Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. Welcome to a meeting of the Land Use and Environment Committee of the City Council. I'm Robert Vanderpool, your chair. I have my folks want to introduce themselves. We'll just go that way. Sure. Clark Gilman, committee member.

Paul Barron, city council member and committee member. Cool.

All right. Can I get an approval of tonight's agenda?

I move to approve the agenda for the June 25th meeting.

Second.

All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All right. We have public comment. A few folks signed up. Yeah. Online we have a person. Potentially a person. All right. Would you like to start us off since you're here? You can come up here if you want. Or you can go. It's up to you.

A little less awkward.

Yes.

For the record, Lynn Fitzhugh, Executive Director of Restoring Earth Connection. And I've had the pleasure in the last few months of talking to Robert Clark and Paul about all my interests and concerns about trees and also have talked to Leanne and Kim on many occasions about this. And so after eight years of asking the city to please, please update the tree code, we're thrilled that things are underway and that a contract is signed. We do wish that it would not take two years. A lot of our concerns center around what has historically happened over that period of time. So for example, when both Lacey and Tumwater have looked at LIDAR data that shows some look back period, they will see significant tree loss that has happened. And even if you get like 2% a year, that means that in five years, you've got 10%. loss, right? So it can look like, oh, we're not getting that much loss. And then really, it's adding up to quite a bit of loss. And Tumwater has just looked at the LIDAR data that they had for 2023 to identify their 10 largest trees. And then when they went out to look for the 10 largest trees, they discovered that two of them had already been cut down Two of them are slated to be cut down any day now. And that includes the largest tree they had in Tumwater. It's about to be cut down. And part of the sadness of that is Tumwater had started on a tree ordinance in 2023 that, if completed, would have protected that largest tree. They got interrupted from the process. And so while waiting, now the tree is gone. Five more of the trees are on Port of Olympia land, so who knows what will happen to those. And so there's one that they can potentially protect. When we did our tree ambassador program and we went door to door and we looked at trees in the city of Olympia and we identified the largest that you had of each species, one of the things that we found, which was sort of a surprise finding to us, was that all of those largest trees with maybe one exception, are on lands that are highly susceptible to redevelopment, either an elderly owner or a slumlord sort of rental situation. So they're very likely to wind up getting cut down. So our concern about the two year period is that, will those significant trees get lost in the meantime? And I think in general, When people think about tree policies, there's sort of this feeling of almost like the trees are static and then we'll just, well, when we get to the tree policy, we get to the tree policy. Well, the trees are not static. They're being lost in the meantime. So I have spoken to council people and really want to encourage a resolution that we put a moratorium in place on the cutting of the largest size trees while this tree policy gets worked on. I hope that by the end of the time when we get to the end of the tree policy, it'll have its own protections in place. But I think we have to do something in the interim to make sure that they don't get cut down. And at this point, the county, based on language Tumwater intended to adopt, has created tree designations heritage trees for the largest size and landmark for the next largest size. So I think those are categories that can be made use of in order to try to identify the trees that we would protect. And having looked at plans for places like Spring Creek and other places where development is happening in the city, it is actually not hard you might think it would be to protect a certain tree with slight adjustments of a floor plan you can do it you can protect the tree so um i'm not proposing something that i think is going to like grind development to a halt or um make it impossible for someone to build i think it's um it will require a little bit of will on their part but That's it, thank you.

Okay, next we have Heather Penns. Heather, you're free to unmute.

All right, I'm Heather Penns. I live in Olympia. Please pass a resolution to temporarily protect Olympia's trees that are over 40 inches diameter at breast height. It will take a long time to get a new tree ordinance. In the meantime, many large trees are at risk of being cut down in development projects. These large trees are very valuable because they sequester and store 50% of the carbon drawn down by trees. They hold water in the soil, preventing flooding. Replacing older trees with saplings is a loss to the environment because it takes a very long time for them to become effective at carbon drawdown. Please pass a resolution to temporarily protect Olympia's trees that are over 40 inches DBH until a new tree ordinance can be put in place. Thank you.

Thank you, Heather.

And it looks like there is nobody else online who is looking to speak, unless Daniel Garcia would like to make comment.

I think he's here for the second agenda item, unless he really wants to chat with us about it. All right. Since that seems to be it, we'll end public comment. Can I get approval of our minutes for the last two meetings?

I move that we approve the minutes from the last two meetings of the Land Use Committee.

Do you think we need two motions with the two dates? We're good? I think it'd be better if you did. If you don't mind.

I don't have the dates in front of me.

A motion to approve the May 28th Land Use Environment Committee meeting minutes.

Second. All in favor? Aye.

Aye. And a motion to approve the June 11th Special Land Use and Environment Committee meeting. Minutes.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

All right.

Cool. All right. Now we're on to committee business briefing of the Urban Forest Management Plan.

Okay. Screen. We'll get started.

All right. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for having me, having us. So a quick round of introductions. My name is Kim Foley. I am an environmental planner in public works in the water resources department. I am not an arborist. I will start with that aspect of my introduction. I came to the city of Olympia from the city of Seattle. I worked in Seattle's urban forestry department for several years. I worked on the city of Seattle's urban forest management plan that came out in 2020. My background is more in long range environmental planning, watershed planning, water resources, ecosystem restoration, things like that. I sit within the stormwater utility. So the primary nexus between my involvement with this work is the growing breadth of knowledge and also regulatory pressures coming from our stormwater permit. that have to do with the benefits of trees to stormwater management. So that's a little bit about my background, why I'm coming to you sitting here as staff from Water Resources, as the person who is shepherding this project along. It's not just me. There's many other folks from city staff working on this project, namely Leanne Wells. And I'll let you introduce yourself. Hello.

So I'm Leanne Wells, and I'm the urban forester for this city. And I've been in the position for nine months. And prior to my work in Olympia, I have most recently I came from the city of Portland and I was there for 10 years. And part of that time, I was the planting program coordinator for the city in their urban forestry program that was housed in the parks department. Prior to that, I was the city forester in Lafayette, Indiana, and then Prior to that, I worked in planning, mostly current planning. And then prior to that was grad school. So yeah, so most of my interests have been in sustainable development and working with the urban forest. So that's where I come in. And my role at the city currently is working primarily with the code. And so I cannot claim to be an expert in the tree code, but I can claim to probably know it pretty well. I think Tim knows it the best. He is my go-to when, when both Nicole and I are stumped, but, but I'm, I'm getting pretty good at it, I must say. So I have had, you know, an everyday experience with it since I've started. And I have a lot of feedback almost as a, consultant from from my point of view coming into it with very fresh eyes and having my my other experiences to draw from and knowing what other municipalities have done in similar situations and it's not the situations aren't different it's just that we're doing it in a different way than other municipalities so um Yeah, so I touch trees as Kim and I go through this process. I'm honing my spiel here and I touch almost all trees and it'll be easiest for me to tell you which trees I am not involved with at all in the city of Olympia. And that's when it comes to trees and habitat restoration projects. Every other tree I generally, and what I mean by every other tree, I mean every other category of tree, trees in the street, trees planted as street trees, trees on private development, trees as part of private development or not as part of development on private property. Yeah, so really if there's a tree issue, if there's a tree question, Janet Callahan- It comes to me. And then if I can't, if I don't know where to triage it out, then, then it then I send it to then I have to ask questions and figure out who that goes to. But so that's what I do. And I also do plan review development for the city. So, and then long range planning and code enforcement and all sorts of other things.

So yeah, so, so

You know we're we're in this we have our I mean kim's going to talk about our timeline and all that, but we can address the comments about the length of time for the project so yeah yeah.

Thanks again. All right, so i'll speak a little bit to the history, the goal of this evening is is to provide a high level. What is this plan? What is the process? What are the intended outcomes? If we can kind of crystal ball and jump to the end and imagine our published final plan, what's going to be in this thing? And in some ways, we don't quite know yet. We're going to go through the process to find out exactly what the needs are. That's where our council members will come in and provide some of that guidance. What do you want to see in this plan based on the context that you have from a citywide perspective across all disciplines. So today is really high level thinking about we're just kicking this thing off. So we're still honing in with the process and the needs and the exact kind of details of the plan will be. So those sort of the goals for this conversation, we'll talk through the basics of needs and opportunities, some of the challenges we expect to face timeline. And then I want to make sure we have plenty of time just for questions and also ideas. And I'll plant the seed at the onset with you three, a question around how and when might full council want to engage with this process. So as we go through, I'll encourage you to think about that. There's kind of the obvious at certain points when we come to actually developing Code amendments or policy, of course, we engage those processes. But in addition to that, when and how do you want to continue to be informed and provide input on this process? And I think at the end, when you have more context, you'll have a better sense of that question. So to ground us in what we're talking about, because this can vary from municipality to municipality. For the sake of this project, for the sake of the City of Olympia and our urban forest management plan, Leanne kind of spoke to it. When we say the urban forest, we're really talking about all trees, not just trees that the city has jurisdiction or management over, not just cities on private properties. I often get, as an environmental planner, I heard this a lot through the comprehensive plan process. A lot of times people hear urban forest and they think, trees deep in the parks, like trees in the wilderness, that's the forest. But it's really, it's every tree and it touches every discipline, it touches every department, every aspect of community livability. So when we say urban forest, it's all of it. So some of the history and background and kind of just big picture context for the why. Regional growth is an obvious one. I think we all understand regionally in the last couple of decades, last decade in particular, and then our projections for population growth into the next 20 years, we know we're going to see growth. And we know that's going to put pressure on all of our systems, all of our infrastructure, including our natural infrastructure. We've heard comment today. And I personally, as I've been going through this process and speaking with other staff, We know that the code could use an update. We know that a lot of elements of the tree code is overdue, as is a lot of our kind of programmatic and maintenance and operations procedures. So time, we're here. Time is up to dive into this work. We're excited to do it. Regulatory pressures, I spoke to the stormwater permit. That's an interesting one. There's a couple of other factors around the why. Why are we... Dressing trees, why are we putting this level of effort into trees with stormwater is a great example. There's a ton of growing science that is demonstrating the quantifying the amount of stormwater management that trees provide literally to the number of gallons per acre per participation flow. So we're starting to get those metrics. We're starting to see those values associated with trees. As such, now we're seeing those requirements in our stormwater permit around managing street trees and things like that. So we do have a requirement in the current stormwater permit to set tree canopy goals citywide. So this project will meet those requirements as well. A couple of folks in this room have been around since we initiated the tree canopy assessment. I know Council Member Gilman, I believe I remember presenting to you several years ago. The intent with that project was let's get some baseline data on the distribution and some of the qualitative data on our tree canopy so that that will inform our urban forest management plan. So we did that piece. I'll talk a little bit more about that as a precedent and a baseline project. Um, and then lastly, as far as background, so this project is funding funded in part by the, um, Washington state department of natural resources, urban and community forestry program. That's actually passed through funds from a federal urban and community forestry program, federal forest service. That's a big part of why this project has been stalled with the current administration. This grant is heavily in environmental justice and social equity based grant. Because of that, the funding was on pause for a couple of years just based on the current federal administration. We finally got the green light. We now have a grant agreement with DNR in place as of a month or two ago. So we're ready to hit the ground running. Some of the policy and regulatory drivers for this project. I spoke on the right to the stormwater permit On the left, I had the privilege and the honor of facilitating the update of the natural environment chapter for the comprehensive plan. But this by no means was language coming from me. There was already language in the comp plan around developing an urban forest management plan around the protection and the values of trees. Really all we did here was tweak and formalize some of the intent to make sure that this work is not only grounded in the comp plan, but ultimately the comp plan is grounded in what our community wants and needs and envisions for the city. So this work is a direct reflection of those comprehensive plan goals and policies. I want to shine a light on PN number 3.2 here, a big focus and driver of this project, we want to manage trees, so that both the benefits and burdens and I want to pause there that's very specific language. With the approach to this project, we recognize that trees are really important we've heard some of that already this evening we'll talk a little bit more about that. and the reality that trees can be extremely challenging, especially in an urban environment, especially within the urban growth area. And so this project very much is acknowledging both and intends to treat how do we emphasize and promote the benefits of trees? How do we navigate the burdens and challenges of trees? What are some of those benefits and burdens? Again, I can't say enough. In the realm of benefits to urban tree canopy, a lot of these bullets here are very, very well researched and scientifically proven. As someone coming to this work from a science background and wanting to make sure the work that we do is rooted in good quantitative, qualitative data, we do have this backing. wants to nerd out a little deeper about this, I encourage looking up the work of Dr. Kathy Wolf from the University of Washington. She's done decades of really great research on the benefits of tree canopy. In particular, around mental and physical health. Especially during the lockdown phase of the COVID pandemic, again, we learned a ton about the value to public health, well-being, and access to tree canopy, access to trees, amongst all of the other just tremendous values for climate, air pollution, noise pollution, water quality, habitat for wildlife, etc. Challenges associated with tree canopy, of course, impacts to infrastructure, both public infrastructure, the systems that we manage at the city, private infrastructure. I know council has had conversations with our transportation department in regard to the sidewalk impact study. We're in conversation with Max and Michelle from transportation as well. We can't say it enough, trees touch everything. And so as staff This is one area where we are not siloed we have to be talking to each other, because it all affects each other, especially when we're talking about these these challenges, how do we address the challenges that trees may cause. And how do we find that, and these are all things that will be exploring as part of this planning process. The bullet there around burdens regulatory requirements for development and housing. This is a huge topic in the industry, so to speak, the discipline of urban forestry is how we know we have a massive need around economic development and in particular affordable housing. We do hear and see in many cases, in some cases it might be a perceived burden, in some cases it might be real, but are there codes requirements in regard to tree protection, tree density requirements that are causing a barrier to development, a barrier to affordable housing. Again, this is not specifically an Olympia question. This is a regional question. This is a nationwide question. We're not the first to be exploring this. There's a lot of precedent out there. I may be a naive idealist, but I've heard myself say many times i refuse to believe that we have to choose there we there's got to be a way that we can find compromise there's got to be a way that we can both protect the elements of the natural environment that are promoting public health promoting environmental health and not have that be a deterrent to the economic growth and affordable housing and other other things that we know this community needs so deeply Last main kind of driver for this project I wanted to highlight is, as folks likely know, in the last couple of years, the city adopted six key citywide focus areas. And of those six, one of which is environmental stewardship. Of that, tracking tree canopy cover is one of the metrics we're using to track our progress around environmental stewardship. So part of the urban forest management plan process. We will be continuing to track our tree canopy cover, that percent cover. We'll be exploring what are our goals. So we'll be working within this metric for this purpose through this project. And a snapshot takeaway from the tree canopy assessment that we did in 2023. I do want to highlight since We worked on this project largely 2021, 2022. Since then, a lot of new high resolution LIDAR data has come out and a lot of tools have come out around machine learning to do tree canopy assessments. At the time, and this was not that, this was just five years ago. At the time, it was a bit of a lift to get access to the high resolution data to do a high quality tree canopy assessment and then work with a consultant to actually do the geospatial analysis to come up with this. All of that is to say, with the resources we have for this project, I'm hoping that we'll be able to update our tree canopy assessment. I'm really curious, as I know many folks are, to see this tree canopy assessment as a hybrid data from actually 2017 and 2021. I'm very curious to see what that change has been over the last five, six, seven years. I will say, as of this, the 2023 tree canopy assessment, a canopy cover of 42% is actually quite excellent. So I did a deep dive into cities around the region of similar populations where their tree canopies are, most are in the mid-30s. Couple, you know, Tumwater is comparable to us. Lacey's a little bit less. I think a helpful qualifier or data point is a lot of the nonprofits and urban forestry guidance out there set a 30% goal target. So for Olympia, we're actually doing quite well. So this is noteworthy because as we start to think about policies and code, We are in a protection mode. We are very much going to be in how do we protect the largest trees? How do we protect the tree canopy in places where it has the most benefit, the most beneficial impact to public health, et cetera, as opposed to many other cities are at in the mid 20s. And so they're trying to figure out how do we plant trees? How do we, you know, it's sort of a different take. So some of what will be in this plan, again, this is extremely high level. Each of these bullets has a slew of questions that we will be exploring and investigating. Again, we're not reinventing the wheel here. Olympia is a little bit behind other jurisdictions. We can learn from what other cities are doing in the region. We can learn from what policy updates, what operational programmatic updates are working for other entities. What's not, we can learn from that. These are the elements that we expect to be in this planning process and in the final product and the final plan. And I want to call out this last bullet here. The tree code and related policies is going to be a huge aspect of this work as we've heard concerns from our community members. I've been hearing this across staff and across council and conversations we've had. That will be a big component of the process and the final product. And then resource allocation and funding strategies. We don't want to come up with a suite of You know, here are ways we can update our maintenance and operations procedures around trees. Here's, you know, updated policy and code, et cetera, but not have any idea of how we're actually going to fund that work. Is it something in the realm of code enforcement? You know, do we have capacity? What is that going to look like? Are we going to need to replace a bunch of street trees? How are we going to fund that? So we'll be working with a consultant. I'll talk a little bit about what the resources are for this project. But a huge aspect of this process is this piece. What resources do we need? Where is it going to come from? What are other entities doing to fund the much needed work? And then who? So Leanne and I introduced ourselves. Again, I am essentially project managing the plan, shepherding this thing along. I'm not an arborist. I do come from this background where we will be bringing on a consultant as part of the grant funding that we received. We can bring on experts almost more in the realm of urban planning and policy as opposed to, you know, we have experts on staff at the city. We have several arborists who are really great at what they do. We're really looking at having conversations across staff you know, ground truthing some assumptions, understanding what the challenges are, what the resources are that we need. And so having a consultant, kind of a third party entity, experts in this field come in and facilitate those conversations, we think will really bring forward robust, meaningful change and recommendation strategies. We'll be bringing in, we've already kicked off actually on Tuesday this week, we kicked off our internal staff team for this project. So there's folks from every department. Trees touch everything. So we have representatives, planners from every department who will be involved and will help inform what comes out of this plan. And then, of course, there's an extremely robust public participation plan, which I'll go into in a second. I wanted to highlight this resource around the The who who what's driving this project, this is a resource that's coming out of a nationwide organization called American forests. they've essentially developed the roadmap for not only coming up with urban forestry policy that addresses the needs that we're discussing. They basically map out the process for developing an urban forest management plan and it's quite excellent and it centers. environmental justice and equity, public participation. So we'll be using this as one of several resources. It's very new. It just came out last year. So this is informed by, again, other entities who've gone through this process and have ground truth, what works, what results in a great product.

Is American Forests the name of the organization? Yes. Thank you.

Yep. So our public participation plan. This slide is just highlighting dates already set with the city's advisory bodies will be giving briefings very much like this, introducing the project and starting to get input from folks how kind of coming back to that question. know how are trees a a burden to the work that you're doing whether it's you know pedestrians and cycling sidewalks accessibility things like that what do people really love about trees where do folks want to see the city focusing around the urban forest and urban canopy um trees touch everything so we're talking to everybody um so we'll be busy this fall Other aspects of community engagement with the grant, I was able to allocate funding to hold a couple of focus groups. We're still honing in on the final draft of the public participation plan. This is sort of an outline of where we're planning to go. I do want to note the focus groups, in particular focus group number one, that language overburdened communities, we pull specifically from the Washington State HEAL Act. And with that group, we really want to, of course, talk to community groups, talk to people who don't necessarily engage with these processes, and who are very impacted by this work, by the urban forest, by natural areas. That focus group will be paid opportunities, will be offering child care, transportation stipends, food, things like that. And then, you know, kind of your standard planning opportunities to engage open houses, tabling events. We'll be using Engage Olympia pretty, like a lot of our projects, we'll have a story map, we'll have ways for folks to actually engage with the tree canopy data that we have. So somebody will be able to log into the map, find their house and see the trees as they've been mapped in the assessment. Yes.

Who'll be conducting the focus groups? Are they done professionally? Will you be doing it?

It's an excellent question. We haven't put the request for qualifications. Part of this conversation and the kickoff with staff is going to inform what we're going to ask for from our consultant. My thinking the whole time was that we would choose a consultant that either have on staff already the ability and capacity to do An equity focused facilitation for focus group like that and or can subcontract with an organization that that does that from an environmental justice and equity lens.

I i've been involved in focus groups, and I know they're good focus groups and they're bad groups and I just.

was curious yeah I appreciate you asking the question it's a good one. I don't expect anybody to be able to read the fine print here, just a sense of the timeline. It is lengthy, depending on your perspective. So this is the timeline associated with the grant with an anticipated delivery of a final urban forest management plan by May of 2028. Really how this breaks down, we are in that kickoff phase. information gathering is that combination of public input and interdepartmental staff input exploring kind of doing an audit of our code and our programs. We have the draft goals and strategies that also includes community engagement right we'll come up with a draft action plan potential draft code amendments bring it back to everybody we talked to you and say this is what we heard. this is a draft of where we're going, get feedback, and then by late 2027, early 2028, be finalizing the plan. So I do want to pause there and to Lynn's comment and Heather's comment around, you know, between now and 2028, we will lose more trees. We know that, you know, we've lost a lot of trees since the 2023 tree canopy assessment. So, um, HAB-Masyn Moyer- Messaging that I've heard also internally is we have the ability to make amendments at other points throughout this process and as we move along. HAB-Masyn Moyer- I'll be working with folks here on staff with folks within leadership and within CPD as we Our learning new information as we're ground truth thing what's our updated tree canopy. We have the ability to make those amendments, perhaps it is something like at the very least, can we put in an update to protect the largest trees. I leave that question to folks here in this room and other planners what that possibility looks like, but I do want to name. It's a two-year timeline. There is a sense of urgency as well. I've spoke to a lot of this, but challenges and opportunities we're anticipating. Again, I kind of spoke to both real and perceived conflicting priorities. Again, we want to be able to come up with as much of a compromise as we can. There are conflicts. There are going to be ways that we're going to have to make hard decisions. That's the nature of what we all do. But ground truthing that and having data, having evidence, having a robust suite of comments and information will ground some of those real and perceived conflicts. Timeline is long. We have very limited staff capacity. Opportunities to promote environmental justice and equity are huge. Again, this project, even just by the nature of its funding mechanism, but and it's also a huge value for the city. We know this through our comprehensive planning process. I hear it again and again from my colleagues. The work that we do has to be centered in equity. Bringing in a third party consultant perspective is going to be extremely helpful. of new research out there around the benefit of trees and also how to best manage and protect trees. And then the last opportunity, and this is a big one, is the chance for messaging and storytelling. This is a chance for us to engage with the community around the work that we're doing to protect trees, the direction that we're going in. There's a lot that we can share around the drivers for this work. To have that dialogue with the public, I think, we think is going to be really helpful and meaningful. So with that, that was a lot. So I'll pause. And I encourage and welcome any comments, questions, ideas, thoughts, and again, to bring me back to that question of how full council might want to engage with this process based on the timeline.

Do you guys have thoughts? I'll be, I have questions, but I'll wait for you guys.

Do you want to kick it off?

Well, I think a great presentation. Obviously, I'm glad we're getting into this. I'm feeling ill-educated, and so I don't feel that I'm prepared to make radical decisions right away on complex policy issues. This is just how I feel. It's not that I'm reluctant to make decisions, but I just feel that there are a lot of complex issues here that all need to be kind of vetted before this committee and the greater council and So I'm anxious to dive into that work, but I'm not anxious to make quick decisions either because I think they're important decisions. I don't know if that's helpful at all, but just to put you kind of in my general idea of where I'm at, I think this is very important work. I see trees disappear and I question those disappearances were right.

I'm thinking you were probably living in South Capitol neighborhood when the cutting trees along the embankment for review really prompted our first urban forester. It is difficult decisions. There are compromises for sure. I agree that we'll have a lot to learn in the community. We'll have a lot of discussion. I see this even though it's a smaller project in terms of sort of work, it's the same kind of community discussion as the Shoreline Master Plan, really, that people have strong feelings. So I think you're not alone in that we'll figure out our suggestions of how often council touches it, what we think about the public participation plan, all that's really important. for me i i feel like we're especially blessed and i know i gushed about this when kim came on but i think it's the same as leanne is now with us that when we have somebody who does ecosystem services and somebody with a sustainable development um background working on this intersection between the ecosystem benefits of natural infrastructure and making room for reasonable development. That's a real gift and an evolution in our organization for sure. There's a couple of narrow things I wanted to put at least in the parking lot as we start out. One is that we took on, the city took on the management of side sewers because we were feeling like it was creating too much hassle when people were coming back to connect into our mains. um but that is as big of a root issue as sidewalks are that and and so i i'd like to learn more about um how the lining um you know the the shoot-in linings how those are protected from tree roots and how relatively expensive that is um as a mitigation so i i just hope that that's with and i'm sure it probably already is within the the um water utilities conversations, but that's something I'm interested in is we kind of like the downtown sidewalks. We create our own big bill by trying to make sure that the infrastructure is robust and it's going to be continuously in service. Um, so, so that's one that intrigues me. The other one is we have a number of front yards that were, um, generously planted during our early tree city efforts in the 80s. They're now quite mature and they've tipped over the sidewalks and in some cases are right out into the street. And so figuring out how to navigate the multiple objectives of preserving access for the people in the house and people coming down the sidewalk and maintaining tree canopy And also recognizing that those individual households may not have the financial capacity or the technical capacity to manage a project like replacing three big, huge oak trees that are along the sidewalk. So those are two areas that I'm especially intrigued with. I'm also really interested in what both Heather and Lynn spoke about. I'm thinking we've had the southern end of Phones Road and more recently on Bethel, real concerns about the the number of trees and some individual larger specimens that are coming down as part of new subdivisions or apartments. And so I would be really interested in pursuing this temporary moratorium for the 40-inch and larger that Heather described that Tumwater calls heritage trees. And then having some additional requests that builders submit in their plans, an effort to hold on to 24-inch or larger heritage trees. And I think we can negotiate who signs off on a reasonable effort or a tree that's just not, yeah, Jay says not me, Tim looks good. But I mean, there are going to be individual situations, but I think that having a broad moratorium and a signal that we want to protect, especially large specimen trees, and not waiting to the end when this two-year process concludes and then we begin implementation. I just, I think...

that they're just some real treasures of of trees that are vulnerable um to um to losing them in development in that that meantime so um yeah yeah yeah you know one of the things that has really disturbed me about trees over the years is that um the cities had a long time policy of uh in in open spaces that if It's supposed to be, well, there's supposed to be more trees planted. In the part of town I live in, I've watched this, trees come down, but they never go back up, meaning there are never new trees that replace those trees. The The policies around diseased trees, what I have observed is that I've never seen a tree arborist consultant come back and say, oh, no, this isn't a diseased tree that's been inspected, that a neighborhood wants a tree to come down. I've just never seen that. There are always diseased trees, you know, when people want to come down. So kind of, taking a stronger look at what is actually a diseased tree in this. Does this make sense, what I'm saying? And I don't know if this is getting in the weeds. I do. I worry about the sidewalks. I sympathize with the neighborhoods, actually, because over the last 30 or 40 years, our cities had multiple policies related to trees and sidewalks. and um uh people feel that they've gotten bad advice from the city you know um have they you know it's it's hard for me to judge uh but this is a this is something i i hear a lot and and and it's related to um planting trees that that heave the sidewalks they said the city told us to plant this tree and you know five years later this yeah sidewalk is getting heat and so um we want trees we want them planted um uh they should be a requirement in in our developments and whatnot but uh but i i It's frustrating to me we can't get this policy right on where that ends up because I just assure you neighborhood after neighborhood feels that they've gotten bad advice over the years from the city on sidewalk tree policy. So, you know, this thing, now that I've railed against, you know, too many trees being viewed as diseased, I'm familiar with another neighborhood that got permitted, you know, on a diseased tree. The wind blew it down before it could be taken out. So that does happen, too. This issue of... 40-inch trees. I see beautiful big trees. They're often in stormwater drainage areas in the city that are protected. I don't know. What are the unforeseen consequences of of passing a 40-inch moratorium? I mean, do we really know where they are? Tim?

Yeah, so I think, so Olympia, we're in a situation where we don't have large swaths of land to develop anymore. A lot of it's infill. So you're talking about smaller subdivisions. I mean, plus a 30-loss subdivision is big. So how do you fit everything on the site? You have stormwater, roads, all those pieces. And then our code for trees, while it's 30 years old, was very advanced at the time. Granted, I will say it needs updating, but we certainly reward mature tree stands. You know, when you come in for land use of rural or plat, an urban professional forester, arborist has to prepare a soil vegetation conservation plan. What are the soils like? Where are the trees? What are the conditions of the trees? And then that is kind of mixed into the land use review, which Leanne is a part of, say, okay, where are you going to protect the trees? We require 30 tree units per acre. Unlike some other cities where it's a one-to-one, the tree's value or units is based upon its diameter. So larger trees get more points. And so there's an incentive to protect the few large trees rather than know cutting them down and having to put in a whole bunch of trees. We also don't require clearing grade before permitting. A lot of cities do that. They clear the site and they come in for permits. We require you to get land use approval first. That's where we identify those trees that have to be protected during construction in advance of the construction. So the other thing I want to mention is that it is a balance now between trees and housing. We have to do both. But I would emphasize our tree canopy isn't all in the backs of private property development. It's about our parks. It's about our street trees. It's about all the critical areas we have that have opportunities for tree preservation. So it is about development, but broader. It's about the whole city. 42% is a great starting point. I mean, I'm proud Olympia's at 42%. I think we have work to do, but I think through this process, we have a chance. The reason that staff has wanted to kind of hold off on code changes is that we want a plan that tells us where to go with those code changes. What are we trying to achieve? What's our goal? And once we have that in place, then we can adjust the code to get better. Just some comments.

to Councilmember Barron's question, I would say there's two ways to write a moratorium. One is thou shalt not, under any circumstances, remove a tree of a certain size, which is really restrictive, versus writing one that has some flexibility or gives some authority to, whether it be Tim, to make some decisions to say, hey, you know, we want to do this. um i'm going to ask a contractor to bring me a plan that shows me they they can't before i say you can right so i think there's a ways we could write it so you don't get unintended consequences and then um and then if however you write it if you give tim some broader authority that if he sees something we hadn't considered he can always come back to council and and kind of talk to you about it before, you know, he gets a new decision point. So that's my recommendation is just write it more broadly.

Here's an example of a project we had near Ontario Avenue a few years ago where there's a huge tree diameter right in the middle of the site, right where a vital transportation connection point had to happen between neighborhoods. In that case, they were able to design the road to actually go around the tree. There may be a case where it's just impossible to do that. In that case, the whole project would stop. So that's kind of the fallacy that she's talking about.

I just have another question. If we were to do a 40-inch moratorium, would that Or a big tree moratorium. Let me just ask, would that include in private yards and not just public parks? I assume it would. Because, you know, there was a giant tree. It was a lot bigger than 40 inches that came down in Southeast Olympia. And it just broke my heart when it came down. But I said, why did they take that down? And they said, well, it It had gotten so big, this was a giant sequoia, that it was like destroying the foundation of the house. I mean, this is what it was. That tree was, there had to be incredible life in that tree. But I mean, that's a judgment. What shall we do in that case when it is a giant tree? Yeah.

So 40 inches, that is a big tree. And what I would say to that is that is too big to start with. Generally, 24 inches is what I have worked with as far as regulatory where it gets very difficult to be able to remove a tree depending on whatever's going on, if it's a development project or if it's private property. that's when the code kicks in and says, okay, we need to see, is it dead? Is it dying? Is it dangerous? Is it diseased? And this is all done via a tree risk assessment. And so regarding our development processes, it is a very complicated process, that obligation of that hired arborist to, work with a developer to find the biggest trees so that they coincide with site development. And I am hard pressed to say that I've ever seen a lovely grove of trees that's been preserved, the best and the beautiful, right in the middle of a site. They are often a corner and it is generally usually not. the biggest and the best. And so right now the code doesn't look to the code incentivize incentivizes the developer to save the biggest, but, but I, that is not what is happening there. They're more than happy to remove and replace because they can do that to bring their, to bring their site up to density. So I guess, Um, 40 inches is a, is a very big tree to start with. And I think if we were to step back and say 24 inches, and then we want to see why, why is it, is that tree? Why is that tree? 24 inches is a big tree. And depending on what species it can take a very long time for that tree to get to that size. Um, just a couple of comments about the sewer lateral. So there's a common myth that, uh, trees break water pipes and they break sewer pipes and the reason why that myth is there is because the roots are inside of the pipe and there is no indication trees take the path of least resistance but they also seek out a water source so if there's a break in the pipe then they will go inside the pipe but they will not break the pipe to get to the water if there is no water so So there's that piece. And then the information shared about the legacy trees, the very large trees that are planted as street trees in front of homes in the 80s, and that those sidewalks have been lifted. But the tree is living life and doing just fine, right? I feel like working with our public works folks and with that property owner, that I do feel like I'm in the same camp with Kim and that there is a path forward there, that the answer, if that tree can sustain construction impacts and we can achieve ADA compliance, then I think that we would hang on to the tree. Trees often can take root pruning, but you need an arborist there to guide that root pruning. So I don't see any of these as impossible, but I do think that starting at 40 inches is starting a little bit high. So I would just think about that when thinking about this. That is a really big tree to kind of bring it down just a bit when you're thinking about preservation, or if you're thinking about an oratory. Like the 24. I was, yes, as your starting point, as a talking point, yeah.

May I just, so I'm intrigued with your questions and my experience is that, actually, my career was as a carpenter and started out in the subdivisions around here as they were getting built and the option of the tree units was taken on. And that's, I think the backyards you're describing were, instead of big trees, there's a bunch of smaller plants. That option to mostly clear and replace the tree units, I think is exercised really often. And my understanding is that the science has evolved. Not only do we have smarter street tree options, but we also better understand that there is value of a large tree that's different from the sum of several large trees or shrubs. And that that's part of what guides this update, I think, for the code is that we better understand that in terms of the natural infrastructure and the carbon sink, that a big tree actually does an outsized job compared to the sum of smaller trees. So those are a couple of factors, I think, in my interest in doing some sort of more immediate protection and making sure that the protection is strong in the final ordinance.

All right. Well, what do you think of the suggestion of passing an ordinance that gives the city leeway in deciding.

A temporary ordinance over the next few years as the code is written?

Yeah, but what Jay had suggested, you know.

I can't imagine that we would just pass an absolute moratorium. I think it has to have some, much as CPMD does all the time with large develops. It prompts the back and forth to say, we really value this. Can we come up together with a way to preserve these? But I just think that's the way we do shoreline work, low impact development work.

And to me, I see it as a way to try to curve a clear cutting situation where I can get as many points just by putting in saplings and just clear cutting it. I see that subdivisions. We don't have a lot of subdivisions left space for it as mentioned, but that does happen where it's similar to how people get around the home, the state entry codes where they'll just put in these little things to get around to get the score that they need. So, yeah.

Well, I would, I would, I would support an ordinance giving, giving the city flexibility and on work rounds on some of these. So just so I make that clear. I support it too.

The language we were playing with had that there'd be a moratorium without special permission from the urban forester and that the planning director, if there were two attempts, two back and forths, and they weren't able to figure out a way to save a tree, it wasn't possible. So I think we started out at a place of understanding that the planning staff would be negotiating and advocating to preserve large trees.

Do you need a referral from the three of us? Yep. That way the full council can say yes to a moratorium. Okay. And then we can work it from there. Okay. I'll let Melissa know. Yep. And then let Melissa know that Tim and his team can help her if she puts it together. Okay.

I don't know. I have a couple of final thoughts. As we're going through the plan, I'll be very curious about, I'm glad I'm hearing that we'll be talking with Public Works, particularly around things like our engineering standards. I bring that up because one of the things that I'd be very curious about is when we're doing the mapping, your GIS layering, is seeing what newer developments in the community, rentals, so on and so forth, how are they, as they're being developed, getting enough tree coverage of street trees versus the new developments, right? I always worry, we're lucky we live in the Pacific Northwest, but there are places in the Southwest where poorer neighborhoods don't have tree trees and the heat island effect is crazy high. And I want to avoid that for people that are working class in the community. And it was brought up folks that either don't have the financial or technical capacity as Clark mentioned. And so that's a big concern for me. I'd be interested in hearing as we bring in a third party about things like... I've seen cities do this, but we have not seen this in Olympia. Sometimes they'll start building the street trees in the median while density is going on so that you still get your tree coverage, like things that we're not doing in the city of Olympia that could help alleviate heat island effect, provide trees, but also meet some of the density as it gets closer to the sidewalk. And I would also be very interested in, as we're going through this, when we get recommendations, policy recommendations about uh... things like i mentioned the ads but specific trees that developers have to use rather than suggestions. All you have to do is go down to Briggs Village to see. I know it's not private streets, but they put in all these younger trees and it's already starting to pull up a little. And it's crazy because they're not even big trees. They're pretty skinny. And so for me, I think perhaps having the conversation as a council about Do we require them to do specific trees rather than suggesting it, right? Because if it's suggested, then the developer will go whatever is cheapest at the closest hardware store and they'll put that in there. And then the burden goes on to whoever owns it in the next 10 years, right? Especially if they're low income. So those are those are things that I'm curious. But I also mentioned that I want us to eventually get to a point where we're avoiding the clear cutting process and getting more towards because it is an asset. Right. I know that we need to move towards affordability and I believe in zoning reform and all these things. But I also feel that if we, someone in the future living there needs to be able to feel the quality of life of it. So those are my thoughts.

One other thing, and that's, we've spoken a couple of times about the Inspire Grant funded tree ambassador survey. and creating some sort of a forum to highlight those large specimens across the city. And I would just really, whether that's a report during a council meeting or some other sort of, but I just, I still... I've been interested in this for a few months, and I'd really like that to have a public airing, both because I think citizen science is really cool, and because I think that having some shared, to begin to have a shared baseline of How many of these larger trees are we talking about and where are they distributed around the city would would be a great conversation starter for the rest of this public conversation. Yeah, we can work that into an agenda. I like that a lot.

I may just Good.

I'm about about this specifically about the Yeah, the tree, the tree ambassador service.

Yeah, someone behind you, I think, knows. Yeah.

Okay, but I know about it.

Yeah, well, we'll talk and then figure out how we get something in front of council.

That's fine.

So I heard Clark suggest one thing about 40 inches and then something else about 24 inches. And then I heard Leanne. say, move it back from 40 to 24, but I was confused by her use of the word back because we're going to lose everything from 40 now.

I think she's trying to say set the standard at 24.

That's what you're trying to say. Okay, thank you. That's what I wrote. Okay, so that's what you put in the referral. Okay, cool. I just was like, okay, what number are we putting in the referral? Now I know what number

and it'll go through some editing and collaboration before we have the referral to council.

I'll work with Tim and we'll find, I'm sure there's an agenda coming up here in the next few months that's light that we could put this on. Should we answer your questions?

do you have everything you need from us council yeah the cap because there's the question about the council feedback being informed yeah of the urban forest management plan itself so uh based on the timeline by around this time by this time next year we will have a draft action plan that's a draft strategy you know programs policies procedures um with potential funding mechanisms in in draft form would that be a time to either come back to you all come back to full council i really follow your lead on council's opportunities to provide guidance and feedback and or is there a final you know But when we have the final plan of a final acceptance of the published plan.

Well, I think my, my distinction is to have it come here, but then ask the full council if they're interested in having that conversation. That's usually how I go about it.

I, uh, my own feeling is if before it goes to the council, we should have some meat on the bones. Yeah, it should be here first.

Yeah. I would suggest. an opportunity at the same time as we present the tree ambassadors survey, that we should lay out broadly the public participation plan and the timeline for this project so that initially council knows that there are opportunities, that it's gonna be up on the portal. And then I agree with you guys that bringing the initial draft back to our committee, and we can also check the appetite of council near to that time to have a study session item.

yeah i i think coming here so you can preview and and give some early feedback before it goes to a study session the council makes sense great cool nice work thank you thank you all so much for the opportunity to to share about it and hear your questions they're really excellent questions i appreciate it cool all right if that's all we have um

We will move on to the other items, wherever I put that.

Thanks, everyone. Good night.

Greenland-Mary discussion of the 2027 Planning Commission BPAC and Land Use Environment Committee work plan. I think Daniel's probably online still.

Would you like me to? Yeah.

You're hanging out, getting a review of something you'll get in the fall. Yeah, I look forward to it. Okay. I forgot who was reporting this. I guess maybe me.

It was okay, Daniel.

Yeah. Oh, the staff board is kind of all over it. Okay.

I mean, basically, yeah, and I talked, we had some items come off the agenda. So for today, so Chair Venterpool, that'd be great to have this conversation. It's really more towards a better alignment of all of our work plans with both this Committee, Council, the Staff Work Plan, Planning Commission, and also BPAC. And so this is really a very first start of a conversation about 2027. and what a work program could look like. We could certainly talk about what we're working on this year, because that folds into next year. But I think this is just kind of initial discussion to get some topics on the table so we can start crafting what we'll be doing in subsequent years. So with that, I'll just open it up to conversation. I will point out that we have Nicole Floyd here, who's now Director of Planning, overseeing long-range engineering planning. And then we have Casey Shoffler, who's our staff liaison to the Planning Commission. And then we have Greg. and then uh daniel online now i don't think we got anybody here from bpac i think we tried really hard yeah i tried to talk to him yesterday no one was available yeah so so we give it an attempt but uh december thursday is gonna be tough so yeah figured anyway so with that all this opened up to the group yeah um

not to put any pressure on Gray or Daniel, but, uh, what, what, what, what, what, what are the items that you think we should be working on for next year? Like, what are the things that you feel like, you know, I have my work plan in front of us. You brought yours. Um, you know, I think we have quite a few, we could start at this a couple of ways, right. We have to, to be scheduled. We have what we currently have. Um, uh, You know, to kind of also like tee this up, we just did our comprehensive plan. So there's so much else going on in the background, right? So this is kind of the first conversation, right? Broadly speaking, what are the things you feel that we are the, I guess, the top items for you for next year? What do you think that you feel like we should be covering?

Can you confirm that Daniel is with us?

Daniel, can you hear us?

Yes, I'm with you guys. Sorry, I am just in transit.

You're great. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Of course.

Daniel is living the life of doing public transportation and talking about land use planning. But anyway, yeah. I'll leave it open to you guys.

Yeah, I think I was trying to think about this in some sort of systematic way as well. We have, I think, plenty of good things to work on. Um, on the work plan currently, but the, at least in my mind, the way I break it down is, um, essentially housing and transportation, uh, come top to mind. Then I think we've, we've made some nice progress on like the middle of housing ordinance, but some of the, particularly the engineering, um, design standards haven't necessarily caught up to kind of the new middle housing reality. Um, And so a lot of those things fall under that, whether it's, we just talked about the vacancy study and it seems like Olympia's kind of frontage improvement triggers are maybe a little bit out of step. And those are also now, you know, if you want to go build a fourplex that's allowed, you're going to end up rebuilding half the street potentially. So getting those kinds of things shaken in the line, I think that's, I mean, the EDS is a nice long document. So there's probably things I have, I wouldn't even think of, but... Just kind of making that in line with middle housing would be good. And then it's a current topic in transportation with the sidewalk policy. And I've been thinking about right now we're doing sidewalk maintenance, which is a specific, I'm trying to keep the scope from going everywhere. But it has raised in my mind ways to create affordable, active transportation, safe and inviting paths tie back to the comp plan. Um, one thing that's come about is the shared streets or shared streets legislation at the state level. And so that allows us to create kind of design streets to be places where it's safe to share. um space between people walking rolling biking and driving um and that's the streets that can be capped at 20 miles per hour i think down to 15 okay um and so that would be the the speed limits but also the the designs of those streets to be that way and ways ways can we do designs that aren't rebuilding these streets to be you know the nicest we could imagine but but um Yeah, things that we can do a little quicker and a little cheaper, more affordable, not cheaper. High quality, but affordable. Yeah, so those are in that with the transportation master plan too, I've thought of, we discussed a little bit in the comp plan, but kind of this idea of a circulation plan. for all these modes of transit or modes of transportation. And I think that really needs the transportation master plan level to think about. And other cities have done things where they have routed cars around different areas to allow for those to be places for people. or places to walk or bike and things like that.

I hear that as make sure there's touches of the transportation master plan update. Yeah. It seems like that's where you'd have that conversation.

I was just going to say, I mean, there's a clear link to the TMP update here, you know, versus standalone things versus how do we frame a TMP conversation with the community around these concepts. Right. Cause not everyone in the community is going to know about them unless we frame the conversation around the TMP with them.

Yeah. And the way you're talking about circulation makes me feel like instead of looking at street by street, you're talking about kind of circulating an area.

Yeah, so I think there's like two like in the news common ways that people do these low traffic neighborhoods or in Spain, they'd be super blocks. But the idea that you can split up modes of travel Um, maybe you limit through traffic. I think one of the first public comments we took, uh, when I was on planning commission, we had comments complaining about, um, speeding or, or through traffic in front of their house and neighborhoods. And, um, I certainly feel that too, right. There's it's hard to, it's hard to limit speeding without kind of design, um, interventions um and and but i think the willingness to be able to split up the the modes is kind of where that starts but that's like a neighborhood level and then you see you know whole cities that design um maybe their historic district or something to be limited to through traffic and and allow for you know people to get around in cars but going around a little bit so okay so there's some of the beer ones i think those are things that aren't on the um Not all of them are on the plan currently, but we have lots of good things with commercial parking and things too.

So Councilwoman Green had this ordinance referral regarding I think the speed cameras. And I, jurisdictionally, I think that was It's going to make its way forward to council.

Yeah, it's it's it's a it's a.

It's almost like neighborhood.

When you say we're meeting, who's meeting?

Oh, I'm meeting with... Usually, Danny and I will meet with Sophie Stimson and Mark Russell once a month. As the regional planning council reps. Yeah, yeah. And we talk about transportation projects there. Not like a council committee, but more of a conversation about what's going on.

Yeah.

And so we... invited kelly to come to that because it was her referral and to talk about the scope of that work before it goes back to eclipse yeah i um you were talking about a transportation policy issue and i was going to different committees and i just kind of wanted to ask okay yeah and i think it's aligned with this because um uh kelly's referral in that program if we were able to to find funding to bring back the transportation uh street calming program that should be in the tmp it like that it should reflect the program so that as we go into the future it stays a part of our system and isn't just a like a one-off program that only lasts a few years yeah all right yeah

Anything else you're thinking of? I think that it's a bit on our plan, but the parking, and I think parking touches on a bunch of things, right-of-way use. We were just talking about trees, and I was thinking like, oh, can this giant tree that's breaking up a sidewalk, can that sidewalk go around? Maybe a parking lane, I could think of that. And just like an integrated, that's another one where it's, maybe it's even part of the TMP, but it's... Parking is lots of things. There's conversations about parking garages, there's on-street parking, there's managing parking. Can we create flexibility so that housing and commercial aren't burdened with parking? Maybe there's a way to manage it to be shared, things like that.

I think shared parking is a great idea, especially with a parking garage that we are always at capacity.

I think that's really a division that we've always talked about. It's hard to build For us to build a garage on our own, it needs to be some shared project so that it gets used and it's affordable to build.

Daniel, do you have any thoughts?

I think kind of continuing from our conversation yesterday, I think it'd be really interesting to have some of these conversations, maybe go to Planning Commission before Council's looking at them. So I know you guys just mentioned parking garage. Would love to have a study session on parking garages and how expensive they are to build. I've heard costs of like $50,000 per space. That seems extensive and seems like we should look at that before we get into it.

Yeah, and Daniel, that's really key to what I just said about, I think it's cost limiting for the city to build parking garages. I think the only way they really work is to find some partnership that might make sense, but there's another development happening. But anyway, I think there's a lot of conversation there.

Depends on the structure, but I've heard estimates a lot higher than that.

Years ago, it was 40,000. It was kind of the number, and now it's probably just more than that.

I think Poulsville got an estimate that was close to like 100. Yeah.

Yeah.

getting closer to the cost of a studio apartment right yeah yeah yeah yeah one one other that just came to mind this and it's kind of floated on our um work plan but there's i think there's been an idea of of zoning simplification um this is another one where with the middle housing you kind of start looking at some of the zones and they've they've like basically they're the same zone now once you account for, for some of the middle housing parts. And then that's, that's been connected to the Plum Street conversation as well. And I think, so those go back and forth and I think there's a kind of a broad general thing and also the Plum Street area. So.

and um i think the other part of that is is uh when jim cooper was on council we had many conversations about the simplification of the code um and doing it in sections throughout the city as as staff had capacity but uh if we were ever to have a conversation about city-wide zoning reform that would require a consultant and probably some probably some resources to do that. That would have to be a project onto its own, probably, just to change the zoning. But I'm not opposed to that one day, but yeah.

Yeah. When I, when I try to organize in my mind, it's, it's what barriers are now between housing, you know, building housing and like some of them are outside our control. Some of them are, you know, hopefully the, some of the ads can be done shorter term, maybe a whole zoning form is a little, it's a longer term thing.

Yeah.

We can hear from Tim.

I know we talked about we were waiting a year or two to get to the next batch of zone consolidation or more form-based language. Is that on next year's staff work plan at all, do you think? Or is it further up?

Well, it could be. It's just been a matter of priorities. So just to kind of summarize where we are this year, program because this year in talking with the long range planners recently kind of where we are, as you know, we just passed the miscellaneous code amendments officially last Tuesday night for second reading. But and so that was a big lift. But we know we have we have changes to the subdivision code going through that David Ginther is working on that will come to Planning Commission this fall. Another big one is a critical areas ordinance update which is required under the Growth Management Act, but we have updated by the end of the year. So those are kind of some of our top priorities. We also will be tackling our minimum commercial parking standards outside of downtown. As you know, we just sort of recently eliminated them in downtown. But outside is a different conversation. We also have state legislation to deal with that also factors into that that Casey will be taking lead on. for into this year into next year. And then two other things that are currently in process is one is looking at home-based businesses. As you know, in response to some of the capital neighborhood concerns, that was a priority for council first to work on this year. And that'll be going to planning commission this summer. uh, through a public process and then also addressing small scale commercial uses generally in areas throughout the city through a conditional use permit. So that kind of that in the CFP kind of wraps up kind of what current plan ranges are working on this year. And next year, frankly, will be a large part of that will be the conversation on Plum Street. You know, this year we're spending some time scoping out a project for a Plum Street corridor plan. If we were to embark on that, we get funding with a consultant, that'll be, you know, one of our two FDs for the planners, basically for next year, it'll be a big lift. So I guess it really depends, Clark, on the priorities. But certainly we've looked at, to start with, we've looked at terms of consolidation of zoning, looking at the area between Plum and Eastside, because there we have a number of zones. And I know that some of the staff are saying, you know,

just go downtown business for the whole thing that's a way to simplify it right there that just take a reason action and some of the process so i think incrementally we can start i um you know one of the to be scheduled items was uh evaluation of overrides funding and uh government approaches and i don't know that that's going to make it on the schedule this year but but I'd like to make sure that it's on the schedule next year. Yeah. Yeah.

Is that, is it planning staff or is that like, that'd be Pam. Okay. Okay. So it's, it's an, it's, it won't, it doesn't disrupt the other capacity. It's its own separate. Okay. Yeah.

No, but if we could make sure that is on the work for next year, it will be for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. yeah i think that the bottom line is we just need to be strategic in how we move forward because the reality is we lost joyce's position and so we just need to make sure we have the resources allocated we have our priorities set so we can do the things that matter most the quickest and either nicole or casey feel free to pipe in on anything i'm talking about here if you have any comments they don't look they don't look angry when we talk about will um consolidation like

There's talking about rezoning Plum Street and turning it into downtown businesses. That's one conversation. There's too many zones in that district. I think there's a separate conversation that I'm hearing about citywide. I think it came up when we did the displacement study and the buildability report where Olympia had the most zoning districts out of the jurisdictions. I think there's a conversation that I'm hearing about reducing number of zones citywide you know from whatever it was like the 21 or 18 different districts so that's a huge undertaking versus plum street which is a large possibly a a corridor plan or a sub-area plan or a rezone that's it's still a big project but i think that's significantly more straightforward than all right take 21 district zoning districts and turn it into 11 to 15 that creates like a city-wide look at a rezone that includes probably EIS and a pretty involved process. And that could be a multi-year project in and of itself, just reducing the total number of zoning districts. And then you're also looking at, do all of the existing uses, if we rezone them, are they now non-conforming? And how to address that. So then we rezone, say, a transitional area like the professional office, residential mix use to a commercial zone, like a fully commercial zone. Do we have the infrastructure utilities to support that? So that's a huge project. Just to make sure that we're delineating kind of Plum Street versus a city-wide rezone.

I think it's important to talk about. I think we would take on smaller areas. We have the staff capacity one at a time to do it. If we were going to do a larger area, we would need some consultant support.

Yeah. On the bright side of that, there are some zones that it's hard to tell the difference of. RM18, MR17, they're both multifamily. They have almost identical regulations. So on like a smaller scale, could you merge a couple that are really meant to do the same thing? That doesn't seem quite as large of a bite, but it would be sort of a smaller scale picking and choosing. It wouldn't be like make major changes like Casey's talking about. If it was important to sort of take smaller bites of that, I think that might be something we could look at.

And it reminds me of the future land use map that was just passed in the comp plan and how even neighborhoods are going to be higher density and all these changes that are

That are in there that will eventually get to where we need to get to not necessarily higher density, but we did change the labeling. So yeah, urban residential versus low density. It's, it's really looking at what are we actually calling it. What does that mean? So we have like low density neighborhoods, but we still have like six to 12 units per acre. A lot of folks in their mind, that's That's not low density. So I think it's kind of, that was more of a nomenclature update, I think, in a lot of ways. Because that was a conversation at length with the planning commission. What does this actually mean?

Yeah, yeah. Just doing the comp plan and the middle housing kind of together, the middle housing introduces this whole idea of unit lot density. And so now we're not looking at kind of like the zone density, but just lot density. If you can get four to six units, depending on if you're close to transit on a 7,200 square foot lot, it just makes the zoning density start to, they're not necessarily in conflict, but the concepts aren't the same. Yeah.

And I guess the other, to kind of finish that, one of the last things that I mentioned to Joyce in this room when we were talking about Plum Street, feels like it was a year ago, but it was only a couple months ago. uh uh was things like um uh street height ratios and other things like that right to simplify if we're looking at a corridor do we just allow the height and density just to be simplified down to does the height of the building equal a similar ratio to the width of the street rather than making it over complicated and just allowing a general mixed use with this the height ratio So that, you know, this is something, you know, famously Japan does that. So, yeah. Something I'm interested in.

I had one come up last night. I was sitting with Michael, the design review chair, and we were noticing that design review does not have a work plan. And then thinking with the state legislative changes, that should they um should should that group of people be engaged in the conversation of sort of what policies need to change what's the director's prerogative now what are they not allowed to review now um or does that go to to planning commission but but yeah we were having those two conversations that maybe there are items that they might have on a work plan beyond coming together ad hoc as projects come in and and then if not them What is there a board and commission or council role in the changes that we have to make because of the state law changes?

Like for ADUs?

No, this is about trying to crack down on design review boards, slowing down or prohibiting certain kinds of projects. Okay.

Well, we did change our code recently where now they have basically we have a once check in with them during a project instead of two. That was mean state law. Grant, if we have any other process changes to our center view standards, we would go through planning commission. I think typically we'd also go through the design board for a recommendation as well as a matter of procedure. There's there's been the question of reducing the number of boards, you know, and so the city were to choose. I'm just going to say that. Yeah. To to not have a board, then we change the code to make it like other cities where it's an administrative review, basically staff level.

review that that's really the crux of the conversation that they would like to at least have a be part of a conversation about which i think is it's reasonable some people have several years and engaged there yeah i think at community livability and public safety when they're talking about uh revising the advisory committees they've talked you kind of mentioned like we've got

folks on the advisory committees now that have certain skill sets, but we don't necessarily have immediate work for those advisory boards. So it's not that we would eliminate any advisory board and then forget that we had those people participate. Like I think Genevieve's been very clear, like even if an advisory board were sunsetted, we would still want to retain or work with those folks and identify the expertise. And that's been part of the conversation as well. As we leave the boards, even though, you know, like planning commission, there's a wealth of knowledge of folks that have served for nine years, no longer on the committee. But if we have some sort of contact list or ask them to participate ad hoc at a future time, I think Genevieve and Stacey Ray are really looking at retaining that kind of knowledge and having them participate in other

They're calling them community connectors or community collaborators. So, you know, you you pull them together around a topic or an issue on an ad hoc basis and say, hey, help us solve this issue or help us work through this issue. And then that's gone and then they they go away. And so that's a model that other cities have used, too. So I think you'll see some of that when this comes to the council in a study session. disappearing committees that used to be an evergreen thing.

Yeah, disappearing task force. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and I kind of want to something's been stuck in the back of my head while we're having this. I want to clarify to Daniel that I am not interested in the parking garage next year. So I could hear the stress of his response. So I just want you to let you know, not interested in having the parking garage conversation.

can i add one thing to that yeah i think the other thing that's really important this conversation is as we've talked about a parking garage it's not about necessary adding more capacity to the system that we have. It's really about, we have a whole bunch of surface parking lots, and that's not the highest and best use of those lots. And if we could find an alternative to parking to replace some parking, then all of those lots could then be developed into some other higher and better use. So I think that's a really important part of this conversation around the parking garage, because I think that gets lost sometimes in this conversation is it's not about

increase capacity for more cars and it's about doing something so that we can do something different with other other resources and infrastructure that we have i'll make a counter that's okay yeah yeah um the problem with centralizing parking is that it centralizes the foot traffic yeah right um it could become a problem for the downtown where you only have part of downtown where People are just driving to that one spot. They're not moving around. Yeah. And I want people to be encouraged to use our public transportation system and other things. Uh, uh, But the last... What was I going to say about that? There's another thing I'm interested in, and I brought this up, and I've emailed all of us about this, is Spokane is looking at the kind of a workaround for land value tax, a way to encourage empty lots through adjustments in property taxes, right? So by lowering... lowering the value of buildings that have structures, zeroing that down, and then raising it for empty lots to encourage doing something with it. I'm interested in this legislatively. I'm also interested in this as a for a work plan as that gets developed. It may be an item for like the fall of next year after the legislature's gone through and if it comes back up. But I'm very interested in the idea of, especially in urban areas, downtown particularly, of changing the property tax around so that it encourages, you wouldn't pay your structural taxes on your buildings, right? So that would encourage doing something with buildings because you'd be only paying for the land tax rather than the building. So that's something I'm very interested in as a specialty item.

And something that we discussed briefly during reports a couple of meetings ago was about as we begin shaping the next year's work plan, we've often, I mean, every time we've had the community planning and economic development staff work plan comes. So we're trying to make it make sense. In my early years on land use, we also had the transportation planners come in. Because we have some transportation planning, like we're talking about sidewalk here, but we don't have anybody from that team. And I also don't think we can really talk about the BPAC work plan without either a transportation planner or BPAC person here. But I do hope that we can invite transportation planners to bring their work plan so that the items that we take on a planning commission and land use build on what's already on their plate.

I second that as another one of these meetings later in the year. like encourage them to come while we're doing this planning, right? And maybe try to get some scheduling with BPAC to come. So, yeah. Yeah. Daniel, do you have any items from your five-year plan?

Daniel, he did mention in chat that he had to head out. Okay. Okay.

i'll watch it later good enough telling them i was at last night at the lips special meeting i said do you have anything from your five-year plan you can give us just joking All right. How are you feeling about it?

Great.

Appreciate your taking the time to come in, Greg.

Thank you for having me. Of course.

Two nights in a row.

That we'll try to avoid. Cool. Well, if there's nothing else, we'll just have another one of these conversations probably in a couple months or something when we have when you have space in the agenda to keep having this conversation um and then maybe even bring it down from what we heard down to a more narrow down to a list of details and just kind of i think at one point we should be having a conversation about what is what will work with staff's capacity with well as they're working on things we mentioned that a little bit but based on what we heard just to make sure uh Yeah. And I, and I think one last thing is to make sure that we are, uh, scheduling and we need to have, still have a conversation about scheduling alignment. Right. So that, so that, uh, planning commission and BPAC, uh, have, uh, adequate time to look at the materials, give us a review back. And then so that like, there's almost like a one month delay from each other going forward. Right.

We should make a list of referrals for both of those bodies.

Yeah. Yeah. We joked about that last night. I talked about, I said, I said, we're going to be doing passive aggressive referrals.

No, no, we'll, we'll, we'll take that very deliberately, but one every five years might be too light. We're going to have such a thing. Yeah. Yeah.

That's right. Yeah.

Yeah. All right.

Well, thank you all for coming in today. And I'm going to go to reports. Oh, yeah. Let's do reports. Totally passed on that. Any reports? No reports from parents.

I got a couple. Okay. First of all, I want to say that Casey Bach from our department has prepared the next major development update report quarterly, which we'll be sending out to Council. It'll update on all the things that are going on, a couple of things I want to highlight. is the Harbor Pines Apartments, which is formerly known as Fieldstone over on 9th Avenue. We're about to issue per building permits for 272 affordable housing units. There are 17 buildings. That's a big project that took advantage of a number of incentives to get there, including low impact, the impact reductions and the GFC reductions. to get the affordable housing units. So that's going to be breaking ground hopefully really soon. At the roundabout up on Henderson, I don't know if you've seen some clearing there next to the hotels. That's for a market rate 35 unit apartment building. And so that's starting work. I was just going to ask you about that.

I saw it last night.

Yep. And so the permits were issued and now work is underway. The West Bay Yards appeal has pretty much completed in terms of the public hearing and the appeal hearing. I think... Nicole, you owe something on that, right? Thank you. Yeah. The hearing examiner is waiting for some additional information and then we'll eventually be making a decision. So it's going to be a few weeks just because it's a complicated appeal. And so, but we do expect a decision in the next month or so.

Yeah. Briefings are due 4th of July-ish. So I wouldn't expect a decision from the hearing examiner until maybe early August. Kind of a sequence of events.

Yeah. Kaiser Woods Park that went to the hearing examiner this week and he basically said he'd approve it from the bench. And so this is a big project for the city developing a bike park for that site. And so what else we got? TBW expansion. This received land use approval in May. It's for an 84,000 square foot addition downtown that includes two parking levels of garage parking, office space and event space. And so we're currently looking at engineering and building permits for that project. So that's a big downtown project.

I had some questions about that actually.

where the parking lane was the original renders we had for that was a little strange for me and we we changed some things to help make that building happen yeah so we had to get creative um and maintain the bike lanes do some other things to kind of help with that so him and mark and their team really got did really great work there yeah i i think it was and it's probably changed since then as we're probably saying but it was kind of strange because it had to

car parking and then the lane and then Columbia. And it was like a little strange for someone riding a bike through there between doors and cars. Did we require putting a Dairy Queen back on that corner?

Yeah.

And the last thing I want to mention, the Gibson, this is the project on Union, which is the conversion of the big Republic commercial, the former office building that Ken Brogan's doing that is very close to occupancy. And so... That'll be for, and Ken was seeking, you know, credits for low-income housing as well. So that was an expedited project, and it's about to be finished.

And he is looking at some other projects, I believe, and continuing to use the affordability program.

Yeah, and he's looking for office space to convert. He had a good experience with the city, and so he wants to do it again, basically, this.

Just make it fast.

Keep doing it. Yeah. And lastly, from a staffing standpoint, I can say that today was the first day for our new planning manager. His name is Kernan Lean. He's going to lead our current planning and development review team, basically doing the job that Nicole used to do. And so he comes to us with about 20 years experience in the private sector and the public sector. Worked for the city of Edmonds for about 15 years. So we're really excited to have him on board. And then I also can say that in July 27th, we're going to have our housing director appointed. Her name is Ashley Chambers. She comes to us from Grand Junction, Colorado, where she leads their Huffington Homeless Response Program. And so she was a topic of all the different interview panels. And so we're really excited to have Ashley on board in about a month.

Yeah.

It's a super important position.

You've talked about, which was kind of a large one. Where is that located?

The one on 9th? Oh, yeah. So you know where Holy Ortho is over there on 9th? By the hospital? By the hospital, by Capital Medical Center. So yeah, it's kind of between 9th and the freeway. Yeah. Back when Holy Ortho sold them the property, subdivided it, and then they developed it as a project.

It's cool. I have a strange, strangest thing in the world. I have on my stepdad's side, a great uncle that lives up in those retirement homes, which is the strangest thing because no one else in that family lives out here. They all live in Ohio. It was the weirdest thing to find out he lives right down the street. Just a side note on that. I always remember where that is. Go barbecue at your uncle's. He's 92. This is still a live meeting. Yeah, for the record, we're not bringing fireworks. Any other updates? Cool, thank you. Cool. Well, I'm going to adjourn the meeting then.

Thank you, Chair.