Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Tuesday, May 13th, Oak Harbor Planning Commission meeting. Um, I'm calling the meeting to order at 6:00 p.m. Um, we'll start with a roll call. And it looks like everyone is here in person. And that's the roll call. Um, we'll move on to our minutes for April 8th. I'll give you all a moment to look through those and when you're ready, um, any discussion or a motion to approve those? I make a motion that we approve uh last month's minutes as written. I'll second that motion. Motion by Bradley, second by Fry. Uh all those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. I. All right, motion passes unanimously. Okay, we will move on to our public comment section. During this time, citizens may comment on subjects of interest not on the agenda or agenda items. Please uh ensure to ensure that your comments are recorded properly, state your name clearly and into a microphone. Individual comments will be limited to 3 minutes uh during this 15minute time frame. You can all also submit public comments online at www.ocarbor.govpublic comment uh at

least 2 days uh business days in advance of the planning commission meeting. So it looks like we didn't receive any prior to the meeting and we will move on to folks who are in the room. Seeing none, we'll move to folks online. Seeing none, going once, going twice. Thank you all for your public comments. We'll move right along. So, our um only action discussion item today is our design, regulations, and guidelines and those revisions presented by our senior planner, Ray Lindenberg. So, we will kick that off and thank you for your presentation. Thank you, members of the planning commission. Good evening. Um, I feel like we've probably been through this a few times and I don't want to start getting into the weeds too far, but I do want to give a little background because we are hoping for a uh motion to uh forward this to the city council for approval. So, I'll give you a little bit of background on where we're going with this and uh you got a copy uh in your packet there to review. So, hopefully you had a chance to take a look at that. But what we're doing tonight is taking a look at our design regulations and guidelines document. And that is what uh controls or we review uh the aesthetic qualities of developments against and specifically uh we are looking at uh the residential portion of that document. There are two things that uh kind of pushed this into motion. One of them was the adoption of ordinance 1953 back in 2022 uh which reduced uh the minimum lot size for properties and the setbacks for properties. And the kind of intent for doing that was to streamline the process a little bit so developers didn't have to go through the PRD process. And that's plan residential development. Um planned residential developments uh

allow the city to get certain mitigations for in exchange for reducing lot sizes. Um, and one of those mitigations was the uh ability to review the exterior design of houses, look at the materials and the the architecture of those. And so what we wanted to do was still have a little bit of of say into that, but not too much. We don't want to dig too far again into the weeds as far as design is concerned, especially when it comes to single family homes because we are sensitive to cost increases when you get into higher quality materials and greater architectural uh kind of design standards. So, um we did review uh some uh recent subdivisions through SEPA uh and made sure that the uh aesthetics were of high quality or are uh appropriate quality I should say for what we're looking for in the city and that that was the case in those. However, we wanted to make sure that number one, those uh criteria are outlined in a document. And number two, uh the second reason that we're here is because of the uh recent changes at the state level, the passage of House Bill 1110 stated that we cannot have higher standards or more stringent standards for multif family than we do for single family. And what that is to trying to do at the state level is to kind of even the playing field, make it so that there aren't kind of arbitrary or increased design standards for those more affordable multif family housing projects. We already had multif family standards. So essentially what we did is we tied them together. Um we felt that our multif family standards were uh appropriate, not too egregious or difficult to meet. And so we just kind of tied in our single family uh development standards or excuse me uh design standards and into those multif family standards to make them essentially equivalent. And so that's what we've done with the the draft that we have before you today. Um again because of the mitigation measures uh for increased

density we wanted to make sure that the that was being reviewed and uh and gone over and approved by uh staff when we go through that. So essentially what we have here is also a little bit of reorganization. We moved things around for better readability within the document. That's why we gave you the full document, the original and the new version just so you can get an idea of context and how it all fits together. We included some new graphics, some new photos in there updated uh to kind of show what it is that we're talking about as far as some of these design standards. Um and now we have section five that encompasses all residential design, not just multif family residential design. So, I'll talk about that in a little bit more detail. Um, our single family design concepts uh include architectural interest, but not a specific style of architecture. If somebody wants to do a craftsman style home, they can do that. If they want to do something modern, they can do that, too. Just as long as there's architectural interest and quality design, not just uh boxes. And uh number two there is uh calling out the reduced front yard setback that happened through 1953. And essentially what that is is um we used to have a 20ft standard front yard setback that was for the entire building. Uh what we did is made it so that you can have living space and or a front porch at a 10-ft setback. Uh the driveway in a front-facing garage still has to be 20 ft. And that is to deemphasize the garage itself, but also allow for parking uh to take place in the driveway and not just in the garage. Uh we wanted to make sure that neighborhood context uh is is kind of preserved there and friendly facads. Essentially, you know where that front door is and it's not just a big wall of garage doors as you go down the streets. Um consideration of privacy. One of the things that we do have in there is to uh have people take a look at where the windows are located on the side of the house so you're not just looking straight into uh your neighbor's kitchen window when you're washing the dishes or their bedroom or what have you. Uh, and finally, reducing the domination of automobiles and their storage on the

aesthetics of the neighborhood. Again, that that recessed garage door and trying to make it so that we don't just see lines of cars as we go down our residential streets there. Now, we have a new section specifically adding guidance for narrow lot house design as well. And that was uh from a document that we did a couple years ago right after that ordinance 1953 came out. And that was uh just anformational type document, but we've folded it into the DRG to give a little bit more information, a little bit fleshing out of what it is that we're talking about. Um and re and taking advantage of those reduced uh front yard setbacks to the living space. So that is the original document that I was talking about the narrow lot residential development that we kind of gave as anformational handout. Uh like I said, we incorporated some of that information into the new DRG section five there. So that is uh the extent of what we have. We did talk a little bit about cottage courts and some of the other types of developments, but we did keep it specifically uh single family residentially kind of oriented and then made some minor edits to the multif family section to make sure that everything was consistent so that we don't get in trouble with that house bill 1110. Uh make sure we're consistent on both of those and not creating a situation where we have higher standards for those multif family uh projects. So, what we have tonight is a uh recommendation and a motion uh to take a look at there. If there's any discussion or questions, I am available to answer those. Awesome. Thank you so much. So, yeah. So, we will move on to Does anyone have any questions? Go for it. Real quick, just to clarify on your setbacks uh for residential, say, let's just use the 10- foot setback from your front door. Mhm. Actually, it's more 20, but uh that's a minimum, right? It could be more than that if you have the room. Correct. Absolutely. Yeah. Um you'll

find that in in all of our setbacks, whether it's side, front, rear. That's a minimum. Yes. Other thoughts, other questions? Okay. Um, I have a few. So, we'll start with so in in this right making it cons making the single family residential components consistent with multif family at that throughout this process. Have you all thought about any other changes to multif family or commercial design or other parts of this that you wanted to explore or was this really mostly focused on getting single family components in line to I guess right protect the the uh multif family components as Yeah. Yeah. I the it started out as getting single family in there um because uh the the change to the the code in 19 ordinance 1953 happened in 2022. So it's been 3 years now. Um the House Bill 1110 is more recent. So when we kind of went through this process uh we it kind of made sense to merge them together. So it started out more as a revision to the single family residential but also became a situation where we did go back and review some of the aspects of the uh multif family or multif family residential. We didn't really look at commercial. Um we went through that previously uh back in 2019 when we went over the central business district uh standards. Uh the main street association had proposed some changes to that that we we folded into the existing DRG document. So yes, it started out as a single family residential, became a slightly larger project, but at the same time, uh, you know, it was kind of running in two lanes at the same time, making sure that those two lanes were fairly consistent with each other. There are some some differences just because

of the nature of the beasts, right? Uh, but we we wanted to make sure that we were compliant with House Bill 1110 mostly so we don't get in trouble with the state. And that's, you know, just the reality of it, honestly. For sure. And I guess can you talk a little bit more about like the a lot of my upcoming questions are going to talk are going to ask more about like how this document and it works in practice, right? I'll get to that eventually, but I I'm curious about sort of the the thought process of why increase regulations and guidelines for single family houses to meet those multif family standards instead of reducing multif family standards to meet single f or to like be, you know, in that same vein of less restrictive in line with the single family. Yeah, that's a really good question. Um to be perfectly honest uh our multif family standards are pretty easy to meet. Um they are not uh specific on architectural styles. They aren't specific on a lot of detail stuff that some uh design regulations are design guidelines are. Uh so we felt it was appropriate to kind of mirror those. And to be perfectly honest, um I have not in my almost 11 years here seen a single family house permit come in that wouldn't meet these standards. Um I have seen very few multif family that didn't meet the standards and we were easily able to get it there. And usually what it is is we want to see you know articulation in the roof line. We don't want to have a ridge line that's 100 ft long that's just one solid line. So we have them take it halfway through and you know offset part of the building. And so a lot of that you know is easily kind of negotiated out in the process when we do multif family. It's in the site plan process. Generally we say hey look this doesn't meet our uh design

regulations and guidelines standards. You need to articulate uh this portion of the wall or the ridge line. Um put in uh some sort of break up in the wall or work on your materials. And we haven't had any issues with that. No, no real push back on it because it is pretty it is a pretty easy bar to meet. But at the same time, it it produces something that is of good quality. And we don't want to, you know, start going down a path where we're prescribing an architectural style or we're saying you have to do this and you have to do that because to me personally, that reduces all semblance of creativity, but also it creates a situation where all buildings start to look the same. because people start designing from a checklist instead of actually designing. And so in terms of like these design guidelines being implemented in practice, can you walk us through a little bit about like someone Well, I guess there's two pathways that I want to ask about. So one, how does this document come into play during like subdivision and larger larger development proposals? Like where in that process does that get looked at? And then sort of the same question about like if there is in particular like an older neighborhood that's basically built out, there's a vacant lot, someone wants to build a house, do does that process also follow these design guidelines and like how do those two things get resolved I guess? Yeah. So, um, in in this situation of a single family subdivision, we would have the developer submit to us proposed plans or, uh, plans that they have considered that they might use. Here's the style that we want to, you know, look at or pick from. Um, a lot of subdivision these days, uh, the ones that we've

looked at are single builder. They come in, they have, you know, their plans that they're going to use. They designed the lots around those houses. Uh you know the widths and the depths and everything because we are working with such you know tight spaces. Now if you have a five- foot setback on either side and you have a 45 foot wide lot, you know what house you're going to put there because it won't fit otherwise. Um there are also standards for lot coverage. We have a 45% lot coverage maximum. And today actually was the first time I I found one in one of our smaller subdivisions that went over that. or having to send it back to them to change it. So there are other uh regulations, dimensional standards that come into play as well. Uh so anyway, what they would do is they would uh submit, you know, some proposed designs. We would take a look at that at the subdivision phase, say, "Yes, this looks good." Uh, and then when it comes back into an actual building permit, we're not expecting them necessarily to have the exact same plan because sometimes things do change, but we are looking at being in substantial conformance or substantively similar to what it is they submitted on a detail level. You know, we're not I'm not saying, well, you told us there is going to be Craftsman style houses here and these are modern. Not getting into the weeds there. Uh what we are looking at is you told us you were going to have this kind of level of detail and the garages were going to be set back from front porches. Do we have that? Yes. Okay, let's move on. So it is a fairly highlevel uh you know review at that point. Um and like I said, uh I think that the market being what it is right now, people don't want ugly, boring, cheapl looking houses. you know, you're spending five, six, $700,000 on a house. You want it to look decent. And so the market responds to that. And uh you know, we're looking at affordable housing. Those look good, too. We have

uh uh an architect who works on our um uh Habitat for Humanity submitts, and they look good. You know, they've got the nice front porches. They've got the good quality uh building materials. They're a little bit boxy, but a lot of houses are boxy, but you you can do it in a way that makes sense for the neighborhood and respects the neighborhood and the context and they end up looking really nice. So, we've been happy with uh the process so far. Awesome. Okay, two two more. Um, so one is in sort of practice the idea of privacy and those sort of sideyards and how how does does that manifest pretty I guess does staff have trouble sort of interpreting and infor and bringing comments back to that about you know this house next to you has these windows here you know think about doing something a little bit different or is that is it a little bit more amorphous than that? it is. Um I don't want to say we ignore it, but we definitely put less of an emphasis on that than we do to the uh the visual aspect of the public realm, right? The the front of the house, we want to make sure that it's not all just garage door. Um if the side of the house faces, if it's corner lot or something, we want to have some sort of visual interest, whether it's the materials carry from the front of the house around the side, things like that. Typically, again, when you're dealing with 45 foot wide lots or 40 foot wide lots, the builder kind of has it in their mind already, look, we can't have two bedroom windows right across from each other. And typically, when you have a house design that is narrow and deep, you're going to put your living spaces on the front or the back anyway. Uh, you know, you might have a bathroom window up high or something like that. U, but for the most part, it it kind of works itself out. We do look at it and uh you know a lot of builders now are putting up fences with

their the houses too and that helps and landscaping gets installed and that helps as well. Uh so it's it's kind of lower on the criteria list but if if one of our reviewers sees something that's egregious and says hey wait a minute you might want to look into changing that you know maybe you flip the the house or something like that. So it's more of an advisory thing at that point I think. Okay. Um one other sorry two more questions now. Um so in in line with like reducing setbacks and wanting sort of friendly facads and having you know that public realm be the priority in these design guidelines does that sort of looking larger scale and what our like right-of-way requirements and on on street parking and sort of those design components of the street. I don't see them in here and that's I'm not asking for them to be in here, but like do you have a good sense of how those two components of sort of the public realm should be intersecting? Yeah. You know, we it this is it's kind of a science experiment at this point, you know, trying to figure out exactly how many parking spaces you need for a subdivision because we have one or two that we've gotten complaints about and we have issues with. you know, the fire department can't get through because there's too many cars parked and stuff like that. So, you know, we have our our street cross-section standards and we've been working through that. Um, you know, we're trying to make sure that we have street trees and we have, you know, an an attractive looking neighborhood without just having 60 ft of pavement or whatever it is. So, it it's there are a lot of different options available to builders. one uh the new Cedar Hill subdivision up on Crosby. What they did and this is was you know working with staff is instead of having two 5-ft park strips uh one on each side is we had them do a 10-ft park strip on one side,

no park strip on the other. And on the the side that doesn't have the park strip is where we put the street parking. So on the other side of the street, you have a nice wide park strip that allows the trees to to flourish, you know, and allows larger trees, which I think is a net benefit in that situation. So it's kind of like, you know, we're we're going through it and trees take a while to grow up. So, you know, it's kind of uh let the market decide on some of it. You know, we have our standards and we'll we'll hold to those. But neighborhoods are going to a little bit look a little bit different. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that honestly. Uh if you have big trees on one side and smaller trees on the other side, that's okay too. Cool. All right. And last question I guess is as we are talking about smaller lots and you know that condensed sort of form in town is that from at whatever you know amount of experience that you all have at this point are we seeing that be I guess attractive or successful compared to sort of you know the the different idea of saying you know people want more space. People, you know, maybe want a big yard and they want their neighbors to have a big yard and compared to sort of this lifestyle change of having closer together neighborhoods. Yeah. So, I'm not a real estate person. Uh I think there is room in this world for all types, right? So, uh Cedar Hill came in as a plat before we changed the the code requirement to have the smaller lot sizes. So, they're building on larger lots and they're, you know, building houses now. Uh, we've had a few come in at the smaller lot sizes. We had Shawn Ridge came in at the smaller lot size. We have Ridgeway Heights. Uh, they're all under construction. We have Preston

Heights on the other side of the highway. Uh, between SR20 and Scenic Heights that is under uh they're doing their uh site improvements right now. Uh, Ridgeway Heights are selling houses, you know, and I think that's a good sign. You know, the economy is kind of up in the air right now, but they're selling houses out there. Uh we've had uh let's see, I'm trying to think what was the other subdivision we did that was that size. Um in any case, uh Howard's Point was a small, it was a PRD1, but those were smaller lots as well. uh the smaller lots are selling and and I think that there is enough demand right now for single family homes specifically that people are willing to accept that this is kind of the new reality is you have a smaller lot. Uh so you know it's the trade-off versus having a a smaller lot that is your own versus having a townhouse or you know some sort of attached uh building that you have neighbors on either side of you. So yeah, thank you very much. Okay, sorry, one more. Um I this I mean this right this is what I do for my job and this is very interesting and I enjoy hearing about what you as staff are doing. So simultaneously to the idea of like narrow lots and all that. Um, is there any thought to including a component of accessory structures or ways to, you know, now that we have super small lots and wanting if people are interested in doing those sort of backyard cottages or conversions of their garage, those types of things. Are there any I guess a do these design guidelines address that in a way that feels comfortable or is that sort of a separate component that should be addressed somewhere else or eventually updated here again? So there are a

couple of things at play there. Um, number one, if you are doing a detached accessory uh dwelling unit, a detached ADU, it falls under the criteria of a accessory building. So, your garages, your sheds, your ADUs all fall under the same kind of category as far as how they are located in the yard and what they're supposed to look like. And what they're supposed to look like is complimentary to the existing house on the the property. Whether that means, you know, you have vertical sighting versus horizontal sighting or paint colors, trim colors, etc. We have kind of, you know, stayed away from that because it does include garages and things. That being said, um, we are probably eventually moving to a formbbased code, in which case there might be a little bit more delving into design standards for specifically residential units, but I don't honestly anticipate that being significantly different. I think that it's a good idea that a dwelling unit, whether it be an ADU or whatever, in somebody's backyard doesn't look like a shed, but if somebody wants to live in a building that looks like a shed and it's in the backyard, that's probably just fine. I mean, we're trying to get affordable housing. And so having a bunch of gingerbread on a, you know, 400 foot building in somebody's backyard that nobody ever sees except for the person that lives there, if the person that lives there is okay with that, then we should be okay with that as well. And I don't want to start adding costs on because we're saying, well, you have to have, you know, an architectural feature here for a building that nobody really ever sees. And so that's that's kind of the balancing act. Um, we want quality. We want buildings that are nice and are going to last. And I think that's really the key. Uh so I I don't see us delving that far down in the future. Cool. All right. Thank you very much.

Anyone else have any other questions? Yes. Thanks, Josh. And thanks for thanks for that, Ryan. I'll just give you a preview to you know, one of my concerns is anytime we uh have the word shall. Um, you know, there's a lot of shoulds in here and and and that's good because again, these are design guidelines and as long as we're going to continue to regulate construction through through density and zoning, you know, it's, as you and I have talked, right, it's hard to to move forward to that formbbased code. And we got to be careful that we're not creating a form-based code while having those other restrictions in place because otherwise that could just kill construction. So, anytime anytime I see a shall in the document, you know, I'm I'm going to caution everybody on this committee, right, that that we're laying out a requirement, right? We're adding a an additional requirement to a a free market enterprise, right, that is somewhat fragile and and and and you're right, things things things are selling and the market's going to speak. um uh you know the 10-ft setback you know having that be a practice or a should that certainly makes sense but you know if some some developer was to come along and decide to create a neighborhood with 7,000 square foot lots because that's what the market is now needing I I'd hate to think that that house has to be you know the living area has to be 10 ft from the street on that that lot that has sufficient size right because it would just be be odd right and and so and obvious Obviously, the cost of building on a larger lot is a higher cost and it's not an affordable house and I get all that, but you know, I don't want to lose the other side of it in in in in in that conversation because that's part of the the quality of life having right obviously different neighborhoods and different in fact, I think neighborhoods should be intertwined. I think we should have neighborhoods with 8,000 foot lots right next to 3,000 foot lots, right? Right

down the street from a a forplex, right? and and th those create healthy neighborhoods, right? And and and part of the reduction in lot size was a thought about mixing it up because the minimum lot size isn't the isn't the only size you can have. It's just the the minimum and and uh of course, you know, we're trying to steer folks to be smart about the the development, but but ultimately, you know, the the market speaks and you get that. So, um, shells are just, you know, concerning. Um, like the oak tree, right? Um, did we add that on to the red residential requirement because it was a multif family requirement so that we weren't more restrictive because I didn't see it in the multif family requirement, a planting of an oak tree, but it's it's now part of a residential requirement. It is in there. And if I if I may kind of address what you were saying previously, think of a shall in the DRG as a soft shell. So what we're doing here is the DRG has shoods and it has shall both of those and everything honestly in the DRG can easily be varied from. If you look at the last section there, pretty much they we will grant an administrative variance if you give us a reason. And in the situation of a shall with that, it is a shall with an asterisk. We're essentially emphasizing that point by saying shall like for instance uh you know a front porch shall project, you know, in front of the garage door. What we're trying to do is emphasize the idea that the pedestrian entrance should be more, you know, visible or impactful than the car entrance. If you're dealing with a property that's 70 or 80 feet wide and you, you know, are playing around with different designs and stuff, uh, we

would take a look at the context of that. And if the developer said, "Look, this is not how we're looking at this. We're going to do something different." I don't see a situation where we're going to say no to a variance request that is reasonable. If somebody wanted to put a fourcar garage at the very front and then have the rest of the house around the back when there's plenty of room to not do that, that might be a situation where we'd hold the line. But what we're trying to do is have flexibility here. And that flexibility is in that variance section at the end. And that applies to all sorts of things. And we have gone through back and forth with with developers on that and and given lots of v variations to this document. Can I say something? Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. We just need to make sure that all planners current and future understand that that shall is used in that context because most of us read the word shall. That means we don't have an escape boat for it. And so when we see that, it's automatically that's the way it's going to have to be. And somebody who comes in later at a later date and replaces you when you retire and are long and gone don't know what went on in this room today sees shall and they're going to hold a a a construction guy or gal to that shall rather than oh well we can mitigate that. So, uh, I I agree with council member Whisner is that that could be kind of a a cautionary term where should could still be used in place of that. That would give more lenience, but then that gives more lenience to the construction site of the home rather than to the planning commission. So maybe something like should at the discretion of city planners, but I don't know how you'd

word it, but yeah. I I I know that shall gets me in trouble at work a lot a lot. Yeah, I I would still point to the to the variance section at the end. Um that anything in that DRG can be varied from and it explicitly says that uh that you can vary from these provisions, you know, with written approval and essentially the written honestly the the written approval is the set of plans. If the planner looks at it and stamps it, that is the written approval. Right? So when we go through our review process, we are as planners thinking about a checklist of shalls and shoulds and whatever else is. And if we look at it and it is meeting the the standards and it is meeting the intent of what we're trying to do, then we are going to likely approve that. This to me is not a way of denying things. This is a way of increasing the level of you know excellence if you will. It's it's trying to bring up instead of you know just doing basic boxes. It's trying to say look we we have pride in this community. We want the best for this community and it is not by any means a a checklist. Again we don't want checklists because that stifles creativity. So it is more guidelines than it is standards. Thank Josh. Um yeah, and you you get we've had times where shall in other ordinances, not necessarily in planning department ordinances, but um I think our food truck ordinance, right, that we misinterpreted for the longest time, you know, had some shall in it. That's, you know, uh, even though we were looking at the wrong ordinance that we used that ordinance to basically, you know, kill food trucks in the the community until we made that that that change, you know, and you guys of course brought that change forward. You found

the the right code for us, right? But those shs, you know, kept getting in the way. Um um so um ju just my concern and I guess on the the Gary Oak thing I I I just picture as a a land developer, you know, uh Shawn Ridge uh is a a perfect example. Those lots could end up u inevitably being sold off as individual lots if they were to get in there obviously and complete the landscaping and and you know complete the final plat. Uh they could sell those off as individual lots, right? And if every seven houses there's got to be an oak tree planted and let's say it's not a PRD and there is no common area. We have some notes about you know landscaping requirements and etc have to go in the common area or an area controlled by the HOA. How does that work ultimately? Which lot gets the oak tree uh planted on it if there is not a common area uh in in a nonpr uh development. Um right. I mean, are you then going to create a just a landscaping strip for that oak tree to to go into um you know, as a a common area which then creates now an HOA has to be formed in order to maintain that strip of land for the common area. So, I I I I can see how, you know, in a a multif family application typically where you're dealing on a much larger scale, much larger lot, how that could make sense. But, you know, how are we going to shoehorn that into a 3200 ft lot if there isn't a common area? So, to respond directly to that, I would never ever recommend that somebody plant a Gary Oak tree on their 3200 foot single family lot because the implication of that is in, you know, 20 years as that tree gets bigger and bigger, you use less and less of your lot, right? So, uh, one tree per seven residential units. I would say that that always goes into a common open space, whatever that common open space is, whether it's a

storm water facility or if it's a neighborhood park or if it's park strips or the frontage along, you know, the major thoroughfare, whatever that may be, but also can be varied from. So uh the the reason that came in and we we had this discussion previously is to make it more equal to multif family. Our previous uh version of this document the DRG said that you had to have Gary oak trees and multif family projects. That's so wide open and so open to interpretation. Nobody really knew what it meant. So 10 and 1/2 years ago when I did my first multif family project and we said, "Well, you got to have a Gary Oak tree, we looked at it and that project had seven units." So guess what? We're at one per seven now. That's how it happened literally because that's that that was the requirement at the time and nobody had thought to put a ratio in there. They just said put Gary oak trees in. So what does that mean? Well, now it means 1% 7. So we put that in there officially because otherwise what does it mean? We need to have something to point to. Right. And and a perfect example of why the simple wording in a document like this becomes so important. Yeah. Right. Because this is going to carry forward. What what what you guys recommend to council and what council ends up ultimately approving is is a carry forward document that is going to be here for probably many many years. Um and and uh you know I appreciate you hearing me out and like I say the the shall always always just uh give me caution but thanks for hearing me out. Okay, any other questions? Any other thoughts for staff? Okay, so thank you very much. And at this point, uh, we have a a

recommendation for a motion to to bring this to town council or to city council, sorry. And I would entertain that now. All right. I move to forward a positive recommendation to the city council for approval of the revised design regulations and guidelines documented via resolution at the future council meeting. Moved by Bradley. Do we have a second? I'll second that. All right. Second by Wilson. So motion is on the table. Is there anything any discussion that we want to have between us before we sort of have a formal vote? Any final thoughts? any other components that we want to talk through? I want to talk about one of the slides. Will you speak into the microphone, please? I just wanted to bring up I I don't know if there was a typo in one of the slides and so we can talk about it afterwards. Okay. Any specific thoughts? Nope. Okay, I'll read three slides today. Okay, so with that, I will ask for a vote. So, all those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying I. I. I. I. All those opposed, please signifi signify by saying no. Anyone who wishes to abstain, please signify by saying abstain. Abstain. All right. With that, the motion carries three to zero with one abstension.

And with that, um, thank you very much. We'll move on to our next item, which is member comments. Um, so does anyone have any comments? Anything they want to to relay before we move on to our our next scheduled meeting and adjournment? All right. Hearing none, our next scheduled meeting is June 10th, 2025. Yes, Dave Cool. Mr. Chairman, members of the commission, I'd like to make a couple of announcements for you tonight. Uh we have some upcoming meetings, uh big meetings. The U virtual open house is going to be held Thursday night at 6 o'clock. And that's virtual. So you'll be able to be anywhere in the world and tune in to the virtual meeting on the waterfront redevelopment project. And I think some of you have attended those meetings. They've been in person before, the first two. And this one will be virtual. So you'll be able to hear the experts from the Center for Creative Land Recycling as well as this one will be special. uh the other consultant called Cascadia will be there. So they'll spend about 45 or 50 minutes talking about the land use economics of the waterfront redevelopment. So a lot of detail will go into whether or not certain things are feasible. And so that'll be an exciting meeting. Uh certainly hope all of you have time to tune into that. I understand you're all busy and have other things to do. But uh we sure appreciate you attending these meetings for us. Um one other one other aspect is we're advertising now from more planning

commissioners. As you know, the council changed their policy and now they've been through all that process and now they're starting to advertise. So hopefully we'll have some additional planning commissioners before long. But I do appreciate all four of you showing up. Very good. And that is May 15th. Uh May 15th, this Thursday. Okay. What time? The next meeting I'd like to direct your attention to would be the June 3rd city council meeting. Uh we're going to be discussing the economic development strategy and action plan. We've been working with a company called Better City that's been putting that together for the last six months. And that's a strategy on economic development. So, we've been through a draft and we've sent comments back to Better City and they'll be returning uh to be able to present to the city council on June 3rd. So, those are uh two big steps we're taking in the direction of economic development and redevelopment. That also folds into of course the comprehensive plan which you hear about all the time and uh that's continuing. One other announcement. I'm retiring at the end of this month. And so I just want to thank all of you for your help and participation in putting this meeting together. I think some of our success stories including the staff and everything they've done for us uh certainly has has been a success story. We've spent a lot of time doing teamwork building. We built a lot of team building between the engineering department, the planning department and the building department. U prior to my showing up, it was broken. And as a team, we've all spent a lot of time trying to put that back together and it works. So that's been one major success

story. Uh we've also used a concept called lean which is focuses on improvements and continuous improvements and that's been our focus for the last five years. The other thing we've done is we've digitized our permitting and planning system through an electronic format and that's going to be a big plus for us. It already is because we're able to track all of our information electronically and not have to pass paper around to various offices like we used to. We're also finding a benefit to the electronic system through our public records. Our public records are digitized now so that we can uh respond to all those requests that people have for records. having it all in an electronic system, all the work that Ry does on current planning and all the work that our building department does on building. So, we think that those uh improvements will help uh set the tone for a long time and these upcoming meetings certainly can help uh give us a track to run on on the future. So, again, I want to thank all of you for your participation. It's been good working with you and I'll still be around somewhere. So, probably playing golf with Tim some place close by. So, thank you all. Thank you. Yeah, congratulations. Thank you. It's all good. Very cool. All right. And so to back up one, the town coun or the city council meeting for the economic development on June 3rd is at what time is that at? That's the normal time for city council. I think they're at 5 5:30. 5:30. That'll be right here in this room. Very cool. All right. So, with all of that, right, our next meeting, our

next planning commission meeting will be June 10th, 2025, 6 p.m. And with that, I will take a motion to adjourn, unless we all want to stay here and just keep talking about stuff. I'll make a motion that we adjourn. Moved by Fry. Do I have a second? Second. Kevin wants to stay. Second by Bradley. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. I. I.