Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Robert Vanderpool. I'm the chair of the Land, Use, and Environment Committee of the City Council. Today is July 23rd. I am here with my councilmates, Clark and Paul, and start the meeting.

Is it supposed to be like that?

Okay.

Okay. Cool, cool, cool. Can I get approval of tonight's agenda?

I move. I move to approve the agenda for today's meeting. Second. All right.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All right. We have an agenda. Public comment. Do we have anyone with hands up in the online or person?

Okay.

Cool.

All right. Can I get approval of the minutes for June 25th?

I move that we approve the minutes. of the Land Use and Environment Committee for June 26th. 25th. Second.

All right. All in favor? Aye. All right. On to committee business. We have a discussion of tenant opportunity purchase arrangements.

Good afternoon. Sorry, I don't know if folks online can hear okay. So I am Krista Lenson, Senior Program Specialist um, and the housing department here. And, um, I'm going to go over just a discussion about tenant opportunity to purchase. Um, so next slide, um, just some background, um, Olympia's housing action plan and comprehensive plan, uh, both direct the city to consider adopting a tenant opportunity to purchase ordinance. And the city hired a consultant in 2023 to conduct a study on ways the city could support affordable homeownership. And part of that study, the consultant provided recommendations about tenant opportunity to purchase policies enacted across the US and provided some options for the city to consider. And then in February, staff provided some initial research to the Land Use Committee, summarizing some of the lessons learned from other jurisdictions who've enacted these types of policies. And at that meeting, Land Use directed staff to gather together community stakeholders to hold a special meeting. And that meeting was held on June 11th. Next slide. So just some key highlights from that meeting. There is interest among community partners to support a tenant and a community opportunity to purchase. The recent passage of the state law that provides manufactured home community owners with the opportunity to compete to purchase their manufactured home parks provides a good template for what legislation, funding sources, and a program model might look like. So there's already kind of a framework that we can look at with the success of that legislation. There is also some lessons learned that the community partners provided about resources needed, timelines, and other factors that might be applied to multifamily rental properties. Rock Northwest which is resident owned communities Northwest estimates that about 30 to 40% subsidy is needed in additional in addition to traditional financing for resident acquisition of a property to keep the housing affordable when it's a limited equity cooperative. And there's currently no set aside funding for this type of acquisition for rental properties like there is for manufactured home communities. So just to put that into context, 30 to 40%, if a property is selling for $4 million, 40% of that is $1.6 million. So that's the kind of subsidy that would be required to keep that property at an affordable rate for residents. The Regional Housing Council's Opportunity Fund is set up well to support these kinds of acquisitions by residents, but funding is limited. So typically there's around $3 million available annually in that fund. But feedback from Rock Northwest is that funding has to be rapidly available like it is in that funding source. And they also suggested at the June meeting that there shouldn't be a requirement for site control to award those funds. And then rock also the representative from Rock Northwest also advocated at that meeting for a direct appropriation, which is how it currently works with acquisition of manufactured housing communities. So the state has direct appropriation that allows residents to be able to purchase their manufactured home park as a cooperative. And part of the reason for that and for the reason they advocate for having the direct appropriation is typically housing trust fund is a competitive annual funding source. So people have to apply for that once a year. Whereas, you know, properties go up for sale throughout the year, and so funding needs to be responsive and timely to enable those kinds of purchases. Next slide. And so staff is requesting direction today from land use on options that we could accomplish with our existing staff and funding resources. And I'll also provide some initial information on policy and program options if we had additional resources. And after today's presentation and discussion, please let me know if there's any additional information that would be helpful for next steps. Next slide. And so the following slides have some suggested actions that staff could take with our current resources available and just considering the current state and regional funding landscape. Next slide. So some of the work we could do is to continue trying to build partnerships and advocate for funding for this type of work. This could look like continue to track and participate in the statewide tenant opportunity to purchase conversations that have been started by Rock Northwest this spring. Continuing conversations with partners like the Thurston Housing Land Trust and Rock Northwest to explore any opportunities that they might have to partner together to help residents purchase rental property cooperatively. At the meeting in June, the representative who is here from the Thurston Housing Land Trust suggested the idea of looking into a scattered site cooperative ownership model with single family homes and duplexes. And so we could continue that conversation with the Housing Land Trust to determine if there's a way that the city could support that if they're interested in pursuing that model. We could advocate for cooperative ownership as a funding priority for some of our regional funding awards that are made through the opportunity fund. We could encourage regional funding awards for the concept. So Victoria from Rock Northwest noted that this could be a potential option. So If there was a property that went up for sale, that they would be ready to provide support and help tenants acquire their property if the opportunity arises. We could also support Rock Northwest in their attempts to expand state and CDFI financial resources. Victoria mentioned that she had already had some initial conversations with lenders and CDFIs. So finding if there's any ways that we can help support that effort. And then working together in partnership with Rock Northwest and the Housing Land Trust or other nonprofits, we could develop direct appropriation ask for a pilot program at the state legislature. Next slide. There are some other actions we could take to do some education and outreach in the community, such as educating tenants on the availability of the Opportunity Fund and what that is, providing current renters with resources and information that might help them if they are looking into homeownership, such as homebuyer classes or down payment assistance. And we could also provide some opportunities for tenants to learn more about cooperative models and cooperative ownership purchases so they can determine if they're interested in that if the opportunity arises. And then similarly provide opportunities for landlords to learn about cooperative purchase. And we could also do some outreach to landlords through the rental registry who might be interested in selling any of their rental property portfolio and connect them with community partners like the housing land trust or provide their tenants with resource information about home ownership. So one example is our rental registry staff have talked with landlords who have considered selling their properties. or have explored that. And some of them have offered to sell directly to their tenants. And some of those purchases have been made and some of them didn't work out because the tenant wasn't in a financial position to do that. But staff could develop some resources that landlords could provide to their tenants about where to find down payment assistance and home buyer education classes and and things like that to help support them in looking into whether that's possible for them. Next slide. So as I mentioned, there's not currently sufficient staff capacity or funding resources to support enacting a tenant opportunity to purchase policy or pilot program. But community stakeholders who participated in that June 11th meeting provided some initial feedback that I think would be useful to inform development of a policy or program if we're able to pursue that in the future. Next slide. So we heard from Rock Northwest that properties ideally would have at least 16 units to make cooperative purchase feasible. due to operational responsibilities like maintenance of the property, accounting, and participation in a board. So a policy could apply to multifamily residential properties with 16 or more units. There was also agreement among the stakeholders who were at that meeting in June that having both the tenant and the community opportunity to purchase would be preferable. So that if there are nonprofit organizations who would be able to purchase the property on the tenants behalf, they would also be able to do that. And then we also heard from stakeholders that the 70 day time frame to submit an offer to purchase in the manufactured home community context is not really sufficient time as it is right now, and more time would be preferable. So looking at what other cities have done across the U.S., 90 to 180 days may be a more realistic time frame for residents to explore together whether they can make this kind of purchase and to get the financing together to do that. And then we learned from stakeholders that simply requiring property owners to provide notification of the sale and the opportunity to compete for purchase in the manufactured home communities context has not always resulted in consistent information being shared with residents and other parties. So the Department of Commerce manages that notification to residents and to the eligible organizations. And Commerce staff really urged us to consider the notification requirements and just ensuring that there is enough staff capacity and administrative mechanisms to carry out that kind of program support. So with our existing resources, staff could continue to look into this further by gathering data on the scope of eligible properties If we're just looking at multifamily residential with 16 or more units, we could also gather some more data on the estimated annual sales to determine, you know, how many of these properties are coming up for sale every year. And we could also look further into, you know, the number of staff that we think it might take to be able to manage that kind of notification process if the city were to take that on.

Next slide.

So a pilot program could involve a smaller scope of eligible properties, and that could be based on a geographic area, a target unit count, or through outreach to any property owners who might be willing to explore selling to their tenants. So if we were looking at a geographic area, some possible kind of factors or variables that we might want to look at could be things like what areas in the city have a higher concentration of renters, if there are areas that are at higher risk for tenant displacement or other similar factors. And with our current capacity, staff could gather data on possible pilot scopes. and perform some initial outreach to multifamily property owners to determine if there's any interest in selling to their tenants. So staff would request that land use would provide any guidance if you'd like to have staff look into further kind of limiting a scope for a pilot program. Next slide. And so thanks and I'll be glad to answer questions as you discuss options and I'm currently scheduled to come back to land use in October. So just let me know if there's any information that would be helpful for me to bring back for next steps at this point.

Thank you questions, yes.

I had a question. Why is the 16 units?

for viable for a viable program what why why that threshold yeah so i think that um what we heard from victoria who's from rock northwest was that um there's really kind of a sweet spot for being able to purchase cooperatively because you have to form a you know kind of a an entity like an llc or a non-profit and you have to have board oversight in those kind of models And so you want to have at least enough tenants to participate in a board to oversee the operations. Additionally, if you have a really small property and there's accounting that has to be done and property maintenance, like if there's a big project that needs to be coordinated, that's a lot to fall on just a few number of residents. Um, and so, you know, really having enough people to make that function, um, they did, um, put in an offer on a 12 unit property in Spokane, but she said really 12 is kind of the bare minimum, um, to really make, um, a cooperative ownership model really work well. So 16 is a little more preferable.

I, um, Just instinctually, it appeals to me that a smaller project would be more desirable, actually, and easier to manage, and actually better communications between tenants to manage issues and whatnot. My daughter has a condo. This is not a co-op. It's a condo, but there are only five units in this, and they all just divvy up the roles, secretary, vice president, you know, maintenance person and so on. And it works pretty well. So, you know, that was one. And I realized as a different model, and I'm not interested in going down a rabbit hole, but the Habitat for Humanity has this big project. I wanted to know if you understood how those units are going to be financed for the buyers or in that project juxtaposed to this. I was just curious if they have a similar model or a different philosophy altogether.

It's a little different because, you know, they are developing it from the ground up, whereas we're really looking at like existing, um, properties that are privately owned that are being converted to tenant ownership. Um, so the kind of, some of the financing is a little bit different. So with habitat, you know, they've gotten grants through the housing trust fund to develop those properties. And then, um, they have, um, their own, uh, second mortgage, um, that they provide to the individual home buyers. So people can get their own kind of, um, financing, most people qualify for some forms of down payment assistance. So they help kind of match people up to those resources. And then to really get like a much lower level of affordability that they also provide a second mortgage through Habitat to those folks to bring the costs down further.

Do any of the models that we've talked about through ROC, offer similar second mortgage option. It seems to me that financing is so critical for any model.

Yeah. So, you know, that's really part of our interest in looking to organizations like ROC Northwest who have experience in helping residents make these kind of purchases and who are familiar with navigating financing is, you know, they actually help get the financing in order. And so, um, rock USA does provide some loans, um, and they also utilize loans from the state. And so there are a lot of different funding sources for manufactured home parks that become, you know, cooperatively run and purchased. Um, and so, you know, I think going through an established provider like that, who has experienced navigating kind of multiple funding streams is really, I think, would be in our best interest in looking at this kind of cooperative model.

Thank you.

So, I mean, this was just the experience around the manufactured home communities that we were hearing about, but I think there was one other element of Victoria suggesting a larger, small multifamily. And that was the resilience of the community themselves in terms of economic ability to continue to service the debt, that she was concerned about having a smaller unit. And if one person, their situation, because these are all low to moderate income people. And if one person's situation changes dramatically, it could make the whole group, not viable. So that was, that was what I heard as part of the 16 or more families together can probably carry somebody who's having a tough time until they either are replaced with another member or they, they, they have their feet back under them. But so that was, that's something else I think about in terms of, because we've had a couple of very small, like triplexes that were family owned for a long time and, and were sold to a outside investor. And there was that dream, but the three parties who were the current tenants, even with 40% public assistance, didn't have the capacity to take over the building. And so that's part of them. I think that sweet spot argument is a large enough group of community members who can carry each other through ups and downs in their own economic situations. So that's one thing I think about in terms of hoping for a larger one. And remind me how large the opportunity fund is through the Regional Housing Council?

I think it's at about $3 million per, is that?

It's $3 million, and there's some changes that are happening recently, or going to be happening, and it'll be capped about $3 million.

But that is our, currently, that's our one quick enough time frame, because I think another contrast to Habitat has been at least five years in fundraising and aggregating resources, and they're just now beginning the first phase. Whereas in these opportunities for an up and operating complex that goes on the market, you've got three months, baby, to come up with your $14 million. So needing to be able to very quickly access capital And that leads to my third point. My interest is that I wouldn't put a lot of energy into the education and outreach if we don't have a matching 40% of the cost of the projects. If we don't either know an external source of that funding or we can't provide that funding, I'm more inclined to think about your self-selected pilot, that if we have a local property owner who has a small holding and they want to figure out in sort of succession planning how to have their tenants take it over as a co-op or a similar model. I think it would make absolute sense to have our team try to help facilitate that. But in terms of marketing this idea, just for the sake of promoting this as a possible someday, feels to me like a really low percentage chance of actually converting a local complex. I want it so badly. It's such a cool idea. And like most really cool housing ideas, that initial capital is the biggest challenge of how do a whole bunch of moderate income people buy something that costs millions of dollars.

I like what I'm hearing here. We've had so much time to think about this and all the different aspects of it. I think that the other part of that is the timeframe, the 90 to 180 days timeframe. having that as a policy makes it more feasible because you have to have that quick turnaround. I mean, even 180 days go by really fast, and particularly if you're trying to get the financing together because even if we can get the opportunity fund out of a regional housing council meeting quickly and have each city go along with it, each member, it would take a bit of time just to get the paperwork right up for that. get everyone on board but i i think that it's um that's a good question about the opportunity to find in itself too is um is trying to define that money a little bit we're still trying to figure that out at the regional housing council it got brought up last night is defining what that money is i i think about that quite often i um but i am interested in continuing to look at various aspects of this the scattered sites come up right i i wonder I wonder about if we were able to even pilot, set up a scattered site. And then because we have so many like mixed types of, we have single family and we also have apartment buildings and multifamily. And I'm just curious about if we're able to figure out a scattered site model that we could keep adding housing units to that scattered site model, if that's a thing, if that's possible. I probably need better understanding of that. Because if that's possible, then you could create a pilot and then over time add more units onto that and just have a shared financing. I also am curious about the additional resources and the capacity building around that. I tell Jay all the time about capacity as a city. Yesterday on our one-on-one, we chatted a little bit about there's so many things as a city that I want us to do. and constantly running into our capacity limits. And I told Jay that next legislative session, I'm going to be there a lot saying, hey, we're doing a lot of great things. We just need more capacity to do things as a city. And so I agree with Clark that I really want to get there. But the hardest thing is that first step, the proof of concept. And I think that's something that I'm really interested in pursuing and continuing to have that work done.

i hope that gives you a direction from from the three of us or go ahead jay i think krista what i'm hearing is there's that additional bit of research that krista talked about as we might inform an ordinance to maybe take this to that next step and do some of that additional research um to bring you some to kind of refine the options more versus the education outreach steps right so and maybe come back in october with this may be a little more fleshed out around this idea of a pilot. Because one of the questions I asked Krista is, how many of these opportunities come available every year? It's kind of hard to scope and know. And I think that'll be really important for you to know as you think about, well, how much money might we need even through an opportunity fund, depending on the opportunities that come up, and scope and scale that. And we don't really know that right now. It might be really good to know that. And because that's really where the opportunities lie. So anyway, I That's kind of what I think I'm hearing.

Yeah. And I'll just throw in there. Um, so tomorrow I'm scheduled to, uh, meet with the Thurston County Realtors Association and they're interested in this topic. And so like that group or other groups might be potential resources that, um, could think of other things that I haven't, you know, thought about yet or, um, like Jay was saying, have an idea of how we would hear about these kind of properties going up for sale earlier, how many go on the market, things like that. So there's some other partners that I can do some outreach to to help us gather more data.

One thing that I would just recommend along those lines, the realtor should know what's coming on available onto the market and whatnot. The Adams Real Estate Office, which is just a couple blocks from here, you know, they've been around forever, and they actually do multi-family housing. They own them. And I think he and his daughter, his daughter's very active. I forget her name. Yeah. She would know, I bet. But they would probably want to snap up. a good property themselves. But I think in the realtor community, there would be people that would be very knowledgeable about the kind of property that would be a good target for this kind of an effort.

So that's great that you're meeting with them.

Thank you.

So one other thing that intrigued me in that last presentation in the special meeting we had was, oh, no, I just went out of my head. The woman from Commerce.

Ann.

Ann. Yes. Ann had said that a land trust is exempt from property taxes and a cooperative is exempt from tax on the value of the buildings. And so... we're at approximately 1% our property tax. So a quarter million dollar unit in a modest multi-complex would be about $200 a month reduction in rent. So I just wanted to flag that that was one of the interesting pieces of this possibility to me was if we put a small multifamily complex into a land trust ownership model, At the current values, that's a couple $300 a month less in cost, which is substantial. So that's one of the sweet carrots that I'm hoping we might leverage in this.

I appreciate you bringing that up.

The more we get into this, the more we'll realize rules and, like, state laws that exist that we weren't aware of. I know we're not, this isn't about development, but the folks at Hauser Neighbors have expressed to me that there are codes of the state that if you're planning on being a developer for cooperative housing, you can go around zoning. There are state laws that have, you can overlap certain zoning based on if you become a cooperative developer. which is fascinating. I had no idea until I went to, so I talked with them, but there are, I'll be interested in what else we learn from this, but I will, yeah. Do you have a direction from us or is there any other?

I think so. Okay. So I'll do some additional data gathering and then bring back a recommendation in October.

Krista, especially as you meet with real estate and management folks, I think that the analogy to succession planning that Northwest Cooperative Development has done with small businesses in town is really fascinating in that we have a number of families with large portfolios of property who might be in the position to actually imagine this as a form of succession planning to keep local community ownership. So that's another piece I was intrigued from that conversation.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Now the next item will be a brief briefing on the short-term rental permitting and enforcement.

Good evening.

Move this a bit.

Okay. While I start sharing my slides, just to introduce myself, since I have not been to these meetings, my name is Casey. I'm one of the planners on your current planning team in community development. I believe last month you heard from Casey Shoffler, who is another planner on my team. Different person, same team. Same spelling.

Well, there's no confusion. What's your last initial?

M. He's S. Yeah. The best part, I think, was I took his job on the current planning team when he moved to Long Range years ago. And so I had to reach out to all of his project applicants and say, you have a new Casey. Don't reach out to that one.

Okay. Should be showing up any minute. It blinked.

Okay, good enough for me. All right, I am here tonight to discuss short-term rental permitting and enforcement. What is a short-term rental? Well, in case you're not aware, it is a rental that is rented for less than 30 days. That threshold is set by state law And so that is the dividing line between a long-term rental, something that would be subject to the rental registry, and a short-term rental. We get a lot of folks who think that if you rent something for a season, three months, that might be a short-term, but it is not. Okay.

Okay. OK, I'm gonna. Share this a different way.

OK. Alright, the history of the program here in Olympia. So the ordinance was passed back in 2021, There was a rise in short-term rentals across the country, across the world, really. And especially during COVID with remote work, it became very easy to move for some folks and work in a different location. And there was growing concern kind of on a national platform, you could say, about maybe a lack of regulation of these rentals and potential undesirable effects. I will say from talking to staff members who were here at the time, of drafting this ordinance and passing it. Olympia didn't have as many concerns as some communities, but it was enough for us to push it through as a new regulation. And in Olympia, we separate out our short-term rentals into two categories. There are homestays, which means the owner is living in the residence and they may be renting one or more rooms. And then there's vacation rentals. This is what people typically think when they imagine a short-term rental. The owner does not live on site. They are not living in the unit. In Olympia, vacation rentals require a short-term rental permit, and homestays do not. Okay, there's a lot of text here. You don't necessarily need to read it, but I'm just going to briefly go through the regulations that fall to each of the types. So regardless of what type of short-term rental you have, there is a cap of 10 adults total or two adults per bedroom, whichever is less. You need a city business license, and if you cross the revenue threshold, you need a state business license. You have to have a local contact within 15 miles identified who is available 24-7. You need to post a copy of your Olympia business license and our good neighbor guidelines in the residence, and if you're a vacation rental, you would also be posting your permit. The good neighbor guidelines are just a pretty handy dandy handout for folks who come to stay about, you know, please don't create excessive noise and here's a good city contact to call if you have this issue. It's a pretty basic set of useful information. Short-term rentals of any type are prohibited on MFTE or income restricted properties. And then state law requires that Operators have liability insurance of $1 million, so we do check for this in our permit review, and the state requires smoke detectors and carbon monoxide alarms. Getting into the differences between the two types, vacation rentals require a permit. It's a permit that's good for two years. Right now, the cost is about $116. This changes annually, as you know. And no operator can own operate or have interest in more than two vacation rental units in Olympia. This does not apply to units that were operating before the ordinance was passed, but it is in place now to prohibit, you know, large conglomerates from buying up units. You can have no more than two rentals on a single lot with a single family home. And you need to provide one additional off-street parking space if you are renting two units and one of them is a single-family home. That parking requirement does not apply to short-term rentals that were operating before the ordinance. Homestays are a little bit simpler. So the property owner or a long-term tenant resides in the residence. No land use permit is needed. So this is one of the types of home-based businesses that you may have been hearing about recently. And this one also has a parking requirement that does not apply for folks operating before the ordinance was passed, that you need to provide one space if renting more than two bedrooms. Okay, my quick numbers, which I'm sure as you all are aware, I am not saying this is the number of short-term rentals operating in Olympia, but this is the number of short-term rental permits, so those vacation rentals, that have sought permits in the city. Right now we have 30 that are active, and the list on the bottom just goes through the number of applications that were approved each year. It has grown steadily, and since the permit is good for two years, basically you get that 30 number by combining the 2026, the 2025, and the little bit of folks who were approved in 2024 post-July. Getting into enforcement, short-term rental enforcement is very similar to how code enforcement works for any other type of permit in the Community Development Department. It is complaint-based. Code enforcement is always focused. Their highest priority is health and safety issues, and past that, it is complaint-based. Since the ordinance became effective, there have been eight complaints that were tagged as a short-term rental issue that resulted in two cases. That does not include noise and nuisance complaints because these go straight to the police department, and they're then referred to code enforcement if appropriate. So if patterns are emerging and code enforcement may be a good party to get involved, they will pass those cases along. And if folks are using unpermitted living units as a short-term rental, that is processed differently as a building code issue. Those are addressed separately. quite actively. My last slide is just about community feedback. So just to share what I've heard from folks in the community. One thing we've heard from one person, potentially more, is some frustration that folks who are not following the rules are not proactively addressed. You know, saying that it's a bit of a fairness issue. Some of us get permits and some of us follow the rules and others don't. The response to that is that we are complaint based. And so, you know, if there is an issue in a community, we do want folks to put in a code enforcement complaint and we can get that addressed. Sometimes we hear some confusion and frustration about the rental registry versus short-term rentals. I think it's a fair point of, you know, sometimes folks are operating for three months. They don't know where they fall. But the rental registry team and myself, I think we can address those questions pretty easily and pretty quickly. And that is a threshold set in state law. Most of the time, it's folks who rent for a couple months and they're in the rental registry. There's been at least one case where there was a rental, someone wanted to use it for sometimes under 30 days, sometimes more. And in that case, they were asked to get both a short-term rental permit and enter the rental registry. And finally, our permit portal online does have a field that when folks are finishing up applying for their permits, they can put in comments about the process or the permit portal itself. So I did go through the comments that we've received on short-term rental applications and I didn't see anything in there that I found personally troubling. There's always mixed reviews about the permit portal. You know, some folks struggle with online applications. Others said this is a great and very quick, clear process. But our department does do a great job of we're open for counter service 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday. You know, if folks really need that over the shoulder, let's do that together. We will provide them that assistance on a computer up on the second floor. And we're also always responsive to calls and emails within 24 hours.

That's all I have. Thank you, Casey.

I'm Clark.

Hi. We've met before, but not in a meeting. All right. My mic. question is about now that we've got a few years under our belt are are we considering any so we get um as council members and probably with staff also get solicited continually by short-term rental monitoring agencies or analysts um and so i'm wondering would we consider an audit to sort of check the community concerns like the recent letter you responded to where somebody says there's many more than 30 listed currently between airbnb and vrbo

Um, it's a fair question and it's a bit of a complicated answer. We could not just require permit numbers through, uh, these hosts, these websites because homestays won't have permit numbers. And so it might block out some of those units, um, going beyond that to just, you know, browsing the website and using it to be more proactive. That's not something that our code enforcement team at this point has the capacity for, but certainly, you know, Tim can speak on exploring other options.

Yeah, it's certainly something we can look at in talking with our code enforcement team. You know, we are complaint-based. That's the reality of it. We do do active enforcement for those life safety issues that Casey talked about, you know, building a structure without a permit. The other big project before the code enforcement team now is supporting our rental registry program. We're really trying to get the science for that. And we're getting to the point where all of our soft notices and phone calls, some of them are resulting in now enforcement taking stronger action. We have about 80 to 100 cases now for that. So given that, that is where our priority is. But certainly we'd have the conversation internally about strategies to use the booking service to where we could do kind of enforcement without adding staff time. I think there's something that we can take a look at.

Thank you. And that's what I'm getting at is would we say yes to one of these companies who solicited us really hard when we were first considering doing a regulation, um, saying, Hey, we can do an analysis. We can drill down in the door. It's hard for us to figure out, are they really within the city? Are they active? Um, anyhow. Um, so I, I would, I would appreciate it if we could figure out a way to get another, um, census of short-term rentals in the community. And, um, You know, the question of the requiring to post the city registration, other communities have, and I would suggest that there could be a single blanket registration number for all of the home state people. You could just offer them essentially a dummy code that they use, and that would, because that is something that many other communities have implemented, is requiring that there's evidence of a city registration number. And then my last question, I realize it's complaint based and I know that code enforcement negotiates solutions to many other kinds of issues. What are the consequences for continuing to operate three or more units under one ownership? Exactly. Or if just a survey found that somebody still has nine units that they manage, what are the consequences?

Well, I don't have a perfect answer, but first of all, you would need to dig into the history because if they were purchased prior to 2021, that is allowed. Beyond that, I will defer to Tim.

Yeah, I mean, I would have to take a look at the enforcement process, but we could ultimately, we would, you know, redact or take away the permit and then pursue enforcement if they continue to operate. Ultimately, if You know, if push comes to shove and they don't comply, then ultimately we have to issue citations and ultimately ends up in court.

And so also help me clarify if they owned the property prior to 2021 or that they were actively renting it as a short-term rental prior to the regulations.

That's a good clarification. They needed to be operating.

Good, because we had a couple of large multifamily buildings that had a suite of apartments they were using. And just the simple fact that they'd owned them, I don't believe grandfathers them in. So thank you. And thank you for the update.

I have a series of questions.

One, I just need to learn some things. Do the short-term rentals pay the lodging tax?

The lodging tax.

The Airbnb pays the lodging tax. Like a hotel.

Yeah, I think we do, but I would need to verify that.

Yeah, that's something we can do.

Well, I don't know. When I think about this issue, I just think about... the stress on services that these units place on the city in a hundred different ways. And, um, that I just want to make sure the city is collecting a lodging tax to pay for the common good, you know, in, in these cases, um, one of the benefits of, uh, of logging lodging tax, of course, is that there's a tax on people who come from out of town. And so, um, My interest in making sure that we're being aggressive in identifying who these people are and where they're at is to make sure that we are... Oh, okay.

Thanks, Tim turned it off. Yeah, the short answer is that Airbnbs for stays less than 30 days, so 29 days or less, are subject to lodging tax. And Airbnb and VRBOs charge that as part of their fees and they're supposed to be submitting that to us, so through their providers. It's automatic. And then same thing, they're also subject to B&O tax if they're under that 30-day threshold. So the other audit that we could look at is for the ones that we know that are permitted at least, are we receiving that lodging tax and or the B&O? And our tax team can certainly find that out to see if that's accurate.

Yeah. And this is just kind of a follow up to that. If Airbnb is collecting the lodging tax, theoretically, they may be collecting the lodging tax on units that were not registered with the city. Is that a possibility?

It absolutely is. And by the way I read this, Airbnb wouldn't know necessarily whether they are or aren't and should still be sending those lodging tax receipts off to the city. So another maybe This may be where you're going. Another quick audit that we could do is to talk to the tax team about how much they're receiving on this LTAC through Airbnb, and does it match up? And there's some work that we can probably do there that could help.

I have a whole bunch of questions, but go ahead. Along that thought, I'm wondering if those receipts they're sending back have addresses attached to them.

Yeah, I don't know. So that's a good question for the tax team about how much detail they get, or they just get a lump distribution. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. But it's a good question that we can look at.

And Airbnb, of course, is kind of like Kleenex. All of them are called Airbnbs, even though there's VRBO and multiple companies. And I assume the city is kind of on top of all of the, you know, it would be interesting to know if all of them have a policy of collecting that tax and getting in. And I have a very strong interest in that, in just making sure that the city's experiencing a tax benefit if these rental units are going. And it's an equity issue to the hotels, too, because if people are staying in Airbnbs, they're not paying lodging tax at hotels. I... This is more of a, when we do a remodel permit, we don't really ask if what that remodel is for, correct? I mean, and this is where I'm going with this. It seems to me, of course, this was kind of unpermitted, I think, but I'm familiar with a house in my neighborhood that put in an Airbnb apartment. They do a lot of work. I don't think they were permitted, if you want to know the truth. They may have been permitted, but if they were permitted, would they have had to say in the permit what the use of that property was going to be, as in this is going to be a second unit or a second property? You know, an Airbnb type of unit, or do they just say, I'm dividing the house and this is it? I was just curious how that works. It would be a way of collecting information is why I'm asking this question.

We don't require it now. And our building team, one of the things they do check for though in remodels is not related to renting, but often folks want to just slip in an additional unit. And so, you know, at the point that we see an additional full cooking facility, sleeping, sanitation, basically, are you putting in another full kitchen? At that point, we do check up because there are significant differences in fees when you're considering it a dwelling unit and not just a renovation. Doesn't answer your question, but we do a little bit of work to try to capture those fees and make sure that folks aren't living in unpermitted residences.

Yeah, go ahead. Paul, another way of looking at that question about the initial permitting and the use. So I built a permitted accessory dwelling unit. My mother lived in it. Then we had some friends live in it for a few years. Then we Airbnb'd it and then my son lived in it and now we're living in it. And so it's difficult to classify a basement apartment or a cottage as being rental or owner occupied or short-term or long-term because there's nothing about the actual physical unit that lends itself to one of those uses.

Thank you. I can see where that would be the case.

Yeah, that's great. What was the nature of the two complaints? I realize you may not have that, but I'm just kind of curious what kind of complaints are coming in.

I don't have them with me. I believe one of them was about trash and trash piling up, and so that was addressed. I don't know about the other one.

Thank you. That's okay. Obviously, if it was a police complaint, that would be handled separately. And this was interesting to me. What are your thoughts about how we can get more people registered? And you kind of addressed this, so I know you kind of addressed this, but in an equity sense, we want apartments to be registered this, this Airbnb that I'm familiar with in, in, in our neighborhood does both short and long-term. So, you know, they should be on the rental registry, but they, uh, should also be on the, um, the short term also. But, um, so, uh, I, I kind of view this as just tight business practices. You know, we, um, And there's an equity issue. If some people are being responsible, we want everyone. Can we talk about that a little more? You know, what do we need to do to really maximize success in getting the short-term rental people signed up in coordination, of course, with our rental registry folks, you know?

I think pursuing communication with the big listing sites is a good start just to see what their options are. Is there something that we could pursue that doesn't allocate a lot of staff time? Um, that is definitely something we can look into. I poked into it before this meeting and none of the representatives got back to me. So I don't have answers tonight, but I think that's a great start. Um, I mean, there's always education and outreach campaigns, but to be honest, I don't personally find that they would be that successful. I can also talk to our tax team and just learn about, you know, are there ways that they approach this issue with other businesses who aren't filing B&O or things of that nature to see if they have strategies.

Sorry, this just makes me think of the fact that, you know, we, as Council knows, we hired some additional staff around B&O to do audits. And I'm wondering if, because they've got a rhythm with these audits, that they actually, Casey, to your point, might be helpful here. Like they, because one of the requirements is a business license, right? So. They may be helpful here in doing a little sleuthing on our part around who may be out there that's not registered based on the tax income that's coming in from them on their B&O forms in particular. So there may be something to that. And then as we talked about an audit, too, that's another way. I think if we can figure out a way to do some sort of an audit of who's registered on the sites might also be another way that we can get to your question about how do we get more people in awareness at least.

And I would really be interested in just knowing how much money is coming in in lodging tax from this subset if that's easily obtainable. So if that's possible, I'd like to see what that is in comparison to the hotels, I guess.

Everything I had thoughts on are kind of covered at this point.

Honestly, I'm interested in the self-regulation part of it. I mean, that's the thing I heard from some providers in the community even a couple of years ago was like, is there a way to create fairness in the system? I think I'm glad it's coming from people who are short-term rental people who have been following these rules, who have two units or less, and that would like it to seem fair as a small business and make sure there's no corporate I guess, you know, multi three or more units in the community causing this unfairness. And I think that that's a good place to come from. And I, so I would be interested in seeing where that audit comes from. I'd be interested in seeing what other, what else comes back from the self-regulating thing too, if that was a possibility. And I'm also interested in even Clark brought up that the dummy code possibility to seeing if we could just make it very uniform and Maybe one of them you have to pay for the permit, maybe the other one isn't if it's a homestay, but at least so that there's an easier way to track in the future because the easier we make this to track, the better it will be for us. So, yeah.

Go ahead. You know, I talked to a few folks about the problems in the South Capitol neighborhood related to rentals, and I do see this as a separate issue from the business issue. Because there's an infusion of short-term rentals, essentially. These are three-month rentals. Some of them technically are homestays. Some of them are technically short-term rentals. They're kind of separate units. And this... I think getting a handle on regulating those individuals that are doing that, and it's quite an enterprise as opposed to just people looking out for a friend or something like this, is key to helping that neighborhood meet some of the challenges that are going on there. And so I... this issue of identifying people in this neighborhood who know that there are long-term rentals going on. This city could be an asset in making sure that those are at least registered as rentals so that they could be regulated. And it's not solving their big problem, but it solves a subset that I think needs to be addressed because, um, uh, church and rentals go in that the traffic in the neighborhood is jammed up and it's, it's jammed up on unregulated. And we kind of just say, Oh, well, that's the Capitol that, you know, the bad traffic, but, but actually it's because people are living in the houses in an unregulated fashion. And, um, I just think we have to peel the problems there one issue at a time and try to address them. And getting a handle on the neighborhood association that identified 20 units that aren't all short-term rentals, but some of them are. Some of them are business rentals. Some of them are no rentals at all. It's a whole variety of different issues. And I think success in that neighborhood, if we're going to embrace this, is kind of taking each of these layers, home rental, short-term rental, business usage, renting bedrooms as offices solely, and kind of bifurcating them. And it's It's not going to necessarily address all the problems there, but I think it's a way the city can address those problems and do so professionally and fairly. So I don't need to say any more about this, but I think this issue of how we go about identifying and having equity in that and what people in the South Capitol neighborhood, for instance, can do, to make sure that these are being regulated appropriately is important to serve those people in that part of the city.

That's all.

Just one last thought and sort of one more plug for why I think we want to periodically do some sort of a census or audit is that it's currently 30 units and maybe it's even if it's double that number that aren't registered, that's out of 15,000 residential units in the city. So that just to bear in mind that sort of a number. So what I'm more interested in, I know that we're not Leavenworth or Squim or, you know, a place that's very much a tourist destination. But as I, As time goes on, I think we were being proactive to enact these regulations while the number is relatively small of units and this practice is not displacing a lot of folks. But if we don't do some sort of periodic measurement, we won't know what that universe looks like, except through complaints or citizens coming with or community members coming with letters. But I really think that some sort of periodically either our own team checking business records or hiring somebody that does this around the country to count up short-term rentals would be good reassurance about whether the practice is really exploding or changing.

Yeah, and I think that

As we explore this audit, I think that whatever information comes out of that, I think it would be good to hear, if we're able to hear it back by the time we look at the home occupation stuff in September, late September. I don't know if we'll have it by then, but whatever we're able to find to help inform that. I don't know if that's too fast of a timeline, but

Um, cause I interject, dude, you work in government. What's the speed of government. Come on.

It depends on, it depends on how busy people are. You know, I don't know. I don't know what the B&O team's doing, you know, I'm sure they're very busy.

Well, one thing about the September deadline too, is that, um, I mean, we, we saw in the paper, there was a lot of dialogue at planning commission Monday night. And so the timeline's based upon them doing basically hearing deliberations in a night, and I don't know if that's going to happen. It could take an additional meeting, so this could get pushed out a little bit, depending on how the conversation goes.

Okay.

Because what I was trying to say is that it's layered, and Paul has mentioned that, and it's making sure that we're able to have both conversations will inform each other as we're able to look through it, because I even wrote down geographic, right? If it turns out that we are able to go through the taxes and find where these are, it may tell us more of a detailed breakdown of what's going on in soft capital, for example. So, yeah. Do you have everything you need from us?

I believe I do. Tim, Nicole, any other outstanding questions?

Thank you. Thank you.

I think we're on to reports and updates, and I believe, Tim, you have something for us. I have a couple things.

I'll start with the big one first. So I want to go back and kind of have a follow-up from a conversation last month about the concept of a moratorium on tree cutting. As you know, last month we brought forward Kim Foley and Leon from our urban forester to talk about the urban forestry management plan. is going to be starting through our process in terms of development. We got a grant from DNR and so we have some funding in place to create this plan that's going to establish some goals for tree canopy and help us pursue better oversight of trees within the city with a goal in mind. And so during that conversation there was a request by a couple community members about establishing a moratorium on tree cutting in the time period between now and when a plan would be adopted in a couple years. And so the direction or the conversation that came out of the committee at that time was to do a moratorium, but also have it not be absolute, but allow some back and forth between staff and the applicant on tree selection as development happens. And so following that meeting, I had an opportunity to talk to staff and review the ordinance. And I'd like to make a pitch that we not do the moratorium at this time, but instead allow staff to make some changes to our land use review process that allows us to do exactly what the committee wants, which is having those conversations back and forth with an applicant to look at a site and be able to preserve the trees that have the most value. And so what I mean by that is that when you look at our current code, which was established 30 years ago, it's probably had some updates, but it's actually pretty progressive at the time, where basically the code says for development projects, it says to look at the trees And then basically in locations where trees are considered landmark or mature trees, they would have priority over development. That is, design the development around the trees. And so when you look at it, and it also has a priority set in there. We have landmark trees, specimen trees, critical area buffers, significant wildlife habitat trees, and then other trees within groves. That's kind of the priority list. When we do a pre-submission conference, typically we provide guidance to the applicant on how to proceed with a development project, with an actual application. And so at that meeting, they come away with the process to go through, but also all the requirements they have to meet. Usually at those meetings, we say, you know what, you have to have a scoping meeting for stormwater management. Why? Because stormwater management is all about the site, the site condition, and how you fit it. They're based on the soils, topography, and everything. We do the same thing for solid waste disposal to make sure we can pick up garbage. We do the same thing for traffic. if there's a TIA or traffic impact analysis that's required. We want to start doing that for urban forestry. That is, what we would say was, during the pre-sub, hire urban forester, do the tree inventory, then have a scoping meeting with staff to sit down and talk about how to design the project to preserve the trees you want to preserve. Because right now, they're kind of an afterthought. I do want to say that, for most, I can say our projects are meeting code for tree retention. You know, there's a magic number of 30 tree units per acre. In Grieco basis, 120 tree units per acre. But I think we could probably do a better job working with the developer to save those trees that have the higher value. And so through that process of a scoping meeting, we then could help them identify those areas where trees are best preserved and that gets designed in the project before it's submitted to the city. Because what's happening typically is we get the project and it may be in an area that may not make a lot of sense. If they've already designed the project, we're in our first round of review, As a city we're required by state law to meet our timelines and it's very challenging and expensive to have a developer go back and redesign a project after it's been submitted. And so I guess in summary what I'm saying is I'd like to give a chance to carry out the current code and try to meet the same objectives as we would through a moratorium. And so if that's my recommendation, if the committee continues with wanting to do a moratorium, what that would take is We would need to bring forward with council an ordinance or declaration of emergency. We would have to hold a public hearing and declare the moratorium in effect for six months. They have to be updated every six months after that for, I think, a total of two years. I don't know if there's like a maximum for that.

I recently read it and it said a maximum of one year, but maybe I don't know.

So anyway, it has some rigid nature to it. So and then there's also the concern of a moratorium typically has a chilling effect on projects in the development community. As a reminder, we're also under a housing crisis, and so we're trying to get our 550 units per year we need for the next 20 years. And a moratorium tends to say to a developer, hey, the city might be really hard to work with. And so with that, I just recommend we go forward with being a little more strategic on how we work with applicants before they submit applications.

Okay.

Yeah, I'm just leaning on our emergency, other emergency ordinances we've done, and I think Nicole's right, it's a year, but that's why we check in with council at the end of that year, because they can renew it at that point in time, but there has to be a redeclaration of an emergent need around it to extend it further, just like we do with the homeless emergency.

The only, one just comment I would say is, I think we made a very quick decision, probably without examining all of the nuances of what a policy means. And I think this is well worth revisiting where we land. I'm open to ideas and whatnot. But I think that we probably, you know, there was a discussion about the 40 inches and then the 24 inches. And my original emotion was 40 inches. And, oh, no, we could do 24. And then it was circumference versus radius and so on and so forth. So, I'd like to see us kind of reopen this discussion anyway.

Interesting. Yeah. So, I'm intrigued with having an internal review, and I know that our current planning people have worked, you know, around stormwater, shoreline, the access for waste pick all of those things and and and held a hard line but i'm i'm i i value the moratorium as a way to protect the existing large trees through the next couple of years development given that it was almost eight years ago that we started talking about updating the tree ordinance um And in recent history, we've had projects where we, like over by the end of Phones Road, where we still talked about tree units being acceptable, that they could essentially clear-cut and put in saplings to meet their tree units. And so I would need some additional assurance that there was a way to, at that pre-submission time, to strongly... insist on the preservation of these highest value trees. And I agree. I mean, I don't want people having to save a bunch of cottonwoods or hybrid poplar, you know, I mean, I, I, I get that. And I, I also wouldn't want people to be in the situation of coming in with a full set of a full plot plan. And then we, we put this upon them. But I, I just, I would like to learn more about how, and I know Nicole actually has years of directly negotiating these situations. How might we be insisting on keeping a few, whatever I'm going to call them, heritage or landmark specimens on a parcel at that initial conference? So I'm open to it, but I'm also cautious because of, the disappointment when we've allowed tree units to satisfy the requirement.

Okay, well, I can speak to that. We do allow for tree, we address tree units, but tree units are ranked, and the intent is that a larger tree counts as significantly more than a sapling. So, for example, 30 tree units, one tree could count, a nice big tree could count as all 30, with the intent of that to say, boy, you really, you get more bang for your buck if you save that tree. So I actually think tree units in this way do, push the developer to try to save trees because it's less expensive in terms of consuming land. I do see your point, though, that it is often easy to not hire a forester and just say, like, can we just bulldoze the whole thing? And I think what would be helpful is some commitment from the council. We get complaints from developers, like, we're just trying to do housing. The council's committed to housing. And these trees, like, well, man, we have to choose between trees and housing. How do we do that? And so a little bit of commitment that, like, you know what? Yep, we support staff. That's the right thing. We're going to preserve these trees. And that might result in a different layout or project. or whatever, I think would go a long ways because sometimes what we hear is, you know, yeah, there's a housing crisis. So if you can get more units, if they can be low-income units, if you can find a way to work around in a way that puts housing first... I think we might say, yeah, maybe you can plant where it's right on the cusp. And I think maybe what I hear you saying is, no, let's save those trees. And I think we could do that. But sometimes it's just not quite as easy as do we save trees. There's always something that's gained and lost.

I appreciate that. And as I recall the conversation last month, we talked about, and actually in that draft moratorium was a director discretion that if, if the beautiful specimen is in the center of the lot, then, you know, and it diminishes the possibility of the building footprint. So I understand whichever path we take, I hope that we will urge the preservation of these larger trees, particularly of slower growing high value species. But I just, I would, look for either a better understanding or more assurance about how this would urge the preservation of the landmark trees.

Well, another idea, other than a moratorium, right, which, like Tisim said, will take some time to work through, is for Tim and Nicole to draft an interim policy or a policy for how, Tim just kind of laid it out verbally, but they could draft a policy around the preservation and, to your point, you know, making the developer show them how they've worked around it. And if there isn't a workaround or whatever it is, we could draft a policy, bring it back. So you could see it laid out and the intention of it, and then give any feedback to it that gives you the assurance you need. And then once we have it, then Tim, as the director can put it in place, it might be faster to get something like that to you and get something in place a lot sooner than working through a moratorium with the council. But that's, again, that's up to you.

Actually having a policy would would help it helps. I mean like Nicole's talking about help support staff saying this is a council priority a city priority. It's in code, but to have that additional policy I think would go a long ways now so don't understand is a trees will be removed, you know when you when we had the discussion about the 2440 inch. I spent some time pulling permits and realize that many of our middle housing and large long-term housing projects we had a strict moratorium would not be approved be simply because Most of them are very treed. And so it's a matter of which trees are the highest priority and which ones are in the best location. The urban forester can certainly give a conversation about, you know, there's certain places where if you remove this bunch of trees, then the rest of them are going to be vulnerable to blowdowns because of those southwesterly wind. And so there's lots of science that goes into determining the best site design. And so what we're suggesting is that, especially with the policy, is that we have that more of an upfront, solid conversation with the developer before they apply.

I'm on my reason to hand myself. Um, so, uh, yeah, I would be interested in it coming back as a document. I think that would be, uh, uh, that, that meets both the, the feedback you're giving us. And, uh, it, it, for the folks that are every app advocate in this community around this, they want to make sure that we're not pulling a fast one. We're making sure that we're listening to their concerns. Um, and then, uh, I also am interested in the pre-sub level so that before there's an architectural design of the site, I think that that is a way of thinking about it in both ways. I wrote this down because I'm curious because when we did the affordability emergency, we gave some flexibility in emergency powers around development, a little bit there, very broadly. I wrote down, as I was listening, I was hearing, I was thinking about how if you have a site and you have a fairly large tree and it ends up being not in the center but somewhere in there, and it turns out the developer's like, well, I'm struggling with where I'm going to put this, right? Well, I'm curious about things like setbacks and locations. I know we have to try to make things fairly square and gridded to create a street grid, but I'm very curious about how much flexibility there is in our affordability because it becomes a matter of affordability for the construction of a development if they have to rearrange things. So if they're at the pre-sub level and it says that you can't take out this big tree here that's over 40, right? But we have broad flexibility in where you can build the housing in there I'm just trying to find ways to think about being flexible to the development while also preserving the tree, right? To think a little side of the box to meet both needs, which I hope that our, our eventual tree ordinance gets to, but, um, I'm just kind of thinking out loud around that issue.

The code does already allow for a, to preserve trees. modifications to standards like setbacks or coverage or things of that nature. So that's in there. What is sometimes not always thought about is that it's not necessarily the structure itself that's the problem for the trees. It's the associated utilities or the specific grade that you have to put a sewer line or how you can't really easily put the road around a tree and the road could but then how do you kind of curve all those utilities? And those are the things that are sometimes complicated to figure out. And what our urban forester has recently been talking about is increasing the level of qualifications for the urban forester. So if we can get urban foresters that are working on the project who really do know how to have some impact in the critical root zone, but not all the way around it and how they really can organize the site so that you're having small impacts. And she has a cool word for that, but I forgot what it's called. Then what you can end up with is more preservation. And so I think that might be something that we put in this is this piece of making sure that the people who are the urban foresters who are working on the site aren't really looking at it necessarily as this kind of old school method, but applying some new technology and new approaches.

I'd be interested in more of that in the future when it comes back. Because it reminds me of a pre-zoning world where, oh, this is here, but I don't want to get rid of it, so I'm just going to kind of build around, like kind of a different way of thinking. A very sometimes risky, sometimes rewarding way of doing things.

Yeah.

Any other feedback?

Thoughts? No, I think this is a good plan. I think if we can come back with a little meat in the bones.

Just a last thought about if it's possible in this policy to be more assertive about what sort of projects would require tree inventory contracting with the forester. I think that's just to make sure that that information is available when you do the pre-sub. so that we're not just having to have you talk from the Google Maps image.

Okay, so the direction I'm hearing is to come back with a formulated policy to run past and then bring to full council.

Will do. Thank you.

Any other reports?

Uh, just for your next meeting, which is our August 27th, we have two agenda items. We have land banking strategies that that just in this tell us will bring forward. I know that she's also coordinating with our economic development director, Jenica Machado on that, and we have manufactured home preservation coming back as a recommendation package from Krista. Two other updates. One is that as Jade is in the email out just to confirm that West Bay Yards decision did come in yesterday and so the hearing examiner denied the SEPA appeal. and approve both the shoreline conditional use permit and shoreline substantial development permit. So the next step is for, well, we're going to publish the decision. That's internal for staff, but then the decision on the conditional use permit is actually by Department of Ecology, and so the shoreline permit. So we're going to forward it to them for review and decision, and then the shoreline substantial development permit portion goes to them just for review. And so I don't know how long that takes. Do you know?

We've published it. I just wanted to say that. It was published today. So there's a 10-day review period where we have to wait. Then we send it to Ecology. And I would expect that their review process will take a couple months. They have the option. Their review process will take a couple months. So they can have another public hearing if they want. That's up to the Department of Ecology. We essentially are applying to the Department of Ecology

same way the applicant applied to the city so that it goes forward to them so this is really interesting i i haven't been through a big project like this what are the um

I mean, is it getting close to go? Is it, are there legal challenges yet that could take place? I just, obviously the SEPA issue was probably the biggest issue, but just not being familiar, I was wondering if you had any thoughts about the things that could hold up the project or move it forward?

Well, certainly the SEPA appeal decision is appealable to Superior Court, and so that would be the next step if the appellant chooses to move in that direction. And then the shoreline permits, I suppose they would have an appeal process for that as well once the Department of Ecology issues that.

Correct. Both the shoreline permits, the shoreline substantial development and the conditional use, go to Ecology. The SEPA goes with it. So all three pieces together can be appealed to the Shoreline Hearings Board. So that could happen, probably, however long that takes for that appeal to resolve itself, assuming that the appeal is approved. One, and the project can move forward. Then it would move towards construction permits. You'd go through the Army Corps of Engineers to get that construction permit. There's the ecology permit for the toxic cleanup that has to take place, which takes some time. There's fish and wildlife. They have a permit that they have to go through. And then, of course, it comes back to the city for construction permits for the city. So I would have to ask the applicant what they think a realistic timeline is, but at least a year.

Thank you. That's very helpful. It's a complex project, to say the least.

And then the last update I just wanted to give is that our housing director starts Monday. And so I know I've been working with Jay to introduce her to council on Tuesday night.

Starts on Monday.

She's in front of us on Tuesday.

That's exactly right.

Oh, wow.

Right into it.

Yeah. And she's relocating from Colorado. And so she's basically working here for two weeks and she's going to work remote for about three and a half weeks as she moves her family back to Washington, originally from Pierce County. So And the hope is they'll eventually move down here where her kids, she plans to have her kids go to school at all of these schools. Sounds good.

Go ahead.

Tim, what's the name of the department that you're director of? Community Development.

Nice and short. Shorter than this one. As soon as we took it to the staff at a retreat and had a vote, and about 90% wanted that, the community development. A shorter, smaller percentage wanted the name we used to be, and no one wanted this one. So they like the brevity. What's interesting is the longer the title gets, the more exclusive it is, because there's those that aren't listed. And so community development kind of includes everything we do. So thank you for supporting it.

Well, last item, and I just want to, if we still have the contact for the folks who public commented on the tree work last month, just to notify them that this is coming back up.

That's all. Thank you. Yeah. Any other last comments? If not, I'm going to adjourn the meeting for the night.

All right. All right. Adjourned.