Remarks by Robert Vanderpool
80 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 4
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“the land use environment committee the olympia city council today is thursday august 27th 2026 i'm your chair robert vanderpoel paul would you like to introduce yourself all right can i get approval of the agenda”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Second. All in favor? Aye. All right. We have an agenda and we have several public commenters starting in person.”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Okay. Thank you both for commenting. If you want to email us a copy of that, I can also share it with Clark, or you can give me a copy too if you have it on you right now. Thank you. Yeah, if you have any write-up of it, I can share it with Councilman Gilman because he's out of town right now, so that for next week or next month when we have this conversation, I can be”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“All right. So now we're to approval of minutes. Can I get a motion to approve?”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Alright, we are at community business discussion of land banking strategies.”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“I see Jacinda. It's popped in, but I also I I I know that the the Seattle social housing program functions similarly to this. It that way that so that the City Council or County Council and King County does not can help fund programs but cannot take it away so it can continue to function outside of government. OK, just send it.”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Thank you, Ashley. I'm going to let my counsel, Paul, kind of answer some of this. I brought some of my own notes, and I think some of it will help answer some of this, but we'll come back around and make sure we have all the information you need. So please let us know if there's a question that is not quite answered along the way. Go ahead, Paul.”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Like a furniture store downtown that's been vacant for a long time.”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Can I jump in and maybe make a recommendation about this? So when I think about the land inventory, I think of what is, I guess, maybe tiered approach. Like obviously, if we own the land or the school district owns the land, that is like a tier one. If it is owned by a a secondary like a state and it's not, it may go in the market one day, that's a lower tier, right? If it's vacant, right? Like those type of things, right? Or it'd be really nice to have affordable housing. So like if that part of town, if we look at like rents and that side of town, there is no affordable housing in that…”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“I don't know, Paul, if you want to answer it, but I was thinking there has to be a cutoff at one point. Right. It's so far down the tier that we have to have a cut off. And as Ashley's saying, we can continue to update this into the future. I don't know if that sounds.”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Thank you, Paul. I agree. I like the deliberateness of this process, these phases. I think it'll be, I look forward to each step as we move along through it. I'm glad that zoning was mentioned because that was an immediate thought I had when I was reading the packet was what zoning barriers exist currently on properties. I think that's a very important look as we go through it. I'm also interested in as we go through the package, as we're looking at, I think it might be phase three of the partnerships and identifying opportunities, I think that that could provide not just outside developers,…”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Ashley, do you have any, do you need any more direction from us?”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Yeah. I support developing the strategic property framework that's phase two, at least in the council notes or the packet here. and partnership models and financing options. Yeah, I do support working on that, if possible at the same time, because that could help us think about the land once we have the inventory. It makes sense at the same time.”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“I understand the need to look at our entire city and and make sure that we're not, you know, missing something, right? Nothing is more embarrassing as an elected official doing something and then some public comments about something you never thought about. But I agree about the tax dollars. To your point before, especially on affordable housing, if people have affordable housing, they will spend more money into the local economy rather than survival. And so trying to get us back to where we are right now, make sure we have all of Ashley's questions answered. We're very supportive of this…”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“And thank you for your first presentation to the City Council. I hope we didn't scare you with our broad aspirations for a city of 60,000 people.”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“We look forward to seeing you in person.”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Thank you, Ashley. All right. So we're on to Approval of manufactured home communities preservation recommendations. And this is an item that has had many, many, many years of building up and talking to so many folks in the community. I'm looking forward to this one because there has been a lot of a lot of interest in the community.”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Thank you, Paul. Um, I appreciate this. This is clearly years of building and working on this. This is... We're really trying everything we can despite preemption, despite barriers. I think you should pursue all of these as you can to answer that question. But I am going to point out a few things that I think are... of interest to me, not to say that you shouldn't pursue all of them. I think you should, whatever we can do to create stability in folks' lives is, is, it's very important. Um, but I think that the things like the, um, uh, commerce infrastructure grant stuff is very interesting. I…”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Yeah. I mean, there's quite a bit in here and I think that I'm aware of it. I know Paul's probably aware of it, but, uh, um, depending on how the schedule is with council, I think, uh, uh, maybe a, um, ask Paul, do you think, do you think this is a study session thing or do you think this is a, uh, agenda of other business council meeting thing? Because I think it can be gone over in a regular council meeting. It doesn't specifically need to go through a study session because these are all things that have been worked on. I don't want to delay them.”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Yep. And I agree with what I'm hearing from, uh, from Paul about this because, uh, Education is very valuable, especially all the changes that have been made. One other thought I did have is that, and I mentioned the Lacey relationship, if we are looking at that funding, and Paul did, I could tell it's like if funding is available, right? We're looking at if it is available to do the rotating fund with Public Works particularly. I think that if we mentioned some of these with Lacey, I mean, we have done joint funding of things before with our jurisdictions. I think that if we're both kind of…”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Appreciate you. All right. And I think... That's it. We're at reports and updates. Tim, do you have anything for us?”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Sounds good. I'm also going to have Chair Quinn from the Planning Commission is probably going to zoom in. I'm going to ask him to have the home-based codes be the first item so he can zoom in during his lunch, and then provide some feedback. I'm going to be meeting with him before our next meeting, and I'll send you both, all of us, an email about that feedback. I suspect that we may have to send it back to the planning commissions and have them work it more, but we'll see where that goes so that we can get a clearer picture because historically I've never seen a 6-0 vote against a staff…”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Thank you. Paul, do you have anything for the night?”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“All right. I'm going to adjourn the meeting then.”
Planning Commission · Aug 27, 2026
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“Whereas survey respondents also stated policy situations in the areas of racial justice and civil rights, economic security, childcare, women's health and community well-being are extremely important to women across the nation, especially policies which support women's autonomy, protect their social and economic freedoms, and respond to the issues of greatest importance to women. And whereas throughout history, women have increasingly stepped into leadership roles in public service, often overcoming longstanding barriers to representation, And in 2026, the city of Olympia marked an important…”
City Council · Aug 25, 2026