Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. Good afternoon, good evening everybody. Welcome to the Tuesday, September 9th, 2025 Oak Harbor Planning Commission meeting. Um we'll call this meeting to order at 6 PM. Um starting with a roll call, we have um all members except for Kevin Wilson and ex officio council member Jim Weezner present. Um moving right along, I will have you all take a look at our minutes for the August 12th, 2025 um regular business meeting. If you guys have any comments or any questions, um I'll give you a second to look over those and then u I'll take a motion to approve those when you're ready. Make a motion that uh we accept the minutes as written.

Second. All right. Moved by Fry, second by Bradley. All those in favor signify by saying I. I.

I. Motion passes. Okay. Um our next item on our agenda is our public comment time. So, if anyone in the audience or online is interested in making comments on um items on the agenda or just in general, um you are all welcome to come to the microphone. Uh to ensure that your comments are recorded properly, please state your name clearly. Comments will be limited to about 3 minutes um to ensure we have the most amount of participation we can. Um, if you have longer comments, you are welcome to send them in writing to um www.ocarbor.gov/public comment two business days in advance for us to display them. And we have not received any in uh preparation of this meeting. So, we'll move right along to anyone who wants to make comments in the room or online. All right. Going once, going twice, three times. Anyone online? Doesn't look like it. Okay. Thank you all for being here. Thank you all for sending in your comments. If anyone knows any planning commissioners that want to become planning commissioners, please let us know. Um, our fourth item in our our major focus for today is our 2025 comprehensive plan major update. So this is going to be presented by our principal planner Kat Kamak and take it away. Good evening U Kamak principal planner. Um I have a short uh presentation but um before I even jump into my presentation for today's material I just wanted to bring the commission up to speed on uh where we are with the comprehensive plan.

I do have some slides with what we'll be covering over the next two three months. Um but in terms of um uh the um some of the topics related to housing and growth, uh we're continuing to work with the county, at least we're expressing our interest to continue to work with the county. the uh countywide planning policies that I spoke about at the August uh meeting with the planning commission related to the changes that Island County is making is going through their review process. Um and um so depending on what actions the county takes, I'll be bringing back those policies here to the planning commission and city council for uh your recommendation and um uh action on on those. Um what happens is uh anytime the countywide planning policies are amended, the county first takes action on it and then all the remaining jurisdictions um uh have to ratify it in order for that amendment to be effective. If uh two or more jurisdictions don't ratify it, then we go back to the original countywide planning policies. So that is ongoing. Um we are still um working with department of commerce and with Island County and um trying to be open to continued discussions about growth. We think as I stated at the last meeting that this is the time to consider these challenges and uh address these headon uh because they're really difficult to do it mid update cycles. These update cycles come once every eight or 10 years. So this is this is the best time uh to tackle it and so we are trying to find uh the best way to uh to uh work with the county on that. So that is

ongoing uh on the side. We're continuing to work with that. Uh but in the meantime, we want to make sure that we uh advance our comprehensive plan ahead. were a little behind on schedule uh due to all the challenges of the unknown targets and the continued challenge uh in in growth related issues. However, we can start to move some sections of the comp plan that are not directly related to that and part of our tonight's discussion is to go over some of that material. So, um that's just an update on on what's going on there. uh over the next 3 months, we're hoping to bring the policies uh for of the comprehensive plan to the planning commission and also workshop it with the city council. Uh our public participation plan when we first set it out to do the comprehensive plan, we designed to have these discussions at the planning commission level. This is these are meetings that are open to the public and so they can come here and see the discussion. They can see it online and they can offer comments. We also have a steering committee that uh is guiding the comp plan process and we are taking selective elements to them to discuss and that's happening also in September and November. So we're trying to get as much input as possible as we go through this draft. This is really it's actually called a preliminary draft. So, uh, it's this is the the this is where staff is taking a look at it and at the same time that we are taking a look at it. We're asking for the public to take a look at it and offer comments so as a commission and board. So, what you're seeing is really a beginning. It's not uh necessarily the end. and um any and my I'll keep my presentation brief because each of these elements have numerous policies and I'm not going to go over them each uh one by

one um but if the commission has identified uh policy changes that we're considering uh and want to discuss them and further happy to um discuss that or if um I don't have the information I'll bring it to you at the next meeting. um a quick kind of procedural in terms of how we go about doing this. Um we have uh all the these policies in a big spreadsheet that the consultants have been uh have created for us and uh we are meeting with every individual department involved with each of the elements and we're reviewing each of the policies and so the result of what you're seeing is based on the input that we got from it uh from each department. So we have um um several elements we'll be covering today. Uh we'll cover four elements in October and two or three elements in November. So anyway, I I'll jump into my presentation which will cover some of this information and then I'll provide some broad comments on what we did with each element and then I'll open up uh for questions and comments from the commission and then u see if we can um have a have a discussion about items. Um so as I mentioned um I think we're trying to uh you know kind of fall on these uh housing targets. um uh for Okabar city limits and the UG and currently where it stands is uh the target that uh we would be shooting for for the 20-year plan is 3,735 units. the existing Okaro UG the county has calculated the capacity to be about 464 units and this leaves a deficit of about 1333 units from the total allocation that was provided to Okar's UG.

So this is the deficit and how to deal with the deficit is I think where we're trying to work with the county. Uh the county is proposing to remove that deficit from the allocation. um based on uh lack of infrastructure which I think it's just a matter of viewing how infrastructure is provided and as I said the city is continuing to work with the state and the county trying to uh continue working on the deficit and trying to um not have to uh delay that to a later time. Um so with the comprehensive plan policies that's in front of us today um like I said it's a preliminary draft review. We're seeking broad feedback and general direction. Uh the comments that we get here and and receive from the public in the next 3 months will actually shape what the draft plan will look like and then we can still change it and amend it after those discussions as well. So we have uh plenty of time to talk about these issues before we adopt them. Um as I said over the next three months uh we'll bring several elements forward. Today uh for discussion we have the urban design, transportation, utilities, environment and capital facilities. These are all existing elements in the comprehensive plan and and the attachment that we provided uh in the report and I'll go over the structure of that goes over all of these existing policies and the changes that are being proposed. So in October we'll cover parks and recreation, economic development, government services and climate resiliency. Climate resiliency is a new chapter. So that will uh be added to our comprehensive plan this year and it's just a requirement for communities our size to planning under GMA to include uh climate resiliency as

a chapter and we've got grant funding for to do that. So the consultants are working in providing that material for us. So, we'll cover that in October. And in November, uh the big items, the land use, housing, and urban growth area. Um and, uh we'll take a look at that in November. And you know, these September, October, November meetings, um are basically the just the policy review. So, if you saw the attached document, we're looking at just the text. Now each element of the of this uh uh in the in the comprehensive plan has additional information in it. We have maps that provide for uh um land uses and and so on. We have neighborhood designation maps um and will be coming forward. These maps are the visual representation of where the oak where Oak Harbor is going. So more exciting discussion will probably come in December and January where we start to kind of go over some of these graphical representations of what is going to be in our uh comprehensive plan. So um we want to have some of those sessions as a joint meeting uh with the city council. So because that's just kind of exciting to see visuals and graphs and that's when ideas and concepts are discussed more extensively and to have the commission and the city council be in the same room helps to kind of formulate some of a common thought process uh as we go towards adoption. So before I jump any further, I just want to kind of um ask the commission um on um some potential ideas for a joint meeting. I know um timings of meetings are uh important to try and get full attendance. Um so my first question to planning commission is do you prefer

a meeting that's 8 to 5 or would you prefer an evening meeting? Uh and we can work in because we have the time we can try and pull the same uh questions with city council to see what works for them. Um we also want to know if December works but we're thinking about the first three weeks. We're thinking probably Wednesday or Thursdays and um should have u these are things that uh came up after the slides were created and I'll just um we're thinking either um uh December 3rd, 10th or the 17th which is Wednesdays or we could do Thursdays 4th, 11th or 18th. Um so Wednesdays or Thursdays are dates that we're asking. So I'll stop there just to give you a moment to think about it. You can tell us whether daytime or evening time is preferable and we'll start with that and then we can kind of look at Wednesday Thursdays and then go from there as well. So just a general poll before I jump into the discussion.

Yeah. Will let's do it in the microphones. Oh yeah. Yes, please. All right. Yeah. If if you're talking about um for me personally, I prefer the evening time. Evening time. Same here. Uh I work I work till 1,600 each day. So Okay. Yeah, I think evenings work best for me. And and then if I have a a day preference, Thursday, any of the Thursdays would work. Anybody else? Wednesday, Thursday, just not Tuesday or Monday. Football.

Yeah, evenings e any of those days. I think probably if we're getting really specific, probably the first two weeks of first two weeks. Okay. The uh either the fourth or the 11th. I'm sure Thursdays are okay mostly. So, how about we pull the same kind of timing with the city council? We'll ask for Thursday evenings in that first two weeks if they're open and then we'll schedule a couple hours like is a 6:00 starting time like similar to this a good time. Okay. We'll do like a 6 to 8 or something like that.

Okay. Thank you for that. Okay. We'll pull the city council and and get back to you and see if we can get something on the calendar on that one. Okay. Uh without fur ado, we'll jump into uh the the policy document that we want to review. So I just wanted to go over the the format of the attachment that's in your packet. We have four columns um in the packet. The first column is basically uh the existing goal uh as stated in the comprehensive plan and then uh most of the goals in the existing comprehensive h plan have policies underneath it and so the policy is listed. They starting kind of a number pattern. Our current document doesn't have any numbers attached to it. And I think uh attaching some kind of marker to it is great to make references when we reference these policies. And um and then a theme and a subheading um and this is something that the consultants have added to uh they evaluated all our goals and policies and they go well you know this is environment this is historic preservation this is conservation. they've attached some tags, some sub themes and this can help in sorting u different um um uh based on different criteria at a later point if necessary. So they've added those markers. So that's what that first column is and then the second column is the existing policy as it's existing in the plan. The third column is the proposed policy revision. there's a strikeout version uh that's provided for languages that are uh proposed for removal and then some of the reasoning notes that go along with it so that um you know why or what are the thought process behind that. So that's kind of the format of the and that's the same format that will come

back with all the other elements as well. Um so in general um before I jump into um these uh policies and what we did in each of the uh each of the elements. So I want to kind of touch a little uh broad based on you know how we use these policies how are they used and it's good to know that because when we do these modifications sometimes we have some criteria based approach. So policies are used for general uh decision u um guidance. So uh this is a policy a document that's adopted for 20 years and 3 years from down the road if the city council has to make a a decision on what they should do for a particular project then you look to the comp plan for guidance at least staff will for technical recommendation on what we think that the that the city should should u the direction they should go. Secondly, policies are um um used for um implementation of design guidelines or actually land development or other action. So not we we have our municipal code that has all our regulations, zoning codes that implement our development regulations and we have other codes as well. Now these codes don't cover every aspect of what the city wants to do. So at times when you have to make a decision that is not contained in the code, you fall back to your comprehensive plan and look at the policies here to see what it says in order for the that direction. So we use policies for that. We use the goals and policies to accomplish something. So over the next 5 years or seven years you want to implement something you want to u do a new plan uh of sorts you start you start to capture these uh desires uh

of the community in in these goals and policies. So they're used for that and they're also used for backing up your development regulations and implementation tools. So when a court system is trying to decide whether a rule was in the public benefit or whether there's a a taking of sorts of private rights, they come back to the comprehensive plan to see where the public benefit is. If it's stated in the comprehensive plan, then they know there is a public benefit and there's a public welfare to it. So therefore your implementing law or rule is valid based on getting public benefit out of it. So the comp plan serves many of these docu uh many of these purposes. So when we looked at these policies um some of the things that we addressed were vague policies. I mean some of these policies are just remnants from the original comp plan that was uh adopted in 1995 amended every year like we are doing right now. And so some of them um remain in place uh because they were not prime for discussion. There was not prime for change at that time. But as we go through these updates every 8 or 10 years, we look at these policies and identify what are the things that need to be changed and so on. So uh for when we looked at these we looked at it for those reasons. We wanted to see we wanted to apply more specificity to some of our goals. We wanted to be somewhat actionoriented. So we've tried to change language on that. And um we've also tried to uh update everything to the state requirements, state law requirements. So there's been several house bills that have been passed requiring cities to include goals and policies for various things and that's what our consultant is helping with and

those new have been added as well. So um I'll give some broad um um kind of what we did in each of these elements. So in urban design um the um policies were basically adjusted to provide flexible uh options for habitat and ecosystem preservation in urban areas particularly in urban tree canopy. So there's been some um um u policy changes related to how we want to promote more tree canopy, healthier tree canopy and uh focusing on native vegetation uh a lot more. So there have been policies actually that's been introduced for the provision of native species and trees and looking at uh plant reveation or regeneration with new development. Now that's a key thing that I want to point out is actually one of the big differences as we go through this update. In the previous update and actually in the previous two or three updates, there was a lot of focus on urban forests and um from the very beginning um the community was very interested. There's been several lands within Oak Harbor in the last 20 years that were vacant land that had trees on them and they all were zoned for some sort of development. They were not yet developed. But people liked those clusters of trees in in town and wanted to preserve them. And in that process they've developed several subpolicies on preserving these which we found out over 10 20 years of development are actually not useful and are creating hazards. So there were tree retention standards, there were buffer uh um retain um standards where if you had a wooded uh piece of land and you wanted to create a development, you had

to leave a 30-foot buffer of these trees on the edges. What was happening is when you take the forest out behind all of these edge trees, they lose that forest feel and what's remaining is not really strong enough to withstand the weather and then they become hazards over time for the houses that are built or for the structures that are built. And some of these are mainly in tracks and still in private ownership. So in terms of long-term maintenance, they are becoming a challenge. Who is doing it? Sometimes it's the homeowners association. sometimes it's still in the developer hands and these are things that the city does not have much control over because they're still on private uh ownership. So we found that reveation is a better way of going about it to get new canopy, introduce native species and develop an urban forest with redevelopment. So, there's a general trend in trying to um try I mean, we still have the Gary Oak uh ordinance and the Gary Oak trees and and that is still protected in our plans and policies and we're not uh affecting that. Um but generally related to development and land clearing, we think we have a robust landscape policy and we can continue to develop that in order to get a better tree canopy for for coverage. So some of the changes in the policies that's a seems like a small thing but it is uh one that has affected many of the policy changes um that uh that we did. So um so that's uh some of the stuff that uh on it from a general uh standpoint what we covered in urban design transportation. Now, the transportation plan uh or the policies in in the comprehensive plan comes from the actual transportation plan which has all of the 20-year projects and planning for the 20

years. Uh but the comprehensive plan just holds the policies. So, public works is actually going out and getting an doing an RFP and going to hire consultants to update this plan. uh it was last done I think in 2016 if I remember right the transportation plan and um so it's it's uh due for an update so this uh uh comp plan will just look at the existing policies and making changes to it however this will be the foundation by which the entire transportation plan can get updated and when that gets updated we may have new policies that will replace these however um We try to uh take a shot at addressing some of the new uh transportation plans that we've adopted since the last transportation plan. For example, we had a safety action plan that was adopted and that has provided a lot of guidance in terms of uh impacting our street network. We've done an active transportation plan and that is also affecting how our roadway cross-sections look like. So with every new project that the Oak Harbor does on the streets, they will look at the active transportation plan and see okay if we have bike lanes that have been designed for this and they'll stripe them according that. So we'll see that change as it goes through. So we've incorporated some of those uh documents into the plan. Policies were revised to ensure that multimmodal planning will be implemented in the future land use and transportation planning efforts. I think the state is making a big push for that and we've added some policies in terms of how how to what level of service we should plan these facilities and what we should strive for. Um the uh a lot of uh grants that uh will be available uh in the future will be dependent on whether

the city has a complete street standard. And that is something that we're hoping to do as well uh um either with the adoption of the comp plan or soon after. So um those are some of the changes that were done in the transportation element, the utilities element. And this again all of uh the city's utility plans are going out for updates, sewer, water, and storm. And so um we will see more changes in the next two or three years. However, uh we have looked at uh revising the the policies in this to uh be consistent for climate and resiliency under the GMA. So there's several GMA requirements that um affected some of the changes here uh mainly related to energy conservation and reducing greenhouse gas. So um those are some of the changes in the utility element. Then we also have the environment element and the policies were revised here for consistency with GMA and how we and and the things that we do for current practice uh changes. Um so there's a uh in conversations with many of the city departments we find out uh what is the current practice, what's practical and what's working and what's not working. And so based on that we amend the policies to make sure we incorporate the policies that do work uh uh for the city. And the same thing with uh capital facilities. Um these are just elements that are required to be in the as part of the comprehensive plan. We have some very good existing robust uh policies to evaluate our capital facilities and we do it every year. So there were some minor changes done to this element as well. So with that, I will I know it's very brief and I did very overall, but we do

have a lot of uh policies and I didn't want to go into it um uh line by line. So with that, I'll just step back a little bit and and give the commission time to ask questions, comments, or uh if anybody in the public want to engage on this as well, we could do that. So uh I'll turn it back over to the commission and uh we can take questions, comments, and thoughts. Cool. Thank you very much. Um, yeah. Do we want to just sort of dive into initial things? I have a stack of comments and we can go through that, but I want to make sure that you all are want to know what LTS1 stands for.

Could I just ask what LTS1 stands for? I think it's probably some type of survey for the pedestrian and bicycles. What is LTS1? [Applause] It's a level of standard for I think uh pedestrian facilities. I will I will find out more on that and get back to you. Is do you know if it's a study or is it a policy from the state?

It's a standard. It's like um I think it's LTS 1 2 3 4 and you're striving for the highest level. So like intersections have level of service A, B, C and D. And like level of service A is like a interstate ramp. There no stopping. Everybody gets to go and then you come to the B and the C and your level of services change. And I think that the LTS1 is a similar level of service that we're trying to achieve. Okay. Thank you. Any other thoughts from either of you for now? Okay. And um Okay. So I guess the the first overall question right is and you had mentioned it at the beginning of like these policies are intended to be decision and direction and actionable. Um on that front, are we also is sort of then the the goal to have less sort of like broad value type policies implemented in there or I guess like are all the policies going forward intended to be something that is actionable or not necessarily. I mean, I think if the policy was very vague and didn't offer much assistance in terms of whether it was decision making, we've tried to tend to make it more actionable. But if a if a value policy still held good, we're not changing that. We're just keeping that.

Okay. Very cool. That helps me. And so I think I'm just I have I went through this and just made notes. So I think one of the things and a lot of them were just trying to ask some questions about what in sort of that realm of values and that type of thing. So um this is page um I guess for you CAC what is most helpful? Should I say like this was policy 2B on page seven of the packet? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's uh Yeah. If you can give me an indication of where it is, then I can find it and try to be in sync with you.

Okay. So, page seven, this is policy 2B that is talking about um historic preservation and existing rural features and the edit is taking out direct references to barns and agricultural facilities. And I guess the question is is that should should and I guess this is a question for you too as well. Um should those agricultural facilities be specifically and explicitly mentioned as still having value? Right? like going from historic preservation broadly as good and something we want to pursue to also mentioning these structures are important enough to be mentioned explicitly and I think that that's something that I think is useful to call out saying you know because I know that historic preservation has you know the Washington trust of his for historic preservation and department of archaeology and historic preservation have like grants and programs to preserve agricultural facilities. And so I wonder if it's helpful to to make mention that those features are important to us here as we continue to grow and as we expand, you know, as the urban growth area expands and as we potentially impact farmland and agricultural facilities, making known that those buildings are still important even if they are sort of these remainders of of when outside of Oak Harbor were was farmland.

Yeah, I would ask the other commission. I think when we were looking at it, we thought rural features and farm buildings were very vague in the sense different people can look at different buildings and and then the idea of whether you want to preserve something or whether it's important to the community also varies from person to person. Um, we thought that having it related to historical or archaeological significance brings in the state criteria and so that gives us a standard by which we can start to look at these buildings and try and determine the value in terms of making a a public decision on that. And that's why we changed that because um you know the the the rural features and farm buildings are so any anything could represent that. Uh and uh and we were concerned that uh oh sorry and um we were concerned that that could just be vague and we just wanted to correct it more for historical but again these are good value type questions. There are no there's no real technical information. We're trying to make it more technical, but this these are policy documents and the commission or the city council can say, "No, I think we should keep some of these uh other um terminologies in place." Uh um because we view it as a community differently. So just uh it's up to the commission to make some comments on that.

Yeah. So coming from somebody that grew up on a farm, um typically in farm when you talk about farm buildings and things of historic significance, a lot of those buildings and barns, outbuildings and stuff like that were built long ago. And there's some of them that although they're old, believe me, aren't worth saying it's preserving, right? So, like if you have a big barn that's like I'll use the roller barn as an example, something that looks like that, be like, "Okay, the main barn that's probably worth preserving, but all these other smaller barns, hen houses, uh, you know, pig barns, whatever it is that you care to call, maybe not. You know, although they're the same age, they don't all fit in that. So that's why I think when you say uh structures of historic or agricultural or architectural significance I think when you say architectural significance you can make the claim that that big massive barn that is something that that's a kind of a landmark is probably more important than just saying agricultural buildings. Does that make

Oh yeah. I mean we can I mean again some of these buildings are really nice but they may not be functional. I mean when it comes to land development and what needs to be retained or preserved is sometimes up to the developer in terms of how much resources they want to spend. Um and you know we can add functional historic architectural and functional significance is there. you know, we can add terms so that we can focus on retaining structures that can actually um uh be maintained to to convey that over time.

Well, yeah, and functional is is a key part of it could be repurposed. Um, you know, kind of like the the roller barn was repurposed from a barn to it's a roller rink and the barn dominiums are are kind of popular where people turn barns into other other things. Um, some old barns like uh like if you go out here towards uh Lconer, some of those old barns, although they're they're landmarks, it would cost so much to maintain or keep them safe because they're just just old and coming apart or to restore. It wouldn't make sense. So, again, I think um can it be functional? Does it have historic significance? Um what's it going to be used for? because just to say, hey, we're going to preserve something so that we have and I'm using barns as an example, but you know, it could be anything. Um, is we're just going to keep this barn for the sake of it's an old barn. You know, that that maybe that doesn't make sense.

Any thoughts on the stuffing? I agree. I think that the wording is very important um because it can make a difference in how future future developers see it and argue with us on it. Us being the city uh based on terminology. So, uh just key for how it's worded would be important. So, it's not left open. I mean, you got to leave a little bit of gray, but don't handcuff us either. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So, is is the historic and archite architectural significance okay? And we'll add functional in there some uh to capture the importance of of looking at functional or safe buildings, so to speak.

Yeah, I think that that that fits well. And I think right like part of the trajectory that I see is like a lot of this especially the urban design policies talk about how do we retain the character of Oak Harbor? What makes this place interesting, unique, all those types of things and part of that is you know the tree canopy and those sort of like forested aspects. And then also right the sort of split and what is really interesting here is like the split between what is urban and what is rural and making sure that as that you know that line changes m that those you know those structures that indicate where we are are able to be adapted to something else. But you know that sort of that aesthetic architectural indication of what it used to be remains. So I think that yeah adding functional would be okay. I mean right because I think that part of it is also giving us the city to the ability to negotiate to say you know here's a subdivision. You're going to turn this farm field into houses. this barn, you know, meets the whatever standards the the state has for being significant and say, well, that can't go right. Like, we want to make sure that that becomes a component of this new development and is retained in some way.

Good point.

So, okay. Uh, I'm just I'm just going to keep moving on. Um yeah, please stop me if you all have other things. So this is page nine um policy 3f when it's basically saying we should we the city should apply strict requirements and then the revision is to remove strict because the remove the word strict because it is hard to navigate. And so then the question is rather than trying to reduce that sort of strictness if we should consider more quantitative requirements for regulation for like the vegetation buffers right some level of percentage or other like more quantitative aspects. I think that that might be useful because I do I think that this policy overall, right, like to have buffered commercial and residential uses, I think that that's particularly important and I think in the spirit of trying to make things more precise, trying to figure out some level of of I guess target for what we would like those requirements to look like. Does that is that making sense?

Yes. Um yeah it I think we I mean we have requirements uh a landscape we have landscape requirements and we don't we we when we review landscape plans we have some flexibility to look at how the landscape is distributed within the site based on site restrictions whether there's wetlands whether slopes etc. So it gives staff a little bit of flexibility in terms of how we evaluate these landscape requirements but um nonetheless they are required um in the sense that we we don't uh grant variances for them. They are we consider them as a variance that you have to go in front of a hearing examiner and it's hard to justify I don't want to provide landscaping and so on. So, we didn't think that strict was necessary because we think it's in the rules and that it applies to everybody and there's it's not necessary to to use the word strict necessarily in these circumstances. So, that was just our thoughts on that because we apply it universally and it's not a way to say that we vary it uh for these purposes, but that's kind of what our thoughts were on that. So, we're not diminishing the ability to require these at any time.

Okay, I think that makes makes sense. Thank you for that. Um, further down on this page, policy 5. A um that's the consideration of building impacts on viewsheds and view corridors. um that policy as it currently exists seems a little bit vague to me, right? And so like I think that I don't have any specific solutions, but I think that two questions to try to work into that goal overall is like what is the focus of like why is a viewshed important? Like what should the focus of that be? whether it's you know a treelined forested avenue or whether it's view across like open fields and those types of things and then what is our outcome like what in protecting viewsheds what do we hope to achieve by that right is that you know does that line up with like the comp components of low impact development and clustering buildings together so that there's a wider open space or other components. I think that that would help make this goal a little bit more right refined.

Absolutely. I mean that was one of the questions I was going to bring up at the end if there were no discussions on policies is viewheds and corridors. These are difficult to regulate. um view sheds and corridors if I remember just from historical knowledge was introduced into the comprehensive plan I think back in 2006 or 2009 I want to say where there was an interest in protecting some of the views that were existent and the city had a difficult time I think even during that time to look at that because uh the city normally is not in the business of protecting at least private property views. Um you know people play pay millions of dollars for a view of the water or view of the mountain but you know it's not the city's responsibility to protect those views for those people. Uh because there are so many things that are out of uh the city's control or the private pH property owners control. um you know, land that's across the street can grow a tree on their front yard and block the view. Um and you know, the the city actually should not be in the business of trying to mitigate that, especially when we're trying to increase tree canopy. So, there's a lot of conflicting things about protecting views and view sheds. However, these policies got put in there uh because at least the commission and council at that time felt like there should be at least a way to protect public views. So there was a map that was created in the parks plan to at least protect the views across Windjama Park, you know, Pioneer Way. And I think there was some views that were noted on

Riata, you know, as you're coming down uh into the city. And as you enter on SR20 on 16th Avenue on a good day, you can see the Olympics. And so those were the views that were marked for protection. But yet we don't have any regulations in terms of how we regulate that. How a development that's happening down Highway 20 by 8th Street is going to impact the view from 16th. You know, uh will it enhance the view? Will it uh will it block the view? At least at that distance, it won't actually do anything much. So in internal discussions and that's why if you look at that uh the the comment there as I said the city is considering this further to define specific actions that may need to be taken. So we're still trying to figure out what that actually means and what can the city do uh in terms of that. So uh good point that you bring. We'll bring it up to city council as well to kind of just weigh and see where commissions and boards are falling on this view because it's a difficult thing to it's it's good to have it there as a feel-good statement, but when it comes to actual regulation and redevelopment, it's hard to bring these factors in um uh you especially at the time when we're looking at a demand for housing and demand for density and all kinds of things. So, Thanks, K. This just a quick comment on that. I think it's kind of ironic that we put protection in place for the city's property down here for the views along the waterfront, yet we're not paying attention to the property owner's views. So, just just a comment on my end. No answer needed. Thank you.

Well, I think you're right. we have to kind of define what it is that we're trying to protect when it comes to views. Um, you can think of, you go down to some of the waterfront cities in California where they've built these big condos up along the beaches and you can drive down the road and not know you're next to the ocean because they have have the view blocked off. I mean, um, like you say, we have great views of the Olympics and all this other stuff, but we need to kind of define what what it is and where we're trying to protect. And as far as you're you're concerned, we can we can protect like public property, but when it comes to private property, how's the city going to regulate that? How is the city going to tell you you can't plant a tree that impacts my view?

Well, isn't that what we're updating is the codes and and the in the property. So, if it's already in here about, you know, protecting the views downtown, then why couldn't we do that for because downtown's commercial property. That's not city property. It's commercial. But we've put things in place to protect those views for those commercial properties. Why? I have no idea. But if we can do it for commercial properties, we should be able to do it for private property as well. If not, we needed to get rid of all of it. Just my opinion. Just my opinion. Yeah. No, it's it's fair.

Well, uh yeah. No, these are very interesting and these are the discussions we need to have as a community and you know there's no right or wrong. Um things could be uh you know sometimes we achieve things because there are policies and sometimes even though there are policies we're unable to achieve what we want. And so as we go through these updates, that's why we look at it and go, does it still make sense to have it in there? Because we're not able to achieve um based on how we regulate or what we can regulate uh whether we can achieve some of these goals or not. So u I mean we can we'll continue to have it in here if we hear from the city council that it doesn't make sense and and um we we can take it out. it um knowing that you know we're going towards a more you know we're actually kind of seeing the the change from where Oak Harbor is you know thinking that it's a small town functioning as a medium-sized town and wants to be a bigger city really with more services and more density and when we go through these changes these are the policies that get impacted or discussed a part because this is where the change is happening. Um so, uh we'll uh continue to have discussions on this. Again, this is this is one of those gray policies. We'll see what the city council says and hopefully as we go towards the draft, we'll get more input on this.

Very cool. I think the yeah the last couple thoughts about that is like whether or not it would be useful to frame it to city council as like we are trying to preserve public like visual public access to the ocean or to Mount Ray near or Mount Baker or wherever. Um, it also I think connects really nicely to like the idea of gateways and what we'll get to at some point about you know the entrances to Oak Harbor and in line with that same like are there specific components that like function as landmarks that should be visible from and like that like rather than rather than trying to protect one building's vis like view across a landscape make sure that one landmark is universally visible. I think that maybe framing it those are good ways to frame this sort of conversation. But I mean I think it would be useful overall to to see what you come up with.

I I think it would too because if you kind of do preserve those overall views that people can see from different different areas rather than that one building. That's what's going to draw people to Oak Harbor. Hey, come to Oak Harbor and and they got this great city and these awesome views and all that stuff. If you take the views away, you're just cutting down something that could um attract people, I guess. I mean from what I'm hearing is at least just retaining the language mostly maybe clarifying or getting more clarification on how we can do it but I'm also hearing that we can retain that map that we have with the the view corridors already uh um and they like I said they are the common views that you see coming into town from various sides um so we'll retain that unless um unless the commission and the council says no let's take it out doesn't make sense. But I mean it's a good point of discussion though. I just wanted to bring that up in

Yeah.

And I think also right like as as it gets developed if there are actionable things that can be utilized I think that's really useful. And then I don't know the thing that I can think of as it relates to your point of like and and you know I I personally don't necessarily enjoy when people are like well look at Europe for these things but like the idea of ancient light which is this framework that you know London or somewhere in the UK have that like these areas have always had access to sunlight and because of that sort of established uh because they have been established for so long, they have protections against neighboring developments building a tall building and blocking their light, right? So, I think that that's not so unheard of in other places. And so, it might be useful that might be useful for you in terms of seeing if there are ways to um I guess navigate that like private protection of of things that they have invested money into. Um,

yeah, whether or not that's like and then yeah, you can come back and see if that's actually like an actionable component that staff can pull off, I guess. Cool. Um, this is page 10, policy 6B, and this is just um in 6A, you cross out Harborside shops in replacing for Oldtown. And then 6B, you have Harborside shops again, but don't have um Oldtown. So I wanted to double check that that was we will change that. Thanks for catching that.

Um [Applause] and I guess one this is a broad question. Um so we have our design guidelines that we recently we recently saw and then the town council took action on. When we talk about design guidelines in the comp plan, is the general thought that eventually all of these different components like the telecommunication or the buffering landscape stuff all of that gets built into those guidelines or are you thinking that they'll be separate sort of components to the code or some other thing or

Yeah. No, they um they'll probably be all housed in the design um guidelines that we currently have. So a lot of the policies were initially to establish design guidelines and we've done that and we've used it now for years. So we changing most of the language to maintain it. Um and we'll be adding that document is going to get I think um probably a little more robust. Um so we're just building up the kind of framework and the foundation to add more to the design guidelines actually. So by including policies in here um then we'll come back later on and see how we can implement it with the design guidelines. Okay. Um on page 12, this is um goal 10, the the city should engage in a community visual analysis process. Um I think that that's super great and the more the concern or the the component that I wanted to talk to advocate keeping is the early and continuous community input. And this is sort of getting into that idea of of value statements of I know that it's mentioned in other places and we have engagement plans and and other things that sort of practically do like practically lead to early and continuous public engagement and all those types of things. At the same time, I it feels better to me to have that language acknowledged in the comp plan to say like, you know, we want to do these things with the community and like the the buzz of like the buzzword

of early and continuous community input like I think signifies just that continuing value to say like this is how we expect to do it and even though it's practically other places, I think having it built and makes makes sense for me just so that it's you know a little bit more we can we can add that at the end and so be fine with that. Yes.

Do y'all have any thoughts while I ramble? Mine moves into transportation so that's not discussed tonight. We can I think we have we're No, we're only covering that one topic. He said the next meeting covers the second section and then the next month covers the next section. I thought we were covering all of this but he said no. Will you Okay. So the topics that are for tonight to talk about will you remind us what elements we're talking about? because I think we we just got through the urban design.

Yeah, the urban design is a big one. We're talk we we have urban design, uh transportation, um we have utilities, environment, okay, and capital facilities. Okay. And yes, I do have So, yeah, transportation's up for grabs. So, if you have some thoughts, go for it. Hey K, good job tonight so far. Now I'm gonna stump you. No, I'm just joking. Uh, and forgive me because I was lost on what he was given numbers because it didn't match my little qard thing here.

But, uh, for supporting Island Transit versus coordinating with Island Transit, if we say we're supporting their initiatives, why wouldn't we coordinate and work with them on those initiatives? If we just say we're supporting it, then do we still have say in that or for their initiatives? I mean, wouldn't we work in conjunction with them? By saying support, that just kind of ties our hands that we'll support what they come out with. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Um, I mean, we can retain the language, but I think it's just, um, I think Island Transit does a great job of, um, planning for their routes, um, and, um, designing their routes. And so we um but if we left it coordinating then what would happen is if it didn't meet our needs as we go through this growth we would have the ability to coordinate with them and helping that design rather than just supporting their design and then removing our ability to communicate with them on it.

Absolutely. I mean uh we definitely can um um enhance that uh relationship with the coordination. Um but I think in the we just did that probably because of our current uh status in terms of the growth that we have seen has not required much of a change in terms of the networks that they already have. They seem to have a very good network. We also thought that the current network is in line with what we have in terms of our land use patterns and growth and um so um I think that was just because it's a different agency than us in terms of what they do. uh we wanted to just be of a supportive uh but I can see your thoughts on coordination being more of a collaborative process and determining that and we can definitely change the language uh to support that. Can you tell me which uh

Oh, you're going to make me go back now cuz I've already flipped pages. Uh we should have the transportation piece. Yeah. Um, it's on page 16 of 39, policy 3B. So, there's the page number down here. Sorry. Yeah, it's super small. And then Gotcha. 3B. Yeah. Yep. Okay. We'll keep the original language. How's that?

Okay. And then but what if we what if we added the support coordinate and support island transit we could do that as well because like you say what they have going now is okay. It might not take a whole lot of coordination if what they're providing works. Yeah. But it doesn't tie our hands for in the future.

Yeah. No, we could do that. That's a good suggestion. So, so the only other question I have right now, CAC, is on uh same page except it's uh 2F and it is on implement complete street design standards for future road improvements as funding becomes available. What what is a complete streets design? What is that? A complete street design basically talks about designing a street for all modes of transportation. So uh in the past when we design streets uh we design it based on whether it's an arterial street and whether it's a collector street and whether it's a local street and we would have cross-sections for those and it was always assumed that your pedestrians or your bicyclists are going to be only on the local streets maybe not on your on your arterial streets. So there was a different thinking process in terms of how street cross-sections are designed. Once we have a complete street standard, we have to design all our streets to accommodate all uh transportation, bicycles, pedestrians, transit and so on. And so you uh invest in uh higher design quality and more design elements to incorporate that whether it's striping or whether it's flexible pavement uh you know all that type of stuff comes in.

Thank you.

Okay. So this is page um 17 policy 4B. And this is um this one, this comment and then my next comment are basically just pointing these out as something that maybe it'd be good to bring up to the city council. Right? These are both saying right like we have these policies for so 4B is for integrating transportation demand management and on page 18 4 H is talking about um implementing local improvement districts LIS and both of those I guess the the notes talk about the if they're not being implemented do we want to remove the policy. And so I I guess the question for city council and staff is are those two sort of programs something that are still of interest and if if so how do we navigate putting you know making those programs possible because I think that I don't know really enough about the transportation demand management thing but I do like ls do potentially limited improvement districts or local improvement districts, right, potentially have a lot of use. Um, especially as we talk about like the urban growth area and those types of things.

Yeah, we can we can definitely raise the question with them. I think with the transportation demand management tools, they it's probably got put into place as part part of a previous update with state law requirements. And I think the thought process there was that this is more employed in higher urbanized areas around uh maybe even transit or um or light rail type uh and denser developments and we didn't see that it was actually going to uh be used here in Okabar. So that was in terms of just the transportation demand management stuff. um the LIS. Um yeah, we can definitely bring that up. I think it just was not a current tool that engineering thought that they would pursue in terms of uh funding local improvements. Uh but that's a good question for city council to consider whether you know they want to retain some of these tools uh to see how local roads could be improved. So yeah, we'll definitely bring that up.

Okay. And then on that same page 17, um the bottom new policy, um I think is really good, but I would like I think I would like to see it strengthened a little bit more. Right. So this is consider historical distribution of capital improvement projects in relation to income and other demographics to access equal access to facilities. And I think that some level of strengthening strengthening that language to say like focus investment or like purposely target making to like rectify some of those past impacts. I think that that is more useful than just sort of like the consider part mostly because right when we're talking about like costbenefit analysis and the way that if you were to to use that like framework to assess whether or not you should go with a transportation project, right? some of that sort of inherently is unequal in terms of where its impacts are, right? So like for example, and to bring you up to speed, right? Like if you do a costbenefit analysis, right? Saying it's going to cost a million dollars and the benefit is to uh $20 million homes, right? Like that's a really good cost benefit. But if you say this project is going to cost a million dollars and it's going to benefit 50 200 or like 50 $100,000 buildings, right? Like that I don't know if that math actually works, but like the idea that more wealthy areas sort of skew the way that we measure how, where, and why we do things following that. So, okay. Um,

I understand what you're saying, but I don't see that. No car. I mostly I I guess I don't know. And that be would be a question for you as well, just like when we talk about historic patterns of investment. Are there areas of Oak Harbor that are losing out on some of those investments? Right? and making sure that if that is the case, we are making sure that we have language in our policies to strengthen targeting investment to those places that have not seen it so far.

Um, absolutely. I mean I think if I'm hearing you right instead of just um considering these in our project do we want uh what you're suggesting is a more directed policy to try and actually make investments in area that are economically disadvantaged. Um I mean um for example we have um u and well I the opportunity zone in Okabar is for a particular census tract in the city and it is an opportunity zone because of the demographics of people that are living there and it was identified as one of those census tracks that could use investments. Um so um we do have areas in in the city um that um have different income level distributions and so uh we could uh ask our consultants uh because this is again to meet the state law. I think they're bringing this this in because I think the state wants cities and counties to consider uh you know investment opportunities in all areas. Um, and we can kind of strengthen it to make sure we're thinking about the economically disadvantaged uh areas in our capital facility planning. Cool. Okay. Um, moving on. This is page 18. Um, policy 4.I. Right. Again, this is sort of that going to that value statement of of I think that it makes sense somewhere in our comprehensive plan to to make a value statement to say that we we want to we acknowledge that air quality is important and something that we want to maintain and protect and mitigate to the best of our ability. And

so like right like I think it makes sense to like pull out this entire policy and and in sort of the context of everything that we've been doing but I think that somewhere it makes sense to say like air quality is a value that we want to make sure that as we go through development we are specifically targeting you know making sure that that is achieved or mitigated. Um, and then similarly, and I think that you've already answered this question, but like in policy 4K, when we're talking about like our Gary Oak trees and that component and taking up that policy because our critical area and environmental policies already cover it, wanting to make sure that, you know, at least somewhere it's sort of explicitly mentioned to say like Gary Oak trees exist. We are called Oak Harbor. There's a reason why we want to protect these specifically. Um, and then sorry. And then jumping back up on that same page to 4 J. This is something that I think that we've talked about before, but I wanted to just like make it known and follow up the best we can. Right. I think that you had mentioned that roundabouts offer an interesting challenge, I will say, to like uh visually impaired people and blind folks. And I think that well I think that that was a comment that has been been brought up and I don't know if we've ever gotten an answer about if that is an actual sort of like barrier and if there are ways to sort of facilitate that sort of accessibility through roundabouts rather than you know a traditional stoplight with like the the buttons that say you know cross across cross across whatever street. And so I think that that at least is an interesting line of thought to make sure that if that is something that like has been

thought about before as we think about roundabouts and that sort of component

creating a sub policy to to consider those in the design of an intersection will be helpful. So even though I think it it's beneficial to go to roundabouts just because of the long-term maintenance and so on associated but it is still a challenge for pedestrian crossing and and uh ADA accessibility. So um I think that's important and um we can we can see if that could be a sub policy um of that uh roundabout policy. Um just going back to the other two that so we'll we'll try and retain I think what you I think what you I heard you say is I think it's important to protect the air quality. I think the reason why we wanted to change that is um um you can design systems but it's really difficult to um uh influence the the single occupancy vehicle and I think uh there was just some discussion in terms of maybe what we should be promoting as opposed to what we shouldn't be doing um or what we should be discouraging. So I think we can still try and protect the air quality but we can connect it to what we want to achieve in terms of using transit, walking and biking but still uh make sure that we have something to protect the air quality.

Yeah, I I think that that makes sense. mostly wanting to make sure that the sort of explicit recognition that air quality is important is is maintained and we're not sort of losing that to a broad like we want to like we want to have more people walking or taking bikes or taking transit with not the sort of why behind it. I think that that's at least important I think in my opinion to to keep maintained. And um just uh on on the 4K um the that policy I think was put in place because I think there was a general push in terms of you know where to promote Gary Oak growth and again um the city was reluctant to try and require Gary Oaks as part of private developments because they become critical areas and they become um areas that you is hard to build around or um redevelop around. And so um the idea at that time was to try and promote Gary Oaks and the public right away. But we found out that those are not necessarily best for um you know the roadways go through improvements, they go through changes and again you're building critical areas into your roadway that continually change and they make it challenging to deal with the changes. So I think we want to promote uh Gary Oak um uh propagation within Oak Harbor. I think we want to support the grassroots efforts that the Gary Oak Society and other organizations put into place to help people realize that this is an important resource and that they should

be more passionate about it than trying to require it. The more the city comes out to require something, the more people want to cut those trees down. I, you know, I have more I I go on these Gary Oak trimming uh permits and when you go to some of these lands that are encumbered by um Gary Oak trees, uh we encounter two kinds of people. One, they're really passionate. They want to keep it. And as long as it's the maintenance is not that much. But then we have areas where some of these trees get aphids and they just shed on in the backyard and and all kinds of stuff and it's very difficult to clean. Or there's been a tree that's been encumbered by vine and some other stuff and it's barely standing. It's still alive, but we don't have regulations to say you can cut it down because the regulations are so strict. So then the developer changes from going, I don't want to preserve this anymore. I'd rather just take it down because it's just so much difficult to try and preserve a tree that doesn't seem to have much life in it. So um so we try to um um kind of u not be so imposing that it turns against uh itself. So, it's kind of a sweet spot we're trying to ride um you know in terms of propagation and communitydriven efforts as opposed to trying to regulate our way out of it. Okay, cool. That sounds good. Um I think that's all that I had for transportation. Any last thoughts for transportation? Okay. um in utilities.

This is page 21. Um just a question of why we're wanting to remove 1.H. That's the encourage collocation of utilities. Um and it's there's not really any notes behind why removing it, but the entire thing is is proposed to be removed. So I I wonder if you have any thoughts or insight onto that one.

Yeah, I think the discussion was I'm not sure how much the city has a say in some of these coal locations. We don't have limitations on one pole per,000 ft or within a mile. We don't have that restrictions. If the if the zoning allows it, you can have a telecommunication tower. I mean, and the and there were federal policies that came down like 10 15 years ago in terms of how much zoning can regulate these because they were just a national security and communication thing that the federal government was doing. And so they required or at least prevented the city from imposing too many regulations on these cell towers. Um, and so this is just probably a remnants of one of those where when cities were trying to do this because uh there were structures that were popping out and and people thought that they were ridiculous. Um, but I think we actually don't have a say because we don't limit these structures in that fashion anymore. Basically, if they are permitted in a particular zoning district, then whoever the cell phone company is can can install it there. So, um, also those it's a double-edged sword. When we start to limit them, they start to become taller and bigger, and if you disperse them, they're they're smaller and they actually disappear into the into the into the neighborhood. So, I think that's kind of why we took that out. But we can add a comment on that to clarify why. Cool. Sounds good. Um the last one in the utilities section that I had was is on page 25 and it's just another clarifying question of

this is 6.c um supporting the city of Anacortis and maintaining water rights. Um what I guess what is Oak Harbor's role? I know that we get our water from Anacortis, but like in what is that policy intending to sort of do?

Good question. I think this may have come based on some decision I think in Watcom County in terms of water rights. And if I remember right, I think um there was some questions in terms of who has the water rights and it's based on water rights are it's not my area of expertise but if you are a senior water right holder which usually most cities are then you get more priority to the water. So I think if I remember right I'll just paraphrase this is what was happening in Watcom County was there were a lot of farmland or working farms that have recently come into existence and have been drawing water from either the creeks or the river to use it for their purpose. And what was happening is downstream impacts were happening because there weren't weren't enough water levels for fish to travel upstream because there were so many being used and also the the cities downstream were also not getting enough water and so there was a court case I think that started to limit uh water usage even though you're in a water uh drainage district. So, um I think this policy may have been added just to support Anacortis keeping their water rights because that's where

we get the water from. So, in supporting Anacortis to maintain their water rights and their rights to the quantity of water that they're drawing from the Scadget River, then we can support ourselves. I think that's the intent of that. Okay, that makes sense. Any thoughts on the utility component? All right. Um, moving on to environmental. Environmental. Yeah. Do you all have any initial thoughts?

Um, I don't really either at this. Okay. Um, okay. Again, um, so this is page 29, policy 4.D. Um and again this is that um well this is about non point source pollution. This is prohibit land uses which create excessive amounts of point source pollution. And just wanting to point out or make a comment about is excessive also a hard to define term. And um going the similar way to the other things is like should we add some level of like quantitative amount or some way that we can say like this one thing is excessive this other thing is not. Um and then okay that was talked about. Um I guess one question that I do have about like urban tree canopy and those sort of regulations is you know on this is on page 30 policy 5H. Um, how are the existing regulations different for right this talks specifically about undeveloped or partially developed properties when we have sort of fully developed you know single family or or otherwise properties and they after development has occurred want to cut down trees. Do we have regulations that would facilitate that or like prevent that or or manage that in some way or are we in a situation where you know the a developer is required to

replant trees as they create a subdivision and then 15 years after that tree is grown a new property owner comes and is like I don't like this tree can I cut it down right like is what I guess will you tell us more about that situation or does that how that framework exists.

Yeah, absolutely. Um so once a property is developed and if there are so there's two ways uh during development that landscaping could be required. So um one u in the in the in the current way our development regulations are written. So when they do like PRDS, plant residential developments where a developer is able to subdivide land and use the PRD uh code which gives them smaller lots, narrower streets, so they get more houses, but the mitigation for that is that they have some public open spaces uh because they're doing smaller lots and they don't have much of a yard space. So when you have these public spaces then they are required to be landscaped. So in the future when a developer 10 20 years down the road when um somebody wants to as on their private property it's not regulated. So in the sense you can buy a house you can go in and you can plant four apple trees right there's no regulation. Nobody giving you a permit for that. If the next owner wants to come down and take out that four apple trees, they have the right to do so. City doesn't interfere or get involved in that. But in these common areas, especially in a PRD, we have these requirements and it's usually a landscape plan that's in the subdivision as part of the subdivision. So, homeowner associations or whatever will come to us and say, "We want to remove these trees that's in this public kind of access easement. What does the city have to say? And we look at our ordinance and say you got to replace each tree when you take them and then they go about doing the stuff. So that's

one way that we make sure that trees are retained at least in these public spaces where we thought they needed to be there on private property till today. As long as it's not a Gary Oak, trees can come and go and it's the private property owner's decision as long as there's a house or development that's already there. Now, if it's a vacant piece of land, then you get into the clearing permit and the grading permit and so on when you're trying to get trees because they're preparing it for some sort of development. And there are still policies here to try and slow that down. Like so if you have a site plan and if you have a plan for it then fine because those trees are going to be taken down you're going to put a new building but guess what you're going to get new landscaping along with that new building. But if you don't have any plans and you take those trees down then all of a sudden this land is just sitting there and it can lead to erosion and so on. And so that's what these policies help to prevent.

Okay. S Okay. Very good. Um, and I don't know if I have an opinion one way or the other, but it might be an interesting conversation. It sounds right like that we're not particularly interested in regulating tree canopy and and trees on individual properties. And I'm curious about how the intersection of that decision, right, to say if it's in the if it's on a private piece of property, we're not, you know, other than a Garyok, we don't necessarily care. How did that how does that intersect with our ability overall as the city of Oak Harbor to have, you know, either a target or a goal of like increased tree canopy, right? And so like whether that means we need policies for how that's managed on public land or in the ride ofway or other areas that the city has control over or if it's worth thinking about how we manage that on private property. I'm not I don't know if I have an opinion one way or the other, but I think that that's an interesting intersection that I've run into.

Yeah. And if I can speak to that, that's an internal conversation that we're having as well because I think one of the ways to provide for nicer canopy is to have trees on private property because when we do a street cross-section and if you look at the parkway, it's only 5 ft. and and we have uh a tree list that we supply our developers in terms of what kind of trees they can plant in these planter strips which are in the rightway. And the um the list is designed so that the trees don't become very big because they'll get underneath the sidewalk and they'll get into utility pipes, the root system. So there's a lot of issues with having these larger trees in the rightway, but this but we talked about not how can we not give up the canopy that we still want and there is some talks on whether we want to try and design have design guidelines just like we have design guidelines for landscaping for commercial. Should we have design guidelines for subdivisions as well where, you know, you have a tree in in in the front yard that can get, you know, have a bigger canopy than if you had a tree just in on the street. Um, but I think our policies are flexible enough to consider those in the future if we wanted to. Currently we don't have requirements but I think our policy has enough at least we wanted to uh give ourselves some flexibility from moving away from um from the strict tree street tree requirements and even consider those on private property. Okay, cool. Yeah, that's good to know. And I think that that's I mean it's a super interesting component of all of

this. Um Um this is page 31. Um it's not an actual it doesn't have a policy. It's one of the critical area. Um I don't know goals. I guess it's right above the environmental review goal. Um that we just change it to support a monitoring and management program. Um, I think that there's there's a little bit of weird grammar in that in how it gets revised, but I'm curious, right, like who would we be supporting, right? Like it when we're talking about um noxious weeds, critical areas, invasive and non-native plant and animal species, and we're talking about, you know, providing support to someone. Who is that? I would think that these would just be like on private property. So we don't have any existing program to go out and monitor, you know, these things happening on private property. But I think we can support any effort that a private property owner wants to do in order to eliminate noxious weeds on their property. So, it's a it's a fine thing than than the city going and saying you must pull out all the scotch broom on your property as opposed to oh, you want to pull it out. Okay. Yeah, here we can help you with in these ways.

Mhm. Okay, that makes sense. Um,

but yeah, we'll change the wording of that to uh make grammatical sense. Okay. Um I think that and I I imagine that this might be more apparent in the climate resiliency element when we get there. Um but this is on page 33 goal 12. Um it would just be inter interesting and I think useful to explicitly mention um how flooding and minimizing public and private losses due to flood hazards, how that changes or intersects with sea level rise, right? and how do we what components of future planning for how we're expecting you know sea level to change and all how that impacts you know flooding potential and hazards um I think making that explic explicitly mentioned is is important just because that way we're you know I mean in my experience right like flood uh flood ele flood insurance rate maps. The thing that we say, you know, if you're building at this level, you have to do X, Y, and Z. If you're building above, you're okay. Um, they're slow to update, right? And at this point, right, probably likely slow to capture changes in severe storms or severe, you know, flooding events as we talk about climate change and sea level rise. And so I think if we can be a little bit more proactive in being able to say, you know, yes, the flood insurance rate maps say one thing and that's what we're going to use, but you should really be thinking about, you know, a magnitude or a couple magnitudes higher than that because that's what

we're expecting in 50 100 years. I think that that's useful and probably, you know, useful to provide as a decision-making tool for folks who are, you know, building close to Crescent Harbor and all that.

Yeah. No, I I think we'll be um and I don't know if we've already maybe and and we can share it again with um the commission for the next meeting when we actually look at the environment policies is our consultants did a an analysis of for Okabar in terms of climate resiliency to identify what assets um are likely to be impacted during some sort of a climate event. And so we'll be generating policies to try and protect those facilities. Um so um it'll be interesting to see, you know, how they how they overlap. So we'll be discussing some of that at the at the next meeting.

Awesome. Yeah, that would be super useful to to see if um yeah, if that is something that you can provide to us as part of it. I'd love to see that.

Um Okay. Um, I think that that's really the most of what I had to talk about. I I haven't I didn't bring up a few that are like I noticed a few that were like change like the policy says like consider doing something and there's no proposed revisions to it and I and so then the questions was like are we still considering this or have we done this and it needs to be changed like maintained or or that type of thing. Um, there's a few of those in throughout, but I, you know, that's small compared to what I'm, you know, that's just sort of general stuff.

It's, it's missing the comments on why we're considering the change. Well, okay. So, the one that I have, right, is yes. So, this is on page 39 um 3. Which is consider adopting impact fees when appropriate to mitigate the short-term fiscal impacts of increased development. And then there's not sort of any reasoning or any proposed policy revisions. Yeah, I would say those those are still under consideration.

They're just not right for discussion. So that's the other thing I was saying like I you know the comprehensive plan has a lot of policies that we want to keep available just in case we want to choose a particular path to solve an issue. Um and so we have it as a toolkit in our policy so that we can say if we if the idea comes up if some project is ripe for something then we say we have it in our comp plan let's pursue it. You know we don't need to make big changes. Cool. I think that makes sense. Um okay I think that that that's all that I had written down and and thought through. So um

those are some great comments and yeah this is the kind of discussion we want to have. Thank you for taking the time to to go through that because we are spending a lot of time as staff and sometimes we can get uh kind of close-minded on what we're doing and may not see the bigger picture. So, it's really helpful to get comments from the commission and from the public um because we don't sometimes are not able to see all uh all the perspectives uh that the community has. So, um yeah, great great conversation. I hope in the next couple meetings we can continue to have these type of discussions and um this is really helpful for us.

Good. Yeah. Do we have any any last comments? Any last thoughts? Yeah. And that's why we need more planning commissioners up here so that there are more opinions and and thought processes and different views because they actually see different things than us and we see different things than them and together we try to come up with the most collective information that we all try to view for the public. So, for those of you that may watch this later or are watching it now, please go to the city website and apply for a planning commission. Just add your resume if you feel like sitting on it and making a difference in Oak Harbor. CAC, thank you very much, sir. I appreciate everything tonight.

Thank you. Good info. Thank you for those comments. And I'll say that we do have a comment sheet on our comprehensive plan page. Anybody can download that and submit it and we'll add it to the public comments that we receive on these. So, we'll be happy to receive those. Very cool. Um, any other comments on comp plan stuff? Okay. Very good. Thank you very much. Okay. So, next Commissioner Fry, I just want to let you know we do have one planning commissioner up for approval with the upcoming agenda on 960. Let me know earlier. Thank you.

Very cool. Thank you. Um, okay. Do we have any last member comments? Anything we want to comment upon before we call it? Cool. I do have one question. Um, in terms of like development department or Yeah, the community development department. Development services.

Development services. There we go. Um, how are searches going for the director and that type of stuff? So unfortunately we um well fortunately we had a really great process but unfortunately the top candidate withdrew um at the last minute. So we are currently going back out for a search. Um we also have some other positions in the department that we are currently opening up for application and those are available to apply for on the website. So I believe it's an associate planner position um and we had an inspector position that we just closed. So those are the things that we're working on. And then I am your acting director. So if you need anything, find me.

Very good. Thank you very much. Okay, I think that that's all I have. So our next scheduled meeting is October 14th, 2025. Um and with that, I will take a motion to adjurnn. I make a motion to adjurnn. Second. Moved by Fry, second by Bradley. All those in favor? I I motion passes unanimously. Thank you all. Have a good night. Um see you