities.

We were considering using the heritage adapting the heritage trees subchapter from being specific to heritage trees because we don't have any reported to being a general tree code. Those are previously identified project within the department.

You have one recorded.

You have one recorded.

Do we? Yeah. You do.

Sounds probably Old City Hall. That little tree is out there

as a recorded imperative stream.

There is very limited documentation on that. If you have any documentation on that, I would absolutely be thrilled to see it, because we don't have much.

Because I will tell you when we created that code, what, a week later, we had massive trees coming down all over the city. It was crazy.

Well Yeah. It started out as being a moratorium against cutting trees, so it wasn't it was misunderstood as to what it was supposed to be. That's why the mass panic about taking care of whatever they wanted to before the COVID went into place. But inherited trees became something that you volunteered to make a heritage tree, but not the the city when said that's the heritage tree. So that was a misunderstanding.

Chair, if I may ask a question. Sure.

I'm hearing that the commission may not be ready to have further discussion on the subchapters and may want to use the previously identified Venn diagram as a basis for the conversation that staff is going to have on the twentieth with the consultant. Is that an accurate representation of commission's feeling?

Well, me personally, I mean, I've got a list of things that I'm concerned about that that some that commissioner Levante had and some that I added and stuff. And, you know, it's a shotgun approach into this kind of target. So, I mean, I would need time to go say, oh, this one's gonna go here, and this one's gonna go here. And so for me, I would think of this as more of a workshop program and not a a public meeting process.

Right. That's what I was thinking. Seems like we maybe we maybe need to have a workshop. I got ahead with the subcommittee meeting. So maybe we needed to have a workshop and see what everybody on the planning commission wanted to look at, and then that subcommittee could come to him because it seems a little confusing to me now.

Yeah. We've come up with our thing, and then now it went to this What's what's driving like you were talking about? It keeps getting bigger and bigger like it did when we were talking about it. It can just keep expanding, and it's like it's never gonna you're never gonna narrow it down to the to this point unless we have a work session and narrow it down to what everybody on the planning commission thinks is you know, we can narrow narrow it down to that, what you're wanting to narrow it down to to come to to go find some planning, right, to do it.

So have you talked to three because I think what you're also trying to do is trying to put a number together.

That is the So have you talked

to three j about any of this?

So what we need to have our conversation with three j on the twentieth is an idea of what the commission wants to see as urgent updates and what the commission wants to see as nice to have, but maybe aspirational updates. So those are the the two categories that I need to put together with the data I currently have from the conversations that I've heard previously. Right now, I would identify design review standards, nonconforming use in structures, street standards, and accessory dwelling units as urgent. And then I would identify parking and loading, sign standards, marijuana and psilocybin, and then a number of staff concerns as wanted for aspiration as well as any changes to residential zones that would require rezoning property.

You you did not put off street parking building into that?

I would not put that into a strategic update because of the level of community involvement. And

You keep talking about community involvement. What's what's gonna

be different than our normal workshop and hearings? So when you're changing off street parking and loading standards, these tend to be rather controversial, and it's best practice to do either several public hearings or to host something like a public workshop meeting to gather public input in alignment with goal one. Because these are considered changes to the comprehensive plan, and we do need to establish good best practices with the state when we're changing our comprehensive plan.

That's future development. And there really is no future development in town.

Because it's a change to comprehensive plan, the state isn't really concerned with how much land we have available. They're concerned with the fact that we're changing how we govern the land.

So it seems like that would be Bill was talking about that would be more in the new expansion.

Off street parking and loading standards?

Because it doesn't affect anything. There's nothing that could really come in that would affect that at this point. So

Nothing that could come in, but our business could change.

Whenever business changes, they do have to change.

Yeah. They should use a commercial, but not

Is

there a way to describe to us what I think Vice was asking, which is the hey. What are the ones that are low hanging fruit? Meaning, those would be candidates for July, tackling that she described. And what are the candidates that can that just literally can't go into that timeline? And then we could look at each of those categories and say, okay. Of the low hanging fruit ones, these are our most important. Of the longer term ones, these are our most important. Well,

with the first round of priority, we need mixed use. We have nothing for mixed use. Mhmm. That's gotta be a priority, and that is not low hanging fruit at all.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm but I'm like, you have a objective of, hey. Let's see what we can do in the first bite. Okay? Rowan, can you tell us what what are candidates for the first bite? And then if mixed use is a candidate for the second bite, put it in that category, it will prioritize it at the top of the second bite.

So based on what I'm hearing from Commissioner Miller, it sounds like we want to go forward with having staff and three j look at the code holistically based on previous conversations, establish what the first bite, the strategic quick update could be, and then establish subsequent scopes of work based off of the themes that we've heard talked about from the subcommittee and the joint work session.

I guess I was just asking, can you just tell us today which ones? Like, how

are the ones that are

you could do some collection of them? They don't have aspects to them that go beyond.

Actually, I think Stafford's gonna be in the same situation that we're in. Staff was looking for which ones do you wanna look at. We're saying we can't really look at them until we identify the things that are in each one of them, and so we can't put the cart before the horse. And so I think what we need to do is if this is the way you want us to do it that works for stat, then we need to take our list of priorities and start putting them in the dots, filling in the holes. Because this, you know, this is the whole comprehensive I mean, this is the zoning, like, what it is.

So every category that's in it. And we have a list of things that one goes here and one goes there and one goes there. And so I think what we need to do is be able to take our list and say, these are the high priority one. They go in this hole and this hole and that hole. These are the second priority. They go in this hole, this hole, and that hole.

Are are we looking at the whole project from now until completion, or are we just looking at this fiscal year for council to amend the budget?

So what we are looking at, vice chair, is creating scopes of work for council to consider funding. Council, very little can be done in terms of code updates from just myself and you all working to update. It's going to be a slow and laborious process. Bringing on additional funding outside help speeds up that process and improves the quality of work because there's more eyes on the project. That requires due to the community development's budget outside funding approved by council.

And so what we are looking to establish is what can we do with the budget that city council is willing to spend this this folio or this budget. Is that? Council has asked for you all to come back with a scope of work and a budget associated to see if they are willing to fund.

We can come back to the scope of work, but it's not our job to do budget. We're not gonna go and research what it's gonna cost to do it. So we'll get the scope of work. You can do the budget.

Yes. So okay. So okay. Thank you, chair. Let me let me elaborate a little bit.

The goal is at your February meeting to have, Heather Austin here. And based on information we have from you and additional information from tonight, meet with her on the twentieth, and then come back to your February meeting and facilitate a decision by you all about what the best course of action would be with a scope of work for outside assistance that's ranges from less, I wouldn't say minimal, but less, to some kind of, you know, a process and work that preferably by you all and likely would need potentially on the higher end of involvement and cost. And And then then what would be a middle road approach to this so that we have three choices that you all can land on as most appropriate for how to handle a situation? And then we go to counsel with that choice and recommendation from you all. They've had three plus meetings and discussions about this.

We had a facilitated discussion with Heather Ross and three j that helped them land on the appropriate scope as this with this level of outside involvement, and then we can go to council with a a certain scope of work and and order of magnitude budget so that we can have council do what they need to do, to free the to free the funds to do it. But, ultimately, what we're looking at is to working with you on a a a lesser involvement to a higher level of involvement outside of systems decision.

So let me just clarify one thing. You're having a meeting with on the January 20? Correct. So if we can get you something before that meeting at least to work with

And that would be helpful to the discussion so that we can better prepare the scope some more for you considering February. K. I mean,

we could, you know, move on, get the meeting done, do a short workshop after the meeting, and at least come up with some things and then, get their our group together and more fine tune it so that you could possibly have something by before the '20. That sound good?

I asked this about budget. So are we looking for some funding just to carry us until July? And then this next budget year, we can plan a whole update? What I I don't

I don't know what we're trying to quote here.

Yeah. No. It's a good question. We're on a biennial budget, so we're looking at funding this the the project. Like, 07/01/2026 means nothing to this because we have a biennial budget.

A year and a half.

The the issue is that this this work, which is very important, council agrees is very important, was not during the budget process anticipated. And so they have to go through a process to approve funds to be allocated to do it. But what they want to hear from you all and have you deliberate on is we because we didn't get that d l c DLCD technical assistance grant, we know we're not getting money from the state to pay for the I you know, ideally pay for the ideal scope of work. And so what we want to do and and, you know, earnestly, effort is here to is somehow to help you get to a point where you can you know what you wanna do, and then what we wanna scope and budget is how much involvement really is necessary from outside professional assistance. You know?

So there's kind of two moving parts here. What is it you wanna do over the next several months? And this is a biennium, so we don't forward about July 1. And then the second moving part is ultimately the cost to pay for outside assistance, less involvement, more involvement, something in the middle.

Until we come up with a list of what we want, you won't know how to put the cost on.

So correct, So I guess one thing I I guess what I would say is it isn't set in stone that we have to know everything you need by the twentieth so that we can talk to Heather. What can happen is that we can talk to her on the twentieth about what we know and what you have provided up to that point. And based on what she hears and and reads of what has been provided and what the conversation has been so far, we can pay her to workshop what it is you need in part of the February meeting, to help us with a scope of with with competing scopes of work and cost. Because I just I hear I think we are earnestly trying to help document what it is you want. I think it's an extremely complicated topic with you know, at hand, and each one of you have a number of different very important priorities.

But I don't want what you're currently feeling as frustration about how clear it is from you what you need. I don't think I I don't think we're there yet, and and maybe that's something help Heather can help facilitate even at the next meeting as a suggestion.

I do like the idea of you going what we have already and coming back and talking about the scope of the work then and if there's anything to add to it.

Counselor Redding, raised her hand. She's, she's an ex officio tonight. So, counselor Redding, go right ahead.

Thank you. I have just a couple questions on this section here. Are we only getting a quote from three j for the code updates, or is that the only person we work or the only company we work with?

It that's a great question. It depends on the cost of this. If this is a minimal lift, not yes. The the general answer is not necessarily three j, But we need to start somewhere regarding, scoping this out depending on what the recommendation is or decision is from the planning commission about what's needed and how much outside assistance is needed, then the likely budget for it would determine how we, go about identifying and, you know, fun selecting the consultant to help us with it. So when we speak about three j, what we're referring to is that, Heather Austin, we have we have talked with based on her long knowledge of all of this, is would be helpful to help us at this stage to figure things out.

But depending on the cost of this project, we would have to go you know, we we would have to go through a a selection process ultimately.

Okay. And then I just had, a couple questions on follow-up. Can we get a quote for the whole code update, the rough estimate of what you know, the whole thing that everybody wants, staff and planning commission? Then could we get a quote for the high priority, you know, to the low priority and then also one for just high priority? Sorry. That might be mixed up. My head is all this cold is hitting me hard. Did that make any sense?

Counselor Redding, you're not far off on what the intention is with these scopes of work. So our sort of first scope of work from staff's perspective, and, of course, this will be workshop with three j in the upcoming meeting, is to create a scope of work focused on high priority urgent updates, a scope of work that's, more involved, maybe requiring a little more public engagement, but still high priority items, something that can be accomplished in, you know, the next calendar year. And then a scope of work that is more aspirational, something where we're try changing multiple zones, rezoning property, or making significant changes to things like overlay districts. And that would be something along the lines of a it may not be in a 100% code update, but it could be looking at something like 80%.

Excellent. Thank you so much.

Let me just bring up one thing what since you just mentioned about rezoning properties. There's a, a block of land here in Northland between Maine and 313th between Wasco and Lennox that currently has a r 7.5 zone overlay on It was actually originally r five because it's the old part of town made up of 50 by a 100 tax lots. And somehow through process, they got zoned r 7.5, which is not fair to those people that have underlying land in it and needs to be rezoned back. Is that a would that be a something when we're talking about rezoning, like, a big deal, or we we look at that individually and say, oh, that's an error. We need to get that corrected.

So it is a it's a project. It's not a hugely involved project, but because it is a zoning code amendment and that is tied to the comprehensive plan, it's type four process and requires the appropriate noticing. It's also something that's much more easy to accomplish with landowner consent and buy in. Something like that would be achievable. There's some other areas that staff have identified as oopsie, zoning, if you will. It's definitely something we could bundle together and do a sort of spot update to the zoning map. That's that's achievable. Separate project from the zoning and development code update them.

And that's also, one of the things I brought up and, was about the IPU zones being an overlay instead of an actual zone itself. And so would that be then all bundled in that category so that I mean, when we start saying these are our priorities, is that something that we say is a priority, or we move it off because it works with these other situations?

So, chair, I think determining the priority level is exactly what staff wanted to hear from the commission, and we will use that as context to decide which scope of dwarf that falls under. If something's a really high priority update and it's high resource, we'll probably try to figure out a way to get it done. Mhmm. If something's, you know, really high resource and not that much of a priority, that's gonna be pushed out into a a larger scope of work rather than that urgent quick update. But it's really important to staff that you, as residents and commissioners who are trusted by city council to make these decisions, have input on what we prioritize.

I know one of the things that, was brought up to and been spoken a number of times is that all the codes need to be looked at to be, clear and objective language. And is that something in a more large scope thing? Or because we're looking at all the code. Yes. So that we would take that out of high priority because of the scope of work that it involves.

I would say it's still a high priority item. We would just consider the resource intensiveness as an aspect for that. They're an objective high priority. It's important that our code is compliant with state law. That said, it's common practice in planning that if your code isn't compliant with state law, you defer to state law. That's not something that's restricted. We're not in a catch 22.

We're not looking at the same, but it may be high priority, but it's gonna cost more money, so let's not look at it. So we still look at it because it's high priority.

We still consider it. It might not happen urgently just because of that resource level. Alright.

So for us, we're more looking at what type priorities and not so much in what's intensive community involvement or other Correct.

Staff will determine the resource intensiveness. We'd like to have your priorities Sure. Regardless of resources. That helps a lot.

Sure, if I may. Yes. Go ahead.

Some added context just in terms of resources and funding as we go forward. While we may have high priority items that are out of reach for us to address urgently, The state and different programs such as TGM do regularly open up new funding opportunities. And if we come back in six, nine, twelve months with half of the items that we needed at our last request, that might be a more attractive thing for them to fund. Exactly. So by by addressing things bite size, we do become more attractive for outside funding. Well,

obviously, compliant with state laws is high priority for them.

Yes. Another resource I wanna make sure that you all still have to have in mind is that the small cities model code will be coming out sometime in the summer, and there will be a lot of code in there that could be cross referenced or directly used in our code that will also bring down the resource intensiveness of some of these updates. It's not gonna be applicable to all of them. We have some code that's unique to North Plains, but there will be some things that can be easily transferred over.

Also, in copying other cities codes too. Right? I think we talked about that in the joint work session.

Absolutely. There's some small cities who have recently done major updates that we could reference. Steal from.

So

it would be then acceptable for us to come back to you then instead of trying to go through this, you know, the public meeting to come back with a either do a workshop, short workshop, and identify something, or, actually, it might be even better for a subcommittee to do this and bring it to our body. But what works for staff?

I think that's a reasonable option. Staff will be happy to bring forward the draft scopes of work in February based off of existing information in a workshop setting, and we can further iterate on those scopes of works during that session. And that would allow us to come to some better consensus on what needs to be incorporated into each one as commission staff and consultants working together. And then that would set us up well to go forward with, deciding on a recommendation to bring forward to council.

Well, what I would like to see is that we come up with a a better, I guess, list and identify priorities that then at least to a point that you have more ammunition, when you go talk to three j on the twentieth. So I think our subcommittee, has done a number of things to work towards that, and I think we probably have a better feel for how we wanna approach it now. And so I think we can hopefully come up with something before the '20, and then I'll help with all I can on that. Commissioner Levante?

Sure.

And, Commissioner Oblante, I do have your list that was previously sent to me as well as our internal list. So we do have something to work with on the twentieth if you have additional thoughts to add or things that have come up. Or, say, you looked at that list and you wanted to take something off or elevate something. That's all great feedback.

Yeah. I mean, I think between all of our meetings that we've discussed it, not only at PC level, but also with planning or excuse excuse me, city council. I mean, I think you have a pretty good list to start, and it's I you know, it's funny, you know, just thinking forward, you know, how this is gonna be submitted to council. And, you know, I I don't know. I kinda hope there's always the caveat that, you know, this could either blow up and be way more expensive, or it could, you know, be maybe not as intensive as we thought.

So, you know, with the being able to have that flexibility to come back or maybe even just do, you know, check ins every quarterly or six months just to make sure we're still on the same path, make sure we're still following their direction as high priorities that they've recognized as well.

Absolutely. I think we can regularly work with council as well as making sure that we're staying, staff are staying up to date with planning commissions, priorities.

Well, if that works for you, then what I would suggest is that we will, work with our subcommittee and prioritize that list and and expand on it because I've taken, commissioner Levante's list and added a bunch of things to it that I sent to her that it's gonna be hard, right, you know, just to sit here and say, oh, this one goes in here, and this one goes in there. So I'd need a little more time to do that, and I think it's better for us to than nonpublic meeting time to do that.

Of course. And if you all do not have the time to organize your thoughts into each subchapter, I am, for better or worse, very well versed with the code and will be able to put those into subchapters even if you just send raw thoughts.

When you do get your package ready for discussion with three j, would it be possible to send it to the subcommittee so we can kinda see where you're at?

I I don't think there's any issue with that.

No. Just

That's possible.

Just so as we're talking, we're still staying on topic, or we need to make sure to move something up that we discover.

Might also help me visualize your layout a little bit so future stuff. Right? So

Absolutely.

And can we add the mixed use to the to the use specific point? Because our code is silent.

Mhmm. So, currently, mixed use is regulated somewhat under conditional use and somewhat under design review, but sounds like you guys are interested in maybe pulling that out into its own.

We like to create a

new app.

Okay. That's something we can we can bring up. Thing is that park code is silent to anything like apartment housing. And so we are any expansion is definitely gonna have high density apartment housing, and so we need to make sure that we can address that. There's currently lands inside the city limits now that could be rezoned and could be high density apartment housing.

We have no language to identify how that's gonna look. So, You know, that's a priority that we may not be just in an expansion, but also to cover thing possible things that could happen today or in the near future, I should say. So and, also, one other thing when we talked about the rezoning and stuff, like, you know, the NC zone is, like, I had mentioned before at the city council meeting, that the workshop was that we have the mix one acre mixed use out in Sunset Ridge, and I wanna make sure that gets protected. And if if we do any rezoning, I'd like to see that resume rezone to it. Like, it's like a c one type thing.

But, of course, then we have to look at our c one because we have commercial frontage on Commercial Street. Well, it also has to be on any other street that's commercial. So that code would need to be identified and, because I think that's one of the issues that we ran into with the green light two acre situation on Maine And North Avenue. And, also, the concept of the conditional use to have a residential on the bottom when that was actually the code was that outright permitted is you would have to

have a commercial. And I think there will have

been an error made there, but that's another story. K. So if that worked for you, we'll move on then?

That will work for me. Thank you, Cheryl.

Any other anything else from the planning commission on that? No. Okay. We will move on then to item number seven is new business. Does the planning commission have any new business?

Staff?

None from staff.

Oh, do you think so?

Okay. If there is no new business with the planning commission, then we'll move on to item number eight is the land use applications and the city project monthly report. Any questions or comments on those? K. Hearing none. Planning commission item number nine, planning commission comment. Go ahead.

Regarding the the report thing on the city's website, are you still collecting data for ecology regarding odors?

We yeah. The occasional email comes in.

Is that how so what do you do with that information? Is that reporting back to Washington County for their their annual or summit, whatever that review they have with Recology?

Great question. I let me ask Dustin about that because he gets those two, and he's the one who handles them. And I don't know if he compiles them or if he if they autumn if they automatically go to Washington County or if we keep them for purposes of specifically of just our direct discussions with Recology, because we do have a separate agreement with them that involves this as well.

Okay. So it's certainly been on the uptick. I I I'm one that's not reported it, but I'm just, honestly, I don't know that there's a lot of people in the city that even know that you can report it.

That's a great question. It it's something that we can get the word out in social media that, hey. You might have forgotten or you're new to town. You don't know. You can, you know, report odor, concerns. But, yeah, every every now and then, we do we will we will like, we actually got one, I think, yesterday because the air's stagnant and it's and the fog, yeah, it's it's just holding in place. So we do get them occasionally. But, yeah, I think it's been a while since we've kind of let people know and promoted that they can send send in those comments. But how does this handling it? I would have to ask.

Yeah. I'm just curious if you're collecting the comments and then doing nothing with them. I you know?

They go right to the college too.

Do they really?

That's what

That that I wasn't aware of. So but they're getting a mirror of it. They're getting a balance of it. So Recology is, according to Laurie, the way the email account was set up, Recology is giving the comments directly also. We just don't get very at all. Frankly, for every one comment

about it to each other.

Well, it's it's when things like this happen and, you know, the the fog and the air

Well, it's actually the last few the last few weeks, there's been multiple days.

That's anybody say for the battle that been in danger before.

Yeah. It

it's sort of like police calls in this town. People don't report things in a manner that creates records so that we can go off of incidents.

To just talk to your neighbor and read it. Right.

Or put it on social media.

Yeah. The the reality is for every complaint that we do get even on days when, well, you know, we're right across from a new building. Right? So, you know, it it's it's strong for us when it does occur. We get more kind of weird junk emails in that account than anything else. So, but we do get every every now and then get a legitimate, you know, email and comment from somebody. As a matter of fact, counsel already sent one in, I think, couple months ago. She's on two. Okay. She's smiling. So so she's been using it, but I do remember one one specifically. But I can follow-up with Dustin and see, you know, how how we just ring those.

Okay. Thank you. And then the second thing I had for, was the ride connection. Have we have we received any data as far as how many users of it or since they since I've launched it?

No. I haven't had a ton of communication from Ride Connection recently. I know they've been navigating some interesting situations just with the recent federal action, but they should be I would have expected something end of year. I'll probably check-in on them and see if they have any new reports to share back.

I was just curious how many people take advantage of it.

That would be good data for

us to have. Yes. Any other planning commission comments? Hearing none, move on to item number 10. Any comments for the planning commission?

Sorry. I had to find unmute. First, I just wanna say thank you guys. I know this is a hard ask. I don't wanna be in your shoes.

So just thank you very much for your your volunteerism and your time on this project. Secondly, counselor Fage has had to step down from his counselor position, and so I'm sure we'll be listing that next week or so, depending on timing of everything, just to keep you aware of what's going on there. And then previously, vice chair Levante had previously noted challenges to doing business with the city, which I agree with, and I would appreciate a focus on reducing those barriers where possible with this next update. Overall, my goal is to make it easier to do business with the city through our code while staying true to our community values. I am particularly interested in how the code can help define the types of businesses we want to attract, including considering limits on uses such as data centers and evaluating impacts on property taxes, utilities, traffic, and quality of life.

I also wanna encourage the use of the city social media to engage in the public, so thank you for offering that bill. And please feel free to raise additional issues you see as important. Hope is to preserve our small farming community while creating jobs and to think creatively and long term, twenty to fifty years ahead, while incorporating the goals of the full council and the expertise of the planning commission. Thank you.

Alright. Thank you for that. Does the any of the planning commission have anything for council Redding and the city council? No. Thank you for showing up for us. Alright. The item number 11. Staff comment?

Thank you, sir. The UGB concept plan public advisory committee, the PAC, will have its first meeting next Thursday on the twenty second from six to 8PM here in Jesse Mays. I believe Stuart has volunteered to be the PAC member or or the planning commission representative for the PAC. At that meeting, the PAC will consider the public engagement plan, the vision and guiding principles memo, and the existing conditions report. So lots of work for them to review, and that will allow the project team to begin work on the concept plan alternatives, which is, in my opinion, the fun part of concept planning.

That's where we start putting pen to paper on different options for what the concept plan might look like leading up to a secondary PAC meeting in March where they will really get to dig in to the meat and potatoes of what that expansion package could be. So that's upcoming. Otherwise, land use applications have been down. Volume is low, partially, of course, the holiday season. I don't know many people who willingly take on a home remodeling or starting a business right before Christmas.

So we're expecting those to pick up over the next couple months. We are in a very low level of buildable land, and there isn't much on the market in North Plains as far as redevelopment potential goes. So we are expecting that volume to stay relatively low. Otherwise, we are engaged in the zoning and development code project, and those are the main projects for staff at the moment.

Alright. Thank you. Any questions for the staff comment?

I just don't mind.

Go ahead. Commissioner Levante?

At a very high bullet point level, can you remind me again of the process for a VGB expansion? It's just very high level.

Yep. From where we are now, the concept plan is typically done after a UGV boundary line has been adopted and approved by the state. Because we are being given some freedom in the scope from the state, we will finish the concept plan, and it will then be up to city council's discretion to direct staff and this commission to if they would like to see a UGV proposal put together based off of the findings of the concept plan. If city council provides that direction, staff will prepare a UTV expansion report and the associated map. It will come to planning commission for consideration.

Public hearings will be held. Eventually, the hope is that the planning commission will land on a recommendation for that expansion report and associated map. This will go to city council for approval or amendment and approval or rejection. If approved and adopted by city council, it then goes to county planning commission. Same process of making a recommendation to the county board of commissioners, then adopted by the bounty the county board of commissioners. At that point, it then goes to DLCD for consideration and approval, and it's finally after that heard by LCDC for acknowledgment by the

state. Thank you.

Any other comments, questions on staff report? Just to swing back onto the the pack on the twenty second. Commissioner, how did the alternate is it viable for him also to show up I mean, he can't. Okay. I'm just asking for any alternate. Okay.

But anybody can show up. Right?

Anybody can show up. Alternates would be encouraged to attend and just be in the audience.

I just wanted to make sure we got the it wasn't strictly just back members. No. Public meeting. Okay. Public. Alright. That's what gets what I mean. Thank you. Alright. If there is no other commission business, our next meeting will be February 11 at 06:00. And once we hear otherwise, I know we did talk about a workshop that's anything been determined on that. And in discussion, would our workshop be after our meeting? Because some may have trouble getting here before.

I think procedurally, that's a decision you can make, chair. I'm happy to host a workshop whenever is best for your purposes if that's starting early or staying late. Right. Or having it during the business meeting. Are are

you Yes. Are you proposing a workshop for the February or not at this time?

I believe if you wanna spend extensive time reviewing the draft scopes of work and digging into the, content of the code and workshop is advisable.

K.

Then could I get Lori to send out a questionnaire to the planning commission to find out if they had time before 06:00 meeting or if it would be advisable to you after the 06:00. Mhmm. Alright. Thank you.

Is an hour sufficient? Like, 05:00?

Yeah. Yeah. Either five or after for now. K. If there's no other planning commission business, we are