Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, so this is the Monday. I'm sorry. We're good. Okay, good. All right, so this is the Monday, June 8th Planning Commission meeting. And we'll go ahead and convene the meeting and have a roll call.

Good evening, everybody. I'll call the roll. Commissioner LaSalle? Here. Commissioner Dole? Here. Commissioner Espy? Here. Commissioner Meinig? Not here. Commissioner Henderson? Present. And Commissioner Laws? Here. Commissioner Gimmont. And Victoria is coming. Okay. And here's Victoria. So we have seven commissioners. We have a full commission this evening. Two commissioners joining by Zoom, Carla and Trace.

Very good, yeah, I'll try to keep their pictures up so that I can keep seeing them and not forget about them during the course of the meeting. It shouldn't be too tough since we just have a little bit. Are there any public comments? I don't think that there are hearing none. Okay, so we'll go right to the presentations for the housing bill updates. And I think Missy Ryan has got something for us tonight.

Hi, can you hear me? Give me a thumbs up if so. Okay, great. It's nice to see you commissioners. And thank you, Pete, for hopefully running my slides.

Yeah, let me pull that up for you. Hang on.

and commissioners i really this is a very short probably 10 minute or less presentation on the latest and greatest of the housing bills that are going to impact the planning commission uh so as you all know it was a short session a short but busy set legislative session uh this year in 2026 and the legislature did manage to pass One bill that I'm gonna talk about tonight that's of interest to the planning commission. What is the general trend and direction is that the types of applications and topics that you all are going to be considering, it's changing and it's narrowing and it's shifting focus. And I know that we are planning on talking with you about that a little bit more extensively, perhaps next meeting. So thank you, Pete, so much. Can you go to the next slide, which would be the first slide? So tonight I'm just going to talk to you and to members of the public who are interested about recent legislation that did create major limits on the procedures for reviewing housing-related applications. Pete, if you can advance. The main piece of legislation coming out of the legislature last session was House Bill 4037. It has a lot of provisions and a lot of sections. But in particular tonight, I wanted to focus on Section 17. This takes effect July 1 coming up here. And this amends what we all refer to as the clear and objective requirement that is now housed in ORS 197A.400. The whole scheme was renumbered about three or four years ago, and it just drives everybody crazy. So that does impose pretty significant restrictions on the procedures that cities are supposed to use for reviewing applications for the development of housing when they're subject to the clear and objective standards requirements, which is honestly about 95% of applications. The two carve outs to that remain, which are historic resources and property in the central city of Portland under the central city plan. Now notice is restricted to property owners within a hundred feet of the subject property. I believe the city's notice has been a bit more generous and went up to 300 feet or. So that will be changing. It is 500 feet if the development is for 20 units or more. So that would be an apartment building or a subdivision. The local government, so the city, cannot any longer require a hearing before making a decision. So all of these are now type 2 decisions. Many of them were already type 2 decisions, but some did go to type 3. The big change is that only the applicant can file a local appeal of the city planning staff decision and only the applicant can appeal that decision on appeal if appealed to LUVA. So what this means is that very likely the Planning Commission will not be seeing any applications for housing and any appeals that you see will be applicant appeals, perhaps of conditions of approval or of a denial of planning staff denial. Does anyone wanna ask any questions about that before we move on? Okay, let's get to the next.

Yeah, one quick question for you. These are very significant changes and the majority of the community is probably not aware of these. Is there a process by which the city plans on educating the community?

So I will say just, Pete's gonna be able to answer this really well and I definitely like that, but I am really impressed with the city's website for, the city has an entire website dedicated to keeping up on and keeping the public up on all of the housing law changes. It's very good. So I just wanted to say that I'm sure that that is one place where the public will be notified.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say first and foremost. In terms of additional outreach, some of these are already in effect and some are going to be in effect fairly soon. And we have to work out a plan to do additional notification if we can. But yeah, it's so fast right now when applicants come in to the counter or just they're inquiring about it, the first thing we tell them is there are a ton of housing bills out here and here's our website, you know, go look at them and if you have any questions about it and inevitably, when they're hearing more about middle housing options and other options and changes to the process, that's usually when we get into the details about notice and that sort of thing.

We will ultimately be asked. So it'd be great if there was a location we could direct people to.

Yeah, it's right on our website under housing bills. And so they're all listed in there with links and jumping off points to the DLCD parts.

Okay, and those will get adopted by the standard legislative process, right? Yes.

Yeah.

So in other words, if a neighborhood association wanted to appeal a decision,

Well, if it was a planning commission decision, that's a good question for Missy. How would that work?

No, Commissioner, it kind of depends. If it was a housing-related decision, say it was an apartment building 20 units or more, and the planning staff made the initial decision and it approved it, the neighborhood association would not be able to appeal that decision to the planning commission. So that's now a type two limited availability for an appeal.

So, but they could appeal a type three.

They still can appeal to type threes. I think the best way to think about it is like the universe of type threes is really small now.

Yeah, I was going to ask you, Missy, could you maybe give us a hypothetical application or scenario that would trigger a Type 3? Is that anything in Kenema, McLaughlin?

Right. So anything in a historic designated area is still going to be subject to the city's normal process and that is not affected because that type of application is not subject to the clear and objective standards. Okay. That is, I would have to think about it a little bit more. Maybe we can kind of continue this conversation. And I know, you know, we're all sort of working through the hypothetical scenarios, but it's not a large universe.

Okay. So if the variance was approved by the planning commission, Could anybody appeal that?

This is on my next slide, actually. So the second piece of legislation, we can flip back and forth, is this was enacted last year, but it had a delayed effective operative date, excuse me, of July 1st. That Senate Bill 974, Section 3 is the one we're talking about now. That does apply to residential PUDs, variances, I'm assuming it's residential, although the language is very unclear of the legislation, and zone changes to higher densities. Those also are subject to a different process, similar to a limited land use decision. A variance decision is gonna be processed as a type two decision at first, but that is appealable by anyone who has provided comments during the initial decision-making phase. So a variance is one where there is still a local appeal available to other parties besides the applicant. And an appeal to LUVA is also still allowed. So again, that's residential PUDs. And, you know, the residential PUDs are the developers that, you know, they have to have a clear and objective path available to them. But sometimes they do choose to go into a discretionary decision-making track. and do a PUD because it gives more density or more flexibility or what they're looking for. So those are gonna be under Senate Bill 974, section three. Those are a more normal process, probably more what you're used to, which is initial type two decision, a potential for local appeal, and then a potential for city commission appeal. I guess the unique thing, perhaps the unexpected thing about Senate Bill 974 is that it includes zone changes to higher residential densities. And that is a little bit of a sea change in the way that zone changes have typically been processed because a zone change is a post-acknowledgement plan amendment. It's a papa, you know, we all like to run around saying mama and papa. So a zone change typically has been a fairly robust process, including a type three decision and then a city commission decision to finally approve a zone change because it does amend the city's zoning map. Zone changes to higher residential densities now are going to be treated as type two decisions.

questions about this also. We're almost done. Can you switch to the next slide? Missy, question for you.

So Senate Bill 974 is section 8. This is not too much about what the Planning Commission is going to see or not see, but it's just a reminder. This is, I guess, sort of a general reminder, mainly for the public as well, that we do have legislation now that requires the city to waive a lot of design standards that are listed here. They're mainly... uh materials colors and patterns group decorations accessories window elements you know all of the things that unfortunately the city worked really hard to incorporate its design standards to reflect the community's values those are now not available in certain circumstances for this planning staff to apply Pete, if you can hit the next slide, I can.

Missy, there was a question.

Oh, yes. I can't see the room.

Sorry.

That's okay.

Missy, can you hear me?

I can.

Yeah, question real quick on all these type two decisions. I believe I've asked you, I may just not be recalling, but do we have a mechanism or does planning staff have a mechanism to decide not to make a decision, right? To elevate it to planning commission or city commission, a type two application? So say an application came in that planning director is like, I don't feel comfortable rendering a decision on this. Can they then defer to planning commission or city commission? No.

No, okay. The block's gonna stop with the planning staff, largely. Okay, thank you for that. That's a good question.

Yeah, I think it boils down to if you've got a clear and objective path, you have to offer it first. And then the discretionary path. In the past, the discretionary path was always up to the applicant to choose as an option.

In some instances, especially if you have a three-tiered review process, it might not be a bad idea to think about elevating it to the second level. If you think you're going to get an appeal, so you don't run out of days of processing time.

Yeah.

Cause that's always a conundrum. You know, when you have three people, three, three different review bodies, you run out of days and, and then your final decision is like at the 120th day.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's no fun. Yep. A quick question definition, it says new homes, what is your definition of a home, what does this apply to structure wise.

Well, we would. We would apply that to, I think the way our residential design standards work currently is applies to any new single family detached home. But this is also gonna apply to any new middle housing potentially too. And any addition of, I believe that is 50% or more. But usually only if it was only triggered if it was adding garage space. because they were garage standards first and foremost. And there was a range of architectural options and choices that a builder could choose off of a list of like 22. And so we're working through this.

So this applies to single family detached homes. It applies to every type of home per the definition of middle housing, but excludes multifamily.

Can you go to the next slide? Because this is a really great question about how oddly this is written. You guys are like anticipating my slides before I get them out. So this is a very odd provision. And there's a lot of red flags up everywhere with city attorneys to say to our clients, we don't know how this is going to roll out there. It's, it's problematic the way that it's worded, but right now it applies to a development proposal that includes more than 20 single family or middle housing units that would include a residential subdivision that would include a apartment building or, you know, uh, or an application for one or two housing units with a shared wall floor or ceiling. So a single family dwelling or a duplex. What's missing is between two and 20.

That shows to me that whoever put these together wasn't really thinking properly because you look at this and an application for one housing unit with a shared wall Couldn't be any, no such thing as one unit with a shared wall.

Well, it's, so one of the things that we're struggling with, I'll just tell you is what if we have a mixed use residential and it's a large, generally commercial space, but it's got one housing unit on the second floor. It technically, it has a shared wall. So these are the kinds of things that we're all, we're all going to just be struggling with. pretty much on an ad hoc basis, unless the legislature can clarify some things. So your question, Commissioner Henderson, I think was sort of, you know, and I think what you were saying correctly is that we've got the sort of universe of three to 19, where you can still apply design standards. I'm not really sure why.

I think the second bullet where the waiver does not apply to three or more housing units with a shared wall, right? So that would be all multifamily. And yeah, I expect based on the two housing units with a shared wall, what you're gonna be seeing is a lot of middle housing where it's two units, either vertically or horizontally adjacent to one another.

Yeah, and then of course it does carve out, I want to hit the last bullet point here, you know, it doesn't apply to, these aren't really design standards, but it was nice that the legislature thought to carve these things out. You know, setbacks, building height, accessibility, and of course fire standards, health and safety standards, water quality. Goal five implementing standards that that would include in the city design review because in historic reasons our goal five resources are goal five resources and the greenway implementing standards and those are called out of the legislation. The truth is that this provision was introduced very late in the legislative process and it didn't go through a lot of public vetting or even committee vetting so you know, perhaps there'll be a clarification. Okay, I'm up to the last slide. Does anyone want to guess what it is? Okay, so I just wanted to mention also that Senate Bill 974, Section 1, this is something that we've been working on since this legislation passed because your excellent engineering folks knew that it was coming. This imposes a 120-day deadline on review of engineering plans, building permits, and public works permits applications. very similar to what we're used to, but it has a 14 day completeness period and it's followed by 120 day deadline extensions up to 240 days, 45 days.

Does that include final plat reviews? Like if a plat comes in after a subdivision has been approved and then they do all the final stuff on it for the surveyor, county surveyor recording, they have to do that in 13 days?

i don't um no because the final flat is not an engineering plan okay um the final plan is more of It's on the land use side of the process.

Yeah. I'm not sure. I didn't know what all engineering plans were because the engineer usually, you know, they're the ones that usually review that. So I just didn't know if that applied or not.

The legislation does define final engineering plans and I'm just, I'm doing, it's a, you know, six line definition and I'm not seeing that a final plan is included.

because that'd be hard to meet.

Also, this slide isn't correct and I apologize. It's a 30 day completeness period, which totally dovetails and tracks with the land use planning program. I think when it was under consideration, it might've been 14 days. That would have been a short amount of time. So, the good news is that the planning commission will be engaging in some long range planning which is, you know, really gratifying because it's a way to take in community input and reflect the community values. And I think that's my last slide.

Well, thank you. I really appreciate the update on the, and we all appreciate the update on.

And I do, I do think that it was, it's what we had talked about the last time we met about this is, you know, once July 1st comes, I believe we'll have some concrete examples to be able to share with the planning commission about how this is turning out to work in practice. So we could touch base again, maybe in August and we can say, well, we've had a couple of examples of things that would have gone to been type three, but now they're type two, here's how it works. So I think it's important for the planning commission to get an update on how it's working after it's rolled out.

Absolutely. Thank you very much, Missy. We really appreciate it.

Pete, do you want me to stay on for the next agenda item? I'm happy to.

Yeah, why don't you stick around for a little bit, if you would? Sure, you bet. Thanks. I may have a question or two.

So the next item is the subdivision, the GLUA 24, SUB 2403, GEO 2407, NROD 24032, request for a continuation of the park place to subdivision proposal. And then there is also a staff report. And I know that the staff is recommending that the planning commission open the public hearing, but I don't believe that there is anybody to open the public hearing for other than the applicant and, So I'm just wondering if there should be a preamble or no, I think we've read it once or twice before for this item and we can just continue to have the record remain open until the final day. Yes, that's correct. And then, and then at this point we can go ahead and hearing nothing from the applicant. Does the applicant want to say, have anything? Yes.

And I do want to, I have a clarification on the date. Okay. Okay. Okay. Then we'll hear from staff and then have the applicant come up then. So in the staff report where we were requesting a continuance until June 22nd, but we're actually wanting to request that to July 27th. The reason for that is that the applicant has revised their subdivision plans so that the sewer line that was previously proposed across the natural resources overlay district in the Northwest is no longer However, the storm pond in this southeastern portion of the site has had some revisions. There's much less impact to the Natural Resources District, but it's still under review by our consultants at David Evans and Associates. And also our engineering staff are still reviewing this new sewer connection. So we don't have a whole lot to share with you at this time, but it still will continue in the type three process And Harlan Barrow from the applicant from ICON is here to talk more.

Yeah, I guess one of the questions would be if we're going to appropriately postpone or extend the 120-day review processing time to accommodate for the proposed continuances.

Yeah, in that regard, I think it would be helpful for Missy to speak briefly about what the decision deadline is at this point because... that we are now beyond the decision deadline under state law and we're working in good faith with the applicant to review this process through the current process. agreement that we have. Melissa, do you wanna talk about that?

So the 120 day deadline plus the allowed 240 day, 45 additional days under RST 27 has passed, but the city and the applicant have, the applicant has essentially agreed to forego it's mandamus remedy. in exchange for the city granting it an additional extension to revise its plans and come back with a plan that hopefully works better to protect the city's NROD resources. I do think that this is an example of an applicant really listening to the testimony that was given at the hearing and in writing and working with the city to revamp its proposal to have a much less significant, if any impact on those resources. Okay.

That sounds good. Yeah. Okay. So can we hear from the applicant at this point?

Good evening. I guess I don't need to say who I am, but I'm Harlan Barrow with Icon Construction. And just real quickly, after hearing the testimony and talking with staff and the comments from the commission, even though that sewer crossing over the bridge is what was included in what was previously approved, we're not gonna go over the bridge anymore. We're gonna take it down south to Livesay and then along Livesay down to Redland and over to Anchor Way. And that basically follows the city's sewer master plan route. There'll need to be conditions of approval because right now we don't have the time to do all the studies to figure out pipe sizes and everything like that because, and I apologize, I don't have any exhibits to talk from, but the master plan comes down through the project from Holcomb onto Livesay and then has three connections to the south. One follows Holly, If Holly were to go to Redland, the other follows Swan. If Swan were to go to Redland, which would be over a bridge, and the third is along Livesay down to Redland. So we're taking the direct route that's accessible now. So with that routing of the sewer, excuse me, with that routing of the sanitary sewer, we no longer need to go over the bridge and impact the end rod going that way. We also heard the testimony and comments from commission and staff and from DEA about the amount of the impact Excuse me and. So we spend quite a bit of time trying to think through how we could minimize that and we've come up with a plan now that. reduces the water quality facility extent into the unrod so no longer goes more than halfway in. We're no longer seeking to adjust the N-Rod. We're gonna accept the N-Rod line as it exists. We're gonna have a two-tiered water quality facility so that it's not one big deep thing, it's gonna be two, because it's coming down a hill so we can cut in like a waterfall kind of approach. And we're also going to have two additional water quality facilities within the project that are outside the N-Rod to further reduce the impact into the N-Rod. So those are the major changes. Staff has gone to the NRC and they had some comments for us as well. They saw a version of the revised plan. It wasn't the final revised plan, but they saw a version of that. And the NRC comments were focused more on types of species and things like that rather than design components. So we're working on all that right now. I expect we'll have things resolved with DEA fairly quickly. They had a question about trying to tie in a national map or something. Didn't really apply and they have a da has a couple other comments about That we need to resolve with them that really apply Once the project is done through conditions of approval not really at this point like with fencing and things like that, so I think we'll get there with them pretty quickly and be able to to definitely make the July 27th meeting when staff can have time to finalize their review of everything and come up with a final staff report with recommendations for you all.

Great, thank you very much.

Are there any questions? I have. Since you'll be going down Livesay Road You'll have to go into the county ordinances and codes, right?

It is the county road there. Yes. So as far as getting permits for work in the road from the county, we would have to do that. Correct. Okay.

And I would like to thank you for listening. That's all I have.

Anybody else? Pete, one quick question for you. Will we receive in our package the recommendation from the NRC?

Yes, the NRC's recommendations have to do with, you know, some of the plant species that were proposed and general desire to see greater diversity of plantings in the various mitigation areas and also where practicable to preserve wildlife snags and dead trees. So these are fairly general and recommendations. They are non-binding. on the planning commission as the NRC is an advisory body.

I wasn't sure if staff was going to take into account any of those comments into the conditions of approval so we could say that the NRC's comments have been incorporated into the final conditions to be approved.

Yeah, I am essentially shepherding those along to you to have a discussion with the applicant about it. And I think they're being very open-minded at this point. I don't want to get into specifics. Great, look forward to seeing it.

Thanks for the updates. Thank you.

Okay, I don't see any other microphones turning green. Is there any other questions? Can I entertain a motion?

Yeah, I'll motion to continue GLUA 24, SUB 2403, GEO 2407, NRA 2432 request for continuation of the Park Place 2 subdivision proposal as requested by the applicant.

Second. Just to clarify, that's a date certain July 27th.

And I believe the record will remain open until that date, both for oral and written testimony. Is that correct? Okay. Thank you.

Let's call the roll. We have a motion and a second. Commissioner LaSalle. Aye. Commissioner Dole. Aye. Commissioner Espy. Aye. Commissioner Meinig. Aye. Commissioner Henderson. Aye. Commissioner Laws. Aye. Commissioner Dumont. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Is there anything else for the good of the order? Well, I have some communication items for you. I'll try not to spend too much time on these, but just long range things that we're working on. We are working with ECHO Northwest on the housing needs, housing capacity analysis. They have... been working on a public engagement plan. So this is a project that's going to run through 2027 2028 all cities in Oregon are doing this per statute and our public engagement plan involves what's called a contextualized housing needs analysis and we have plans to engage with various focus groups. We need to abide by tribal notice and consultation. They're going to be developing a housing conversation guide, a project webpage. There will be planning commission and city commission work sessions and housing developer input on the housing capacity analysis. So that's ongoing. We anticipate... having a work session with the planning commission to discuss the initial results of portions of that analysis in September. And then it'll run through June of 2027. So that is one of the items we're working on. Also with you all, the planning commission, we need to update our work plan that you had previously looked at with Aquila Herd Ravage. So we need to schedule an annual update to the city commission once we've worked with you on what items need to be amended and revised on that work plan. and I'll be leading that project with you. And that will be informed to some extent by the city commission goals and priorities as well. The city commission is doing their annual retreat sometime in summer, 2026. The Natural Resources Committee is working on a NROD brochure, Natural Resources Overlay District brochure, which is an educational piece for owners who live within the NROD or who have purchased homes in the NROD. it's a great idea the NRC came up with this and it's gonna be in plain language, short document with illustrations and that's gonna be going out every quarter when there's a property transaction within the NROD so that we folks know that there are not just regulations, but also things that they can do to enhance the NROD itself, you know. I don't know if you knew this from Kelly, but the economic development department is getting folded into the community development department, which is Anne Griffin, the coordinator. We're still in early days of that. There's a lot of work to be done, but we think it's gonna be a really nice component for community development to have the expertise of the economic development staff there, because there's a strong land use component. And that includes potentially expanding the statewide vertical housing development zone for mixed use areas, which is incentivizing housing in mixed use areas, not just in the downtown, but potentially in the mixed use corridor zones further up toward the hilltop. So that's something that we're potentially going to be doing. and would be folded into your work plan as well. We're doing an internal fee schedule audit for review fees, for community development, for building and planning. And this is a long process that we're just wanna be sure what we're charging is correct and what we're choosing those fees for. And if we're not using those fees, why are they in our schedule? Those kinds of things. just to clean up. It's not mandated by any particular thing. It's just something that Kelly Hart took very seriously and wants to be transparent about it. So it's a good process. The There is also an Oregon administrative rule about tribal engagement. The city already does quite a bit of tribal engagement outreach during the early land use process, but this is reaching out even further to deal with the formalized process of tribal engagement during land use and legislative updates. Something else we're working on? And also on the fun side, National Night Out, August 4th at the end of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, 1726 Washington Street, will be at 5.30 p.m. Community Development will have a booth, details to follow, and followed by a viewing of the Princess Bride, I believe, when it gets dark at 8.30. So I'm gonna stick around for that. But yeah, I think this year definitely the city manager emphasized the need for public facing departments to show up and be at the national light out and actually have booths. And so we would also like to be able to promote the boards and commissions that we served as well, including yourselves. So thank you. And that's all I have for communication items.

I had one I was going to throw out. I was going to give a shout out to Oregon City School District administrators, staff, families, and kids. It's the last week of school. Oh, wow. Congrats. My second grader ends on Wednesday. Good luck to everybody and all of us out there.

I'd also like to mention and give a shout out to Kelly Hart, who's graduating with an executive master's in public administration this Friday. Oh, outstanding. Very good. Wonderful. She's amazing. Good job, Kelly. Also, there were two groundbreakings. There was Clackamas Heights. Housing Authority groundbreaking on June the 3rd, and also the Tumwater groundbreaking on May 28th, both of which are on YouTube, if you want to look them up, really cool. Just the ceremonies. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thanks, Pete.

Yeah. Is there anything else? Anybody have any other questions, comments? All right, move to adjourn.