Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

we will start with a roll call uh we have all except all of our commissioners present except for commissioner Bradley and we have council member Jim Weisner present as well our first item on the agenda is our approval of the November 12 2024 minutes um I'll give you all a a moment to look over them and if you have any comments or questions Now's the Time otherwise I will take a motion for those approvals I'll set a motion to uh approve I'll second the motion to approve as written all right motion by Wilson second by fry all those in favor signify by saying I I all right motion passes unanimously our next item is uh public comment period so during this time residents May comment on subjects of interest on the agenda or sorry subjects of Interest not on the agenda or agenda items to ensure comments are properly recorded state your name clearly individual comments will be limited to 3 minutes for maximum participation during this 15minute time frame public comments may also be submitted online at www.ok harbor. goov backu comment two business days in advance um it looks like we don't have anyone in the audience but we did receive um One online comment just kidding we did not receive we have not received any comments uh since the last meeting so if there's anyone out there who would like to make a public comment Now's the Time

going once going twice three times okay now on to our uh discussion items for uh our meeting our first one is the selection of chair and vice chair which will be introduced by our director David Co thank you Commissioners David cool development services director tonight we're going to pick a chairperson and a vice chairperson and the role of the chairperson is basically to run the meeting to be a spokesperson for the Planning Commission to ask volunteers or may you may appoint or lead subcommittees uh and perform other duties as assigned by the Planning Commission the role of the vice chairperson basically is the same as what the chairperson is so what you do is you uh make a nomination since this is your first meeting of the year and you traditionally select the new chair and vice chair and then second the motion and then you vote on those particular nominations so if there's more than one nominations then you'll vote on each one uh so you can just open it up at this time okay so we'll take some nominations or discussion I can't nominate anyone so it's up to you too I nominate our current chair to remain in position motion I will second that motion and second for chair englebret to remain chair for the 2025 year should we vote and then do Vice chair yeah okay so all those in favor please signify by saying I I I I motion passes unanimously okay now are there any nominations for the vice

chair I would like to nominate Eddie fry for vice chair and I'll second all right any further discussion all right all those in favor please signify by saying I I I motion passes unanimously all right we have our vice chair and chair moving on to our next item which is the 2025 meeting schedule also introduced by director David Co um thank you Mr chairman um I also want to mention uh rule six uh I I I guess it would be uh four it says if a if a member misses 25% of the meetings in a rolling 12-month period the chair shall discuss participation with the member and then notify the mayor of the results of the conversation so so we just wanted to put that in there that's on the previous item while you're going through your administrative duties and so that's just FYI that's also in the future item we're going to talk about later tonight and that's the bylaws so this next item is the schedule for the 2025 Planning Commission uh in January of each year you go ahead and you set your schedule uh as you know already uh the Planning Commission is now going to meet on the 2 Tuesday of the month and that will start in March so that'll be at 6: p.m. we have some scheduling challenges we'd like to bring by you uh to put on a February 25th Planning Commission and then turn around within two weeks and have a another Planning Commission

meeting we are requesting that you cancel the meeting February 25th and then that will give us time to uh prepare prepare for the March 11th meeting and then also you'll notice in November uh it's been adjusted for Veterans Day which follows on the 11th and so it be will be held on November 12th and we've also got a meeting scheduled in December and uh we'll see how that goes so uh okay we're available for any questions you may have and are ready for any kind of motion you want to make I'll make a motion that we cancel the February 25th meeting um uh which gives six weeks for the city council uh and the staff I'll second that okay Motion in second for the cancellation of the February 20 February 25th 2025 uh meeting all those in favor [Music] I okay motion passes um and then I will also take a motion to uh approve the remainder of the the 2025 uh schedule if there are no more questions I'll make a motion to accept the schedule for 2025 as written I'll second that motion hold on let me rephrase that as written with the exception of what we just voted on for the cancellation of 25 fit I will second that motion by fry second by Wilson all those in favor motion passes okay very good speeding right

along our third discussion item is our update to the bylaws uh thank you once again um just for reference on the previous item Sarah has a real nice Planning Commission calendar that you can follow if you're trying to find the dates that we do certain things and I don't really know where to squeeze it in so I'll just throw it in here now be on the lookout for a flyer that's coming out and it'll probably be emailed to you regarding the Waterfront project and that's the new project we're doing uh downtown on the waterfront and we're going to be holding the first open house with our consultant we'd certainly uh encourage planning Commissioners to attend it will be on February 27th and that'll be right here in City Hall in the evening and so I think that's on a Thursday uh so hopefully you can make it uh it's a real exciting project we've gotten started and uh I think the community will really uh pull behind it so certainly we would encourage your participation and anything else you'd like to suggest we work on relating to that very good and does that also start at 6 p.m. I don't know if the time's been said I think I heard 6:30 was mentioned sure but I'd like to I'd just like to add if you do think you might attend that um please just contact me in advance and let me know um if needed I can um publish a notice of attendance just in case we might actually have a quum of Commissioners we want to note that no action would be taken if that's the case absolutely and there's going to be something sent out about that you said David U we'll be emailing out a flyer to everybody and we were supposed to have it for tonight but I think people got busy and couldn't get done so no worries

thank you okay thank you on to the uh next item excuse go ahead excuse me Mr M uh Sarah you said that uh if the Planning Commission if somebody's to show up that there'd be no action for the planning commissioner or for the council in the event that any um commission or board has enough attendees of that commission or board to any event where there could technically constitute a quorum of Commissioners we just are required legally to put a notice of attendance out for that border commission and say there may be um several members of this border commission attending if there are enough to constitute a quorum that does not mean any actions going to be taken and it's just a legal requirement in the event we we might end up having a quum the same happens with City C council members attend public events as well we just want to make sure we do the right legal posting and so just keep me informed if you plan on attending um those types of events because there might be several of you from the same commission doing that thank you Sarah um we're moving on to the next item which is uh as of January 7th 2025 the city council approv resolution 2501 which updated our version of the Planning Commission bylaws we've been working on those for a long time and uh it's an exciting time because they've changed a few things uh we now have an ex official council member who's councilman weer who's here with us tonight thank you and we're also going to have a one student representative from a local high school as a possibility to join us the person will not be a voting member but they'll be able to learn from their experience here hopefully I've not heard of any high school students that have

been suggested yet but for selection of uh members of the Planning Commission and ex ex official members the new process is to have the mayor interview every candidate and then uh forward that onto the city council to confirm it in the past it was kind of fast and Loos and there were different different ways to get people here uh particularly we had a hard time finding people to join and so we're getting a little more interest now and so this will be fine the mayor can can vet all the candidates and and make a decision uh who he would like to see that would represent the council's interests um so beyond that uh that's also where you find your rules on U the number of meetings missed and we talked about that earlier it also talks about remote attendance and that's a New Concept for all of us over the last few years and basically it allows remote attendance uh they do ask you to contact the staff or the chairperson a day in advance if you want to attend remotely and the reason for that is so we can plan ahead and be ready for you and U and we think remote attendance still works and we want to make sure that you can be seen on the the camera when you're working remotely uh that you can hear and that we can hear what you're saying so that you can be fully attending as a Planning Commission member any questions on remote attendance uh let's see I think that was all the changes we had that were significant in the uh plan commission bylaws any questions okay thank you thank you go ahead

there's another attachment in here that has the actual bylaws and rules of procedure in case you're interested you can follow through all the all the details uh there's some interesting rules in there to encourage industrial settlement within the municipality uh to study needs of existing local Industries with a view of the strengthening and developing local Industries and stabilizing employment conditions so uh this all came out of the 1935 planning enabling act and uh so we're still following all those older guidelines so I think that's all we have on the uh the attendance we talked about that um and chairperson and the new day and time so I think that concludes that particular item very good all right any questions any comments all right sounds good moving on we are looking at our the planning commission's annual report to the city council take it away thank you Mr chairman uh this is your annual report to the city council it's organized uh the same as we have in the past we we have a lot of the results of this past year then we'll go into the topic of future projects we'll be working on which is our work program and then there'll be a section in there for you to comment back to us so that we can forward those comments to city council things that you think would be important for the city to do things that you can see the Planning Commission working on and even the city as a whole

so traditionally we have not gotten a lot of feedback but we're certainly open ears to hear what you uh have to say so the Planning Commission last year and I think uh on my document here we have four different resolutions that uh you approved uh one was the comprehensive plan docket the next one was ratifying the 20-year population projection which was adopted by Island County at 102,7 39 people the third one was approving the active Transportation plan that CAC worked so hard on and then also the fourth item was ratifying the countywide planning policies and that's what set the basis for all that comprehensive plan work we're doing now we did one two three four five ordinances last year one was regarding conditional use permit ownership where conditional use permits used to stop when the owner of the project left and we wanted the conditional use permit to stay with the land and so that's what was approved by you and the city council also we changed a uh deposit for Engineering Services which also allowed an extension of time for a final subdivision Subdivision plat from 5 years to 7 years and then it also allows the digital submitt of a subdivision and so we're working to get digital signatures uh a process approv for that so we can just approve a subdivision with a digital signature and not have to route a myw around for everybody to sign which tends to delay the implementation of a subdivision the Capital Improvements plan was also approved by ordinance

1994 ordinance 1974 revised the zoning map reclassify Ying all planned industrial park and planned Business Park zoning to Industrial and those were old zones that we don't use anymore and the last one uh was ordinance 1993 which was pertaining to appeals of land use decisions and it changed the the timing of land use decision appeals to meet state law where we had uh not quite stayed caught up with state law so that was a good busy year you had uh thank you for your participation uh the work program U generally we always work with Comprehensive planning uh the 25 docket uh we're just going to roll any proposed amendments into the end of the year process that we're currently doing I've heard there might be one item coming forward uh from a private property owner so we'll add that to the agenda as we go forward the housing action plan we've been working to implement those changes for years and we'll be doing more of that in the future the upcoming text amendments that we have of the municipal code include uh new state mandated timelines for project approval and Nolan grunska will be talking about that tonight we're going to revise our definitions we're going to come back with a land clearing and Grading ordinance and Dennis Lefever will talk about that we have daycare Recreation space and design guidelines and Ray we will be talking about that upcoming bigger picture projects we have is the economic development strategy and action plan we have a consultant we've hired to do a whole economic strategy for us and we'll get the results out to you we think that will be done by about the 1st of April so we'll make sure you get a chance to weigh in on

that we've been working with the county to partner on interlocal agreement to be able to Annex property out there we have some other longrange planning projects you might remember from last year the Central Development sub area planning the vision to action planning uh by a group called Center for Creative Recycling and the downtown Waterfront planning that I mentioned earlier tonight the last one is the land action committee and I don't know much about it I know councilman Marshall is an instigator behind this and maybe longer term we'll find out more about what they have in mind some of it could mean working with the military base to do some joint planning other projects we have going on is a parking analysis and Nolan grunska will be I think in front of Council in March and uh maybe they'll be bringing it back to Planning Commission as well Ray sitting next to me is working on middle housing analysis I think we're waiting for the comprehensive plan to be completed before we can implement uh those kinds of Housing Solutions fence height is one we discussed today in a workshop uh that may come back to you uh the daycare Recreation space I mentioned earlier setback encroachments Ray will tell you about that tonight and then the housing program we'd like to get a multif family tax exemption program started and we'll be moving that forward as well last three items are environmental projects and those are items that Dennis Lefever works on one is the critical areas update uh the other one is the nipy conformance the national pollution discharge elimination system and the last one is the climate resilience subelement uh for the comp

plan so that's what we've achieved in the last year that's what we hope to achieve in the coming year and now is your chance to tell us what you'd like to achieve if anything beyond what's in this list thank you all right any questions any comments for staff on this item uh Mr chairman not at this time uh as I'm still learning kind of everything that we do so sure as the year goes on if something else needs to be implemented then we can add to at that time is that correct I believe that most like if we get to the end of the year or close to end it would be wrapped into the 2026 related stuff um for is this um our sort of feedback and comments something that you would like us to present to you tonight or do we have some additional time to get you comments and ideas via email before town or before the city council well typically you would do it tonight but you know I'm certainly open if you have some thoughts you can sure forward it to me and and we see if we can add that to the list and forward it on to the city council yes and I I would suggest you all take and put some thought to it right um just like us you're in touch with the community right you you drive through the community you you see what planning can do to help a community right and uh you talk to people out there in the community right so this is the that groundup approach you guys have the opportunity through your work

schedule documents next year to to to have some influence on on those things that that the council brings forward right and it's not just a matter of council sending them down to you guys for your opinion on it's actually you guys sending it up to council and saying hey these are things that we think that we as a Planning Commission can help with guidance to the council uh whether it comes down to long range planning uh the comp plan you know is going to be obviously a a big big uh document for next year and is really going to lay the groundwork for the the next 25 years for sure and and in what the community looks like I mean we're going to be talking about things like uh possibly you know 10-story buildings in our downtown I mean that could be a you know a subject of discussion right and that is is is going to affect uh the community and you know those are things are all going to come in front of you folks right for your input but um I I'd certainly suggest you all put some time and thought to it and if there is something that uh you know you think of get it over to Mr Co so we can get it up to us so that we can all be working together uhu and and I just want to comment on on some of those bylaw changes it's not just that the planning commissions it's most of the commissions we've been asking to to have a little bit more of a a Str guideline for the appointment process you know we we we want to be there to to support and and and and and work together and and we thought uh like Mr coou said it was kind of Loosey Goosey how things were being done and and we thought we we need to treat this all a little bit more serious we certainly take the comments uh I can speak for myself on Council we take the comments that come from this commission very seriously right and we want to make sure you all have all the tools you need to to help give us the valuable guidance you give us so please please take some time and if there's something that you guys need added onto that work calendar something you guys want to discuss

please get that info over to Mr cool thank you absolutely very good I would just like to suggest that we bring this item back formally on the Planning Commission agenda for next on March um the March meeting agenda because I think the message that we do send a council needs to be a collective message coming from the Planning Commission as a body and not individual um ideas although if you bring individual ideas and as a body all agree um we would still forward them on but we'd like to get a collective um agreement from the group about the message that gets sent and that recommendation if if could we get like uh as soon as we get everything sent into to you to compile and maybe possibly get it sent out to us so we can review it like you do with our minutes and everything um so that it's not that few days before and that gives us some time to think about it and uh and then it's ready for us I mean are we voting on this agenda is that why we're postponing it or just to wait to get everything added in before Mr MC takes it to the mayor it's not a it's not an item I believe that requires a a vote it's the annual report is essentially a summary of all of the work that you guys completed over the previous year a summary of the work that we plan to work through your this body with over the coming year and any recommendations that you guys would like to make to city council uh for example last year the recommendation from this group um was to focus more on some shortterm solutions for housing needs as well as the long-term Solutions we're working on through the comp plan that was something

they felt very strongly about and as a group they discussed it and wanted that to be put into the document as a formal recommendation to council's part of their report um in the past we have not had any recommendation come from Planning Commission because I just don't know people were sure what that meant how it impacted council's procedures or their the things that they were going to work on so um it's kind of a new category of Engagement we haven't had in the past um so I think the idea is just you guys can filter all your thoughts to us through email we can just list them out on a document that comes back with this item at the next meeting that gives you guys some time to think about all the different ideas that have been suggested and then as a group to decide which ideas you think should be moved forward or just to discuss them in case maybe they need to be um further embellished if you want to add if you see an idea that's great and going to add to it that gives you all the the time to talk about it so if that sounds good we can certainly just take your suggestions VIA mail email and then com combine them and add them into your material for next meeting yeah I think that's a great plan so we'll we'll be on the lookout for that and yeah for us be sure to give it some thought and should be good all right any further questions any other comments related to our annual report okay the last item on the annual report is the rundown of all the meetings that you've held in the last year and so it just has a summary of of the action that took place at each of those meetings and that's just for your reference in case you want to go back look to see what happened very good thank

you okay so we'll move on to our our next item which is our discussions on zoning code amendments presented by senior planner Ray linderberg associate planner Nolan grunska and Senior planner Den lver take it away thank you members of the Planning Commission um as you mentioned we're going to be doing kind of a tag team here so I'm going to start off with the two uh definitions and I will pass it on to Nolan I will take him the Magic Remote and all that stuff so we can do our presentation on the screen here uh essentially uh my two are going to be uh two definitions of the uh Oak Harbor Municipal Code section 1908 and um there we go um the first definition being the building line and the building line definition is there because that's what uh we use to kind of determine what has to meet setbacks uh from property lines and right now uh we have uh everything has to meet the setbacks or has to follow the setback restriction except for Eaves essentially your roof overhangs um we had a uh home builder come in and ask us if that was something that we could uh possibly look at changing because they had houses that have fireplaces that project um out from the walls um it's something that other communities typically have is there are certain uh kind of exceptions to the setback regulations and so uh they ask that we take a look at that and and determine if that's something that we could do um we did take a look at it uh and it seems reasonable to us uh there are other communities that allow for those projections and so what we are con uh considering here is to change the definition of building line that right now just says essentially Eaves and include that red letter uh uh information in there including architectural features such as cornices

Sills fireplaces chimneys and flu open beams trellises um of those exemptions only fireplaces chimneys and flu can be extended down to the ground so in other words all those other things you know project out from the house you have a cornice you have an eve you have things like that that's above the ground um the one thing that we did want to talk about a little bit was the 3ot projection that's kind of a lot um it's a little bit more than than a lot of other communities have uh 2 ft is your typical 18 in is also kind of typical um we'd actually recommend that that go to 2T instead of 3T because then if you do have two of these fireplaces that are adjacent to each other on opposite sides of the property line you still have at least 6 feet from the houses between them which is a good number that we've utilized uh for kind of separation of things before so I think that uh based on that we would um you know make the recommendation that we change the include the red letter uh information in there and also to change the the distance to 2 ft um so that is our recommendation on that one um the second definition that we have for you tonight is the private Nursery School child daycare center or kindergarten that's a mouthful um but essentially what uh this had in there was a uh a statement that um put forth essentially a a regulation in our definitions and and the previous one did too it's it's awkward um we prefer not to do it but we've done it here and uh what we would like to do is to defer um this square footage calculation uh for outdoor play area defer that to the state the state has a requirement ours is actually a little bit stricter we would like to um defer that to the state department that takes care of kids and child care and schools and that sort of thing because they're the experts and we're not um so what we would prefer to do is to strike some of that information out of there and

include the the red text uh that's within that definition there uh to make that change and then if the state ever changes their requirements we will just defer to that as well they do all the inspections they have all the the regulations that go along with the interior uh square footage requirements bathrooms all that sort of thing so it just makes more sense to just allow them to uh run that essentially and then we will just do the permitting of it and then they can figure out the the square footage and all that that way our applicants can just have it all in one place it makes a lot more streamlined so what I will do is pass this off to Nolan now and he can take care of his uh information on the project permit review thank you Ray thank you Council or commission rather um so I'll be discussing uh necessary changes to our project permit review procedures um Senate Bill 5290 which was passed into law made amendments to the local project review act uh chapter 3670 BR RCW um primarily to add new requirements um changing the timelines uh for review to increase the timeliness and predictability of local projects um from the side of the applicants uh this is requiring us to make updates to uh section 1820 of our code and because we are making updates to section 1820 we found it appropriate to um simultaneously remove a series of vestigial references to other processes in the same section in our code to improve the clarity of the section so amendments include changes to the timelines as required by S SP 5290 as well as updates to definitions and exemptions that were also covered in 5290 to make our code

consistent we are looking to remove references to the uh defunct pip and PBP permit process as was referenced on the docket those zones no longer exist we are looking to remove reference to the counter complete review procedure which is is obsolete now that we have digital submissions and there's no such procedure provided for in uh the local project review act um the updated timelines so just to be specific about what s SP 5290 is changing um it now requires us so currently our article or section 1820 has a flat 120-day review timeline for type two three and four permits the changes required by S SP 5290 is that we change our timelines to 65 days for projects that do not require public notice so our type one projects 100 days for projects requiring public notice which would be our type two projects and increasing the timeline to 170 days for projects requiring ing a public hearing it also requires us to consider days specifically as calendar days whereas the current sections occasionally ambiguous as to whether they may be calendar days or business days these are the sections where amendments are proposed um there are in the intervening time between when we submit these documents and now we have received a couple of wording adjustments on advice from our legal team we have also found couple of additional vestigal references to permit processes um in two additional sections of 1820 so the next presentation after mine will concern the consolidation of the land clearing and Grading processes and if that moves forward there will be a bunch of references to the land clearing permit process which may not exist in the near future so we proposing

to get rid of those if that is packaged with these amendments um as well as a reference to an accessory dwelling permit process which uh is not which does not exist in our um the processing for an accessory dwelling unit that's just in in practice that's just a regular building permit so those changes in addition to what's been supplied to you or what's proposed as amendments to 1820 and I'm here to answer any questions you have thank you very much um does anyone have any comments for Nolan first and then we can ask any questions to Ry if we would like sitting down okay um my only question or sort of comment would be for those timelines that got shorten to 100 days or 65 days is that concerning for you all do you think that that it will be a tough sell to get that actually sorted out or do you think that your perent times will be okay with that um well I can only express my own opinion um I I'm not too concerned about it for two reasons the first of all um only the type two process is really significantly shortened and type two permit processes are usually not particularly complicated the the second reason is that there is an additional provision regarding how time is counted that stipulates when the applicant is notified that there are changes needed for their application to be compliant the timeline kind of stops so to speak and after a certain time elapses where the ball is in their Court there's additional time added to our timeline so if there's a back and forth between us and the applicant that extends the time

period we're not going to get docked for that um so I'm not concerned um really the only thing to look out for is stuff that slips between the cracks and that's just a matter of of making sure that our our review process is is tight it's always an ongoing battle with that very good okay thank you very much any questions for Rey thank you Mr chairman uh Rey uh real quick on the eaves for the shortening from 3 feet to two foot yeah my question is is on houses yeah pretty standard is 2T some are 18 like you said inches but uh where I think that this might run into an issue by putting this on a on a on a uh structure is your A-frame houses those Eaves are not 2 feet long at the end those are typically a lot longer because they're such a steep angle that they drape a lot lower do you think that that would have implications on the A-frame houses um I don't recall ever permitting an A-frame house um and that includes uh when I've worked here and in other places they're they're an architectural type that's kind of you know specific um and not really kind of suburban like our development pattern is but I would say that there could be you know a carve out for for a situation like that and to be perfectly honest too if somebody wants to to build an A-frame house I think that the the real reason that we're going through this right now is because we we intentionally narrowed the minimum lot sizes and we made things a lot smaller and uh a lot of Builders are are maximizing you know they have a 40ft wide lot so they have a 30ft wide house

and that's what's in their catalog and that's what we're seeing a lot of is just kind of plans that come from a catalog and they build them all over the place and so any variation to that where they have a fireplace box that sticks out or bay window or you know some sort of post for a porch or something like that that's what we're looking at um if somebody wants to come in with an A-frame house and it and I think the thing is too is it depends on the structure like if it has if it goes all the way down to the ground with the actual posts you know I think we would cross that bridge when we get there I don't honestly seeing it being an issue I I think that that in the long run the eaves sticking out 3T from the house is so atypical and then what you have in that situation with our typical development pattern right now is houses that then become 4T apart on the eaves and that gets a little kind of nervous you know so okay I I guess my second question would be is why would we handcuff oursel because wouldn't that then become a caseby casee basis um and only reason I say that is I have seen a few A-frames uh in out out in the county not necessarily in the city limits and I don't know of any A-frames in the city limits but you know if someone has the parcel for it and they have the clearance and something happens and they want to build an A-frame why would we restrict would we be able to since it's now written into our building codes would we be able to on a Case by case basis allow them to extend it for whatever purpose it may be I just hate to see us handcuff ourselves where we have to tell somebody no because it's our code mhm but that it doesn't make sense for that particular person just a set back so so he just corrected me on something then so you

can have a 4 foot Eve you just can't have you just have to have a setback of more than right I mean so many feet from the other house so if if you have that distance you could have a 20ft Eve that's not going to happen but let's just say that that's the case then so you're talking about the setback from the other property correct well I mean what so what we would consider here if if you're if you're talking about a and this is getting way into hypotheticals right if you're talking about an A-frame house that has vertical walls and then a roof on that we would measure from the vertical walls what the setback is from there going down you know if it projects 3 ft out and you talk about the angle that would actually be a pretty significant you know drop there uh I think honestly in this situation we're trying to plan for the 99th percentile that the A-frame house is not in that and that we can probably move forward pretty safely without being too concerned about it somebody wants to build an A-frame house they can still do it they just need to meet the setback okay thank you appreciate it and just so everybody else he heard what I said it it just it's just uh you're restricted to 2 feet into the setback there's a 5ft setback from the property line required you can protrude into that set back 2 feet so you can be 3T off the property line like you say it could be a 20ft Eve but in the end that Eve can't stretch any more than 3 ft off the property line in other words 2 feet into the required setback the vertical wall can't be any closer than 5 ft from the sideline but that Eve could extend 2 feet further into the setback than what the normal setback is does that make sense we tried to be very specific with that to make make sure that it's not people just kind of taking advantage of that as a loophole to extend living space much closer than it should be because 5 ft is you know I think a reasonable setback um unless they're doing a PRD or something like that and

there's other special conditions that we have attached to it which you can still do um but this this is more for your just kind of mainstream everyday single family house one more quick question um with the setback let's say someone meets the 5 foot setback for example right um and the chimney is excluded from meeting part of that setback as long as it still maintains 2 ft from the line or whatever the 3ot from the property line what about uh one of the other exclusion areas is what about people that have uh gas Genera generators are those part of the exclusion those are not addressed in our code um we generally view like air conditioning compressors and Generator and things like that as not part of the house so they can essentially be there um you know and it's one of those things that we try and make sure that it's not causing noise impacts to the neighbors and things like that but that's something that we don't dive too deeply in the Weeds on perfect thank you any further questions go for it R I apologize uh what is the Crux of the comments or situ ations coming to you for this is it just the architect has put in their plans the home builders plans that this is where the fireplace is going to go it doesn't meet that 5ot requirement because they've written the lines too [Music] close so what problem are we trying to fix other than or is it just contractors or home builders trying to make more money so they can have a few more feet in the house whatever so to answer that um honestly in the long run yes it is so that contractors can make more money you

know to to make their home more livable or or whatever it is um it will apply to everybody um it's not just one Contra contractor who's going to make more money off of this but uh in the long run and honestly this is kind of a correction if you will we went for a long time where we had five foot setbacks and 12T setbacks on the sides and you could determine which one it would be but in in a 7200 ft lot we went from a the 7200 ft lot down to a de facto 3200t minimum because we did 40ft width and 80ft depth as long as you meet those minimums we don't have a minimum lot size but we do so when we did that we also reduced the sidey yard setbacks down to 5 ft on both sides when you start combining all these things together it does become more difficult to find house plans that fit into that space because when you get a 40ft 80t wide lot essentially what you have is a 30t by uh what is it um 30t X 40t building envelope and so that's kind of tight especially when you're putting a two-car garage in there and you're putting a front porch in it and things like that so what we did is we allowed for living space to project forward in the front yard um so that you have uh a front porch or a living space or something like that in front of a garage so you don't just see a big wall of garages down the street um that was one thing we did to try and improve the appearance but one of the things that we're we're trying to do now is allow a little bit of flexibility so that people can have a fireplace or they can have you know uh some sort of architectural projection something that makes the house look more livable or you know look nicer or more livable or things like that so this is kind of a correction you know we we cut everything down so tight and then we're saying well wait a minute we should probably allow for this too and it is a typical thing in many communities to allow for this and we're we're bringing into line with

that very good okay um one comment before we go to clearing grading for the private Nursery School Child Care daycare kindergarten definition would it be useful to be more specific saying set forth by either like an RCW citation or a you know Department of Education or that type of thing I don't know if it matters but that's food for thought I potentially but also potentially if they change the the number of the RCW or something that we have to change it and maybe we don't know that they changed it and all of a sudden it's changed and I I think it is honestly better to be a little bit vague in this situation because it puts the onus on the applicant to do it cool very good okay clearing and Grading go for it so this will be Denis fever but I'm going to operate his slides for him all right take it away Dennis oh no no so I'm going to jump in here for Dennis I'm told that he's having some technical problems that uh the other end so first slide uh land clearing and Grading code Amendment uh this is the administrated administration of the land clearing and grading permit process this is going to be prompted by this code Amendment land clearing review and permitting under Oak Harbor Municipal Code 1947 has been under the jurisdiction of the development services department uh while grading regulations are under the public works department uh the engineering division so two different departments kind of administering a lot of the same thing so next slide please is this the next one often a

review of land clearing permits and Grading permits involve several common concerns uh those can involve vegetation retention storm water conveyance and erosion protection in addition State specific uh level review and approval uh Washington Department of Natural Resources and the Washington department of ecology is required in that case the coordination is always performed by the engineering staff which is in the public works department this amendment will combine the land clearing and Grading regulations and procedures within one Oak Harbor Municipal Code chapter 1947 and it will provide the review authority to the city engineer or their designate it is anticipated that this will streamline the application process for most applicable land disturbing activities so we think it's a good deal uh we think it's going to help the development community and it's going to be uh positive development this is the uh next steps this is the general uh framework that we're going to run by the draft documents uh going on in February the sepid checklist publication in early March Planning Commission and city council draft review in March uh in the Department of Commerce 60-day notification that's required with all text amendments that'll be in early April by mid April we'll have the uh determination of nonsignificance on the sea done and then the ordinance preparation will take place at the end of April our legal team will review the final ordinance and then the Planning Commission you'll see that again in May and city council by the 1st of June so this is a chance to consolidate a lot of our processes and make them work better for the

customer very good thank you any questions comments for clearing grading yep thank you I just wanted to jump in and make sure everybody understood the difference between clearing and Grading right um imagine uh going into a forest and uh you're cutting down trees and you're cutting down brush that's clearing uh gradings when you touch the dirt so basically what's gone on in the past is one department has been issuing the permits review for cutting down trees and another apartment's been issuing the permits if you want to touch any of the dirt and so this is just kind of bringing it all into one and I think the current rules are uh 500 cubic yards if I'm not mistaken triggers the the more extensive grading permit than if you're um moving less than 500 yards a combination of cut uh and fill so there's some regulations in within that that you know trigger different things for storm water and stuff but but right now it's been Mr CO's office uh that gives you permission to cut down trees and then it's been the engineering department that gives you permission to touch the the soil and this is putting it all together correct summation thank you very good quick question for you Mr mol uh do does the engineering department have the manpow women power however you want to say it uh to meet this task and take on this additional uh from the other uh program office um thank you for the question uh that's always a good question to ask if you're transferring duties to another department do they have the ability to do the job I think the brain power question is a definite yes as far as

capacity on the staff they have a lot of interest in doing it so I think they'll make it work uh you know everybody always wants more resources and I think uh by consolidating it all in one place I think it'll go more efficiently and so I think I think it'll be fine thank you sir any further questions okay with that we'll thank you all for your presentations and we'll move along so our next item is our 2020 five major update to the comprehensive plan presented by our principal planner Kat kamak all right good evening CAC ma principal planner um here to present an update on the comprehensive plan uh update for uh 2025 um we have included in the packet a couple of memos uh related related to climate change and climate resiliency um I have a short presentation to kind of summarize these two memos uh that are included in the packet uh this will be the focus uh of our uh update discussion tonight um so without further Ado I will jump right in so the two memos that have been provided to Planning Commission are um a summary of the climate hazards and a a policy Gap analysis and a summary of the potential climate impacts risks and vulnerabilities sorry um so the climate change element so this is a new element that uh we're considering as part of a major update

and this is part of a house bill 1181 uh that will considering these inclusions into our comprehensive plan we have received a grant from Department of Commerce for this work uh kimley horn that's helping with our update with the comprehensive plan is also helping us with this update and um what we're trying to do is uh include a climate resiliency element into the comprehensive plan there's couple parameters that Define how we do it we got to do it equitably equitably enhanc resiliency and we should try and avoid or substantially reduce the impacts that we um adverse impacts that we identify uh basically this um element is supposed to be a guidance document for us to use climate modeling to identify and prepare for natural hazards uh EXA by climate change so um what these two memos have done basically the Consultants have done is they have used guidance from the Department of Commerce on how to address this house bill so the state has given some toolkits on how to uh evaluate the documents how to uh document what the assets are how to do uh the analysis um and so our Consultants have helped with that and these two documents just provide us the first summary of their exercise of reviewing all our documents and putting it into this tool and now we have to take a look at it we provide feedback to them kind of refine it and before we go into our final comp plan we refine policies and so on so this is just a first draft taking a look at it and so um uh I'll go over some of the uh highlights of the summary uh of the

findings of these documents so um what are the um climate hazards most relevant to okaa so there's several climate hazards the hazards that are applicable in Eastern Washington are different than the ones that are applicable to the Western Washington communities and so they do an analysis to determine what's relevant to okaba and the three climate hazards most relevant to okaba are extreme precipitation flooding and sea level rise um we uh again are as we uh talk through these we can identify more of the hazards uh that we encounter one of the feedback that we got from Public Works was high winds uh you know and all the damage that comes along with that and so you know we'll make a note of that and see if we can include policies even though that's not identified as a separate Hazard by itself it's definitely is something that we're impacted by and then the um second summary is um about identifying all the assets that the community has uh such as a waste for treatment facilities our um religious and cultural institutions our educational facilities um our um roads infrastru structure uh grocery stores medical facilities they take a inventory of all that we have they kind of match it up with the hazard that's identified and then they kind of evaluate it on how sensitive uh these um uses are to the hazard uh what's the capacity to adapt uh what's the probability of a hazard happening what's the magnitude to which they can adapt to so all of these are given some scores uh in the tool so they've done that work as well and and that's what these summary documents uh provide for us so um what have uh this

toolkit identified for us as vulnerable assets uh it has identified uh our Naval wouldbe Air Station uh this is something that we know in our comp plan that is an asset that we want to protect and as you know there are a lot of policies in our comprehensive plan to try and uh be uh a very good neighbor to NAS would be and the climate change and resiliency document is confirming that it is an important asset and that we should work with them uh in making sure that that uh asset stays uh in Nyland County the uh document also or the analysis also identifies the varied Shoreline that we have and that we should study it uh if you look at uh the shoreline along o cover it's varied we've got the marina we've got um uh Ro we got pineer way we've got some um Parks we've got single family homes we've got um Wetlands we've got Bluffs so it's varied and these are all have their own risks and so we have to study them and make sure that we have appropriate policies to protect all these assets wastewater treatment uh facility has been identified as something that's a vulnerable asset um and and we'll have to probably develop policies to try and protect it and plan for future uh changes um the water line that comes uh from the city of anoris that's a Lifeline for the island uh and for the city that's what differentiates okah hub from the rest of the communities uh on Woodby Island and uh the ability to accommodate population and growth is dependent on that water line um and therefore it is of everybody's interest to make sure that that water line stays and it's also an interest to make sure

that uh IT Supplies water to na as wouldbe so um these are long-term um uh plans that we should think about uh how do we maintain that and how do we replace that infrastructure if needed so that's been identified and then our health would be Health medical facilities have also been identified as critical facilities that uh should be looked at uh um and um have resilience Clauses for so those have been identified in the as in the toolkit we have public input processes and we're going through this review process where we'll get feedback and so this is a document that will keep changing uh but this is kind of um where we are with the with the analysis uh currently um so before we jump the questions there are some recommended actions that have come out from this toolkit these are not the a full list of recommendations these are just uh the beginning of what's been identified with our initial analysis like I said we'll keep working uh with the consultants and the community and as we get input we'll uh we'll we'll add to these recommended actions so some of the things that have been uh identified is of course some development standards that need to be updated in order to protect these infrastructures so we'll be looking at that um update evacuation routes they've looked at all our uh Emergency Management plans and and noted that we need to probably uh update some of these routes uh strengthen the emergency uh action plan uh for Nas would be update the emergency water supply plan uh again this goes back to the water supply water line from manac Cordis uh we can look at that again to make sure that it's we stay resilient again we talked about studying the shoreline and the Very

sheline um uh challenges that are presented and also update our sewer system plan again related to our uh water treatment facility and what would be the long-term plan for it given that uh we may likely see some uh changes in the climate that could impact it so these are the things that are currently on the table um and we collect just sharing it with the Planning Commission and getting feedback uh on a side note uh the work that's being done with the county and the ug is still uh moving along it's on a different timeline uh we have uh some mediation um Services set up between us and the county uh through the Department of Commerce to look at our ug areas we have uh differences in perception in terms of how the ug um uh should develop and I think uh these are things that uh we are uh open to go and chat and make sure that we are on Common Ground before we move forward so um this that's on a different timeline but we're continuing to work there's a joint meeting between the city council and the County Commissioners on February 11th and that'll be um a key meeting that tells us or gives us Direction on uh how we move forward with those ug discussions and how we move forward with the rest of the comp plan so while we're working on that we'll keep moving on the climate element um and uh and keep moving the document forward so with that I will open it up for questions discussions uh comments and any thoughts that the commission may have okay thank you very much anyone have any initial comments questions go for it thanks Mr chairman C you could not have come up with this at a better

time and the reason why I say that with everything that's happened in La North Carolina these right here the analysis that you're going to be running I think it's important that the public know that we do have current emergency action plans in place for emergencies but this also shows them that we're looking at how to improve it uh for those emergency cases so thank you for presenting this tonight uh just on a side note I had reached out to the fire chief uh because of the LA fires wondering what is our emergency action plan do we have one and yes we have one that works in correlation with the between the city the county the state uh so it it's massive and uh it was nice to hear him explain it so uh thank you for presenting this tonight and right now I don't have any questions but I do think that this is a very positive way of moving forward with this so thank you very good CAC so you said the Public Works said that you needed to add high wind events is that going to we add it or you just said they said that that should be in there so that's a feedback that they gave now that's not a hazard that's been identified as one of the hazards in the toolkit but I bet we'll what we'll do is We'll add policies to deal with responses to high wind or to avoid circumstances where high wind can potentially you know lead to damaging structures or assets so we can include policies that can affect you know how we plant trees where we plant trees those kind of things could be impacted by those kind of things undergrounding of uh facilities we want that uh policy as we have subdivisions that are being built we want all the utilities to be underground so th th these are things that will affect those type of policy calls when we um when we do development

review and Implement so the way you're saying that it seems like the majority of the plan is simply the the high winds generally tend to cause the power to go out which trees falling down seems to be the Crux of that situation but the majority of this is the waters the flooding and Fires for emergency AC evacuation plans not necessarily just the what is the uh what is the result of the high winds trees falling down and L of power yes we're I mean this is basically policy to help us um plan for uh dealing with these um hazards now we cannot avoid them um but we could be resilient when we do have them and so um if we have policy so for example one of the the policies you know is just to look at our water system plan and in the past we may have looked at Water System plan and how efficient it could be or how we can reduce the rates so we kind of take out parts of the the system that are maybe not in use so we haven't used in a while but if you look at resiliency we may think of it differently we may want water reservoirs we want to maybe protect our wells maybe you know if something happens we have 3 days worth water supply for cover right now can we make that more can can we become more resilient so you think of a system very differently if you have policies related to so those are the kind of things I don't know if I answer the question it's not just about responding to emergency but generally we're going to try and become more

resilient knowing that we'll be faced with some of these disasters coming apologize last question and this isn't in there but having seen this the last few days and gotten the call every every other day for the last 3 weeks the pg& flex events I'm sorry the pg& E Flex events P psse sorry oh the PS PSE Flex events yeah yeah what do we have going forward as far as requirements for I guess them either upgrading their system for us building more houses requiring more electricity whatever what do we have have as far as or how are we working with them to do that so that we don't have the power going out because too many people are drawing whatever yeah I mean I'm not I mean I I don't know what our public works department deals with them in terms of infrastructure wise but from development regulations wise when we have new development we look at how new infrastructure is installed the old overall grid requirement for power companies to operate on Woodby Island is a more Regional uh system than Only Oak Harbor um and so I think there are requirements from the state for PSC to have redundancy in their system and backups in the system uh that we rely on the state to have those requirements in place because there are public utility they serve a larger area they will serve a larger public service so they have goals and plans in place that they have to submit to the state in order to um to make sure that power is uninterrupted as much as possible for the island um so we I think we rely on those uh requirements

and plans for psse to continually make sure that the system uh is upgraded and that's for the power I think but I think there's other policy uh areas infrastructure policies that the city can work with that's like broadband land and things like that that make other types of economic systems more sustainable um so you try and work with policies such as that to give you resiliency and the ability to communicate uh even during disaster so different ways of doing it and different systems have different policies totally agree I just I I know plenty of people in California that deal with those rolling blackouts as they go through through that and I just don't want us to get into a position where we have to deal with that all because psse wasn't doing their job or whatever so yeah I mean different communities and different regions operate utilities differently I mean there are some cities that don't operate um Wastewater facilities they have other districts that do them common districts that'll serve multiple jurisdictions and that's not a city function so they'll have agreements with them to have certain requirements out of them so every city is a little different some cities have their own power management uh we don't and so we rely on PSC to do that good questions very good okay any other thoughts questions um one question or comment that I had is I it would be useful from my background to know a little bit more about the analysis for like snow pack and drought I think that especially knowing like our water comes from scatchet River and that is you know

there's it's not in wbe Island it's not in okaro boundaries but that is sort of secondary and tertiary effects of resilience I think that would be another useful thing to consider of like potentially right what policies we can enact here to make ourselves a little bit more resilient on that front but also if there are I guess more Regional things that we can do in Partnership to ensure water is available and that I think that's a useful framework to look through as well you bring up a good point I think there'll be a lot of policies that we have to consider to regionally support policies that will benefit wab because um as more and more population moves to Western Washington uh we will need those um uh we need the support that all the other communities are doing their part just like how we're doing our climate resiliency and trying to be resilient uh the same requirement is of anoris and the same requirement of Mount Vernon and hopefully they're you know closer to some of these um assets uh rivers and water resources than we are and uh so regionally we need to be better partners and in dealing with our uh Regional uh neighbors to make sure that they have policies in place to protect the resources that Supply us as well so good point so we'll have Regional issues to consider as we go with this climate and that's what the climate element we cannot do it alone some of this you know no matter what policy no matter how high of a goal we need the region um to to help some uh move some of these goals forward you know so very good and does is that Prim

is that coordination like in infrastructure primarily a public works uh Focus right are they the ones that talk about water lines and partnership and all that type of stuff yep it's so public workot to me cool all right any final thoughts any final questions all right thank you very much thank you all right and it sounds like our last discussion item is our design regulations and guidelines revisions presented by our senior planner Ray lindenberg thank you uh Mr chairman and the members of the Planning Commission I will apologize first off I gave you a outdated or incorrect attachment one um I'm going to actually put it up on the screen here and share it with with you real quick to show you what it is that I wanted you to see um feel free to disregard uh the uh attachment one that you got there and I will put this one up if I can Tim I'm not sure if I have the right there we go see if that works yay it worked okay so this is the original version of the uh design regulations and guidelines document drg uh that was reopt or re revised in November of 2019 um in that we had a section for multif family residential design amongst other sections um the state uh when they went through and adopted some of those recent house bills including 1110 uh stated that uh design or and approval of multifamily and affordable and middle housing cannot be more difficult than it is for res or for single family residential and one of those aspects is design review so what we decided to do rather than getting rid of multif family design

review is to bring in single family design review because the other aspect of that is when we went to that smaller lot size that we talked about a lot of developers um no longer utilize the PRD process and the PRD process brought an entire subdivision to you to the Planning Commission and you would review not only the the layout of the subdivision but the design of the houses within that subdivision and the reason reason that prds were popular is it because it allowed for smaller Lots so when we're allowing for smaller Lots anyway it takes away that ability for us to look at the design of the houses and we would still like to be able to do that at least to a certain extent so what we've done is we've come up with a draft um that has instead of calling it multif family residential design it just says residential design and it has subheadings underneath that those subheadings include multif family and then the the multif family and talking about the buildings multif family talking about the landscaping and the people spaces and then also talking about how cars are handled in those uh neighborhoods and then we do single family and we have the same breakdown so I'm going to go through uh just real quickly how that all whoops how that all lines up I accidentally skipped too far I need to move things around is there any way you can make that bigger I can't read that for I I will do that as well yes thank you thank you well that didn't work I might not be able to do that I I will go through as I try and make this work packet this one is in your packet yeah this yeah this revised one I'm sorry the revised one is in the packet thank you Dave um so essentially what we have like I said is instead of just having your multif family we made it so that it has both oh man my fingers are too fat for this

that's not working at all I'm just going to talk so what I did is I I made it so that there were um those divisions for each the multif family and the single family there are standards for how we handle the design of the buildings and um it talks about some of the potential uh of moving some of the l living space to the front of the house and having front porches and things like that and that was one of the things that we did in reducing that front yard setback to living space and to front porches was to encourage that so that we don't have walls of garages as we go down residential streets um the second aspect of it is Landscaping in people spaces and making sure that we have um you know landscaped areas in front of those houses it's not all just pavement um one of the things I think that we should include in there that uh is not specifically called out yet is the requirement to plant a tree and with every single family home I think that is something that we should be doing because you can drive through some of our neighborhoods and you can see neighborhoods are significantly different visually when there is not Landscaping included with the house and at least to require a tree a single tree um will move that in the in the direction that we need to and I don't want to get to a point where we're mandating all these things I don't want to mandate that we have X number of shrubs and this many flowers and whatever else I would say a tree because a tree is impactful and a tree is something that people kind of put off to the last you know they might put some flowers in front of their house or some grass or something like that but trees are a little bit more of a kind of a thing that people don't necessarily do because they're a little bit more you know uh work honestly so um that's one of the things that I think that we should put in there and this is like I said this is an early draft uh this is something we talked about in the past probably about 2 years ago uh 3 years ago now none of you were here and so that's why we're bringing it back

um another thing that we want to talk about was cars and again that's to to push those garages to the back um you have at least a 20ft driveway length and that's to allow for people to park their vehicles in front of their house if they've chosen to use those garages as a recck room or storage space um there is still room to park the car rather than overhanging a sidewalk or requiring that we have uh street parking significant street parking um one of the things that we'll be looking at and this is I will be perfectly honest a stop Gap measure before we get to form based code and what we want to do is we want to make sure that if there are more subdivisions that come in in the next year or so that we have a way to um be able to review some of this stuff because right now we're using sepa sea works but it's kind of clunky um so we would prefer to be able to have it in here and this will probably you know some of these Concepts will get folded into our form base code but we're working through it um you know kind of in advance of that uh one of the things that we're looking at also is just the idea of possibly reducing parking requirements and that doesn't specifically go into this but um it is important from the standpoint of we spend a lot of time worrying about design when it comes to cars you know we are designing our entire subdivisions around cars because we have parking spaces in a garage parking spaces in a driveway we have guest parking spaces we have street parking we have all these things so what's that bicycle parking oh yeah we got to have bicycle parking yeah um but we have all of these requirements that are going along with that so what we're going to try and do is like I said fold that into a form based code at some point this is kind of a stop Gap measure and we will come back with a more fully formed version of it um at a future meeting that we will have you take a look at and um hopefully provide a positive recommendation to our city council to take a look at as well but we wanted to get the process restarted um again it was originally we had started this process because of the

smaller lots and because we felt like it was important to get some of that review and that design criteria um put into into place so we can review against it um but the uh the state uh requirements that came in the last year or so have kind of pushed that along as well so um that's why we're here today uh I'm open to any comments or questions or concerns and we can go from there thank you very much okay questions comments concerns I I will say Ry having to uh deal with this the the one thing I I love the tree idea I dislike the tree idea in the fact that especially when you're dealing with the commercial Parts there wasn't forethought back in the day so a lot of the sidewalks get messed up because of the tree roots um and then it becomes darn near impossible to to get said tree out and then fix the concrete um trying to just get the concrete around my place done is hard I I have the answer to that and it's called the Seattle Street tree list and um what what was done in the past uh the sins of the past right we planted trees and they were great and then they started buckling up the sidewalk I I remember when I was a kid living far away from here that there was a mulberry tree right next to the sidewalk in our neighbor's place and it made a great jump for your bike cuz it moved the sidewalk by a good foot um we have this street tree list now and there it is organized by color of leaves and shape of the tree and how tall it gets if it's appropriate for putting under wires and how much it spreads and how much space you need and it is a great resource and we have been using that in the last uh

eight or nine years that I've worked here and so hopefully you know going down the line 40 years from now people won't be cursing us for planting a lot of trees so yeah list great yeah yes you hit the nail on the head just then because I was thinking to myself with the setbacks and everything and having to park a 24t extended bed truck in a driveway that's 20 ft long it's going to hang out but then you said parking on the street so those are Provisions for that but then to have to put a tree in the front how much front space are they going to have or back space with the setbacks I'm just curious so when this comes to fruition if you could possibly provide us like a drawing of two or three dwellings next to one another on what it would kind of look like with the setbacks and the property lines that would be helpful for me I'm more of a visual guy so if you could do that I'd appreciate it cuz I'd just be curious how how it's going to look and and also the type of tree too cuz I'm all about the tree being being there so and I think that you know utilizing that street tree list and and tree shapes and actually thinking in advance rather than just saying oh this will be a cool tree or this is a cheap tree I'm buying you know whatever it is and and thinking about that in advance uh is is important planning ahead and you know getting a tall skinny tree is more appropriate for some of these smaller Lots than getting something that just spreads and spreads and also knowing where your water lines are where you're planting these trees a lot of people don't know so they plant a tree and don't realize that some Roots grow out some grow down some do both and if you don't know you can get yourself in a lot of trouble real quick so that's a good good point Thank you very true yep very good um a couple of questions so and this is a little bit more broad

than just the the design guidelines um so when we're thinking about like accessory dwelling units and backyard Cottage in that type of um form I guess are you foreseeing any particular challenges with like having you know having a 30 foot house on a 40ft wide lot and sort of access and that type of well I me configuration so the thing is and and I I'm going to pick on you when you're 24t long truck um living within your means or living within your space there are going to be neighborhoods and there going to be subdivisions that are not going to be appropriate for an Adu because they have a really small backyard there are going to be houses that are not going to work for your 24t long truck because the driveway is not long enough and those are choices that everybody makes every day right uh so we can work to limit things as much as we can but we don't want to get to the point where we are having so many different regulations and so many restrictions and everything that to me is not the Oak Harbor way that's not how Oak Harbor wants to be I don't believe so we are going to come up with some common sense ideas that are going to move the needle in the right direction um yes maybe someday somebody that lives in uh you know uh Howard's Point wants to build themselves an Adu and we have reduced the parking requirements down to two parking spaces per house instead of two plus the driveway plus the ex you know the additional one and they want to convert their garage into an apartment maybe that works maybe you know maybe we get to the point where we don't have so many vehicles and so much stuff and and everything that that will work or maybe it doesn't but we are going to to cross that bridge when we get there right now

we're trying to get to the point where you know we can have smaller lots more density more people and to be perfectly honest um I will bang this drum until I'm blew in the face um affordable housing is not going to be single family homes so we need to work on density in other places too this is trying to get us in that direction very good and so for the residential design is it right single family and then multif family is two plus there's not any sort of call outs for duplexes triplexes sort of those smaller like middle housing components in this context no um and we did that intentionally uh because we just want to make sure that it's just as even as possible we're not calling out you know if you do a duplex you have to do this because because what we have right now is in our code right now a duplex is essentially the exact same thing as a house in an Adu with the exception of the number of parking spaces required and that's silly there's no reason for that so we want to make it as you know kind of Baseline as possible so that we we can have some flexibility and people will want to do stuff like that very good um I remember I think when Nolan was either first starting or when we first were talking about the idea of a form based code one of the things that I brought up and I'll bring it up again here is it would be and you know this of course like making sure as we look at design guidelines and form based codes and all that it's not a New Concept and so looking at the places that have done it for a while and have those like uh success stories but also where they ran into trouble and taking those things and making sure that we're you know picking the good things and and leaving out the bad I think is a useful tool as we would moved toward sort of design based building for sure yeah I I think that we we're smart and not trying to be the Leading Edge on these things so thanks Josh yeah I think it's

important for all of us to you know hear what Ray is saying here when he's talking that this is a stop Gap measure because I think Ry would be in agreement with me then in the fact that there's a lot we can do with design based code but if we do it while we still have Zone in overlays on top of them it starts to get um non-conducive to what we're trying to do we just build new stuff right and So eventually you know the design based code is going to become the code of the land the the the zoning overlays will go be go away and it will eventually become all about the design the look it's not going to be about how many units it is it's going to not going to be B him and you know whether it's a zone for a single family or for a duplex or a Triplex it's going to be all about how it looks but for now this is going to be a stop Gap uh it's going to make it so that we still have a little bit control over design but we don't want to overly control it yet because we're still controlling it through zoning regulation and having uh the two of them going at the same time could be like I say counterproductive to what we're trying to do but you know certainly the the state forced our hands on this uh we either had to do with all of our do away with all of our design regulations on multif family or we had to implement some design regulations uh for single family to stay within the new uh State guidelines but uh yeah I just want to caution that we don't want to over overthink this or overdo it at this stage because the zoning regulations are still driving uh a lot of this yep exactly right very good okay any final thoughts questions all right thank you very much um with that I think I think we are out of our discussion items and so our next uh item on the agenda is any member comments that we may

have so if you all have anything you'd like to say now is the time all right going once going twice three times happy New Year um so with that our uh next scheduled meeting is going to be March 11 2025 and with that I will I can't remember do we motion to adjourn uh with that I will call for a motion to adjourn I motion to adjourn a second move by Wilson second by fry all those in favor signify by saying I I I