Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

So the third claims planning commission for approximately eleven to order at 06:00.

K.

Could you please ride Can I please get the roll of the balcony?

Thank you. Chair Keane? Here. Vice Chair LeBlanc? Here. Commissioner House? Here. Commissioner Cannonell? Here. Commissioner Parra? Here. Commissioner Nunnenkamp? Here. I have not heard from commissioner Miller, did you? I have not heard from. Okay. I'll keep an eye out for him. Your ex officio, mayor Aaron Dunbrow, I am not sure why he's not here, but I will keep an eye open for him too. He's he mentioned it when he was talking last week. So Right. I'm excused until we approve of it. Great. Alright. Thank you.

Item, the next item on the agenda since there's no item numbers on the agenda, we'll go to public comments.

May use the same thing I'm doing?

This time is available for anyone in the audience or on the Zoom for any comments of planning commission business that are not on the agenda. Let the record show there's no one in the audience. Is there anyone on Zoom?

None on Zoom.

Alright. Thank you. Next item is the approval of the minutes for 02/11/2026. Are there any corrections, changes? Hearing none, I'll entertain motion.

I move to approve the Planning Commission meeting minutes on February 11 as they were written. Second.

It's been moved by commissioner Nunnikanth and second by commissioner Nunnikanth for approval of the February as presented. Is there any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. The amendments are approved as presented. Move on to unfinished business. Do we have any unfinished business?

No unfinished business from staff.

K. We

will move on then to new business. That

Okay. Thank you, chair. We should be discussing tonight the Planning Commission's role as the city's committee for citizen involvement, and that is laid out under our comprehensive plan as required by Oregon Land Use State Planning Board. This is a topic which we have, not necessarily highlighted in the past few years for the planning commission, but it is really important to all of your service as planning commissioners. So as we come up, the fiscal year will be turning over in July.

So we have a few months to work on any up programmatic updates, reports, and changing our approach to certain things if you all will be interested. So I wanted to start conversation here with a little bit of a refresher on what committee for citizen involvement is, both at the county and the city level, and what some of the improvements that we could make, would be. Yep. So background, the committee for citizen involvement is a significant branch of the public engagement that is required under our statewide planning goals, and it is primarily to provide residents with opportunities to be involved in the land use process through different pathways. Traditionally, the land use system was established in the seventies.

This would look like public hearings and different engagement opportunities where maybe city staff went out into the community. Nowadays, we have a lot more options. We have online surveys, social media. Still, public hearings are a major avenue, but we also have a a lot more tools at our disposal. And why now?

As I mentioned briefly, a lot of departmental updates are conducted in line with the fiscal year happening in July. And so it's a great time for us to start thinking about what sorts of changes might need to be made or reports might need to be drafted. This is a great time to start doing that. So a little refresher on state planning goal one, which calls for the opportunity for citizens to be involved in all phases of the planning process. And this is then broken down by the state into several sort of subcategories here, ability for public to be involved, feedback mechanisms, the making of of technical information easy to understand, so communication of these complex land use topics to the general public, opportunities for widespread, not just individualized involvement, financial support for public involvement, and two way communication.

So making sure that we are not just preaching at the public, but really allowing them to be involved in changing how these land use processes work. So here we have a little bit of the county perspective. We're located here in Washington County, and the county has been very engaged with the concept of public engagement and the CCI program for a long time. Historically, they've offer they've operated these community participation of organizations or CPOs to engage members of the rural population throughout the county. There's been 17 of these CPOs historically.

And from those CPOs, they would have representatives on their CCI. That looks a little bit different than here in the city where you all as planning commissioners also serve as the CCI. Moving forward, the county is looking to consolidate that program down to one CPO per district and then move to a program that looks more like the city where the planning commission is also the CCI. And as part of that process, the county has been reaching out to cities like North Plains, Bank, Beaverton, Hillsborough, everyone to get a read on how the cities have been doing their CCI, which is essentially what prompted us to take another look at what we could be doing

better. So

CCI in North Plains laid out in our comprehensive plan as the opportunity for active participation participation by residents and landowners in preparation of a community's comprehensive plan, not just mandated by state law, the only realistic means of assuring that communities planning efforts be worthwhile and meaningful endeavors. And we have two key policies in our comprehensive plan. It is a citizen involvement program be directed by the Planning Commission, you all, sitting as the CCI. And that the Planning Commission shall evaluate the citizen involvement pro program and process annually and report back to city council. So with looking at our comprehensive plan and looking at what we're currently doing, staff has identified four opportunities for improvement.

One big one that is really centered on the planning commission as the CCI is preparing to give the annual report to city council, likely sometime in the summer. And then three ones that staff are interested in is adding a planning summary to the monthly newsletter, so making the planning work that the city does a little more visible, exploring better translation and accessibility in our planning materials, and adding a interactive planning archive to the city web page. So those are three things that are easy to find in the comprehensive plan that we maybe aren't doing right now or aren't doing to the extent that we could that we would be able to easily upgrade. And so with that, I would love to hear your guys' opinions on anything you think could be done to improve citizen involvement, how staff could improve citizen involvement. And then as we go forward in the next couple months thinking about annual reporting about citizen involvement, if there's anything that staff could help you with to get that message across about what you all do as far as public involvement.

But, ultimately, this is y'all's body and responsibility to the people that appointed you and the residents that you represent, making sure that they feel heard in the planning process.

I have one question right off. It's CPOs thought the county was talking about not combining, city jurisdictions with county jurisdictions, and you're talking about the one per district. So

So it's still the CPOs will just be representing the rural residents, not the incorporated residents. Right. But they are now going to be going by district instead of the 17

sort of sub Instead of breaking them up into a bunch of smaller one, which I thought was the whole purpose because they all had their own individual concerns.

That's good.

That's why there was so many. And so now all of a sudden, you're gonna jam them all together in large or not you, of course, but county and their eminent wisdom are gonna jam them all together and so that they have different concerns and then the same CPOs. Yeah.

It's it's definitely been a hot topic at the county, and there's a lot of management and administration concerns.

But there is still the separation between city and jurisdiction. Absolutely. The

the big change here is that county community participation is actually going to look a lot more like city community participation. So they're moving that CCI responsibility to to planning commission, which is what almost all of the cities do, and they're consolidating those CPOs.

Yeah. I know that the in the past, the planning commission was a lot more active in the CCIs. I'm sure it's probably fifteen years ago or something like that under different management. And, so recognize that we are planning commission and the CCI is our function. And, obviously, we would be looking to, staff for recommendations on annual reports and monthly reports.

I mean, you know, we get these updates here, and I'm assuming some of that stuff can go in a monthly report. Are they talking about doing something just on website, or are they talking about newsletter, or are they talking about multiple avenues for reporting?

Yeah. We're we're looking at expanding to multiple avenues. The website has been an ongoing, updating project for for staff, but the newsletter is something we wanna branch into where we haven't historically used that as a way to spread planning information. So I'll be working with Laurie to figure out what we can do if we can have a little corner. Or A

lot of people waiting to find out what we're doing.

I know. We we Yeah. That's and that's part of the battle with civic engagement for all of our meetings is that folks oftentimes don't show up unless there's something exciting on the agenda. Controversial. So but that's something that I'd love to see this bodywork on, brainstorming ideas for how to get people more civically engaged, in these planning processes even if there isn't something exciting on the agenda.

So Yes. I have one on this on this particular question of civic engagement. And I won't take credit for this because this came from constituents telling me you should do this. And and the the proposition sort of goes like this. I don't have time nor the energy to come to every single meeting and give input.

I would love to do that. I just can't. But what I would like to do is give it. And the best way to give me the opportunity to give input is as needed, ask me a question simple that I can answer on my phone for input, which means let me get on a text a a city run text message that I can be confident that there's one per household allowed in the town. And when you need input from the planning commission, from the city council, you generated a very simple question, and they answered that question, and they're done.

They would feel a 100% more engaged, and it wouldn't take them more than a minute or two to answer those simple questions. So and and when I talked to the mayor about that, he said, I don't see why we can't do that. This was a couple months ago, but that was an idea that came from constituents is don't make me come to these meetings. This is 1970. Right? I understand you have to have them, but, also, give me an avenue to give you internal input really quick and really easy. And texting was their choice. Thank you.

Yeah. I was gonna say I had a lot of constituents silently tell me that they didn't want they wanted me to just take care of it. We do. You know, don't bother them. Just do your job and because that's what you're here for or something. So I'm good with that, really. But I do agree that, yeah, we need to have a better presence. And I think we need to look at avenues to try to get people involved one way or another. I mean, I don't expect them to come here. It's boring. You know? I hardly come here. But And there's gonna be

a link on the website that we're planning questions question.

Yep. So then the I think English newsletter.

Well and and Submit it. You know, we're in in the works of pulling the newsletter out of the water bill because a lot of people auto pay their water bill, and they get the bill and just toss the whole thing without even looking at the newsletter. And so, we are looking at pulling it out, sending it to every household by mail itself. There has been talk of QR code questions, like, in in each month's newsletter or you know? And that could be how we get people's feedback.

We've done we've sent out, questionnaires through electronically and don't get a lot of response, unfortunately, back even though it's an easy way to do it. I did message you. But we have not done text messaging. Is what I'm getting. Don't send

me emails. Don't send me letters in the mail. If you want me to read by you something, send me a very simple text.

I will reply. I know how to get their attention. Shut their water. Yeah.

Yeah. There it goes. They'll reply. We'll reply to it. You know, my

door handle that says your water

to each other.

You need to respond to this. That I will respond to.

I think the Facebook updates are at least starting to inform people if they're on Facebook, but at least it's updating to where they can see behind them.

Like, that's helpful. Yeah. If it's a subset of people. Right? A subset of people use that medium. A subset of people use a different medium. Everyone uses their phone too.

Yeah. A 100% use that medium. Yeah.

Well, that's a bad story.

90,000,000. Yeah. Yes. And I know that the city doesn't wanna use 100%. And the probably the

Here it was.

North Plains living doesn't wanna be as balls of the city, but, obviously, if somebody's doing a publication, it would be nice. So you would there would be a.

They haven't asked.

No. I know. And I don't think they're going No. I'm they've already stated they're not far as the chamber, and they're not part of the city yet. So I think they might be dependent. We're pretty

sure that they'll So But it's

a nice time you clean, and it probably costs a lot of money.

Yeah. It is. Yeah. Those last

It's fine.

But can it I mean, is it enough to just be one question via text? I mean, we we have lots of questions when planning things come up. But it's

but it's not single it it is like, it is just as simple to say, here's a link to a form. There's four questions. Choose these radio buttons. I'm done. It doesn't have to be one. Right? It's it's a link to a Google form. You get the data back automatically in Excel, and then text goes out automatically. It is

very ask for one every month. And if they do all three, they begin to go into a draw.

Yeah. There's a lot of No. And we're not against that either. We are not against that either. That's me. It's a pretty good job. You know? That is what it takes. A good point that the Google Doc things were great when we have an event. You can send that to you.

So they make it for a quick time. It's like that quick or simple. Four questions and a question. Okay.

So what I'm hearing is a lot of less barriers, more easy clicks.

Yeah. Well, that you have to make it simple.

And by the way, not close to the water bill also. There there will be some people that will use that.

Like, didn't you know questions? Yeah. The other thing I is I have always thought should be more present was we were talking about the the website presence of last path planning projects and things. I mean, you know, I'm always I'm gonna go back and try to find out what happened here or there, and

they only Well so far. Before we switched to this website, we did have some of the older stuff on there. Just like we had all of our ordinances and all of our resolutions on there. And when we transferred over, they would only do three years history. So ordinance ordinances older than 2022 are not even on the website, and we don't have staff Yeah. Time to go put it on. I mean, it's and that's something that should be on there. I've actually got

a public records request. Because they

said Hey. I need ordinance whatever, and it's not on your website, and it absolutely should be. Yes. It should be. So we are fully aware of historical planning projects should be on there. Ordinances should all be on there. Revolution should all be on there. Yeah. We just need to work a

way to There is make it happen. Unfortunately, no way to get those documents on there other than a lot of hours of staff time going through files, uploading files, formatting files, and publishing them.

And City Capital has some money for that. We have

interns of the summer.

Have talked about that. Request it. Right?

We have talked that. Like, Yeah. High schoolers in the summer.

Or even library help. The library's not gonna see if you have them. Oh, you know?

Yeah. Those

those are all good documents.

I've had five emails asking what the what's going on down here. We're clearing the property, and nobody knows what's going on there either. So

It clearly says it on

the front page of the newsletter this month.

But, yeah,

that's the only thing. If you don't have a newsletter Yeah. Nobody knows.

So Yeah.

Nobody even knew the city. Four of them didn't even know the city owned the property if anything was gonna come down for a second. The people in

the bank didn't know.

They're across the street. Right. That's one of the people that actually got asked what time.

We

need a a reader board.

There was a past counselor that was hell bent on getting one of those, but they are so expensive. Right.

So expensive to write. Yeah.

Well, it's hard

to keep changing

those bands. That's true. That's true. Yep. Maybe we could you know, the bank has one out in front of us. We maybe they could, you know, run our news for us.

Long as it's not flashing or spinning.

They're not gonna because that's a distraction. Right?

Yeah. Then it's a distraction.

Yeah. Well, that sign frame is still up over there. It's her big old, poster board up there. It's a city owned property coming soon.

You mean? Abandoned sign? Sign's been there

for decades, and it hasn't been On

the city property?

Yes. It hasn't been there yet. For the abandoned buildings that are still there?

It's in sign, but it's just a frame.

Mhmm. It's a sign frame. It's

still a band. It's just yeah. Was there anything else?

Nothing else from staff.

Any other comments on the CCI? So the next agenda item is the land use applications and the city project report monthly report. Any questions, comments on those?

Okay. My only question is is does the city know what kind of, restaurant that the Hamda Dove House is? It's inquiring my

Asian dough. Well, I guess dumplings. Dumplings. Asian dumplings. And noodles, I think. I think they have another place. I think so too. In Beaverford.

I'm trying to look them up, but they weren't registered secretaries today.

Yeah. They don't we haven't heard anything. I mean, they have a business license with us, but that's all we've heard. Under that name? Under the dough dough house. Something dough house.

Yes. Hongda dough house.

There you go.

So Yeah. Pongda dough house. I thought it was popping up on Google for that invite yet. But

Yeah. Like I said, they're not even registered with the secretary of state. You gave them a business license?

Yeah. It was it wasn't I don't think it was them that contacted me. I think it was, like, their developer or something. And so I looked him up. But no time frame of it. We have no nothing else, I guess.

There are no other questions or comments on those. We will move on to final commission comments. One of the items today is the UGB PAC meeting update. There has not been another meeting. There are no updates. Right. I'm not even sure if it's scheduled yet. I haven't heard anything.

The the project team is working on a schedule adjustment, so, expecting news in the next two weeks.

And

over through some emails on with and yourself, there was some questions about public records. And if are the documents that we have, if we take notes on, are those subject to public public records laws and the statement that they should be turned again to the recorder after meetings? And I was hoping Bill's here to talk about this.

Yes. We have never asked for planning commission documents or or notes or anything. I don't know why. It wasn't you didn't they didn't ask when I started, and so I it just stayed the same. Counselors have to turn theirs into me. When they fill up a notepad, they fill turn it into me, and I give them another one. We did have some problems last year with one person who said that they were unaware that that was the case. And after they left office, they destroyed them according to what she said. So we are bringing it up again. Wonder who she.

State just making sure that you all know. I I mean, I'm not overly worried about any of you. Lot of you don't take notes. Heather takes lots of notes, and she keeps them. I've seen her bring a binder in this big. So if someone did come to me and ask for something, I would come to you guys and would hope that you had them in your possession as required by public records law, but some of you may never maybe weren't aware of that. So because it's never come up since I've been working here. I'm

pretty sure none of us were aware of it. Okay. We assumed it was for elected officials.

It's for all city meetings.

K. So it's just strictly what happened from gavel to gavel? Correct.

Correct. And I'm not gonna ask you to turn them in.

Oh, I'm gonna turn them in. You you can have them.

I'm gonna find them. I'm gonna find room for them. That's I haven't asked record them. That's fine. That's why I So I don't know

These are on those that

you But it's a public meeting. Yeah. So public meeting.

Then that gets to the point where some people are bringing in their personal computers. Correct. So if they're doing anything on them, then they should really turn their computers into you.

Well and So I mean, it it goes that way for cell phones too. I mean If

they're using

their cell phones.

Their cell phones. That's why I've never asked for anything. K. Two reasons. One, because nobody's ever done a public records request for planning commission stuff. Yeah. That doesn't mean it's not gonna happen now that we've put it out there in the universe and the way things have gone the last two years.

It could certainly happen. I understand this this but then in the last three years, it it's now requirement where it wasn't before. I mean, I'm this is what I somebody else told me. Is that do we know if that's correct?

Always been a state ORS Oh, okay.

About notes taken during public meetings. My thirty one years?

I I really don't.

I just gotta ask. What's the retention on on that?

Is it That, I'm not sure of. I'll have to look because,

honestly If I keep my nose up here, I'm not turning it, man.

That's right. See, then you're safe. I I'm not sure what your attention is because I've never been asked for until the last two years. Actually, the last since last January Mhmm. Till now. That's the only time I've been asked for them. And the ones that they wanted, I did not have because I was told they were destroyed, which is a big no no.

But Right. Nothing Moving on to to the next step then. So this is okay. So we're just talking public records because my concern now is emailing.

Well, we always prefer that you don't email all. I think we've talked about that a few times because that that is a public meeting's law Right. About having, you know But your

the city is sending me emails to my business email, and I'm not sure if that's the right thing to be doing. Because my business has nothing to do with planning commission. So I'm surprised that the city didn't give me an email address so they could use it just for planning commission.

Well, we can I we can talk about that? Write down It would

have been nice if our city manager or mayor appeared. You know?

Yeah. The city manager's dealing with legal city legal issues right now. So I the city city council are the only ones that have a city provided email address. No other boards or commissions do. If that's a discussion that we need to have, then that's a Well,

I that I'm just concerned that if, you know, if it's just public record for for the meetings, public meetings, then nobody's sending me an email. You got hopefully, you're not sending me an email right now. Oh, no. You know? And that, I'm not sending any emails, so then it's outside of that. But I don't want my purse my either my personal or my business email to be convoluted in public records law.

Just to be clear, anything that you email staff or the staff emails you is automatically public record because Right. It's city staff communications. Right. Right.

So No. I don't have a problem with that

because I'm doing that. But the thing is I don't want my emails So my business emails available for public record.

Well and the only time that would happen, and it and it could I'm not saying it couldn't happen, would be if they thought that more than three of you were talking via email amongst yourself, which is a forum and against public meeting laws according to state ORS. So if somebody said, I think these guys are emailing each other, and if there's four of them doing it, then we would do a public records request. I mean, they could do a public records request asking for all emails between whoever they think is doing this. And, ideally, we'd be be able to pull up only those where the four people are are emailing them. Yeah.

Their addresses are

all Yes. Yep. As long as we're providing that. So if we do three and a half, it's pushing the limit a little bit. But Yeah.

And I do think that we all need the path of city emails in because Yeah. If that's the case, then that that is pulling then you're gonna ask me for all the nine emails to find out whether or not Yeah. Know. My personal email. Right.

I don't wanna get into your business email.

Exactly. And we don't wanna do that either. Believe me. That's not we wanna do. We we wanna

So

We we would like a line between city business and your personal business and your personal life.

Yeah. For instance, commissioner Levante, there was an issue sending it to wash her Washington County email address, and that's a no no because Washington County doesn't like that. Yeah. You know? So me, I can make the decision because I'm the boss. But if it comes down to that, I don't want to

Well, and there could be other you know, if we've got somebody else that we're gonna get their work email address Yeah. They could say, you got you shouldn't be conducting city business on work time. Right. Use your personal email address. So it's it's a learning process because it's gotten to be such a major ordeal and not just for us. I mean Okay. All lots of cities are going through it. 10. Most cities are going through it, actually. So I will Roland and I will both talk to Bill about getting seeing him about getting you guys email addresses.

We have a new IT company that's going to be huge improvement over what we've had the last year and a half. So it may be easy and may not be expensive. Through the other one, we had to pay for each city email address, I believe, that we had. Yeah. I there was something there was money attached to it.

Seems like it was. Yeah. Yeah. So only allow so much, and then after that, you had people have to pay. And then that's what I'm saying is everybody using their personal equipment probably shouldn't be using their personal equipment here either. Yeah. So then the city should supply everybody with laptops or iPads or whatever.

Which we do for city council. Which I

do have still in mind.

You still have yeah. We we used to do that, but then we found out Yep. Years back that most of the mining commissioners weren't using them, what we had provided. Right. So why were we gonna spend that much money to provide them if they weren't gonna use them? Right. So that's another bullet point to discuss. Now what we did with EDC wanted they wanted to send out a a Oh, sure. Now I should. What's we were they were sending out a survey, but they didn't want they didn't wanna use their personal email addresses either.

So we created one, ebc@citynorth. And then when we get those, then we can disperse them out to the members. But so far, that's the only thing we've done that for.

And that's the other thing. I gotta go through my personal email to get into the agenda in the first place. We used to go through some other server to get into the agenda for the week.

Yeah. We we don't do that anymore. Because you can go right on the city website and on the calendar and get it.

Well But Not very easy. It's a lot easier to do

it this way. But Yeah.

So we're talking about public records and how Oh, yes. Notes that are taken during meetings need to be kept as public records, and there's concerns that all the city emails are going to their personal or business email addresses. So if someone asks for a public records request, it's putting putting their personal and or work email address into the mix.

Correct. Chair, my apologies. City public information officer duties contained. Correct. So if you are there is nothing again, there is nothing wrong with utilizing personal email address for communication on city business. Just be aware that, like like Lori said, if there is a public record request for city business conducted, by planning commission member, that may include a personal an email that was sent on your personal account. So that would be part of the public records request.

So they were asking, can we look into getting them HSC email at once? Now that we and I said we have new tech. We have new IT company. I don't know what their policies are for for that.

Well, I think the biggest thing too is to understand the retention period. So, I mean, how so at work, I have a very structured how many years do I have to keep all my emails Right. You know, depending on what they are.

And we're we're going through that process right now because we're transferring to ORMS, their records management system. And so we're in the process of learning how to set our file our folders up, our email folders on how long certain things need

to have records and all

that stuff. So that that is in the works as well because

we don't know other things.

I literally have a city folder a city folder and a couple subfolders within that city folder, and I go back. I I quite are, but it shouldn't all be

Right. And if you keep no matter how long you keep it, if if if the city file records retention is five years and you've got stuff from ten years ago and someone asked for it, you have to provide it because you have still kept it. If you get rid of it after five years, then you can say, oh, I kept it at the retention, and I'm good. So you do wanna get rid of things when you know the retention schedule's up, or you could be subject to turning over everything from thirty one years.

That's the problem with the with the personal that I'm gonna bring in my directories. Yeah.

So I'm

having to go search my files right now.

I I guess the answer for me would be we would need to check into what seeming we we just we would need to check into the wisdom of and policies about individual city email addresses for for volunteer board members because because we

don't have

that. So we believe we work into that.

Because I don't want somebody going through my personal business emails to go searching for some emails that they're looking for.

Well, so so to be clear, if a public records request comes in and says, I'm interested in emails, I'm interested in emails discussing planning city planning commission business by commissioner planning commissioner on on including in private email in private emails. Laurie would get that request and then would notify you, review your emails. And if you have any that meet that condition Would send you need to send them to Laurie. Nobody gets to access your account. Nobody searches for you.

We heard it is on us to review it. Yes. Ideally, we would hope that everyone would be honest enough to go through their own emails and forward whatever they have to us. I have no There's no obligation on us. Qualms about you guys doing that.

To open access to anyone for for private email.

That's correct. Unless there's a subpoena. But then that would be that would happen if there's if if something gets to the point of there being a subpoena over something, then I think your e private email account is the least of your worries. I

mean, real.

Yeah.

But if if

we get a public records request, you know, in that example, it is you're notified, and it is upon you to identify which emails comply or or consistent with that request. And any but it's on you to go through and look Yes. And provide.

Even if you have that for all your email addresses. We you know, if you have if you use more than one for if you get all of our Citi stuff through one, but you guys email each other through another, it would it by law, it should include your other email that Citi isn't necessarily c. But we trust that people It's it's self reported

for even, elected officials.

Same thing. If we get a we have gotten public record requests where the request is for city business discussed, including in private emails by a city councilor, that city councilor was notified or city councils have been notified. You have been there's a request for city business emails city emails private emails with city business discussed. Those need to be turned over for this whatever the time period requested is. And it is upon the city council to return the emails they found to be consistent with that request.

Did we get all of the emails completely in in hold? I don't know. Were some emails deleted that should've been should've been because they were public records? Perhaps. But it is on the person to turn over what private emails are compliant with the request.

I don't have any. I'm guaranteed. And, of course, then we wanna get the back of the office.

It came up with, oh, notes we've taken during meetings. And this chair King proudly announced that he'd be happy to bring all of us in for the last thirty one years and put them on my desk. And vice chair Levante probably has just as much even though she hasn't been as on the board quite as long

as he has. So Great. Let's let's do that.

Let's let's do that. I mean, the the thing is about having city email addresses is if there are issues that you feel are sensitive, you would see the email address. You defer to your private email address anyway, and you're still subject to a request that's self reporting, if that makes sense.

Perfect. Any

questions of those comments? Is this documented somewhere, or is this just

I mean, because this will continue tomorrow.

State law. State law. State of. Yep. Okay.

K. So any other planning commission comments? Nope. Okay. We'll move on to city council comment. Mayor Dunbar? No. I'm

saying the taxman said I didn't know it was supposed to be my terms right after

that. Okay.

Ex officio. So then I emailed it to him, and I still got feel it was all of this.

I saw it on the list. I knew it was. I do have a question. I already looked up. Sorry.

And maybe it's in our code, but is there something about

abandoned structures in our code?

We can hold on. Right? We have a I mean, abandoned structure. And you got a lot of structures that

are boarded up and stuff in the city. Long do they sit here?

Like Oh, you mean, like, the subway? Yeah. Subway. Is that what you're talking about?

And then, like, the blue house down the corner,

I mean, those have been

I mean, that's always only been

ordered up for over a year, maybe two.

But only if they create a nuisance. But the or The trifle is burning.

But they aren't. They look comfortable.

They're terrible.

Well, they we've had to contact them to keep up with mowing the

Yeah. Yeah. That's a requirement because of doctor's bleeding during April

too. September. Whatever. Yeah. The it it it really only becomes an issue when you have demonstrated vermin issues if you have homeless people or activity, people trying to get into the building. Blight in and of blight, not pretty buildings, in and of themselves aren't a problem. It's when they become a public safety active public safety issue. Rowan, you can go ahead if you would.

Yeah. So looking through our code, we do not have a chapter or subchapter specifically dedicated to abandoned structures. We address significantly abandoned vehicles and personal property. So most likely,

what our

regulating ordinances are going to be is under health and sanitation nuisances or general nuisances, of which we have several that would apply. Our building nuisances would apply, things like, attractive nuisances might apply. There's kind of a number of things which would you know, when we look at the conditions of an abandoned structure, your nauseous vegetation, probably a fence code violation, attractive nuisance vermin. That's not a property theft. So there's there's a lot that would go into that that could be addressed.

Those city homes only have been buildings.

Not the subway one. And not the blue one on the corner.

And property tax because that building is personal property.

Cross street from the old City

Hall. Depends on how we specifically define personal property. It's personal property.

We we could add that

in our code updates too, though. Right?

So in building That

is outside of

the land use code.

So this is under these kinds of things are under chapter 92. So absolutely could be addressed in a future code update as we saw chief had a work session with city council about a month ago, addressing a lot of traffic code and other, you know, quality of life code updates. This is something I think would be really well addressed in that project because we want to keep land use and nonland use code updates separate because land use has to go through that laborious DLCD process. If we can keep things out of the land use process, that's better. It it's shorter. It's cheaper.

So if we could take this

into to that project, I think that'd be a great area to to look at it.

Thank you. Of course.

K. There are no other planning commission done at the school. Sorry. We'll move on to staff comment.

Thank you, chair. A few things. So I wanted to address, last month, I believe, maybe it was the month before, commissioner of how you had mentioned concerns about the intersection at North Ave and Main Street. I did check-in with the city engineer and, confirmed that, pavement striping is not required, by law and that he was checking to make sure that that bill that that intersection was built to standard. I haven't checked in with him again since he started looking into that, but our suspicion is that it was built to standard and that that is an upgraded safety intersection.

So that's where engineering stands on that issue. And then coming up on Monday, it is expected that the chair or the vice chair will give an update to city council on planning commission activities, and that that will be one of you, chair king or vice chair Levante, attending city council to communicate with city with the the council your activities as by any commission. Otherwise

We can schedule that for a future meeting because I didn't put that on Monday's agenda. Oh, okay. We haven't discussed it. So Okay. You can plan for it in one of the April meetings. April.

This is on top of the CCI stuff?

Correct. Yeah. This is just

a

quarterly they want all boards and city boards and commissions, either the chair or vice chair quarterly, to provide a report on what they have been I'll

get a stab on them.

And then

I believe that is all at the moment. I briefly touched on the best. The UTB concept plan project team is doing the schedule adjustment, so we'll have more news on that in the coming weeks. And planning activities have generally been, calm and steady over the last month. So I'm available for any questions you may have.

Commissioner Howell? What? You hear me comment on the Main And North Intersection?

I keep going down north. Everywhere they have a every street where they have the access to cross to go to the North for kids going to playgrounds. I'm not asking for a flashing light. I'm asking for white paint. But, again, I was there two days ago, and you you walk up to the intersection.

It's not a marked crosswalk. And here here, people come flying through, and they're not they're not doing 25 anyway. It's just a bad street because it's our main street going to the school or out of town, and I'm just afraid someone's gonna get hurt on one of those streets. So I thought I'd bring it up.

Maybe something we can have public safety look into. I believe we've had the radar signs out there before. Mhmm. So it may need to go back on the rotation.

I I wish we would have caught it when it was in design. You know? It is what it is. Can't catch everything.

Any other, questions or comments on staff update? Hearing none. K. Our, next regular meeting will be April 8 here at 06:00. There was a discussion, a a question we were gonna ask the or poll the, plan commission on work sessions before the meeting. I assumed that there were some people that couldn't make it, but did we wanna poll them before we adjourn?

Chair, if you would like to get consensus on whether before or after work sessions are preferred, the staff would be happy to take that information down. K.

Is there any comments or concerns of having work sessions before or after meetings? I mean, some people have jobs.

Some have jobs.

Very good for jobs. Something.

It's not enough jobs. Yeah. Have jobs. Some are retired.

Well, the only reason we're at six is because of our last city plan. It allowed us to go at six. They used to start at seven, so we could afford it. Oh.

As city staff.

Thank

you. All the other city boards and other than city council now start at six. Library, EDC, and parks all start at six as well. And it can be it it can be a a by meeting choice too if you I mean, I can always send out an email like I have recently polling, you know, if you're able to do a work session before or after. But

That would be preferable because if we have a heavy agenda, I wouldn't wanna stay after too until a work session.

Well and I think that's for judgement as our schedule goes. But Commissioner Barra, are you available prior to sixty o'clock? Yes. Commissioner Howell?

Yeah. Commissioner The one retired person on the board. Commissioner Levante?

It I mean, it's 10 of them. I I would have to go better closer.

So possibility, but it's not confirmed. And commissioner? Yeah. Commissioner Conradell? Yeah. Commissioner Miller? Possible same situation? Yeah. Same situation. Okay. So Case by case? Yeah. Case by case, I guess. But, right now, we'll stay with our original plan as we have it at meeting till 06:00 and then workshop after. But I would think, sending out a poll question prior to, but then adjust accordingly. Right. What I don't wanna do is I don't wanna keep changing the start date for the regular meeting. I wanna keep that as Exactly. If possible.

And if commissioner Levante has it right. If if it's a heavy agenda, you, you know, may not wanna have it after if you're getting done at ten to nine. I'm not

So okay. Case by case. Okay. So with that, if we have nothing else, no other business, like I said, our next meeting is April 8 right here, 06:00. We're adjourned in 06:55. So we will now move into our work session. Whenever you're ready.

Thank you, chair. So before you, you have an updated memorandum from three j Consulting, wherein staff and Heather Asiku has joined us online tonight. We've put together a updated memo that is reflective of our conversation last month wherein you indicated an interest in a comprehensive project that was phased over several years. So you'll see in the updated file, and I'm gonna let Heather explain this in much greater detail. I'm just gonna give you a, like, road map.

We've transferred this into instead of sort of an option a, b, c into phase one, two, and three, but maintaining much of the same structure. And so with that, I'll let Heather add any additional details that you think are in are needed, and we will discuss.

Thanks, Rowan. Good evening. It's, good to be with you all this evening. I noticed when pulling up this memo this evening that I did miss in the header, the regarding portion that I'm still calling it three options. But what I really wanted to call it is three phases because at the last meeting, what we heard is that the goal is to get all of the work done.

All of the chapters, have priority. The chapters that were listed were in priority order, but they all are needing updates, and planning commission felt, unanimously about that. The other thing I wanted to point out is that, we tried to keep the phasing schedule just so that it was clear to council, who I think is the ultimate, audience for this, that we can do this in phases. We can break some of it out as we go along and try to get grants for some of this work. But, also, I think it was commissioner Miller who pointed out last time that we have a list of things that we're not touching.

So we call those low priority. So we mentioned that we're not going for everything here. There are things that we didn't identify as needing to be updated. So I did use the the code committees notes to be able to prioritize the sections of code that we'd like to get done, as well as just probably starting with that legislative compliance that the city needs to do to be able to be compliant with state law. So I I would propose, you know, as if this were to move forward or be part of a package that's going to city council, we would change that header to have it be more reflective of three phases where rather than three options, just considering this as a as a large project, that we are breaking up into smaller chunks.

I'm happy to answer any questions or go into further detail about anything specific if needed.

I I had this workshop.

Yeah. I do have a question about your comment about the things that, sections that were not gonna be touched.

Mhmm.

So we found already sitting down and talking to our small group that, I mean, one leads into another, leads into another. Does that blow blow this whole phasing thing up then? Or or what does it do to

No. So I think, I hear what you're saying, and there might be that if we pull on the, nonconforming uses, we have to make a change over to design review, like, earlier in the process or something like that. And I think those small changes to keep the code consistent with itself, can come along as they go. What I meant was just there are sections the code that we're not fully overhauling, like floodplain and some other sections that we're not taking as a whole re rewrite like we are the ones listed here.

And those sections have been identified that we're not going to touch?

I was under the impression that staff has a long list of sections that could use small updates, but that are not included that maybe was part of a work session your group had a while back?

What I would recommend is since we're talking about a low priority and not touching it when we're talking about a comprehensive overhaul, We might wanna know exactly what those low priorities are because that box may be empty.

So include that in the intro that the low priority code updates such as or including and list the ones that we're not proposing?

Well, that's what I'm just suggesting is that if we know what they are, we start working on code, all of a sudden, we may need to pull them out of low priority and move them up.

So maybe what we actually need to do is just add a sentence that, acknowledges that there could be need for, you know, other chapters to be looked at as we go through, and that that would be sort of incidental to what work we're focused on.

Well, that I I just wanna make it from at least my position is that I don't wanna just identify them all and then say, oh, we're not gonna touch these because we may end up touching them.

Right.

Because So find reason that we have to from doing some other code and go, oh, well, now that relates back to this code.

Yeah. So so saying there are other chapters that are more of a low priority that we're not listing here, but that they could be updated portions of them could be updated incidentally to these proposed changes.

Yeah. I don't wanna say we're ignoring them because we may not we may not be able to.

Okay.

I think that was the spirit of my comment, which is identify low priorities, but don't say we'll live in a bunch of yeah. Yeah. Got it. These are

learning we we don't anticipate, but liquid. Yeah.

Yeah. Makes sense.

Any other questions coming? Can make sure a little latte?

Well, I have lots of questions only because I wasn't here last month. But, just in general in this memo, Heather, you you actually submitted, snippets of the, house and senate bills that are really gonna influence some of our language in the in the code going forward?

Yes.

Can you elaborate a little bit on, senate bill fifteen thirty seven? Because I was struggling with this one a little bit when I was speaking forward as to some possible changes to certain sections. And the city must grant up to 10 distinct adjustments. So, I mean, is that, like, in general over all of them? Or or Yeah.

So it it's subject to residential only. So this wouldn't apply to any of your commercial or industrial or institutional applications. But if you have residential applications between now and 2032, you must grant these adjustments, and they can apply for up to 10 of these listed adjustments. And we did talk at the last meeting because I wanted to make this a a point. I had heard the concern about not having commercial space on the 1st Floor in a mixed use building, and that is specifically listed here.

So, we we have to allow and adjust even if we have code language that says you must have commercial as the 1st Floor of a mixed use, in certain zones, we now have to say that, nonresidential uses like, lobbies, daycares, gyms, other things that are incidental to the residential uses have to be considered commercial where the I heard specifically from this group that that's not what you wanna see on your 1st Floor. But the, we would be prohibited from precluding that if it fit within one of 10 adjustments

requesting.

I mean, I just I'm looking forward. I this would completely change the look of our downtown, should we start having residential on the 1st Floor. I mean, so much so that I'm almost wondering if we should update our c one and take out the fuse of it just so we don't have apartments on the 1st Floor or residential on the 1st Floor.

That that's definitely an option. The other the other thing to keep in mind is that the state so DLCD is not recommending that you necessarily update your code to include these pieces because they do sunset. So the state is recommending you apply these directly. But, yes, one way to, preclude that from happening is to remove residential from your downtown commercial district, and you might consider doing that, you know, for a limited amount of time. If you do ultimately want to see mixed use with 1st Floor commercial and residential above and have more of that, multilayered, you may wanna consider preserving the opportunity to do that in the future.

Of course, we don't know if this, sunset clause will be dropped in the future or if other changes will come and take its place, but that's another thing to consider. You could have it be a sunset clause as well.

Okay. I like that idea.

Can we do it in a moratorium?

A moratorium on residential development in your c one until a certain date?

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm less familiar with with that because a moratorium is usually more of a legislative action and less of a code update. But, yes, effectively, could do it in some way, whether it's a sunset clause written into a development code or a moratorium adopted by the city. Yeah.

So then it's the next step is can we have it for a period of time and then change it because we want something to happen and then put it back on?

Yeah. I mean, you you as a city can make your choice about what you what you preclude or not in your C 1 zoning district, and you can change that. You can you can have something happen for a year or five years, and then you can decide you want something different, definitely.

Well, my concern is is that our C 1 is technically our mixed use area for residential and commercial. And so all of a sudden, if we take residential out of it, the component, that kinda defeats the whole idea of the downtown core having people live there. So

Yeah. I mean, what if what if there's an in between where it's, like, properties that front commercial are, you know, though that's where you, know, moratorium on residential, although that probably is where they'd wanna be. But, you know, the blocks are you could do the backside of the block. You could do the side streets, maybe something like that.

Well, I you know, I'm just thinking that you could do the backsides are different because they're up against residential. But if you do side streets and they're commercial on both sides, then they should be commercial facing. Commercial fronts and not residential.

Yeah. I mean, I think there's also a bit of a risk assessment here, you know, how fast will we see residential development. And if we think that the market really supports commercial on the 1st Floor, would allowing a 1st Floor space to be a lobby or a gym right now, you know, wouldn't preclude commercial use in the future. But I think what's happening is that's not what the market is supporting in a lot of places. But these are all cons these are all, like, code update questions, but I understand how the state law the and that's why I put it in here, honestly, is I wanted to make sure that we were all aware that there's implications from the state level that might affect what we can actually do with our code updates, just so that we don't feel like we can solve all the problems in the direction that we want them to be solved knowing that, there are changes coming to.

Just to throw this out just because I'm in real estate, can we do deed restrictions on the land that would preclude residential on the 1st Floor?

I mean, you're more of an expert on deed restrictions than I am. They're pretty permanent. Right? There's not yeah. So I guess I would say that's a consideration, you know, if you if you're sure that's what forever you wanna have there. But I think that I think deed restrictions from a city standpoint get a little trickier than zoning code or moratoriums.

Well, I was throwing it out at different options. So

Well, and something you're definitely familiar with and see when you're selling property or

yeah.

But yes. So this is included, and I don't know if that information is helpful when this goes if this goes on as, sort of a joint, like, staff planning commission recommendation to, city council if we need to include this level of detail. Or, it was it was really geared toward this body because I know how well you know your code and and know what changes you wanna make. So I just wanna make sure that, you had this information. And there's actually more that's just come out of the short session as far as how residential, applications are reviewed and things like that, but, I don't think it's overly impactful to this discussion.

So, like, let me ask you then. With the identification of the SP1537 and the SP974HP2005

and

HP thirty five sixty. It's this information or just a synopsis and not the whole info problem.

There are more

yeah. So there are more, there are more measures that we'd wanna bring into the discussion when we're considering code updates. These were the most impactful that I wanted you to be aware of if they were like commissioner Levante read. Wow. Some of these mandatory adjustments are the exact opposite of what we were trying to accomplish with some of these code changes. So it was more, more of an FYI to this code group. But but I could provide more, absolutely. As we as we go along, you know, especially as we step into phase one, we would provide you all of the legislative context to make sure that you have it all. And then you make the decisions if there are sunset clauses. Do we wanna codify?

Do we wanna just apply state law directly? You know? And then we just make those decisions as we go.

As part of the code committee, I would love to see any of those earlier, sooner than later.

Sure. And, my, company is actually, you know, comp so and your city attorney probably has this information too in their legalese, but we kind of put it in our own words, distilled it down. So I we can provide that resource. We have a spreadsheet with, information. And in a lot of cases, DLCD is writing, like, a fact sheet around each of the pieces of legislation that come out once they're adopted so that it's a little easier to understand. So we're linking that too, so I'm happy to provide that information.

Thank you.

So

we this is just the kind of the new program of how we're gonna approach this. And so then this is to go to city council then is what's our next step?

So if this body is happy with the overall substance of the memo, as Heather mentioned, there's a few things that we would wanna tweak before we send this to city council. If the body is happy with this, yes. We would work next on getting this before city council with a definitive, request for, any necessary budget adjustments and, work on getting this project into the actual pipeline.

Any comments to the planning commission?

I I thought, at least, like, May didn't we see some stuff shuffle around a

little bit too that we were concerned about? I was thinking that we were gonna, c one is actually in phase two, and we were thinking it kinda went with the mixed use in phase one. So that was kinda one of the things that we just were talking about, actually. So Right. And I think it was in phase one. With workflow. Okay. It was the phase one. Yeah.

So I think I cut the phases in a different location than the subcommittee did because of the need to phase the budget a little tighter, but I could revise and move were you thinking c one moves up to phase one rather than phase two? Okay. So

can together with Chris Hughes just because of downtown stuff.

Yeah. So we could definitely do that. I would just adjust the budget numbers accordingly to add in a little more for phase one and a little smaller for phase two.

I I like that. That that

was the biggest kinda seem like they go together. So Right. It's hard to separate them out.

There was some smaller stuff, but that was the biggest one that I think we came up with. So unless unless somebody else no. That was the only note I made. So Heather, did you have anything else in the or do want my notes?

No. Just the length of the overall updates.

Two years.

But the length of the doc Hopefully. No. The time. Yeah. Okay.

Well, the sooner we approve it,

the sooner we get on started on this.

Yeah. I mean, really, this is just to get an outline for Yeah. To approve some thoughts.

Right. Yeah. And I think that's at least we should move forward. Yeah.

I was gonna say I would hope too that council would have some flexibility that should, you know, needs arise and we need to move stuff around a little bit that the funds were approved and at our discretion, we could wiggle things if needed.

Well and I think also to go along with that is as you start working on these, you may say, oh, we've gotta do this now too, or we can move that back. So there should be some adjustment give and take as you go through this and not be so stuck in, oh, can only work on this and this phase kinda thing too.

I can write in I can write that into this too that, you know, this is this is a rough outline of what we propose, but that there could be adjustments as we go along

and do the work.

And and another thing that we will emphasize to city council is that as we work on this and the fact that it is a long term project, funding opportunities may arise. We may be able to do work concurrently with different teams and get the project done quicker or for less budget.

Well, I think once we have kind of a proof schedule, then it's easier to go out and get funding too. Exactly. They'll say, oh, you're already working on it. So we could make this available sooner.

The other thing about that is, sometimes there are targeted grants that would be specific to certain portions of this. So that would give that flexibility would give you the ability. Like, there may be something about, you know, downtowns, and then you'd wanna, like, go after your c one mixed use portion or something like that.

Well, that may yeah. That's one of the good reasons to be able to move stuff because it's something maybe in conjunction

Yep.

In that third party where funding is available. K? Anything else?

I would just ask you, Bill, when would you expect we could get this in front of city council based on their upcoming schedule?

Great question. So, I mean, we could get this in front of city council at the first April meeting. It's too late for the set of this meeting on Monday, but we could put this before them in April. The other consideration is depending on how much of a hurry you are, the budget committee is going to be having its mid biennium meeting, and that's where they'll be taking up newer, bigger things. And if that'll be probably later April. So depending on when you how and when you want this process to work as early as first meeting in April, but, it just kinda depends on how you want it handled.

Is there a better I I think my idea It sounds better. Yeah. Especially since it's a four year project. So Okay. Sounds good to me.

Okay. We will work on getting this in front of council as soon as possible. Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you.

So then as far as our next step, as far as workshop, do we need to have one for April then? We'll tap if we get city council approval. And between that and our meeting, you're not gonna have time to put anything together. Right? Or

My design movie went out to everybody.

Yeah. I I'd say that staff wouldn't necessarily have something of substance for you by the April top, commission meeting, just considering the the dates of the date. Yeah. It's your meeting's early in the month. Right.

Their their first meeting's the '6. Yours is the eight.

Yeah. So What I was concerned about.

Yeah. Yeah.

So and right now, I mean, assuming we don't have anything huge on our agenda for a regular meeting. So is there a reason to have a workshop then in April? Or No.

Take a take a break.

Staff does not have any anything that would require a work session in April.

So we'll just plan on our regular meeting then in April. Is there anything else from the workshop then?

Hearing none. Thank you. Good to see you, Heather. Thank you, Heather. Thank you.

You. Good night.

Good night.