Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, this meeting is now called to order. Welcome to the August 17th, 2026 Planning Commission meeting. We'll begin with the roll call. Casey, will you please call the roll?

Yes. Chair Quinton? Here. Vice Chair Daniel Garcia? Here. Commissioner Berger?

Here.

Commissioner Rafael Garcia?

Here.

Commissioner Grubb?

Here.

Commissioner Ibrahimovic? Here. Commissioner Njoti is excused this evening. Commissioner Sauerhof, I don't see, and Commissioner Talius. We have quorum, Chair.

Great, thank you, Casey. Our first order of business is approval of tonight's agenda. Do I have a motion, and can the motion maker please state their name? So moved, Daniel.

I'll second, Jessica.

It's been moved by Daniel and seconded by Jessica to approve the agenda for the August 17th Planning Commission meeting. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All right. Any opposed say nay? Any abstentions? All right. The agenda has been approved as submitted. Moving on to approval of the minutes from the July 20th, 2026 Planning Commission meeting. Is there a motion?

So moved. This is Jason.

I'll second. This is Justin.

It has been moved by Jason and seconded by Jessica to approve the minutes from the July 20, 2026 planning commission meeting. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Any abstentions? The minutes are approved. One abstention in the room, Chair. One abstention in the room, okay. On to public comment. This portion of the meeting is an opportunity for members of the audience to speak on any items related to city business, including items on the agenda, except those items for which the Commission held a public hearing, but has not yet completed its deliberations and issued a recommendation to the City Council. or where the speaker promotes or opposes a candidate for public office or a ballot measure. Comments on all topics will be allowed during this portion of the meeting tonight. Please hold comments on the home-based business code amendments until the portion later in the meeting. I will identify two to three speakers, and when your name is called, the host will unmute the microphone. You'll then need to unmute your microphone before you start speaking. Comments will be limited to three minutes, and staff or one of the commissioners will share a countdown clock. We'll interrupt you and ask you to quickly finish your comments if you extend beyond three minutes. And my understanding is no one has signed up for public comment. Probably folks are here for home-based business code amendments. And so we'll hold those until the public hearing portion of the meeting. Now, if anyone in the audience would like to provide general public comments, please indicate so by using the raise hand function. Nobody in the room? Raised hand from Gordon.

One online. Yep. And I'll move them over to panelists for a moment. And just a heads up, Chair, Commissioner Sauerhoff has joined us.

Hey, Aaron.

Gordon, you should get an invite. When you're ready to start speaking, go ahead and state your name for the record, and I will start a clock. You'll see the clock in the My Camera, the City of Olympia Room 207 box. So whenever you're ready. Gordon, if you're talking, we can't hear you. You're on mute.

How's that?

We can hear you.

We got you. Yeah, my name's Gordon White. I live in the South Captain neighborhood. Lived here about 40 years. Mainly I'm talking now. I will speak later on the hearing item, but I just wanted to thank all of you for the hard work you did the last year and a half, last two years. I'm really excited about many of the amendments that were made in the last year. As you know, South Gap neighborhood is like the original middle housing neighborhood. And what you all did last year, as well as the council and others, to help bring more density possibilities. And I think that will end up in the long term with more affordable housing in our neighborhood. So I'm really, really excited about seeing that coming on as we get to more details on that. And you have one of the hardest jobs I can imagine of within sort of the city government and volunteers that you are. Again, it's really appreciate you. I see what's on your agenda for the year. And so I just want to thank you and your staff for that. I'll close now.

Thank you, Gordon. If anyone else would like to give a public comment, please raise your hand. Otherwise, we will move on. I'm not seeing anybody in the room, Casey.

No one in the room, no.

Great, then we'll move on to staff announcements.

Casey. No announcements for this evening, sure.

Great, then we'll move on to business items.

Give me one moment. Just had a technical issue on my part. Greg, sorry. I'm going to promote you back to panelists.

Do we get Greg out? Has there been a coup?

No, there has not. He is coming back. Sorry about that, Greg. That was an issue on my side.

I'll hold my comments in the later. I'm out of my three minutes, right? Okay, tonight's first business item 6A is a public hearing regarding home-based business in the Olympia Municipal Code Amendments. David Ginther, Senior Long Range Planner in the Community Development Department is here to present on the topic. David.

Thank you. Let me get the slideshow going here. One moment. Okay. Did you mention this is about home-based businesses, also known as home occupations? And this is how we got to this point. We received a number of comments during the comprehensive plan update over the past year and a half. Actually, yeah, year and a half. Many of those were that the code was out of date and didn't reflect the realities of today's work from home and other aspects of The code hasn't been updated in a couple decades. And then we did get comments about the use of homes in the South Capitol neighborhood by lobbyists. City Council had a discussion item in the fall of 2025, and our former planning director wrote an interpretation memo and brought that to discuss with the City Council. There also were adjustments made to the comprehensive plan policies in the land use and urban design chapter. And those dealt with small-scale commercial neighborhoods, which is an upcoming agenda item for you in the next few months, and home occupations, home-based businesses. And then early this year, this particular set of amendments was placed on the work plan for planning staff. I wanted to show you the two main comprehensive plan policies. The first one there does deal with home occupations and small-scale commercial in residential areas. It doesn't come out and say small-scale commercial, and eventually we'll be looking for the community's help on a name with that, but that's a whole different subject. And the other one at the bottom was about streamlining the development code, getting rid of redundant sections, and so on. Now I wanted to start off with the definition. This is a definition in the zoning code or the unified development code for the city of Olympia. A commercial, I'm going to read this for you, even though I'm sure you already went through it, but I just want to make sure we're grounded into what a home occupation is. It's a commercial use within a residential dwelling unit, which is clearly incidental and accessory to the residential use of the property and complies with applicable provisions of this title. This picture on the bottom right is actually in West Olympia. It is a home occupation. So many of them go under the radar in regards to visibility because they're limited on a broad range of aspects that you would expect a business to be able to take advantage of. And home occupations, the regulations are meant to minimize the impacts on neighboring properties. How do you know if it's a home-based business? The very first thing you do is you figure out if you need a business license. And to do that, you contact the finance department and you take a look at the city of Olympia municipal code title five, which is the tax and license section of that. If finance department says you do not need a business license, then you are not a home-based business. If they say you do need one, then you talk to community development or look in the zoning code yourself. We'd like to have people contact us just to make sure, though, and see if what you're planning to do, the business, meets the requirements for a home-based business in the zoning code. If it does meet those, it's a home-based business. If it doesn't, it is not a home-based business, but it might be another commercial land use that has regulations, applicable regulations in the zoning code. So I just wanted to give you this little flow chart here. And notice I didn't, we're gonna discuss remote work a little bit further in, but I didn't put it on this because if you're doing remote work, you ask if you need a business license and the answer is no, then you're not going to be involved with the regulations that we're dealing with tonight. A little bit of a comparison here between a home-based business and a commercial business. Obviously, both need a business license, but the differences after that are night and day. Home-based business, you don't have to do frontage improvements. You don't have impact fees. You don't have to do upgrades for utilities like resize the water lines for fire flow and so on. ADA, Accessibility, American Disabilities Act, you don't have that. Now, this is in general. Occasionally, you might have some sort of an exception like upgrades for building and fire and energy codes, especially if you're going to be doing any... any improvements inside the home. There is a mention of changing code to allow for structural renovations provided they're not visible from the outside, but I have that in a list of amendments a little bit further on in the presentation. And then design standards, excuse me, parking, landscape, trees, and so on. You don't have to deal with those if you're a home-based business. However, if you look at the column on the right, you do have to deal with every one of those things. Generally, I like to put generally because it's not exact. It's not absolute, but that's the main difference is there's very few requirements for a home-based business besides meeting the requirements that are in Title 18 specifically for home-based businesses. We've had a number of comments and complaints specifically about the South Capitol neighborhood and lobbyists using homes in that area. This has been going on for decades. I talked to one of the city planners who had been here actually for almost 30 years. And he said this was occurring back when he started over 30 years ago. However, they have ramped up in the past year and a half. I'm trying to summarize what, what, complaints and comments. This isn't everything. These are the ones that stuck out to me. So this is a somewhat incomplete summary, but the information we received said there was about 20 homes in the South Capitol neighborhood used for lobbying purposes. They're empty almost a good portion of the year. Um, there was comments about how it creates a, uh, an area of very little activity, typical neighborhood activity in the neighborhood. Um, There were mentions of some of them being converted to offices on the inside, occasional parties, gatherings, and not used primarily for residential purposes. There was mention about how the use of these homes impacts the housing stock. And then in the research that the commenters made, they did not believe that most of these had a business license or had signed a home-based business addendum, which is, I'll discuss that a little bit more in a minute, but basically when you get a business license and you're going to do a home-based business, you sign an affidavit that says, I meet the requirements that are in the code. I wanted to show you what this licenses in neighborhoods looks like around the city. Got the South Capitol neighborhood right there in the middle, Northwest Olympia over on the left and the Northeast Olympia over on the right. I don't have data for which of these are home-based businesses and which are not. That's just not available to me. We apparently don't have that on a mapping system or in a database. But I did want to show you, there's probably a surprising, it may be surprising to you how many businesses have their address in a residential neighborhood. All the dots, all the dots, even though there's different colors, those are different codes for the general type of business. And there's only a few, a few codes. So they're very broad categories. Now, in response to the complaints and comments about the South Capitol neighborhood, there isn't a lot we can do to address some of those complaints. There are things we can do to address some of them, though. We can require that the home-based business owner provide proof that the site is their principal residence. I want to stress that this is already required. It's in the code. It says to get the permit, you have to prove that that's your principal residence. That's basically what it says. I'll get to that in a minute, but the permit language is being removed because the city stopped requiring permits about 2008. For budget and staffing reasons, I've been told. So the amendments do add a little bit of clarity to that requirement. And if you do approve that or recommend approval of that, we'll be adding that clarifying language to the home-based business addendum. I'll use addendum because that's a title on that document, but it's an affidavit. The police can investigate large disturbances or large gatherings. The South Capitol neighborhood is within a residential parking permit zone. So if there's parking issues that can be addressed. Police could also address that too if it's after hours. Homes converted to commercial uses. Code enforcement will investigate that and determine if that has occurred and then remedy that. The city also has a minimum maintenance type ordinance where we can require the home and lot to be maintained. So these are things that we can do. Some of the things that we can't address were on that list. All right. I'll jump right to the proposed amendments. These are the ones that were proposed in the ordinance. I have a couple more slides showing what additional amendments were proposed after the last planning commission meeting. First off, removing reference to permits. I mentioned that was about 2008 when that fizzled out. The proposal is to allow onsite sales, provided they're not visible from outside. Structural renovations would be allowed, provided they're consistent with the residential character of the lot and the neighborhood. Adding in mobile mechanics and detailers, provided they don't do work at the home, would be a new definition for remote work. That will be a particular discussion item right at the end of the presentation because we've gotten a lot of attention about that definition. There were a few sections that were redundant, so they're removed. There were already requirements for short-term rentals, adult daycare homes, and family child care homes that are in other codes. Other sections of the code and state law. There was special exceptions written through this for a two-block area on West Bay Drive. Those are being proposed to be removed. And then just general changes for department name, grammar, and changing the name from home occupations to home-based businesses. At the last meeting, if you need to refer to your staff report, there is a several-page document in there explaining these particular changes that were proposed by Planning Commission at the last meeting. You requested a new definition for principal residence. That's been added. Remove the limit of two off-street parking spaces. Allow for counseling practitioners to have more than the limit of two persons per session. So basically it would be allowed group sessions and allow for substance use counseling. Clarified that the business must be conducted in the home or a non-residential accessory structure. I did double check my notes on that. There was some discussion back and forth about conducting business in an accessory dwelling unit. But from my notes, it appeared that it was preferred to have it in a non-residential accessory structure. The 500 square foot limit for the business was removed. That left the 25% limit of the home size. remove the limit of one vehicle for the mobile mechanics and detailers, and then remove the prohibition on meeting onsite for offsite work. A couple of additional amendments that are proposed from city staff, finance department wanted to remove the requirement for employees to be listed on the application. And then they had a concern about a sentence that was in the middle of, that mentioned business licenses in the definition of remote work, which we can talk about towards the end. And I did more research on the childcare registration form, contacted the state. They said that they do not require that. That's not their form. Kind of be up to us if we want to remove it. I talked to support staff and they can only recall one of these being signed in recent years. And it doesn't seem that we have a real good reason to continue requiring these. So that's being proposed for removal. I want to address the public comments. We've gotten a fair amount of public comments. This is not a complete or comprehensive list. These are just ones that I thought stood out. I tried to get as many in here as I could. And these are not direct quotes. These are my summaries of what the comment, the gist of the comment was. It was proposed that we require six months of residency before allowing a home-based business. Staff does not recommend this requirement. I had the MRSC, Municipal Research Services Center check in the state to see if they could find another jurisdiction that does that. They were not successful with that. The closest they found was a few jurisdictions that say that must be your permanent residence. I had concerns about people moving into Olympia wanting to start a business. They have to wait six months. People moving across Olympia within the city or people that live out of the area for quite a while. Also concerns that seem to target a specific area or particular type of business. And we've had comments about that, that these amendments are doing that. So that was a concern. Performing annual outreach. That might be a discussion, a broader discussion about how to inform the community about the city's regulations. um clarifying the code how the city wants your compliance if a business does not self-report or a citizen does not file a complaint uh this would be a major policy change that the city council would need to discuss if code enforcement changed from complaint driven to active code enforcement um Even though Planning Commission did suggest we add a definition for principal residence, there was a public comment that said the same thing. Clarifying the amendments to deal with entity-owned homes, ownership of the home, it really doesn't impact whether someone can establish that that is their principal residence. One moment. Okay. The definition of remote work. We're going to discuss this a little bit more at the end. It will not be... It will not be possible to enforce the regulations in a fair and equitable manner. I did include the director's interpretation, which I believe planning commissioners asked for. It's attached to the staff report. And that document does discuss the challenges with code enforcement. And again, I need to reiterate, these are citywide amendments. We're not calling out a specific area of the city. I did recognize that we've gotten a lot of complaints from one particular area, but these amendments do not focus in on only one area. There was a letter that talked about constitutional concerns. The letter was sent to our legal department as well, and there were no changes recommended at this time. There was a suggestion that we add something about applicants need to check with their HOAs, homeowner associations. We don't recommend putting that in the code. We can add that to the home-based business addendum. We typically do not put things about HOAs in the city code. Those are private agreements, not something the city's involved with or enforces. The another discussion item about remote work definition, we'll get to that at the end. And then there was suggestion in one of the comment letters that we remove the principal residence requirement for a home-based business. I don't recommend that residing at the location is pretty much central to the meaning of a home-based business. Without someone residing there, it's simply a business being run out of a house, basically a commercial enterprise. It's no longer accessory. All right. One of the last ones here, one of the comment letters we got said this does not support businesses. There are a lot of things in here that actually help businesses. We're formally removing the permit requirement. We're allowing additional types of businesses, the mobile mechanics, detailers, expanding counselors' options to do group counseling and substance use counseling, removing the extra regulations for adult daycares, home daycares, and short-term rentals, remove the 500-square-foot limit, allowing structural modifications, allowing on-site sale and display, provided it's not seen from the outside, Parking space limits. That was discussed by planning commission and that is in there. So removing those limits. Allowing for meetings on site when you're going to do offsite work. Allowing for more than one work vehicle for the mobile mechanics detailers. That was discussed at the last planning commission. And removing a requirement to sign an affidavit, allowing code enforcement to enter the business. One of the very late comment letters we got talked about that. And the amendments do propose to remove that requirement. All right, we're getting near the end here. I do want, I'll come back to the slide so you can start to discuss it. I wanted to finish the presentation. We're near the end. The definition of remote work. We were trying to help people who work from home to make sure that they didn't get roped into having to get a business license for a home-based business. However, It has become central for confusion as to what constitutes remote work. And after talking with our finance department, they are the ones that decide, along with looking at Title V of the Olympia Municipal Code and state law, whether an activity needs a business license. And they've mentioned that some remote work may need one and some may not. The zoning code, unified development code, is about regulating land uses, not determining what needs a business license. We'd leave that up to the finance department. So my proposal is you consider removing the definition of remote work. It seems to be doing more harm than good. I'll come back to the slide for the purpose of the discussion in a moment. I have this in here again. You saw it at the beginning. because this is a defining factor as to whether you're doing remote work or you're doing a business. Is a business license required? If it's not, then it's not a home-based business. The first draft for this was released for the public in early July. You had a briefing late July. Obviously, we're here for the Planning Commission public hearing tonight. Now, it is scheduled for the Land Use and Environment Committee on September 24th, and the first meeting in September for Planning Commission, I believe, has been cancelled. So if you do want to continue this for further deliberations, you certainly can. I've spoken with our director and the Land Use and Environment Committee briefing can be rescheduled. Do not have any dates for city council yet. Here's my contact info. I think everybody that got noticed in the meeting had that contact info. I'm going to jump back to the other slide for your discussion and turn it back over to Chair Cleeton. Thank you.

Thank you, David. um does anyone have any real quick uh clarifications they'd like to ask now otherwise we can discuss more after the public hearing let me make sure i have everything here nobody uh okay then let us move on to the public hearing and i will open the public

David, can you stop sharing screen, dude? Thank you. Go ahead, sure.

And I will open the public hearing at 7.01 p.m. Oh, sorry, I didn't... Short change to a quick paragraph. So we'll invite public members to provide comments and we'll limit to three minutes. I will identify two to three speakers. When your name is called, the host will unmute the microphone. You'll then need to unmute your microphone before you start speaking. We will interrupt you and ask you to quickly finish your comments if they didn't be on three minutes. Okay. I'm not going to reopen it. I'm just right at the top. So we started at 7.01. And we'll start with folks that are in the room and then move to people that are waiting online. Thank you, everyone, for being here.

So for folks that joined late, there will be a timer that shows up in the Room 207 window where you can see me speaking. Folks in the room, you'll see that timer in the box, but you'll also see the app here. We'll start the clock, then you go ahead and please state your name for the record, and then you may begin your comments. Nope, you should be good to go.

Great. Thank you for having me tonight. My name is Christine Brewer, and thank you for the opportunity to comment. Thank you for your service. I'm here to discuss the amendments that are proposed to the home-based business, and I'm speaking in opposition to those amendments. I am a working mom of four that has lived in Olympia, my husband and I, for over 40 years. I'm a graduate of Tomahawk High School. My mom worked for Employment Security Department for 35 years, so I am a product of the Olympia area, and I'm very proud of that, and so is my husband. He graduated from Capital. He owns a small business in town, and we invest heavily in this community, and we wanted to raise our family here. We came back here, and so We do own a house in the South Capitol neighborhood. We bought it very specifically so I could be a very active working mom of five with five kids. That allows me to be able to work from home, be able to go over to the Capitol for meetings, but also get to Columbia High School to watch them play in a basketball game. So I feel like this proposal is a very direct attack on limiting working mothers that are trying to have as much flexibility as possible to have effective career but also be an effective mom at the same time. We also, I would like to outline that we bought our house three years ago and have invested significantly in it. The house was rotting from the inside out. It had rats, it had mattresses, paint in the basement. So we're proud that we invested new siding, new windows, new roof. We got all approved through the South Cap Neighborhood Architectural Committee to make sure we are following all the rules of the neighborhoods. And so we're very proud of the investment we've made and the opportunity that I can work from home down by South calf, be able to, um, during session, often on my family will come down and we will have dinner there. So then I can go right back to work and then they can go home and get ready for the next day. I think my other piece is that I think that. We've been welcomed by many South capital neighbors, many of them, and they're friends of ours during the community that we've gotten to know through our kids and sports. I do feel like this is a very small group that. quite frankly, has had some bullying behavior. We've had people come up to our kids when they're down at our house asking, what did their mom do for a living? Do they live here? Taking pictures of us. And so what I've communicated to my family and my kids that I'm proud of what I do, that these are very small, narrow voice in this neighborhood that others have welcomed us with open arms that that are thankful that lobbyists are there and that we bring a voice and that we're very proud of what we do. And so I just would like, I appreciate that's what I would like to communicate with you today. And I ask that you not advance the amendments that are in front of you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you very much. Good evening. My name is Michael Cade. I'm the executive director of the Thurston Economic Development Capital Center for Business Innovation. I have an Olympia resident, 3526 Holiday Drive, Southeast Olympia. I have actually in my neighborhood, I have five home-based businesses that operate there, and I actually welcome them. It creates a different vibrancy in those communities. I've provided a letter, my formal comments to you this evening, and I won't read that letter because I don't want to be redundant to you. I'm going to focus my comments really on the context of our organization and the work that we do and the impact that we have, try to have on the economy of Thurston County. About 1991, the city of Olympia approached my organization, the Economic Development Council, to create the Center for Business and Innovation. It was known at that time as the Business Resource Center. It was set up specifically in partnership with a committee by the city council to establish an organization that was focused solely on the notion that Olympia's and Thurston County's businesses were closely held. About 15,000 businesses in Thurston County, about 92% of them, our small businesses, closely-held businesses. That's the work that we do, and that's the work of Thurston County and the community of Olympia. We wanted to make sure that all home-based businesses and all small businesses, every opportunity for success. And that really was the mantra of, as we set up that new organization as a 501c3, is to establish the technical assistance programs that we have that support small businesses. Last year, through our scale-up program, our Washington Center for Women in Business, our business entrepreneurial, the SBDC, we counseled about 15, a little over 15,000 businesses in Thurston County. We went through the record, how many of those businesses are home-based businesses. And I found for our counselors that a larger majority of those were home-based businesses. So the question is, is how does this discussion impact their ability? And what we found really was, The notion that home-based businesses are there as a startup. They're there as a piece of the economy. There are a variety of reasons. They're testing out new processes and new models. It is very vibrant. When you think about Thurston County's economy, think about what drives them. And right now we have a major driver. It's Joint Base Lewis-McChord. It's a healthcare industry. And the other large one is the capital campus that we have. A lot of businesses will locate here and start here. and grow here and to expand and take advantage of that market. It's a very significant piece of our comment. Our comments to you this evening in the letter, we're asking you to walk back or stop or remove or don't pursue this anymore that would restrict and inhibit small businesses in Thurston County and in Olympia to take advantage of the market that is already there. We have plenty of resources for them to take advantage of. And the last thing I would leave a comment to is that we, We as economic developers, sometimes we forget the notion that the economic drivers have upon our businesses. The capital campus is a significant driver. We need to make sure that we're taking care of it. We need to make sure that we're caring for it and we're supporting it. So we're asking you to remove this or deny this proposal. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

That is all for in-person care.

All right, great. And then we'll move online. And if you'd like to comment or testify at the public hearing, please hit the raise your hand button and we'll let you in. We'll start with Paul Bittar and then go to Gordon White.

Paul, when you're ready, go ahead and just state your name and I will start the time and you should see that timer in the corner of this camera.

Great. Yeah. My name is Paul Batar and I am an Olympia resident. I am just here to express my support for the proposed amendment for onsite sales. My wife wants to start a business where she would advertise antiques for sale on Instagram. And the current code seems to prohibit showing any kind of inventory on in person, but the proposed change seems to allow that. She just wants to advertise some antiques for sale on Instagram. And if a person was interested, they would come over to our house and look at the item, inspect it before buying it, and be able to purchase it if they wanted it. And I think this change would allow her to do that. But I had looked at the code and she had asked about doing that. I thought, well, under the current rules, you can advertise a product for sale, but you really wouldn't be able to have a person come and inspect it because that would violate having a stock of goods on display in your home. So I think this proposed change just fixes that problem. And I'm really pleased to see it. And I think it's a great, great idea. I don't know if anyone thinks I have my interpretation incorrect, let me know. But I think this does allow her to move forward on that. Does anyone with the city disagree?

Well, we can't engage in discussion. This is three minutes for you.

Just a comment only. Okay, great. In that case, I'm done. Thank you so much. And I think I'll go ahead and leave.

Thanks, Paul. So next up is Gordon White, followed by Heather Burgess.

Yes. My name is Gordon. I've lived in the South Capitol for 40 years. Just a question. I think many people have registered for this to speak. And so raising your hand is sort of an, I wasn't sure we were also, do we all have to also raise our hand in order to speak? Because I think some people may be on their phones and not able to do that.

I don't believe I have anyone on their phone, Gordon.

Okay. Okay. Well, anyway, so I live in South Capitol neighborhood, been here about 40 years. South Capitol neighborhood is home to many home-based businesses and their existence are a welcome part of the neighborhood. The businesses in these homes are accessory to the principal use as a residence. Historically, the neighborhood has always had homes where the owners and residents worked at the nearby legislature and state agencies. These were full-time residents, some were lobbyists, some legislators, some were legislative and agency staff, some agency executives. All were part of the residential nature of the neighborhood. I generally support the proposed amendments and will offer some suggestions for helping businesses that own homes understand the obligation to ensure the home's principal use is residential. The current draft provides great clarity on that question. This is important since we are seeing many businesses buy homes in the neighborhood and use them as office space while the owner's full-time residence is not in Olympia. Unfortunately, these businesses are not registered in the city and do not pay business taxes to Olympia. They conduct businesses in their homes they own in Olympia, but are licensed in other cities in the county. How will the city identify and help these businesses comply when they do not show up in its business licensing system? I think the proposed home-based business amendments need to provide a clear pathway to help businesses comply with the residential requirement. This could include regular notifications to business owners of the need for residential as the principal use of the homes they're using and the process for them to comply with that requirement. Compliance is the main goal here, not some punitive measure. We want to be helpful. We enjoy all forms of home-based businesses in the neighborhood. As it stands, if they do not sell It is not clear how the city will ensure that they will comply with the residential requirement. I want to emphasize that I welcome lobbyists as neighbors. and think there are ways to accommodate their needs in the South Carolina neighborhood. I look forward to ways to have that conversation if need be and to support solutions here. In closing, I want to thank David Ginther for his detailed work on the proposal and the clear explanation of its intent. Thank you very much, David. I also appreciate the work of all of you on the Planning Commission and what you take on for the community. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Gordon. Next will be Heather Burgess followed by Doug Ma.

Hi, this is Heather. Can you hear me okay?

We can hear you. Go ahead, Heather.

Wonderful. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Heather Burgess. I'm a lawyer with the law firm of Dixon Froehlich Phillips Burgess, represent the South Capitol Neighborhood Alliance. Uh, we've submitted two comment letters, one back in July and another today, detailing legal concerns with the proposal and, uh, I am not going to reiterate all of those concerns for you because I know that the commission is diligent in reviewing public comments as his staff. I do have two points I'd wish to emphasize though. The first is in Olympia is in most cities and as Mr. Ginther explained, code enforcement is a complaint driven system. And here in South Capitol, there's a well-documented and indeed decades long history of complaints against lobbyists for the use of residences in and around the legislature. These complaints may have changed in shape and contour over the decades, but they have been persistent. And indeed, the specific impetus behind the amendments before you was a fresh set of complaints. So you must assume in acting on this measure that if some version of this ordinance is adopted, that the South Capitol neighborhood will seek to enforce it. And as documented in our letter, the proposal as written and even with revisions presents a litany of enforceability concerns to determine whether a violation has occurred of the proposed standards or even further to determine if a license is required in the first place. It's unworkable, and I assure you it will all but certainly lead to litigation. Secondly, the primary driver of the latest iteration of complaints specific to South Capitol appears primarily focused on the part-time nature of potential occupancy of specific residences and the alleged detriment that results. Respectfully, the city cannot legally mandate the duration of any individual residence occupancy, and to the extent there's a number of homes that are only occupied on a part-time basis in South Capitol, That's to be expected for the neighborhood closest to the part-time legislature. I note that there's been no study about, as part of this process, about the extent to which part-time residency actually impacts neighborhoods. One could imagine, for example, that age-restricted communities may also experience a large number of vacancies during snowboarding or other seasons or due to retirements and other travel. But there's no attempt made to regulate that because unlike South Capitol, no one has complained. We firmly believe that the city's existing regulations are adequate to mitigate the impact associated with these individuals' work. A fully commercial conversion is already prohibited and adding new requirements to the business licensure scheme as proposed will continue to leave significant regulatory gaps. I'd like to commend staff for their hard and diligent work in trying to find a solution that is looking for a problem being driven by a single neighborhood targeted at a single profession. We urge the city to go back to the drawing board on this issue, and thanks for your consideration of the comments. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Heather. Up next, Julia Gorton, followed by Linda Kunz.

I think we have Doug Ma next.

Sorry, the hand went down. Let's go with Doug. Let me get that going here real quick.

Doug, when you're ready, go ahead and unmute, state your name, and we'll start the clock.

Well, good evening. My name is Doug Maugh. I reside at Kinsale Lane, Southeast Olympia, Washington. Thank you very much for the opportunity to provide comments. I'm here this evening representing the Thurston Chamber, Thurston County Chamber of Commerce. I'd like to express the Chamber's concern and operation to the proposed home-based business amendments under consideration by the commission. Based on the public record, the proposed amendment changes attempt to address a single neighborhood's code enforcement problem, and yet the proposed amendments attempt to solve a narrow problem by creating a broad solution. The proposal by definition and intent increases the regulatory burden on small businesses, most of which start and thrive in homes. Implementing the proposed change appears complicated, burdensome and costly. And because the proposed changes aim to restrict business operations, we find the proposed amendments to be explicitly anti-business and a barrier to entrepreneurs. The record also shows that the proposed changes are specifically targeted at legislative lobbyists. Now, for 150 years, the Thurston Chamber of Commerce has fought, advocated, and championed that the City of Olympia serve as the state capital. Serving as the host for the seat of state government brings prestige to the city, influence, commerce, and an economic reputational advantage. But it also requires that the city support the part-time legislature and the part-time activities associated with the legislative branch of government and the legislative process. So we ask the city to ask that the city continue to embrace all of the operations of the legislative branch, including the work of lobbyists and those ancillary businesses that support them. We respectfully request that the Planning Commission make no changes to the existing home occupancy ordinance since the city already has the tools needed to regulate home businesses. Thank you.

Thank you, Doug. Now we'll move on to Julia Gordon. Followed by Linda Kunz.

Good evening. My name is Julia Gorton. I'm a lifelong resident of Olympia and I appreciate the opportunity to comment again on the proposed home-based business amendments. I still have two major concerns and I'm asking the Commission to reject the proposal. First, these amendments unfairly impact people who are part of Olympia's community and economy but because of their profession or personal circumstances divide their time between Olympia and another community. Prohibiting someone from answering an email or taking a work-related call because they aren't at their principal residence is not land use regulation. It's regulation of ordinary daily activity. The Greater Olympia area is unique. We are the state capital. We're home to three colleges, two major hospitals, and the state Supreme Court. That means our city depends on people who live here for part of the year, our part-time citizen legislature, emphasis on part-time and their staff, students and faculty, specialized physicians that perform life-saving procedures, and attorneys traveling here to argue cases to shape Washington's law. dual residents help drive our economy strengthen our neighborhoods and serve our community i wholeheartedly disagree with the sentiment that dual residency negatively impacts our neighborhoods rather it allows olympia to have these types of institutions that serve the community it defines our city's culture these residents deserve our gratitude and appreciation and instead they have found themselves the target of this proposal without a tangible connection to land use Second, regulating those tangible impacts on neighborhoods like parking, noise, property maintenance, property maintenance is appropriate. Who I have in my private home and what we discuss is not. I asked the commission to think about how these provisions would actually be enforced. If someone files a complaint and I thought I have a work related person visit my home, what happens next? How are you gonna determine who is work-related and when does someone become work-related? Will I have to identify everyone who comes to my private home, explain in detail what we discussed in private, turn over my emails or phone records to city inspectors? All of the information gathered would become a public record. The names of my guests, my communications, even details about activity inside my own home. This will create a system where neighbors surveil neighbors, where my family, my child, my private visitors become the subject of government investigation, and where a complaint will make my family's private life public. I did not waive my right to privacy or constitutional protections when I purchased a home in Olympia. These provisions raise serious privacy, safety, and legal concerns and target professions that will have a detrimental impact on our local economy,

all without any rational connection to land use and i respectfully urge the commission to reject them thank you thank you julia up next will be linda coons and if you would like to testify at the public hearing please raise your hand hit the raise hand button

Linda, go ahead, if you can hear us.

Hi, can you hear me?

We can, go ahead.

Okay. My name is Linda Kunze, and I am providing comments on the proposed home-based business amendments. I have lived in the South Capitol neighborhood for over 39 years. And one of the things I most love about South Capitol is community. In my experience, it is a neighborhood in which people know each other, or at least recognize and greet each other. It is a place where neighbors watch out for each other. We help each other, sometimes in simple things like taking the garbage bins out, borrowing tools, shopping or providing meals when someone is sick or hurt, watching out for neighborhood kids, just to name a few things. It is a place where if you know someone is home but haven't seen them as usual, you knock on their door or call to see if they are OK. It is a place where people stop and chat with folks they know, new people they see walking by, or people who have newly moved in. But that doesn't happen when houses are turned into businesses instead of homes, when they stand empty most of the year, and when there are people there, they are not being neighbors. The person calling out for help doesn't get heard. The child looking for a neighboring child to play with finds none. Houses used for businesses don't build or support community. They block it. And we now have over 20 such houses in the neighborhood, mostly in the north near the Capitol campus. I have absolutely no issue with a true resident working from home or having a home-based business. What is problematic are houses without full-time residents that first and foremost are used for businesses. Please prioritize community as you continue work on the Home-Based Business Ordinance and its compliance. Thank you.

Thank you. Up next will be Holly Gedbach.

Holly, you should be getting a note to join as panelists if you want to join as panelists and provide your testimony. Declined, so let me try again. If you see that and would like to testify, Holly, please accept that invite. And Holly, when you're ready, go ahead and unmute, state your name, and we'll start the clock.

I'm Holly Gadbaugh. I am a resident of the South Capitol neighborhood, and I have lived here for 45 years. I served for 19 years on the city council in the 80s and 90s, several iterations of home-based businesses ago. I've been working with several neighborhood residents to understand how these regulations affect our neighborhood and try to recommend methods to maintain our neighborhood as a residential neighborhood. And it is one of the city's greatest assets. I've reviewed the draft ordinance and I have no and I would agree that you should get rid of the remote work provisions. We're home to many home-based business and the businesses that have the principal resident living there have never been a problem. What are the most egregious, A fence is these buildings that are exclusively used as offices. I think the city should be concerned about maintaining this neighborhood for housing, which is one of their major goals. and not allow it to turn into an office park. The South Captain neighborhood looks residential, and the homes are generally well maintained. What's missing on the north end where I live are people and neighbors. On my block, more than half of the single family residences and duplexes are owned by lobbyists and are vacant and dark during more than half the year. The city has been resistant to regulating and enforcing enforcement. I am not anti-lobbyist and I understand they play an important role in the legislative process. I encourage the city to look for enforceable regulations that meets the neighborhood's needs to have permanent residents all year round, the lobbyist's needs, and the city's need to provide for more housing. The home-based businesses are adequate way to address home-based businesses that are housed in residence lived in by the primary owner. However, it does not address my concern that the neighborhood not become a business park and remains a residential neighborhood. Thank you for your service to these City, I understand how time consuming it is, and I appreciate you have chosen to spend your valuable time this way. I've also submitted more extensive comments.

Thank you, Holly. If there are other folks online that would like to testify, please raise your hand now. All right, not seeing any additional hands, then I will close the public hearing at 7.31 p.m. Okay, now is our time for the planning commissioners, if we'd like to discuss what we've heard, have questions for David, and any other thoughts or comments about the the proposed amendments. Go ahead, Daniel.

Yeah. Thank you for the presentation, David. I think last time we heard about this, I think we heard, I think there was a question on like the scale of this. And I think that there's maybe some, like you're going to follow up about this. Do you remember that? And do you have any more information to talk about like the scale of like how many businesses are like, operating in the South cap neighborhood or like how many in Olympia overall, do you remember this conversation?

Yes. Um, I, I thought that I included that, um, in the staff report was, um, I did find out how many residences are in the South Capital neighborhood. We had a map that was shared at the last meeting that listed the businesses. I did not have a way to update that, so we used the same data for the businesses and home-based businesses. I can double-check. I thought that I put that in the staff report. Am I mistaken on that?

I think it's right at the... Right at the end of list of changes. There's a research and information requested section.

Is that what you're looking for? Commissioner Garcia? Yes, thank you.

Other questions for David? David, one question I had, and it came up in public comment, is the issue of principal resident. And I may be glossing over some of the edits, but it seems like that was a requirement in the original code. Am I incorrect in that?

That is correct. I think it's subsection 2A, if I recall correctly. Yeah. Yeah. I can read it off real quick, it's short section. Basically it says, home occupations must be conducted within the principal residence of the permit holder. Now I'm reading the existing text in City Code, not the proposed changes. or within an accessory structure on the same property. Permit holders shall provide evidence thereof through such means as voter's registration, driver's license, tax statement, or other evidence of residency and sign a notarized affidavit attesting to their principal residence at the site. That is existing language. The amendments change that so it says the business license holder instead of permit holder. And then it does remove the language about the proof of residence

residence but that is proposed to be put into the affidavit okay and then so the to me the one of the main changes there is that instead of the permit holder which we haven't required permits for some time it becomes the business license holder and so if someone had a registered business at their residence, but was not, but also, you know, had an office and for whatever reason they wanted to register at home, how would, um, would that be a home-based business, uh, to the city if they worked somewhere else, but, but registered the business at home? That's really a question for, um,

Maybe, maybe you could clarify that for me for a second there. I thought you mentioned, is that a business or is that a home-based business?

No. So it's definitely a business. So they have a business license. Okay. I'm partly thinking of enforcement, but they don't work. You know, they have a office somewhere else. And so for whatever reason they registered, they didn't register at the office. I don't know why, but yeah, Like that to me is not a home-based business, even though it's registered at the home because none of the work is happening at the home.

We'd have to go down the list of requirements for home-based business. And if they meet those requirements, then they would be a home-based business. If they don't meet them, then they're going to be something else, which would either be not, excuse me, it would be possibly a commercial-style business. I don't think I have a good answer for you on that particular situation, though. Okay.

Casey, remind me of our options for tonight. We can recommend as is, recommend with revisions or not recommend. Is that right?

Correct. Basically, they all have to kind of be some sort of affirmative. So the recommendation, if you, yeah, you've got the first recommend as proposed, recommend with alterations or amendments. And then recommend not to adopt. So just great semantics there, but that's what you would have to put forward as a third option. I believe that might be in the packet as well for you if you need to see those motions. You can also choose to take no action at this time. So if it's going to land use and environment, there's nothing necessarily requiring this, I think at this point, but it is a proposed amendment. you can choose to deliberate. Let me back that up a bit because it is a proposed amendment. You will have to take action. So it, you can continue to deliberate at a future meeting, which is the other option. So, excuse me, that was very roundabout way of saying you kind of have four options, but you do need to make some sort of decision probably at least by the 21st.

Yep.

Great. Um, If I may, Chair Cleeton? Yeah, go ahead, David. The timeline did say September 24th for Land Use Environment Committee. That can be rescheduled if you need more time to discuss and deliberate. Okay. Great.

So that could be part of the other option is to deliberate and make a decision at a future time. So that could be a possible motion. And that could be based on... If there's further discussion, you could potentially... So here's where we're in a bit of a bind. We're in the public hearing right now based on the amendments as proposed. So you have to make a decision based on that. Otherwise, we do have to hold a second public hearing based on additional changes.

So if there are changes after it went to land use?

Yeah, it would happen. you would have to have a further public hearing based on those amendments as well.

Great.

So that's kind of where we're at.

Yeah. Uh, so I would welcome, um, I would welcome a, uh, motion either to recommend, recommend with revisions or recommend not to adopt that we can continue to, um, hold our discussion under, and we can always table that to a later date. If we need more time, or if people want to comment on whether they feel like they need more time, we can do that before we make any motions. Go ahead, Aaron.

Hey. You know, for what it's worth, I could think that maybe a temperature check might be helpful in this case. I know I want to do that. For a number of reasons, I'm not feeling good with the maintenance. As is. I'm having a hard time even imagining what modifications would put me personally into the okay zone. So temperature check, I personally would recommend not to adopt.

I would suggest that you make a motion to recommend not to adopt and then see if there's a second we can talk about it. i will make a motion to not adopt the amendments uh so aaron is making a motion uh or a recommendation not to adopt is there a second second uh so aaron has made the motion to recommend not to adopt and samir has seconded are there uh discussions or amendments

Sorry, I had a hard time hearing Aaron. Did you say that you want amendments or you don't want amendments?

Sorry, it's hard to hear you. Recommendation not to adopt. So that doesn't have any amendments. We can revise that motion or make recommendations and change it to a...

I heard the motion. I'm asking, Aaron, you're saying there's nothing that will... I couldn't hear the first part of what you said before the motion. You said you want amendments or you said you don't want any amendments?

Yeah, good point. Good question. I'm having a hard time imagining what kind of amendments would even take me into the yes zone. I have a... I have some pretty serious fundamental qualms, disagreements with the direction, with the strategy itself of these amendments. Got it. I don't know if tweaks would do it for me.

Are there any... I certainly share some of those feelings. Do you have specific areas and or do other folks have... points that they'd like to bring up as kind of like specific discussion points. Go ahead, Samir.

Yeah, I think, David, in your presentation, you made a really good point about a lot of the ways this proposal makes home-based businesses more accessible. I think I also, like Aaron, have a lot of feelings as someone who's worked in the legislature, has a lot of colleagues who are lobbyists and also understands someone who walks through the capital neighborhood every single day. like what makes it special and also how unique a field such as lobbying is and the demands lobbyists face. At the same time, I also think about some of the comments we heard tonight and also the approach for how we're addressing where these complaints come from versus like scope of the issue realistically and the wider approach we're taking. So again, like Aaron, I don't know what amendments would get me there at this time, but just that I need more time to reflect and think about the strategy and my own values on that.

Chair, both Commissioner Burger and Taylor also had their hands raised. Okay.

Elle, first then.

OK, yeah, I mean, I can see that there still needs to be some more work on this. And I think what I'm trying to understand in this moment is it seems like we need to update the amendments anyways, because it's outdated, I think was one of the things that came up in the last meeting. And so the amendment should reflect the actual intent along with the comprehensive plan. to address the specific issues of the South Capitol area. Is there a South Capitol subarea development plan for that? And so that we can focus on the larger comprehensive plan for our amendments?

I don't think there's a subarea plan. Correct me if I'm wrong, David. There is a Capitol campus plan that might touch on some of the residential aspects, but that's going to be more on the border. David, are you tracking on that subarea plan? I'm not aware of a sub area plan for that particular area.

There are two sub area plans for other neighborhoods, but I'm not aware of one for that.

I think I'm just in agreement all around. I mean, I guess a couple of questions or points. So for example, right now with the current residential zoning, In South Capitol, if there was an empty lot or a house for sale that somebody wanted to tear down, they could not tear it down and build an office building, correct? And that's not on the table? And there's no current movement in the City of Olympia to prohibit someone from purchasing a house that they're only going to live in for two weeks or one week or one day of the year, correct?

okay thank you do other people have comments I guess I just wonder if anybody has like proposed alternatives of like what would we want to suggest instead like I can imagine if in a comment letter you if the plan commissioner recommends like not to approve I'm assuming there'd be some explanation of like what we, like what led us there, like what we want instead. So I guess I'm just like wondering what, if anybody has thoughts, Aaron, kind of looking at you just since you made the motion, but don't want to put you on the spot, but like, just wondering if you had other thoughts.

Yeah, I don't mind speaking to it once we get to it. Raphael can go ahead. No rush.

Yeah, I guess, um, Turn it to more like I guess the edit side of adjustments to it, because I know the focus being on outdated language make it much easier from like an entrepreneurial side for them to operate. I guess one thing that came to mind is possibly just removing the proposed remote work definition from Title 18. I know David mentioned finance had already identified that remote work does not map cleanly onto business licensing requirements. And then since some remote activity, I guess, may require a license and some may not, I guess that supports like keeping business licensing in, was it Title V and then the land use regulation in Title 18, I think. And that's, I think, a thought I had too on an earlier point that David had made.

Yeah, Rafael, to follow up on the remote work, question i had is is if the if the activity of remote work is the same as a business that's that's registered at the home it doesn't doesn't feel fair to me that like you know i i work from home and like i'm working for some other company at home i'm not i'm not causing any more uh consternation for the neighborhood or impact on the neighborhood um than someone who's also licensed at their house um And I think I shared, Casey shared around the article where they kind of laid out some categories of remote work or of not of remote work, but of activity that was at least helpful for me when thinking through it and kind of the idea that if, um, your business or occupancy or business or occupation activity, you know, was kind of, uh, unknowable from outside and it was just, you know, office work or something like that, then, then it shouldn't, it should just all fall under a home occupancy, but not be regulated other than being allowed without a permit. And that seemed fair. That was a conflict I had. It didn't seem fair that someone had to jump through a bunch of hoops that I don't have to for working for some other company at home. I think it would be, as Daniel was mentioning, coming up with some of these. So I've got remove this remote work definition. Um, which sounds like it would be a good cleanup here and then other, other specific points, then maybe that'll help us flush this out. Go ahead.

Okay. So on to see the word participate is used, but I think that the intent is that it should be individuals employed. And so that way we're not having to regulate who actually comes into the business or comes into somebody's home. We can focus on who is actually employed by the business. And that would be an impact.

So it'd be like how many employees the business has.

Yeah, and whether they live in the home or not, if that is the, again, I want to check the intent, but if the intent is that people, to see the second draft home-based business amendments. And so it has the word participate. No persons other than those who live in the residence shall participate in the home-based business, but participate is a very broad word. And I think the intent is to be employed by. and maybe starting there and then discussing whether the amendment with the more specified language still meets the intent of the proposals.

I want to make sure I'm on the same page here. We're looking at 2C, no persons, under this section?

Yes.

Okay. So in your packets, if you're looking at the document, page 11.

Yeah, the only thing that draws to mind is if If you have a home-based business, you're the only one that works on site, but then had, you know, a hundred employees that also worked on their site, whether you'd come afoul of that. I think I, but.

Okay. So she'll be employed in the home of the home. Yeah. Right. Right. I wonder.

L, I hear what you're saying, and I'm not an employment law expert, but I guess that's why I'm kind of wondering, because I feel like I've heard with Amazon, people will say, well, you're not technically an employee of Amazon. You're a contractor or contracted by Amazon. So I'm definitely not an employment law expert. but I guess I'm just saying that I'm a little hesitant to start putting like very specific words like that into the thing just because I don't know like how they affect things. And I guess I'm a little worried that we would like put something in there that then creates like a whole other can of worms of like, well, you said employed, but technically if like they're like contracted as a lobbyist and they're not employed, I don't like, I'm a little nervous just about making it like that.

I hear that. Um,

i just think that if we're going to be making recommendations and these are going to be used for further complaints and it's complaint-based enforcement then we need to be specific we owe that as a protection to the homeowners and to the businesses totally hear you on being specific and offering recommendations but i just think that then maybe we should under understand what that means if you're gonna say employed by then i'm like i again like i don't know what that means if because or like i'm not an expert in like the difference between like employed by contracted by I don't know, like retained by, like, I don't know.

I think the recommendation would be to just define participate better. And then I can totally let somebody else take that.

I'm yeah. I like that. I like that a little bit better of like defining participate better rather than like being like, yeah.

Yeah, it does. I know, I'm not sure it came out specifically in the comments this time around, but previous comments were talking about, you know, having multiple people have a meeting at home and if those, you know, they're all part of the same firm or some other business that hasn't come up quite as specifically. Yeah. That also doesn't seem like it's putting a lot of pressure on the neighborhood to have some meetings like that. Nor would we want to try to figure out whether they're social or business related. Other constructive points? Go ahead, Raphael.

I guess I'm thinking more back, I guess, to the lens of the small businesses, maybe also considering like that um work from home moms or even like with military spouses um not necessarily being here for a long time frame as well um that aspect too um possibly reconsidering uh that whole blanket prohibition on i guess like the non-resident participation so like um Kyle Magyera, Maybe like allowing one or perhaps like a very limited number non resident employees subject to like the parking and impact standards to somewhat provide a better balance there and then I guess. thoughts being like, if you think about like a single quiet administrative employee, they may generate less impact than a business with frequent customers, but no employees. That's just the thought there too, when it comes to that prohibition on the non-resident participation side as well. I actually had a quick question too for staff. Is there a justification or reasoning for the 25% floor area limit specifically?

You're talking about the existing language that limits the size of the home-based business to 25% of the home?

Yes.

Okay. I don't know why that's in there. That's a very commonly used throughout the state. 500 square feet, 25%. I don't know where it came from. I don't have a reasoning for those numbers for you. One of them is proposed to be removed. The 500 square foot limit is proposed to be removed though. I think at the last meeting there was some discussion about what percentage would be appropriate. I don't believe there was a resolution to that, but there was some discussion. I think someone... I think some of the discussion dealt with is 49% an accessory use still.

Gotcha. So essentially, from that perspective to removing that old 500 square foot ceiling already kind of improves flexibility from that sense, I guess, is what you're kind of saying there too.

That was part of the discussion when the direction was to remove that because some homes are much larger and can accommodate a larger area of the home as an accessory, as a home-based business.

Gotcha. Thank you.

Other points? Go ahead, Al.

I just think to follow up on that, it'd be really great for any numbers that are in here, like the 25%. If we could understand where they come from, definitely a rule that I'm aware of is like, there shouldn't be magic numbers because there is an intent. There is a reason why we have these rules in place. And so if we don't understand that, then we're not really connected to what it should be doing. We're just holding rules for world's sake.

If I may, I think some of that discussion comes back, and David, I think you referenced this. It kind of came back to what's the principal use? Once you get that 51% is based on the business use, is it really a home or is it now a business that just happens to be a, what do we call it, a work-live hybrid? So it's not necessarily residential. Its primacy is in the business use. Again, it's kind of that semantics, but I think that's kind of where some of that comes from. Whether it needs to be 25%, 50%, I think that's really kind of a discretionary. It doesn't have to be 25%, but that's what it has been. And I think, David, like you said, under the code as it exists, it's 25% or 500 square feet, whichever is less. So if you just limit it to the 25 feet or 25%, you're actually in many instances, probably allowing more space to be used as that business type. So again, I think it's really discretionary and it's not really said anything in terms of studies, at least not that I'm aware of. I don't recall that being referenced in that APA American Planets Association article. And David, I don't think you found anything from MRSC on that topic either. Is that correct?

That's correct. And like you mentioned, it's really discretionary as to what the decision makers in a jurisdiction want to set that number at. If you feel it's appropriate, closer to 50 or appropriate, lower like it's set at 25.

Yeah, my recollection is too early for that. From the APA article I shared is that they just noted that there might be some like state or federal standards for how much square footage you could use to, or some tax considerations for that. And so there might be a jurisdiction above us that has some, but it doesn't necessarily mean we need to match it if it's limited some other way. David, you mentioned, so to me anyway, the fundamental issue is that the business activity is, you know, ancillary or secondary to the residential activity. And you mentioned that having it be the primary resident activity. or principal resident, as it's stated in the code, is fundamental to that. And I feel uncertain about that. And I guess I would welcome discussion from Planning Commissioner, if you thought through it, David, what you're thinking on that is. I guess I'll start with David, and then I'll ask the other Planning Commissioners.

One of the, or some of the comments we got really debated whether a home occupation needed to be the primary or principal residence.

It's actually stated in the code already that that's supposed to be your principal residence.

if if you don't live there and you run a business out of the house it's not in my opinion not really a home occupation at that point it's simply a commercial enterprise that's where i was coming from on that statement also if if no one lives there um or it's not your principal residence uh you've really lost the residential aspect of that structure if it's not being used as a residence.

Right, but I think we've discussed in the case of someone spending a lot of their time where it's sunnier in the winter or something like that, the home doesn't lose its kind of residential structure. characteristics because of that, even though I understand the kind of consternation with folks that have empty houses in their neighborhood, that can happen for a lot of reasons. Just part of it that I'm thinking about. I could imagine if you had a residence... And it was being maintained as a residence, whether there was someone living there or not. And then someone was doing some commercial activity in the accessory structure. I'm not sure that affects the neighborhood any more than if someone lives there. But I'm also not locked in it. So I'd be curious if other people have thoughts about that. Go ahead, Elle.

So are you asking if somebody could live in the house but rent the accessory unit to a business to operate?

Yeah. Huh. Well, so one of the things that seems like some of the public comment and hinges on is this principal resident issue. think in both in you know kind of both sides of some of the comments and whether or not that's that's necessary to kind of like establish establish principal residence at a place to be able to run a home occupancy out of it or if you're you know if i are remote working at at uh and i guess remote working is gonna fall somewhere else but if i were uh registered registered my business at my home, but I was doing work at my friend's house because we had some complimentary something going on. Is that really something we want to regulate away or not?

Is that remote work?

Well, I'm thinking in this case, if it's not remote work.

I'm really interested in the idea that you could own that property, but rent out the ADU essentially. And so that would be taking with enforcement, not with the home-based business license itself, but with the property instead in order to actually have enforcement so that somebody is actually living on the property and we maintain the definition of a home-based business. Is that, am I following correctly here?

Yeah, so I'm thinking if it's, I guess maybe you'd say your business is registered somewhere else, but you're, I don't know, maybe you're doing physical training in the garage or something of a friend's house. Like is that, like that activity is the same, it has the same impact as if you were doing it at your home. Right. But I understand it raises some complications because that person is maybe now renting their accessory structure to a business, even if it's a residential. But it's still maintaining. All the things that we're talking about of maintaining consistent residential aspects of the neighborhood would be intact.

Well, I think that's the question, right? What's the incentive there if you set up a two-person business at an address somewhere else and you're now the employee of your business and you're running it out of your home, right? You're just a remote worker.

David, thoughts on this one?

It seems like a lot of, some of what I'm hearing is really, is it a business or is it remote work? We're going to leave, my recommendation is leave anything that is a decision on whether something needs a business license in Title V and with finance. If you get past that a little, your question is, it sounds like my notes from the last meeting mentioned non-residential accessory structure would be allowed to have the home occupation. So that's the change that I put in there. Now I'm hearing a little bit more discussion on that as to whether you could use an ADU accessory dwelling unit for the business and whether or not you could rent it out to someone who wants to run a business there. Is this someone that would live in the accessory dwelling unit or is this just someone running a business in an accessory dwelling unit, but living elsewhere?

Yeah, I guess my understanding would be if they live there, that would, that would fit comfortably under the current ordinance or the current proposed. Yes. They were. But if they didn't live there, they would not. That's correct. But if the person who lived at the house, I realize this is... But if the person that lived at the house had their own business but had an employee that worked in the accessory structure, then that would be Well, okay, I'm trying to remember whether we're allowing anybody to participate or no one to participate, but assuming you allowed a few employees to participate, then that would be okay. I guess maybe the short of it is that it feels very complicated to do all these relationships between the business holder and the home and the principal residency, whereas the actual impacts on the neighborhoods are going to come from the activity. And if like, we can't tell that there's like, one of the biggest impacts has come up in comments, which again, I'm sympathetic to is that there are empty houses, but that is not like a outcome of business activity necessarily, and could easily be the outcome of residential behavior. Go ahead, Raphael.

That's kind of where my mindset was drifting to, too, is like if an activity produces almost like no external impact, generally regulation should be lighter there and enable that activity to continue, especially if it's supporting like the economics of the area as well. And then that mindset there becomes more on that measurable impact side. So like concerns of like the traffic, the parking, reoccurring people coming through, deliveries, the noise, structural alterations. I guess the delineation and balance between what's actually measurable. And then if you were to implement that, how would you measure that once implemented and to see if it was actually effective in addressing concerns, but not limiting small time, small businesses specifically working from home.

yeah measuring is hard, unfortunately.

enforcement is harder, especially if we're going to ask. residents neighbors to be part of that complaint based system.

And I guess a refresher on this too, has there been any other focus areas? Because I know a lot of public comments have come from South Capitol. Have any other areas been affected in similar parallel to the way South Capitol has been affected?

I've not received public comment that would indicate that.

Gotcha. Yeah, because my concern would be an overarching regulatory factor that is limited to focused on one specific area now affecting broader majority Olympia. So if there's a way to like navigate through that, I know probably not easy to address, but that's just things that come to mind, especially if it's solely focused on South Capitol.

If I could ask, which part of the amendments are you referring to that focus on South Capitol?

I wasn't just I was more so talking about a lot of public comments versus actual amendments. Yeah, because I like most of. public comment to our South Capitol residents versus if there was another area making similar comments about the same issue? No.

I also just, Raphael, to your point about South Capitol, it does seem like it's a minority of the homes in South Capitol. That's what, David, thank you. I was able to find the numbers that you provided. And it's, yeah, it's like 76 home-based businesses out of 797 residences. So it's like 10%, which like in my, like in my head, what I hear is like 90% of the neighborhood is not dealing with this. And so it's like an acute issue of, But it's not like widespread, I would say. And so that helps me like contextualize of like, this seems like a important but limited issue in that neighborhood.

There you had Commissioner Ibrahimovic followed by Commissioner Talius raising their hand.

Great. Thanks, Daisy.

Oh, Daniel, I was going to discuss the scope of it being 797 residences as well. Where did we get the figure of 20 residences being unoccupied for part of the year? So taking that figure 20 out of 797, right? Okay. So just to Daniel's point, that's what I was talking about. 8%.

And to clarify on those numbers, what we're talking about right now are the registered home-based businesses, right, or not. That in no way accounts for any number of people that are just remote workers in South Capitol. That's correct, yeah.

I guess I'm trying to imagine if it was a college neighborhood since I grew up in one. My neighbors, I guess, didn't really see much issue with the students leaving for part of the year. It was something that was expected as part of the culture of that neighborhood and part of what made it great and enjoyable, but also difficult because it felt way more empty. You're talking about the entire neighborhood leaving. And as someone obviously who's intertwined with legislature and appreciates that neighborhood as well, I guess I'm just trying to understand the scope of it and also to what degree that is the culture of the neighborhood because of its proximity.

David, do you know if, has there ever been enforcement on a residence turned into an office, which I don't know what portion of buildings it's suggested that's happened with, but has that been enforced or been attempted to be enforced ever? Because that seems like that's outside of the scope of this set of amendments, but I'd be curious if it's happened.

There was a complaint, a formal complaint received recently. And I say recently, it could have been in the last couple of months. I think it was a spring actually. The code enforcement officer and our director investigated that. I was not involved with it, so I don't know the outcome.

Okay. And do you, It also brings up the question of what the, I guess the line there would be if there is, you know, if it's not accessory to residential use, then it, you know, I guess even an empty house that was used as an office is now just being used as an office, potentially, and you could enforce that outside the kind of home-based, but if it's... I guess in thinking about creating kind of as expanded an opportunity for home-based businesses as possible, where that kind of line bumps up against like a fully commercial business. Just in how we define it in the words.

Just piggybacking off of that, Greg, I think that's my question right now is what is in the current code would make that unenforceable if those houses are being used as office spaces. I really appreciated the comment about making it, I guess, more permissive for somebody to post a potential sales opportunity. I think that is an absolute example of more modernization in the code. Things that couldn't have been accounted for even 20 years ago, honestly. But I really do wonder right now what about the current level of complaints isn't enforceable if the houses are being used as office spaces.

um, I'm, I'm going to attempt to add some, add something there for you. Cause I think you're looking at me, even though on my screen, you're looking off to the side. Um, the, the code enforcement will go out. This is my understanding after talking with code enforcement, they get a complaint says a house is being used as a office space. Um, From my understanding, code enforcement will go out and without going on the property, simply take a look. Does it look like an office? And in the cases that I was told about, it looks like a house. There's no indication of an office. There's no sign. There's no crowds, no traffic, no parking problems. There's really not much else to look at for code enforcement. That was an example that was explained to me by code enforcement.

Thank you, David. Good information, also challenging information.

That has nothing to do with residency.

Yeah. If I may, part of what I was trying to figure out is what happens from here since we've had the public hearing. you've got kind of the options to adopt, adopt with amendment. And it sounds like the amendments that might make this palatable are more robust than what is presented at the moment. So that kind of leaves the option of recommend, do not adopt. And that can go on to land use and to council. And what from there, kind of that conversation can be had on. What is it that we're specifically trying to accomplish? What's the issue that council sees and they could possibly refer back to staff and even to the planning commission and say, okay, this is the problem as we see it. In addition, these are the ways that we would like to modernize. And I think that's kind of where you're at at this point. from what I hear on the discussion. So you can certainly make recommendations for amendments. But because we do have a motion on the table for do not adopt, and I don't know that we've got clarity on the extent of what amendments you would want to make to get to that point. So if you want to deliberate on that further, we can table the motion for additional discussion later. So that's That's kind of the two real options that I hear right now is table for additional discussion and possible additional follow-up with David at a future date for possible amendments that you could recommend or to kick it back and say, you know what, this is not the proposal that addresses the issues as we see. And that kind of, that doesn't mean that it's, It's not going forward forever. And also, council can take it or leave it. They can say, you know what? We've got your recommendation, but here are the amendments that we would propose to make this work. So they can take your recommendation and take it or leave it, really. But that does put it back in their court to figure out what they want out of this. So they can either refer back to staff and for additional changes and amendments that you could see at a later date. It just wouldn't necessarily be something to adopt now. But What I was trying to figure out is since we've had the public hearing, what the next step has to be. I don't think it would come back as a new public hearing until council decides on the amendments as they are. And if they say, you know, we're choosing not to act on this now as well. All I just, let me shorten this up and say, there might be a future public hearing that you might have to do, but I think you have to make a decision on this as it is right now. So you can delay until deliberations on, at the next meeting, or you have to send it on to council for them to figure out. I just want to make sure that we understand that process.

I'm hearing the same thing, Casey, and it seems like there's maybe some suggestions. One of my hiccups is just that I think in both the current ordinance and in the suggested changes is this principal residence issue that seems to have come up a lot in public comment and that I have obviously some complicated and maybe confusing thoughts about. And so I don't have like a specific recommendation and I'm kind of comfortable under this. Do not, or sorry, recommend not to adopt. And then we can give some context to that to land use and council to think about.

And even if you're not recommending, you can still include in the comment letter things that you think should be considered for a possible code update in the future. Or if council decides to move forward on this, these are the things we would ask you to consider as an amendment. So you can make some of those proposed amendments and say this would make this more in line with what we see and hear as the issue and what the public is asking us to solve. So you can still make those comments and recommendations to council. It's just, as it is proposed, there's too much of a goal for us to say even adopt with amendments. That's kind of where I hear this group landing.

Yeah, agreed. Yeah, so I'd take any other points of discussion. Otherwise, we can call the vote on the minute. Go ahead, Aaron.

Yeah, hey, just a quick question to staff. I want to... understand, I don't remember anyone talking about this, the, I feel for to say, you know, unable to discuss right now, but I want to know what kind of conversations staff has had with legal about this reach. What's our understanding from them?

I met with our legal, one of our attorneys a couple of months ago, and then he did review the draft at that time and had some suggested changes to it. I did meet with him and our department director last week in regards to the first letter we got talking about constitutional issues.

And I just want to say real quickly, David, that Conversations with legal are to make sure that what we're proposing doesn't break laws. Otherwise, a lot of the conversation between legal is we have to be careful in what we say because our conversations with legal are protected conversations. So I don't know that we can necessarily delve into that a ton, Commissioner Sauerhoff. It's really making, legal doesn't advise on necessarily the mission purpose or the the policy decision itself. It's advising on, will this break laws if we enact this? So that's the conversation that's been had with legal. Policy-wise, that's been mostly kind of staff conversations internally and then some staff conversations with city management based on their conversations with the community. So, you know, I think you've heard a majority of that conversation this evening. And I think you've heard some of the feedback that staff that has provided, um, that's what we can offer. Yeah.

Understood. Thank you. And I understand the nature of that. Thanks.

Uh, and apologies. I forgot who seconded our motion today. What up this case? You remember?

Uh, yes. So motion was made by commissioner Sarah, uh, seconded by commissioner Ibrahimovic.

Excellent. All right, then it has been, it's getting late and slow. It has been moved by Aaron and seconded by Samir to recommend do not approve for the home-based businesses ordinance amendments

And just to clarify chair and the motion I wrote down was recommend not to adopt as proposed.

Right not to adopt as proposed. Great Casey for the. Home based business Olympia municipal code amendments all those in favor. I think Raphael raised his, Raphael, do you have a question?

Yeah, just a quick question. Just to clarify, if we don't recommend, we could still provide comments on areas of focus that need to be really addressed to think about actual amendments, I guess.

Yeah, absolutely. I think we would try to put together a list of suggestions for sure. Okay, so all those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Any abstentions? Okay, then I have it, the ayes have it, and we will, the motion passes. I appreciate the discussion on it. I definitely have some notes taken down from that. If there are other specific things that people want, I can draft kind of a list of those that we can send along to land use, and then we can discuss it at a future time, too, to refine it. Anything that people didn't get off their chest that they want to put on there? I'll try to come up with some matrix of which accessory structure is rented and has a business license.

I'm happy to go with the group. It seems like enough people had concerns that I'm happy to vote with the group and be like, let's vote to not recommend approval. But I'm a little bit confused just on what we are recommending specifically. Instead, so I would love to see kind of like more maybe conversation about that about like what people want to propose instead because I just, I'll say I don't really have a ton of ideas. So, like, I'm interested to see what people think. kind of propose alternatively, because I don't really know what can be enforced. And I think that that's kind of the issue I feel like I keep coming back to is like, a lot of this does feel like it's like, just unenforceable, which kind of sucks. But I guess I'm just like, interested to hear what ideas people are proposing, because I'm like, totally fair that people are uncomfortable with where the draft is now, completely hear them. But I am a little confused on where we're trying to go instead.

At this point, I don't think it's necessarily a recommendation for amendments. I would say the comment letter would focus on the discussion that was had, concerns that you have, and possible considerations for council to consider as future amendments, whether they adopt that under their current proposed update or if they have some sort of options that they want to refer back for consideration. That might be another option, but I don't think you're necessarily making a comment letter with any sort of proposal. It's that this was the discussion. These were our concerns. These are the things that we think need to be considered and addressed. So I just want to make it's maybe a nuanced difference than kind of what I hear you saying, Commissioner or Vice Chair Garcia, but I just want to make sure that at this point you have voted

to do not recommend so yes i i hear you casey and maybe if i need to call them considerations then they're considerations but i guess that's like i guess the like i want to kind of hear more from people what i already i heard the considerations voice today but i guess i just would like to hear more additional like how those are going to be in the comment letter because i guess if i i'm i'm a little confused on what we're saying to counsel with like don't recommend then it's like, why, why are we not recommending? And it's like, I don't exactly understand, but I guess that's what the comment letter's for.

Yeah, I can, go ahead, Jessica.

So is the comment letter that we're going to send, is that something that we need to make a motion tonight that at the next meeting, or is that just something that you put together based off of what the discussion is that we've had already?

Yeah, I think we'll, we'll put something on and I can, I can actually try to summarize what I've heard and see if, if folks agree or want to, want to add some things. Well, I will try. So the.

You don't have to vote on the comment letter. It's very much discussion and in summary of what you had to get to your vote. I want to, that's kind of the other thing. So. you don't necessarily need to vote on it. I would say that by the next meeting, you could certainly take a look at it and say, yes, this is in line with what we had. And I think that would be the next step.

Yeah. But I think there's certainly some, the remote work issue, and David brought this up too, that that's probably adding some additional confusion and then focusing on neighborhood impacts rather than some of the kind of behind the scenes business and relational aspects. I know we had, you know, discussion of complexities there. And then the question for me there is like, you know, at what point are you coming up to the business, you know, an actual commercial space? Yeah, I guess a lot of that to me circles around that where we have these aspects like Raphael brought up with military spouses and small businesses and people moving in and out and whether they're, you know, the principal resident somewhere. And that certainly rose up to the top in comments. We had the question, what's the line between office space versus home occupancy? than people that I guess the line of what it kind of means to participate and how many people that is and when that's an impact or should it be employees that participate there is another big question. Yeah, I think in my attempt to summarize, maybe we didn't have, and I think this is why it's probably the recommendation we gave is that we don't have a specific thing, but we don't want to limit kind of the economic activity by mistake, I guess. Or we want to be favorable to having that economic activity going on. That was a fairly poor summarization. I would welcome any additional comments on it, and then we can maybe move to the next business item.

We can move on. We don't need to summarize everything today, but I'm just voicing what I am feeling. I think the group is skeptical, and that's totally great, and we can vote as a group and be skeptical, but I don't exactly know where we're going. That's what the comment letter's for.

I think that's a point to make in the letter as well, is that As proposed, there wasn't necessarily agreement on how to make this something adoptable at this time. And it can be as simple as that. There are too many issues for us to concisely recommend amendments to move this forward. And I think it's fair to say that.

I would also just, uh, one quick comment. I think the, there's a lot of effort in this, uh, recommendation or the ordinance, um, amendments that, you know, it's just modernizing this ordinance to be in more in line with how it is. And I think, um, most of those recommendations were, weren't controversial and, and, uh, we would want to see that happen kind of, but we don't have on the stickier points. We don't have a strong, um, revision or recommendation. Go ahead, Raphael.

I think it's important. We kind of include the proportionality and geographics of it. So like that percentage of the numbers of the businesses that are actually impacted and then focus on like the South capital. I think it's important to have that aspect included. And then one other thought that just came to mind is more so like the thought of like the progression aspect of, I guess a low impact startup at home, growing this home business and then commercial location when I guess they're like impacts and scale warranted or say, cause I know there was a talk about Like in the past, we talked about like storefronts or buildings not being occupied downtown and whatnot. And that being a goal to further develop economics of it. I guess that's just an additional thought that came to mind is really concerning that relationship between the home business and Olympia's, I guess, commercial districts.

See, this is, I think, where I'm a little confused because, Raphael, you just were talking about downtown businesses being empty, but are those home-based businesses downtown?

No, but from a sense of for businesses to scale and grow, a lot of startups start at home and for them to become larger businesses and actually grow. be make the income necessary to run a storefront per se. Um, a lot of them tend to start from home from that aspect. And you could be limiting those people that eventually would occupy a storefront in downtown Olympia, if that makes sense.

God. Okay. Yeah. So I think just for a quick time check, we're at eight 37. We have one more item to get through. Um, I think if you want to work on that comment letter, I can coordinate with you and David on that going forward, and we can try to bring that back to the Commission at our next meeting.

Yeah, that sounds great. then we will move on to our second business item. 6B is a briefing regarding the preliminary 2027 to 2032 capital facilities plan. Presenting on this topic is associate planner, Casey Shoffler of the community development department. Casey, fastest briefing ever.

Yeah, I will try to be concise here for you folks. So let's get to the break. All right. So, like I said, I'll start with me. For the record, my name is Casey Shopper. I am a long-range planner in community development. I am here to introduce the Preliminary Capital Facilities Plan, or CFP, which has a focus on the 2027-2032 financial plan, especially the first year. This document is part two of the city's comprehensive plan. which is why it comes before the planning commission. All amendments and alterations to the comprehensive plan require a public hearing and vote of our planning commission for a recommendation to city council. So the preliminary CFP was issued on August 3rd of 2026 and a revised version was issued on August 13th or last Thursday. So before we dive into it too far, As I mentioned, it was released on August 3rd, but that revised version came out last week. This updated version includes updates to a few of the project line items, fairly minor project line item changes. It also corrects a handful of table formulas. So the table formulas are why you see such a wide discrepancy. The actual programmatic line items didn't really change and they they didn't, the totals were always there. It's just the summary table was broken. That's kind of the long and short of it. So that's why you see such a discrepancy here. It is available on the City of Olympia budget performance website. With this being released after the staff report and the supporting documents in your agenda packet, the revised copy was provided to you separately. Some of the highlights that I want to bring before you here are The year six total was revised up to $412.6 million, whereas the original release version had a six-year total of $391.6 million. This constitutes a 6% increase over the 2026-2031 plan, whereas originally reported to you as a 10% decrease from last year's six-year plan. The year one was revised to $82.3 million from $70.3 million. So the projects that are included in the plan come from the master plans that are developed to implement the comprehensive plan, such as the transportation master plan, the utilities master plans, and the parks, arts, and recreation plans. Year one of the approved CFP is the capital budget for 2027. And that will be the primary focus of what we're looking at here this evening. So for your policy consideration, this is kind of what council asks the planning commission with considering as they reviewed this document. Additionally, the planning commission, so going through this real quick, does the capital facilities plan prioritize projects and services needed to implement the vision of the comprehensive plan, especially our updated Olympia 2045 comprehensive plan, which was adopted last year? Are there any gaps to adequately implement these projects going forward? And in future CFPs, how can the city better implement the comprehensive plan? I will say that we briefed this to the Council Finance Committee earlier this evening, and that was very much part of the conversation. How are we implementing these projects, especially when we have a new park, arts, and recreation master plan that is undergoing revisions now and should be updated by next year? And the transportation master plan, which is also slated to be updated in the next two to three years. How do we reconcile kind of what we might call aging TMPs or parks plans? And how do we bridge that gap between what's in this CFP and kind of those older master plans when they're under discussion for future updates? So just a heads up there, that was part of the conversation. So with that, I will jump into the, 2027 capital expenses by program. Again, this is the year one projects by program or city. Projects total $82.3 million. The largest share of the funds are going towards parks, followed by general facilities and transportation. We'll delve into that here in a moment. City plans to fund these projects through a variety of funding sources. Most of the sources are limited by law or city policy on what the funds can be used for. For example, transportation benefit district dollars cannot be used to build parks. We're also required to provide a balanced budget, meaning we must demonstrate that we have the ability to pay for the projects identified in the plan. The CFP is updated annually. The first six years of the plan must be financially constrained. This slide shows the anticipated costs of the projects planned between 2027 and 2032 by program. These projects have a total estimated cost of approximately $412.6 million. Okay, so this slide shows the funding strategy to pay for those projects proposed for 2027 through 2032. Again, most of these funds are dedicated for certain types of projects. It's really just the general fund that you can, and kind of department funding that can be switched around a little bit. Otherwise, a lot of these funds are very specific to the use. So from here, let's transition into looking at what the projects fund and actually build, starting with Parks, Arts, and Recreation. Through a variety of funding sources, as shown on the slide, the 2027 capital budget for these projects is approximately $25 million. The majority of the funding is made up of general bond issuances, state grants, impact fees, and funds from the Olympia Metropolitan Parks District, among other financing sources. Some of the projects to highlight here are the Daily Arts Center, formerly the Armory. This includes the phase one and two design construction. It also includes the Jolene Unsold Community Park, which is the Yelm Highway Park property, and the phase one construction of that. So they went through the design and review of that in the previous year, and now we're into the phase one construction. Also, that's the other, I apologize, the Japanese garden relocation is one of the other items there. That was the error I was looking for from last meeting. I apologize on that, folks. So this does include plans for relocating and redesign of a future Japanese garden. It also has Rebecca Howard Park phase one design. It includes Kaiser Woods Park improvements, and it also includes the downtown flood mitigation at Percival Landing. So if you're familiar with the last couple of years of king tides, things of that nature in particular, this is really focused on mitigating some of those flooding issues and hazards that we had immediately on personal landing and the adjacent streets. For transportation, the amount for 2027 is $13.7 million. The majority of funding is coming from real estate, excise tax or REIT funds, transportation benefit district, impact fees, and state and federal grants. I would note that projects may or may not physically begin construction the year it is listed. Many projects require funding over multiple years in order to be able to pay for them over time. So some of the highlights here are several street and traffic calming redesigns, the addition for the work that's happening on Lilly Road and the core safety pre-design, citywide school zone updates, signage and pedestrian protections, enhanced crosswalks, notably on Lilly and Pacific, several bike corridor connections through the city, citywide multimodal streets reconstruction, sidewalk connections and repairs, as well as multiple street repairs with resurfacing and enhanced bike lanes. So again, lots of small line item projects falling under those individual base program categories. So for capital projects for 2027 through 2032, wait, fire, did I skip? Nope, my apologies, it's the next slide. So identified through 2032 are new or replacement fire apparatus and aid units. This includes a proposal to remodel two fire stations in the next six years and to build a new station, particularly with an eye towards the possibility of the south urban growth area annexation. Olympia Fire Department's capital facility projects and associated new fire apparatus will require the issuance of general obligation debt via voter-approved property tax levies. For 2027, $9.5 million is proposed, and that includes replacement of multiple vehicle types, including BLS transport units, a fire ladder truck, fire engine pumper, and a brush truck. Fire engine pumper is critical equipment. infrastructure. Basically, that's what actually enables many of the trucks to function. So it is a critical infrastructure for their firefighting operations. It also includes additional units of those trucks I just listed, as well as a new technical rescue special operations team vehicle or assorted vehicle. So really, that falls under some emergency management outside of It's a weird thing to say for fire department, but think of critical incidents, I would say mass casualty or environmental hazards, volcanoes, earthquakes, things of that nature. So that's what a SWORD vehicle is prepared to respond to. Moving along, the general capital facilities essentially covers capital construction of and And of and improvements to city-owned buildings, the 2027 capital construction line item of $14.3 million is for the expansion of the Hands-On Children's Museum with a new building. So that's essentially a one-year line item that will go towards the Hands-On Children's Museum for their expansion. In the past several years, general facilities projects were supported primarily by cable TV and an annual contribution from the general fund. However, in recent years, cable tax has been declining 2% to 5% annually. So we're definitely seeing that revenue source continually shrink. For 2027, drinking water projects total just under $5 million. Drinking water capital facilities are designed and built to provide community members with safe and sustainable drinking water citywide. Noted here are some of the larger line items, though those line items include projects that span across the city. So an example would be aging water main replacements. That's not a specific project or site. That is throughout the city. And there are identified sites for that that you can see further in the CFP. Same with small diameter water main replacements. There's also a line item for main seismic valve construction. pressure reducing valves, and then a booster station upgrade and rehabilitation. For wastewater, this is capital facility funding is important to heavily infrastructure dependent wastewater utilities. The public system of Olympia is comprised of approximately 230 miles of gravity pipe and 35 regional lift stations. For wastewater and sewer, the planned projects come in at about $5.8 million for 2027. This includes cured-in-place pipe rehabilitation across the city, a site-specific Glenmore Village step conversion, so step converted to standard sewer, Kaiser step cabinet replacement, and Fourth Avenue sewer construction. So those are the main light items that you'll see here. Moving on to storm and surface water. Over the past several decades, Storm and Surface Water Utility has successfully invested in projects that address many of Olympia's most significant legacy flooding problems. Their mission includes three interconnected responsibilities. Mitigate flooding, improve water quality, and protect and enhance aquatic habitat. So here you see some of the highlights being the Percival Creek riparian restoration, several areas where there will be peak flow reduction, a new facility on Ascension and 4th Avenue, plum and legion pipe replacements, And then the dedicated CCTV camera truck, that is to allow for targeted and direct inspection of those storm and surface water facilities. And then there's also the green stormwater retrofit at Rogers and Hayes. Again, this is not all inclusive, really just trying to pull some of the highlights and larger projects from the document. So for waste resources, In 2027, Waste Resources continues the facility planning, design, and construction of a new maintenance facility. The facility is currently planned to be located on Carpenter Road within a few miles of the Thurston County Waste and Recovery Center. This project encompasses the planning, design, and construction of a new Waste Resources utility maintenance facility. Currently, operations are based at the Public Works Maintenance Center off of East Side Street. which was built in 1976 and is now at and probably beyond capacity. A 2017 feasibility study confirmed the utility can function efficiently from a separate facility with the Carpenter Road site identified as optimal due to its proximity to the Thurston County Waste and Recovery Center. In 2019, council approved a preliminary design contract. This included a cost estimate, property remediation plans, and next steps. So this site previously housed an abandoned firing range, which was decommissioned due to lead contamination. Following demolition and cleanup of that facility, the Department of Ecology issued a no further action determination in early 2025, which basically means that the site has been remediated to state and federal regulations. And we can proceed with utilizing that site for a future waste of resources facility. So again, that's a multi-year project. We don't necessarily highlight the year one in the same way that we do some of the other programs. So with that, your schedule going forward, obviously this evening, we've got the planning commission. We also had the council finance committee just a little bit earlier today. Going forward, the CFP will be introduced to a number of advisory committees through August and September, including Parks, Recreation Advisory Committee, Utilities Advisory Committee, and the Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee at dates to be determined. For this body, your next date on this will be September 21, the Planning Commission public hearings. Up to that date, we've already been coordinating with the finance subcommittee on a number of dates. I think the primary next meeting that will be of interest to this group and the community at large is the session that we'll hold with the chapter contributors. That's an opportunity for the finance subcommittee to ask direct questions of various city staff on some of those line items, get clarification and feedback. just some of the reasoning behind some of those projects as well. From that meeting, we will create our Q&A document. Basically, any of the questions that were asked by that finance subcommittee will be added into a document and the staff responses. If you're familiar with how this has been done in the last two years, that's a pretty robust document with some very, I would say, technical responses, very technical questions, and council has found that to be pretty valuable. So we're hoping to do that again this year. And then... Following the public hearing, we'll ask the Planning Commission to prepare their comment letter to City Council tentatively at the October 5th meeting. From there, council meetings coming up. We just scheduled a CFP intro briefing to council on September 15th. We anticipate having most of the department directors, if not the chapter contributors, at that meeting as well. So Any questions that we get from Council on that, I will likely include in our Q&A document, and I'll share that with the Commission at large as well so that you have that. And then Council is tentatively scheduled to hold their public hearing on October 27th with an anticipated first reading on December 12th. So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Like I said, we're coordinating with the Finance Subcommittee. We may adjust some of those meetings. It may not be necessary to do our first meeting where we divvy up and kind of look at the policy or the kind of how we divvy this up. And the initial meeting might not be as necessary as we think. So we may just plan on the chapter contributors and coordinate offline. So that's something I'll reach out to you and discuss. But that's been a little bit of discussion just because it has been a little difficult to coordinate some of the schedules. So we may hold only one meeting. And that's not unprecedented. We've definitely done that in the past as well. So if we can keep it to one meeting, that might be best for everyone. So just a heads up there. More communications on that to follow. But when we do meet, that will be noticed. And that would be a public meeting. So anyone in the public who is still listening and watching at this time, nearly 9 o'clock, More to come on the finance subcommittee meetings. You'll see those posted on our agendas page. With that, Chair Quitten, I'm happy to answer any questions. So thank you for letting me have some time this evening.

Great. Thank you, Casey. Do folks have questions? Not seeing any questions. Okay. We will wait to hear more from the finance subcommittee and move on quickly to reports. Does anyone have any to report on, meeting, relevant book or article? Go ahead, Daniel.

Yes, I have a meeting that I think Planning Commission will care about. There is a couple of meetings scheduled this week being led by the city talking about the Artesian Well. The Artesian Well mosaic was recently repaired by the original mosaic artist, Jennifer Koons. The Parks Department, I think, worked with her to restore the mosaic. So not the entire site, but just the art piece. There are some focus groups, work groups being organized by the city, one today and I think another on Thursday. So attended that today. And they sound like based on whatever feedback they get from that group, they're going to present recommendations to city council on September 22nd at an artesian parking study session, something or other. So positive development. Love to see conversation around the artesian well being restored.

Great. Thank you, Daniel. I'll just plug the article I mentioned in the home occupancy, the equitable zoning for home occupations from the APA.

Okay. Real quick, I'll check and see if I can publish that. I'm not sure if I can publish it directly, but I might be able to get permission to at least link it. I'll have to check on our allowances that way, but we'll try to make that available to the public if possible. Great.

Thanks, Casey. Then other topics. We have noted here the finance subcommittee next steps, but I think we, did we cover that to what you need, Casey? We'll do the rest.

I think we're good unless there's other questions, but I'll follow up with the subcommittee directly.

Great. Sounds good. All right. Then next regular scheduled meeting is September 21st, 2026. And the meeting is adjourned at 9pm. Thank you, everybody.

Thanks, everyone.