Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right, good evening. My name is Jerry Cochran. I'd like to call the City of Pasco Planning Commission meeting to order. I'd like to welcome all those in attendance this evening and ask you to join me in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. To start tonight's meeting, I'd like to ask the clerk to call the roll.

Rosa Torres. Excused. Austin Crawford. Excused. Pat Jones. Present. Kim Letterman.

Present.

Rob Waits.

Present.

Anna Crutchfield.

Here.

Here. That must be you. Brian Tunks. Vic. Excused. Miguel Miranda. Miranda.

Present.

Jerry Cochran. Present. Mr. Chair, there are six members present. We do have a quorum.

Thank you very much. And I'd like to also welcome Commissioner Miguel Miranda to the team tonight. So welcome to the team. So to start off, the Planning Commission is an advisory board made up of volunteers appointed by the City Council. The purpose of the Planning Commission is to provide recommendations to City Council regarding changes to the City's comprehensive plan, land use updates, block grant allocations, and zoning code. The Commission is tasked with considering the long-term growth and development of the community, the impact of land use decisions on community, livability, economic opportunity, housing affordability, public services, and the environment. I'd like to remind the audience that tonight's proceedings are being broadcast live. on the City of Pasco's Facebook page on Charter Cable PSC 191, and will be rebroadcast several times during the next month. The meeting is also being recorded, so you can watch it on the City of Pasco's website, which is pasco-wa.gov, click on video on demand, and you can make your selection of the meetings there. There are also copies of the meeting agenda on the back table, so you may follow along. And please, at this time, go ahead and silence your, cell phones and pagers, et cetera, to avoid any interruptions in the meeting. Also note, we had a member join, so commissioner has joined, so go ahead and note that we have another member join. For those present this evening, when you're given the opportunity to address the commission, please come to the podium, speak clearly into the microphone, turn the microphone on, state your name and city of address for the records. Before we begin tonight's meeting, I need to remind the audience and the Planning Commission that Washington state law requires public meetings like the one being held this evening not only to be fair, but also appear to be fair. In addition, Washington state law prohibits Planning Commission members from participating in discussions or decisions in which the member may have a direct interest or may be either harmed or benefited or harmed by the Planning Commission's decision. Any objection to any Planning Commission member hearing any matter on tonight's agenda needs to be aired at this time or it will be waived. First, are there any Planning Commission members who have a declaration at this time regarding the items on the agenda?

I'd like to ask Director Mattson if there's a, it's necessary for me to recuse myself on one of these items, which is, File numbers for CPA 2025-002, Z2025-001, and CA 2025-006. As a realtor of this community, I have an active client that is directly impacted by the decision made here tonight. So I'm unsure if I need to recuse myself for that.

I would err on the side of safety and say yes, probably. I think you can participate in the conversation, you know, and then when it comes to vote, you can just recuse yourself from the vote. Thank you.

Thank you. So we have one declaration of Commissioner. Any others?

This is Commissioner Lehrman. I want to go ahead and... clarify two meetings ago in November, I had made a correction. I am not living in the SR 20 Riverview area. And that correction during the meeting did not show up in the meeting minutes in December. So I wanted to clarify that. Okay. Thank you.

We'll note that in the minutes for this meeting that you brought that up and correct that on the record that way.

And we also noted in the December meeting that we don't have to recuse ourselves, even if we do live in the area. All right, also, is there anyone in the audience this evening who would object to any Planning Commission member hearing any of the items on the agenda? All right, let the record show there were no declarations. We as the Planning Commission need and value your input. It helps us to understand issues more clearly and make better recommendations to the City Council. Furthermore, in many cases, your input here at this Planning Commission meeting is your only opportunity to get your facts and opinions placed onto the official record the City Council will use to make its decisions. I encourage you to take full advantage of the opportunity. The first item on our agenda tonight is the approval of the meeting minutes from December 18th, 2025. These are provided ahead or mailed or delivered to the commissioners ahead of time. I trust you have an opportunity to look at the minutes and I'd entertain either any discussion for corrections or clarifications or a motion to approve the meeting minutes. Mr. Chairman, I move to approve the minutes. Second. All right. It's been moved by Commissioner Jones and seconded by Commissioner Crawford. Sorry. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Let the record show that the meeting minutes were unanimously approved. We have no old business, so we'll jump right into our public hearings. And we have two items on the public hearing agenda tonight. The first is the CA-2025-002, the sandwich board sign within right-of-way issue. So I'll turn it over to, I believe, Director Madsen to talk about that.

And I will turn it over to our Planner 3. I'm in bargain.

Thank you, Haley. Thank you Chair and members of the Planning Commission. For the record, my name is Ivan Barragan. Last month, this item was presented to the Planning Commission as a workshop item. This evening, it is being brought forward as a public hearing. Notice of the public hearing was posted at City Hall and published in the Tri-City Herald. No public comments were received prior to tonight's hearing. This evening, I am here to present a proposed code amendment that would allow sandwich board signs within the public right-of-way in the downtown Pasco Overly District. This proposal as directed by city council is limited in scope. It applies only to the downtown Pasco overlay district and a 300 foot buffer surrounding it. On the map before you, the downtown overlay district is shown and the 300 foot buffer area is highlighted in pink. Only properties within this area would be eligible under the proposed amendment. The proposed amendment makes targeted and clarifying updates to the city sign code. Specifically, it updates an existing sign definition to include the term board, Add sub note 18 to sound allowance table to allow sandwich board signs within the public right-of-way but only within the downtown Pasco overlay district and establishes a new code section PMC 17.15.025 titled sandwich board signs. This new section establishes clear standards regulating sandwich board signs. It limits where signs may be placed. restricts the number of signs per business and establishes allowable hours of display. It also introduces additional standards for signs located near intersections, requires compliance with ADA accessibility requirements and prohibits placement in areas necessary for vehicular access or traffic operations. The amendment further clarifies prohibited locations and establishes enforcement and removal procedures for violations and includes a hold harmless provision to protect the city from liability related to signs placed within the public right-of-way. Additional minor revisions were also included to ensure consistency throughout Title 17 regarding where sandwich board signs are permitted within the downtown Pasco overlay district. One change from the prior proposal relates to corner lot placement. The original proposal required sandwich board signs to be placed at the point along the business frontage furthest from the intersection. The revised language maintains that location as the preferred placement. However, where that placement is not feasible, it allows a sign to be located closer to the intersection, provided a minimum 10-foot clearance. from the curb radius or verge is maintained. This revision preserves adequate sight distance and pedestrian safety while providing additional flexibility for corner lot businesses. At the last meeting, the Commission raised several thoughtful questions which staff appreciated. While there was limited feedback suggesting specific changes, this proposal represents a meaningful update to a longstanding code provision that has prohibited sandwich board signs within the public right of way for many years. Our goal is to move this proposal forward from the Planning Commission to City Council for consideration at a City Council workshop, followed by final action by ordinance. Key benefits of the proposal include providing increased flexibility for downtown businesses, establishing a clear regulatory framework for oversight and enforcement, and maintaining site distance and pedestrian safety while allowing flexibility for corner businesses. Alternatives to the proposal include taking no action, allowing sandwich board signs in the public right of way without regulation, which staff does not recommend, or expanding the allowance citywide. At this time, staff recommends that the Planning Commission provide input, ask questions, and make a recommendation to City Council for consideration at the City Council workshop scheduled for February 9th, with the goal of adoption by ordinance at the regular City Council meeting on February 17th, 2026. A suggested motion is included at the bottom of page three of your staff report. Thank you. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Great. Thank you very much. Commissioners, go ahead and Commissioner Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well done. I appreciate this. I really like how this is moving forward with staying in the downtown area that is marked off for growth. and similarities and it will add to the beauty of that area with being consistent throughout the area as far as the signage and the size and that kind of thing. So well done on that. One question I had about you showed a vehicle down there with an X through it. And I read in here about vehicles not being allowed to go through the signs. That seems like that would be difficult to monitor vehicles coming through that area. But I've seen vehicles, large vehicles going through town advertising various things. So they would not be allowed in the downtown area. Is that what that means?

No, the intention of that was to represent no sandwich board signs to be mounted on vehicles. I got that idea from a surrounding city.

So the large vehicles, those large electronic ones and that kind of thing, they're still... that they don't fall into this at all.

No.

It's just the concept of the sandwich board sign on a moving vehicle or parked on a vehicle. Right. Okay, in the downtown area. This is purely a sandwich board thing. And as you read it, it's sandwich board mania, top to bottom. Okay, very good. Thank you. Yeah, of course.

This is Commissioner Lehrman. I really like the language off of... I'm trying to see which city we're looking at. Appreciate all the different cities that you shared out as far as third language. It might be city of Redmond. And the language reads, sign shall be constructed of weather resistant materials professionally lettered and neatly painted. The sign shall be constructed to avoid being blown, tipping, or falling from its intended locations. Sign shall remain in good condition, repaired, and maintained as needed. nowhere else and what you provided talked about being blown or tipped over and I feel like that's a safety concern to our community and with whether we have around here we like to see the word weighted or something like that to avoid tipping over I notice in one part of the sign codes It gives where signs can be at, and then other parts in the sign codes, as you read through our plethora of sign definitions throughout our PMCs, it gets highly more specific. And so I encourage to consider how we can build to make it more specific to be able to help protect our pedestrians and our community.

Understood. Thank you.

Commissioner Crouchfield, I have a question. I believe...

there we go I believe you said that it's restricted now to the downtown area is what we're looking at for the not citywide right okay I think we talked about or mentioned about the enforcement ability and I know we've talked about the fewer amount of code enforcement people that are available to us. And I noticed today, driving to the meeting tonight after dark on Court Street, there across from Andy's Diner, Andy's North, I think I counted three of them. One was a barber shop, one was a, a restaurant, I believe. But they were right in the sidewalk, in the middle of the sidewalk. And so when we talked about ADA accessibility, like the sidewalk for pedestrians and stuff, that clearly would have blocked the path. So I just wondered, in doing this, how is that going to be very enforceable to folks?

But the downtown area, there is a plan to expand those sidewalks, and I'm not sure if some of it has already been executed, but yeah, we need to adhere to ADA no matter what.

But I wasn't talking about the downtown. I was talking about part that isn't the downtown.

Right, and they would still be prohibited outside of the downtown.

So my point was in thinking, you know, that maybe it's a little bit more complicated than just allowing them in the downtown because now we have them elsewhere that isn't the downtown. Who's going to police that? They are in the public right away.

And one of the options we have, right, we can make the recommendation that the staff does send this to city council with allowance for a citywide implementation. So that's one option, right? And then the other option is we could recommend any other things like the weighted thing be added to it. So that's certainly within our possibility. Did you have something to say, Director Mattson?

Yes, and I apologize for cutting you off there, Chair Cochran. As far as enforcement, which I believe that's the question, I mean, last month we received over 400 code enforcement inquiries, and we have two staff right now, so it really is triaged as, you know, and As level of importance. So life safety comes first. And if there's a sign that's blown over in the sidewalk and we get complaints about it, they'll go out and check it. You know, if there's like another life safety issue. Out of that, we're going to address that first. But it's citywide. It is a problem. There's people putting out. Sandwich boards and same with downtown. So I believe we were just allowing it downtown and then putting some parameters and, you know, enforcement. I don't think we'll drastically change how it is. It's complaint based unless we add more staff. I wouldn't advocate to have our code enforcement officers focus on that unless, you know, there's a citizen who's walking every day on the sidewalk and they're blocked by a bunch of signs. Of course, we'll go take care of it. But, you know, every sign in the city, it's just not a priority right now for us to go. Police. Downtown's a little easier. I think there's more eyes and more attention on it. And we're in the area, so it's something we can kind of observe while we're going to other places too.

Any other questions or feedback for staff? from commissioners? All right, well this is a public hearing item, so we can go ahead and open up the public hearing for this item. This item only, which is the sandwich board. We'll get to the other one later. So if you're here to speak on the sandwich board right away ordinance, please come forward to the microphone and state your name and city of record. Anyone? Okay. Second, we don't have anybody online either, the second call online? Okay. All right. All right, third and final call for anyone for this public hearing item? All right, we will close the public hearing for this item. I think our next step is we can, you know, there's a motion. The staff has made a recommendation. If you have no other questions or concern, we can move with the motion as staff recommended. We can modify the motion. We can also choose to do nothing. But I would encourage us to try to help staff move this forward because it has been something that we need to move forward. So with that, I'll open it up for motions or modification to the motion.

I have a question for Director. Do you have any insight as far as potential opportunities for additional code enforcement?

Um, yes, we do have it on our agenda this year to speak with city council about, I, I, the city manager's office, you know, asked that we do a presentation on code enforcement and priorities because we did have more staff or temporary staff, I believe before I got here. And I think it was trimmed up a bit. And so when you, when you trim up your staffing, you trim up what you're enforcing on citywide. So I, my recommendation would be that we take it to council and get their advice on it. You know, if we do want code enforcement for everything, everywhere, that's going to be several more staff. And then it's a budget question at that point. So, so we do plan to bridge it later, later this year with council.

Yes. I, in keeping with that, I just think that because of the, um, the difficulties or the challenges in the code enforcement. I just question the wise action taking on something that's going to be probably needed to be enforced since it's occurring now in an area where you don't even aren't even proposing it, and yet it can't be enforced. No, it isn't necessarily as bad as maybe another issue that's called in as a violation,

I think this provides less work for code enforcement because right now the code does not allow it. And if we were technically to go enforce, we'd be knocking on 100 doors right now telling them not to put out their sign and battling it out with all the business owners about why is the city so worried about this little sandwich board sign. So I think this helps us put parameters in. downtown, it's now allowed. So we're not going to be out there chasing down sandwich boards. It's allowed in certain circumstances and now there's clear guidance for the business owners and code enforcement to follow. So haven't asked the code enforcement officers directly, but I have been in code enforcement before in my career and I would appreciate this code going through just by virtue of if there's a business owner that doesn't like their neighbor and they want to say, you know, They have their sandwich board. I'll come do something about it. It takes a lot of time to explain to them like, hey, this isn't a priority. I'd just rather have them allowed in the downtown area as a pilot case and see if we can get people to follow the rules and not stack them in corners and unnecessary locations. So I think it actually helps. I don't think it adds to the work.

The other point I would make is that the hidden gem is the city also currently technically has liability. If somebody puts out their sign and somebody trips and injures themselves, the city could technically be sued for not governing it. At least this indemnifies the city from things that business owners do with their sign that's a kind of a side benefit of the code as i understand it so it's a question for the city attorney i'm not a lawyer but it does provide some protections of liability for the city because if you have versus not enforcing or having no code versus having a code that identifies the city kids that's a little bit of protection so there are some benefits that way too is any of the current code enforcement officers being paid for by the cbg

the community building grants.

Yes, we have two code enforcement officers and I believe this round of CDBG funds was approved for $70,000 going toward, you know, one or both of their salaries. I don't know how it's precisely allocated, but there are some funds, but there is ties to that. They're required to go to specific CDBG identified areas of the community that focus on low income residents. So, I don't think that would actually focus on the downtown area. So there's a specific amount of their time associated with that program allocation. Okay.

And so far for current projection for the CBG funds for the next release amount, is it on track or decreased or?

For next year or yes, I'm not aware of next year. I know the program, you know, at the federal level has been in question if it's going to proceed or not. I know this year we have the funds for it and I'm, I'm spacing on the amount. I think we received around 400,000. That's a guess. I can check and verify at the end of the meeting for you. Okay.

And then another question I have is regards to, um, community members contacting code enforcement to share their concerns. Historically, there has been code enforcement used as harassing business owners, and if we end up codifying this, then could that potentially be another leverage, or has that problem decreased?

I think it will decrease. I'm not aware of a lot of businesses complaining about each other downtown. I'm basing that based on my past experience at two other cities, so I'm I shouldn't make the assumption here. So I haven't been aware of it. I'm sure it happens from time to time between businesses. But again, I think going back to the previous question, I think having these parameters in place help just because someone can say, you know, hey, there are signs in front of my business and we can just easily say, well, it's not allowed there. The code says you have to put it in front of your business. So I think it helps just establish rules for everyone. And if there's a good downtown association or something-esque in place, they can please each other with these roles too and show each other. So I think this is all a good thing.

Thank you.

Yeah, there's certainly tons of areas where we would like more enforcement. I'm getting tired of the motorcycles riding on the river path where it's legal, but we have no ability to enforce it. I know. So any more questions or motions? I know we are ready for a motion, so I'll go ahead and defer to that. Thank you.

I just want to go along a little bit with what Haley said. I think this as a pilot program could really help. I think most businesses want to do things the right way. And going from no rules and regs to something will help those that want to do it the right way. And I think this is a good way to ease our way into that. And with that being said, Mr. Chair, I move that the Planning Commission recommend the City Council approve Code Amendment CA2025-002, allowing sandwich board signs within the public right-of-way only in the downtown Pasco overlay district as proposed in Exhibit 2. Second.

Second.

right it's been moved by Commissioner Jones and seconded by Commissioner Crawford got it that right all those in favor of this motion say aye aye any opposed all right but the record show that motion passed unanimously thank you staff for the presentation All right, the final workshop, it's not workshop, sorry, public hearing item is CPA 2025-002, the Emergency Comp Plan Amendment, Residential Density Amendment. And I'll remind you that we workshopped on this Did we workshop or public hearing on it last month? I don't remember.

We held one workshop and one public hearing.

Yeah, so we deferred to another public hearing with another announcement, so I think that's happened. Also, I would remind the team, the commissioners, that the staff is responding to direction by city council to align that inconsistency. And the discussion, there's a lot of issues kind of built into this, but I'd like us to focus on the real issue that council directed staff, because I don't want to put staff between a rock and a hard place, which is Council has directed staff to align and address the inconsistency. Now, you can do a lot in that, but we kind of gave feedback last to, well, let's align, let's do what we need to do to align the consistency and let's leave the other stuff alone. And so I think that can help us kind of focus tonight because there's political opinions and other things about the state's interference. Let's just keep it focused on what the council directed staff to do here, if that makes sense.

Um, thank you chair and good evening planning commission. Since this is a public hearing, I'll provide some brief background on this topic and how we got here today. So as the chair mentioned, there is an inconsistency in code. Um, the city wide, this is our existing land use map. Um, citywide, all the yellow areas there are the low density residential areas in Pasco. And in 2023, the low density resignation, Low density designation throughout Pasco was changed from two to five units per acre to 36 units per acre citywide. So that was in an effort to allow additional densities in the city. And so that was in 2023. And then sometime in the last year or two, there was development proposed in the RS 20 zone. And someone noticed, you know, at the staffing level and then legal level, There's a conflict because the RS-20 zone, which is shown in these light yellow areas on the screen where the arrows are pointing to, in the RS-20 zone, the zone allows for a minimum lot size of 20,000 square feet, which yields two units per acre. So that was not compliant with the overall city zone of three to six units. So we have a problem. And once we identified that and figured it out, we have frozen development in those areas. So for over a year and actually a year and a half, I think now, people who own property in that area or want to develop have not been able to develop because there's a discrepancy. And before this came to Planning Commission, there was a lot of work legally that we had to deal with this. So I'm respectfully asking for a decision tonight just for the people who have been waiting for so long. They have property rights too. And I know that, as Chair mentioned, there are political sentiments related to it, and I have mentioned that the state is, by the end of the year, going to require these lots to yield eight to 12 units per acre with middle housing units, so duplexes, triplexes, and we have that conversation coming very soon too, and it is scary, and I understand your sentiment on it. I feel the same way, I think. The state is really pushing for housing and this is going to be a huge bill for us to mention. With that said, there's been some public comments and there were some comments at the last meeting about we should allow this area to be the lowest level in the city, which this proposed ordinance will do. It's proposed at two to three units per acre for the zoning. and then reverting the land use designation back to two to five units, just like it was before. And I think it has sprung other conversations in the community and we did receive a public comment to possibly allow for lots larger than a half acre because in some instances you can't make septic work because septic you can usually make work with a half acre lot, but in some cases you can't, it has to be bigger due to soil types. So staff recognizes that and I do, understand and sympathize, but the code has never allowed for less density than two units. The RS-20 zone was established in 1970. And then the last major update to it was in 1999. So the zone has never allowed for, unless it was existing lots, which there's a lot of existing lots out there that are an acre or bigger, but the zone has never allowed for less density than two units per acre. So if we did go backwards, if we did allow less density, we would be going backwards in what the zone allows and then mimicking more county density. And I know that's tempting to do, especially in this area, especially with some of the septic requirements to facilitate certain developments. But the reality is we're in the middle of a city and the state is mandating that PASCO grow by 18,000 units over the next 20 years. And we have to show that our zoning can accommodate those 18,000 units. And currently, and it's another discussion for the planning commission likely in March, currently we're showing a deficit of 4,000 units. So we have to show our work to the state and say, here's the zoning in Pasco and the zoning allows for not only 18,000 units in the next 20 years, But the state is also requiring that we allow different income bands within those units. So we have to have a certain amount of zero 30% income level, which we have to have apartments, a certain amount of apartments zone for in smaller lots. And so if Riverview goes backwards or even stays at two to three, which is still pretty low, which is what we're proposing and we're okay with, we're proposing that to the group. That means that this area will be allowing bigger lots at the expense of the rest of the city. And I'm wording it slightly biased by saying at the expense, but I'm putting myself in the shoes of people in the county in the north end of town where they're already frustrated with city development and it's just a thing. Cities are developing, right? That's the nature of the Growth Management Act. So if we get any lower in the Riverview area than what's proposed tonight, I can tell you as a fact we will have to densify more greatly other areas of town. So it's a trade-off and you're squeezing the balloon. So I think what we've proposed tonight is fair. I have the only slide really for this presentation on the screen. I don't have a lot of slides tonight. It's just this diagram. It shows the light yellow areas and the existing land use, like I mentioned, is three to six units. And we are proposing that the land use be Um, converted to two to five. And the reason we are allowing two is because Riverview, I wouldn't suggest to anywhere else in the city. Um, but Riverview is unique there. There's a lot of properties that are bigger, like I mentioned, and there's not available sewer. readily everywhere in the Riverview area. So the two lots does allow for certain lots to utilize septic, not all lots. There's some lots that have to be bigger due to the topography and the Ben Franklin County Health District requirements and you know those could be denied and unfortunately my opinion which not everyone will agree with is then that site isn't ripe for development because going less than two units per acre isn't consistent with what the city has had in place or where we're going. So the two units would allow for some sites to utilize septic. And to be honest, my professional opinion is that we don't want every lot in Riverview to be on septic. It's not a good practice for cities to have. thousands of septic systems throughout the city. It's better and more organized to have it all on a sewer system where everything's maintained and there's pipes going and it's just easier for the community as a whole, you know, and there's less health hazards associated with it. But I realized that's not reality, you know, people own property and they should be able to develop in my opinion. and have the ability for septic in some situations, but maybe not everywhere because if we had septic systems everywhere, then we lose our ability to really bring coordinated services to the area. So the land use proposed is two to five units per acre. And then the existing zoning is RS-20. It's been RS-20 since 1970. This zone has barely been touched since then, which is actually pretty amazing, looking at the history of the zone, which historically has allowed for two units per acre. It had a minimum lot size of 20,000. If you went any less than the lot size, you wouldn't meet the code. And then the range was two to five, so that means that that zone effectively worked as two units per acre for years and years. So what we're proposing originally we proposed two to five and the planning commission asked us to dial this down a bit. So the new proposal is a zone called our 15 and that would allow for two to three units per acre. So we're adding a unit to what the lot, the zone has allowed since 1971 unit per acre. Um, and that would, results in a lot size of a third of an acre, which is just under 15,000. I think it comes out to 14,520 square feet per lot. And we're just calling the zone R15 where you round up. You could call it R14 or 15. I went with 15. so that developers think, oh, it's 15,000, and then they look, okay, we can get a little bit smaller. And I did, in an effort to be a little more flexible with septic requirements, add an adjustment in there. And the Planning Commission may not want to go this route, but an adjustment saying that you could vary the lot size by 20%. If you needed just something slightly bigger for septic somewhere, you could do that. But then the other lots need to be smaller which wouldn't work for septic so the reasoning behind that is there's some it may not work for every septic situation but if there's a lot with like a weird lot size and you can you know you're only left with just a tiny lot at the end it it doesn't make sense to leave a wasted space so My reasoning for that was to allow maybe some bigger lots in some instances and smaller lots so that there's just a little more flexibility. So that would be lot sizes down to 11,000 square feet and then whatever 20% plus half acre is. I think the math is in. the staff report. So we have that flexibility built in just so people have a little more flexibility and they're not stuck to just one minimum lot size. And we have some flexibility in density rounding and other zones, so it's not too far off of what we offer. So that is what we are recommending tonight. Again, we are hoping for a vote tonight and a decision to bring this to council, and two to three is as low as staff is comfortable with. Obviously, the Planning Commission gets to decide and provide recommendations on it. If we go lower to two, then we're just matching what the zone did before, and that could be a strategy at this point. I wouldn't recommend going lower than two just because then we're starting to be at a density that concerns me for the rest of the city. Happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you.

Well, first I want to say how much I appreciate, and I'm sure the commissioners do as well, is that we gave you some instructions to try to thread the needle and strike a balance, and as I read through this this week, I felt like you did the best you could possibly do at balancing this between developer interests, property owner interests, the look and feel of West Pasco, and I thought you did a really great job, so I appreciate the work, and I know that it's a charged issue and a passionate issue, but I also know that, and we have to honor the council's direction, which was delete, get rid of the inconsistency, address the inconsistency. I also rather recognize that we have more heated debates on the way as the state starts to impose more stuff but I hope we can maybe separate that here because we all may many of us don't agree with what the state's trying to do but it's not the issue I don't want to load this one thing with that and so I appreciate how you threaded the needle and try to strike a really great balance so I'll look with that I'll open it up to the commissioners I see Commissioner Crutchfield is wants to speak so open up for comments and questions

Thank you. I wanted to reiterate what Jerry said. I do appreciate it. I think you heard our discussion and responded to that. And I listened to a meeting that we attended. It was with the council, and the director spoke, And you did mention looking at densifying certain areas more, some less, identifying what areas are vacant, and trying to stay away from maybe densifying certain areas. You mentioned that at the July 9th meeting, I believe, and talked about, you know, from a planning perspective, your perspective that one size doesn't fit all. historically this area when the city annexed and made promises to the residents there that it invested a lot of time and money and in the character where they were living and they were very concerned that the city was going to come in and you know put apartments and And so I think that you've tried to address that that is not going to happen and the city can stand by their word. We understand change is going to happen. I listened to what the mayor said at that meeting as well, and he talked about moving here from California and not liking the vertical building, the zero lot lines, losing the character of Franklin County. I do have a question about why we need to have maximum lot size. I mean, the minimum is one thing, but why, in other words, I think I asked you this question before. If I had a piece of property that was like, say, almost an acre, and I wanted to put a single family home there, and I believe you said, yes, you can do that. You don't have to put two or what have you.

I believe state law allows us to allow a home on a lot. That's where that comment came from. So if you already had an existing lot, I believe you can put a home on a lot. And I don't think the city can deny that. I'm seeing nods from my planning staff to my left. Thank you. So that's where, you know, if you have a five-acre lot and you want to put just one innocent little house on there, we're not going to get too worked up about it. If it was a one-acre lot, I would probably suggest to said applicant that they place the house on either side of the lot to leave room for something later and not center it. But, yes, you could. But the reason I have, if you'd like me to answer the maximum lot size, is because the zone – density range is two to three and if you go bigger for your lot size like the one per lot question I think is just a separate thing so you can just put a house on a lot so I think that's a good freebie for everyone you can just come in and have one house on a big lot and you're not going to really hear from us on that If you're subdividing and you want to add two or three lots and you want, let's say a lot size of over a half acre, well, you're not meeting the density range. So the intent of the maximum lot size is to basically say, You know, it's just making it easier for people to reinstate the density range. So if you go above a half acre size, you're going to be outside of the density range. And then there's a stipulation you can go bigger than a half acre if you go smaller in other areas and it balances out to meet the density. So if someone does really want to, if there's some parents subdividing their lot and they want the bigger lot and they want little lots for their kids, they can do a bigger lot for themselves and do smaller lots and even out the density range. So that's why there's a minimum and a maximum. And there was a maximum in the old RS-20 zone. It said minimum lot size of 20,000 square feet, but the range for that zone before for several years was two to five. So you couldn't do less than two. So there really was a max on the RS 20 zone before. This isn't really any different than that. It's just making it more clear because it sure wasn't clear to me in the original code. So that's why I, um, insert, you know, put that in here just so it was clear for applicants in the public. Good question. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

Is that okay, Jones?

Okay. So I have a question on the last page where Scott Downs sent in a letter saying that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife does not recommend this due to the separate tanks and the nature of some of the houses along the shoreline and They also noted noted that it contradicts our Shoreline master plan so question number one is there any Can you go ahead and address that letter? Because I didn't see any feedback or addressing of that concern. And then the second question I have is, if we end up recommending this to City Council, will we be coming back and updating the Shoreline Master Plan to address this new standard?

We didn't believe the Shoreline Master Program was in conflict, so I guess I disagreed with the comment. And I did reply. I think my reply was attached in the comments. If it wasn't, then I apologize. But I did reply and say the comment was noted and that we didn't believe there was a conflict in the plan. You know, the density range for the shoreline area was three to six citywide and it's getting less. So I just didn't really think their comment was valid because we're, we're essentially implying less of a density range than what was there before. So it didn't make a lot of sense. If there is a discrepancy, we would fix it. But, um, the state has these mandates for, so it's just two different state agencies with different competing policies. But I actually didn't read, and Ivan might have a better memory because I think he looked into it. If you don't know, Ivan, it's okay. But we did look into the Shoreline Master Program and did not feel that there was a conflict. So I think there's just a disagreement on how it's read. And instead of splitting errors, I just said the comment was noted in that we weren't planning on changing anything.

We did review the ShoreMine master plan a couple years back, and there were a limited number of lots that did infringe on that. But his comment, I took his comments as like, there might be a handful of lots that do, but it's such a small number of lots that I don't know how it would ever be a huge issue. There was a couple that, you know, because it's that one to 200 feet kind of thing, and there are some lots that fall into that. but it was such a small number of lots that I don't know why it's a major consideration for an entire zone.

And if there's the shoreline requirement that trumps, the zoning isn't going to override the shoreline. So if there is a specific lot that we didn't find in there, we go through and it says, This lot can only have one unit on it because of some shoreline rule. That would trump the zoning. The zoning isn't going to, so I just, I think it's a non-issue. And if we do need to clean up the shoreline master program, we would, but I would say that prevails over the zoning. If there's a specific environmental condition, I'm not going to say, well, the zoning allows this and we're going to ignore it. I mean, the shoreline master program would prevail if there's a true conflict. But thank you, I appreciate that question.

Others? There you go, sorry. I had the same letter in my hand, so great minds obviously think alike. I wanted to underscore what Haley was talking about, about how important connecting the sewer is over septic tanks, and the shoreline thing, If there's too many septic tanks, that makes me concerned about how that could impact shoreline and that kind of thing. So I'm happy to hear where that's at. So thank you for answering that. A question about how development would take place. If we're going to tell people as they develop, okay, you have to be on sewer and there's no sewer line there, who pays for the sewer? Is it the developer? Is it the city? Is it shared? And can anyone tell me right now what the cost to put in sewer line is per foot for development areas?

It's expensive. I don't know the exact amount, but we might have someone in the audience who develops and may know the exact amount. But I know that it's infeasible if you are outside of it by 1,000 feet or less. It just makes it not feasible. If it's next to your project, it's still really expensive. And if you have to bring in any amount, even a couple hundred feet, it starts to take money off the bottom line and just makes it not pencil. So to answer your question, if that's why we're lowering it to two. So the city change in 23 took a stance like three to six. If you don't have sewer near you too bad, wait for it to come or pay for it. I'm sure they weren't that cold about it, but yeah, The sentiment was, you know, we're aimed at, you know, getting a sewer system in place. So going back to two does allow not all situations, but some situations to utilize septic. And if you're not a good candidate for septic, like let's say you're trying to do 20 lots and it just doesn't work, like all the lots can't be exact size to make septic work then the expectation is that you extend sewer or wait for it to be brought to the area in our current plans the city has been trying to partner with the development community down in the area for a lift station um you know we did have several meetings uh city manager zabel was was very involved in those meetings And, you know, you need to get easements from certain property owners and there's some that don't want development. So they're not giving easements unless you're paying them a trillion dollars. And then at that point, it doesn't doesn't really pencil. So if the city has funds for it, then, you know, we would like to extend sewer in that area. But the money isn't readily available right now. You know, we get their public works team does a great job getting. State grants for different road projects, you know, so we're always looking if we can find a grant to do it. I think that would be awesome. But there's just not that many grants available for this. So it's just really budget. We have a lot of things in the city to take care of and maintain. Um, so the, the sewer, I think realistically in that area, if we can't find a way to fund it, um, would be partnership with the development community. And those conversations have fell flat as of recent. And I think it's just, there's been a few people who've dropped out and, and that, so it's, it's to funding, but you know, that's why I think this is good to go down to two to allow for some people to develop. So they're not just completely stuck if they're super far away from sewer.

Um, so it could be, the developer, it could be the city, it could be a partnership. Yes, it could be. It could look like a lot of different things.

Yes, if there was a developer who wanted to develop like a huge site and it penciled, then they'd probably bring sewer and late come right and have other people pay for it. But, you know, a lot of sites aren't big enough to justify that cost to bring sewer down. So unfortunately, it's just one of those situations where you need to wait for the sewer services to become available and the easier way to do it for the city if we don't have funds is require it so someone has to be first and then it inches down to the areas if you allow septic everywhere and make the lot sizes bigger and just say you know what fine we're opening it up everybody can do septic then you know sewer is just a thing of the past you know getting it through just it will take a very long time to get into those areas thank you uh this gentleman

Can we call on him so he can answer my question, Mr. Chair?

Do you know what the answer is? Well, one of the costs is lift stations, which are really expensive because it's a low-lying area.

Again, even if it's a 150-way, if it's a bill, you have to install an expensive and operated maintainer.

It could add up to millions pretty quick, like a lift station. I mean, it's very expensive. Just bringing the line down, I think, is just a lot. I don't know the numbers, unfortunately, but I know it's enough not to make a project even worth it.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. That's all. Thank you. Any other commissioners with questions or comments?

I do have a question or a comment on section 25.30.05. I wish I could find it in all this paperwork now, but I made a note about it earlier. And I would like a little clarification about this. It talks about allowing the director to adjust the minimum lot size requirement for any parcel having characteristic needing adjustment in order to fully develop if the health district requires it for some reason. So I'm wondering if the health district requires more area for septics, why would the city be involved in that? The health department issue would probably be handled by the health department. And then it goes on to talk about to address site-specific constraints, soil condition, drainage, topography, parcel configuration, I think you mentioned that, but I feel that there needs to be some example of circumstances requiring the use of that administrative discretion. And I would think that, you know, that kind of adjustment authority, if that's needed, why not have a hearing examiner provide a neutral decision maker that could occur in the public, notice to neighboring property owners so they would know what's going on. And I know the Board of Adjustment used to do that. I just felt that that kind of avoids any, you know, appearance of any impropriety on the city's part or what have you. That part bothers me. So that was, yeah.

Yeah, and I appreciate the comment. It was meant to be very flexible. So how it reads right now is, you know, the director can approve adjustments to the lot size 20%, either less or more.

20% is a lot.

Yeah, and that's a policy question for the group. If you think 20% is... too much we can adjust it but it is meant to be flexible and if we are going to need to take it to the hearing examiner i say just take it out and just say here's your box and you're stuck with that box no matter what because taking that to the hearing examiner for applicants is a cost to them as much as the city so i would say how it's written right now is is very flexible so you have a minimum lot size of um 14 520 square feet so if you have a odd shaped lot for instance and you're trying to do like 10 lots and you can't do them all cookie cutter the same size this is just meant to allow some smaller lots in some areas and bigger lots so 14 520 80 of that so the the lots could go down to 11 000 square feet um which to me isn't very small. That's a big, big lot still, but you know, I'm, I'm jaded. I look at urban densities all day long, so it might feel big to people in that area. Um, so it would be from 11,000 square feet in some change to, um, let's see here. Half an acre is so the, you know, the maximum lot size is a half acre, which is 21,780. And you could increase that by 20% up to 26,000. And I don't know, I thought that would be a good idea for the Riverview area because I know that there are people that cherish bigger lots. And I thought if someone does want to subdivide and, you know, the parent example is probably silly, but, you know, if someone wants to subdivide and leave a bigger lot for themselves and maybe some smaller lots, I thought that would be a kind of cool flexibility. But if we don't like that, percentage or the director discretion that I would just suggest we stick to minimum lot size of 14,520 square feet and maximum lot size of a half acre and not allow that flexibility is my response to that comment.

Thank you. Would it be fair to say that the code's been amended to basically reflect maximum flexibility to keep people or current properties from kind of being hamstrung?

Yeah, it is developer-focused or property owner-focused, I guess I should say. So it does give people the max amount of flexibility. It doesn't solve all the issues. If there is, again, a septic system that the health district says has to be at least 26,000 square foot lot, then I can't really help there. If you can't make the other lot smaller and make it work, then it won't work for the septic requirements alone. But I was just thinking more like there's odd-shaped lots, there's topography. Sometimes you put a road through the middle of the lot. It just offers a little more flexibility in the development. But it does create smaller lots in some situations and bigger lots.

Sure. No, I was just clarifying that. Of course. I think it works well. Thanks.

I have a quick question. As a realtor, I scout out land oftentimes. I might even say that 20% maybe not be enough. I know a lot of times these properties aren't exactly one acre or 1.5 acres or two acres and so forth. I mean, I have an active client right now that has a parcel that's 2.48 acres. And so he can't get five half acre lots from that. And the Ben Franklin Health Department requires at least minimum 0.50 acres exactly or more in order to allow for onsite septic system. And so the alternative is four parcels, and that four parcels would in turn make those parcel sizes about 0.62 acres. And so as I was reading through this, I did see for 25-30-050-1A, the lot size adjustment comment. And so you do the math, and for that property specifically, he's on the wrong side of that 20%. 20% of half acre above, it just puts them on the wrong side. And so I wanted to bring that up to see what kind of feedback or guidance said client would receive from the city in that situation.

So he would just need to go smaller and wait for sewer. It would be my answer. Smaller lots. He wants bigger lots so he can utilize septic. But I would say that site isn't ready for development. And I know that sounds cold. It's just... You know, if you start going the other way from two, you know, less than two units per acre, then we're starting to densify at one unit per acre. So it's the cold land use response, I guess. And I feel bad saying it, but that would be my response to it is that there's a desire to do bigger lots. At that point, that's where I'm hoping the city and applicants can coordinate together to bring sewer to the area, but not every lot. Because if we were to go that way and go in favor of that example, I think there's a similar example that came up in public comment. Then I would just say we're opening up septic for the whole area and then that really limits the city's ability to establish a sewer system later on. If everybody's on septic and everyone has bigger lots, then we don't really have the ability to establish a system long-term and I'm looking at it from, you know, multiple sides here, like property rights, um, you know, zoning from the city standpoint and the state regulations and just all sorts of angles. Um, so I, I understand not, it doesn't hit everything and I wish it did, but it's just the recommendation I came up with based on all the competing interests in the area.

Director Mountsend with, all the work that you're doing on trying to be uh... peacemaking between all those different interest groups uh... and uh... laws and standards, it sounds like it's going to be a greater burden onto your guys' shoulders. Will you guys have the staffing to be able to make those individual decisions versus the automated permit systems and things like that that the city's been pushing for? Okay.

Yes, I'm not sure what isn't automated in this process. Everything in the code I can easily administer. Planners can administer. The flexibility in here is very flexible. So we'll probably, if we're unsure, err on the side of the developer and allow the 20% swing. So I don't see any additional... work for staff. I mean, the zone has been frozen for a year and a half, so we haven't technically, so we'll probably get a wave of applicants coming in that are super happy that we did something and didn't just sit on this for years. So, you know, government's slow. And I, you know, part of that's due to staff. We were slow on this. I was slow on it. So, you know, I don't think it will. I'm not reading anything in here that we can't handle with our existing staffing levels.

Of course. Great, so I think there, it sounds like there is a question about, I mean, when I hear the director's discretion, I mean, you have discretion in the permitting process as staff anyway within, and I think the only alternative, if I recall, and you can correct me, is there's a special permitting or special use kind of thing as well option that you could apply to this. Like I remember we were doing that with the truck parking. Like, hey, we're not gonna restrict everything in the truck parking, but we're gonna also make sure that it's a special use permit if you wanna, and that's just something you guys as staff adjudicate. And I agree with you, though, it's too heavyweight for the hearing examiner because that'll be, restrictive so i think we have lots of other things where it's at the staff's discretion and i think your spirit was trying to be able to be flexible to a variety of needs it sounds like so does that make is that the way yes and if we're worried about it you know discretion we could just take discretion out and just say minimum lot area is 14 000 maximum is half acre and you know

Applicants can swing 20% really without even having to justify it, but the way it's written. It's so easy you know and I Pesco does not have a lot of director discretion built in Pesco needs a code update I've noticed So there is you know once you start trusting a certain director team, and then they move on you know I guess it does there is a risk right how is the next director going to interpret it? But this is written in such a way that you know it's if it had the word absolute or you have to demonstrate 100% feasible that nothing else will work. There's ways that it can be worded where it's super strict. How it's worded now is just very laid back in my opinion.

Any other comments or questions for staff before we open up the public hearing? Okay, we're opening the public hearing on this item. If you wanna come forward and speak, please turn the microphone on and state your name and city of address.

Thanks. My name is Roger Wright. I live on Willoway and Pasco. I'm a civil engineer. I've been here in the Tri-Cities for a number of years, and thank you very much for serving. I recognize these are not high-profile, high-compensation positions, so thank you very much for taking your time and doing this. And I appreciate, yeah, I jokingly said that. I also appreciate Director Madsen's staff. They've been very responsive to me, so thank you. So I completely understand the city's need to create housing lots that I've been involved in that my whole career. We want to do that. But it's got to be reasonable and logical. So I do also appreciate Director Matheson's offering the proposal about giving some leeway in those lot sizes. But with septic, it just doesn't work. And I'm going to give you my personal example here that I'm currently working on. But the health department requires no less than half an acre. And if you guys allow no more than half an acre, unless you've got a parcel of land that equals exactly half acres, you can't develop it. It's as simple as that. So we're currently working on a development on Road 72. We wanted to go sewer. We wanted to go over three lots to the acre, three and a half lots to the acre. We started working with the city of Pasco over two years ago, our development and the development next to us. We were going to fund a lift station in a forest main. All the city had to do was you have to modify your sewer comp plan, so you have to go to the Department of Ecology, and for two years, every three or four months, we get an email saying we're working on it, we're working on it, we're working on it. In October, we get an email saying, we don't have the time and budget right now, so we're not going to work the sewer comp plan. So we had no choice. We wanted to go sewer and more densified development. So when they came back, we couldn't do that. We understood that they were having this amendment to the zoning. We said, great, we'll go half-acre lots and do septic. But again, our development just doesn't even out half-acre lots. So even the 20% would just barely make the lots on one part of the development for just the configuration of the existing lot work out so we could get septic system in there. There's no way to go less than half an acre to get that average that Director Madsen wants because the Health Department won't let you go. Years ago, the Health Department would let us be a little more lenient, part of the road and easements and things like that. Now they don't accept any of those things. You've got to have a half acre lot. In the past, in S-20, several years ago, 10 years ago, we developed some lots that we couldn't quite get to lots to the acre. So City of Pasco let us do 1.6 because it just made logical sense. I'm not asking you to change what Director Madsen is talking about here. Two lots to the acre, I get it, I understand why, but there's got to be some common sense. All I'm asking for is that there's a workable solution where the lots don't work out to exactly half acre lots. And the 20% would probably work. I think that's a reasonable one, but you can't save the 20%. And then the other part of your lots have to be less than that. So it all averages out to two. You can't get less than half acre lots. The health department won't lay it. So it's just, it's simple math. Unless you've got a development that works out exactly half acre, you can't develop it. We would have been happy to go sewer city. Pasco has told us that they won't. So, um, I just hope that you'll come up with a reasonable option, continue this process, make it available. Most people are going to want to go sewer because you get more lots to the acre. But in some places, it's just not workable at this point in time. Thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead and can you turn? Anyone else? Well, his mic's on. Can anybody else want to speak on this issue? Go ahead and come up and state your name and city of address.

My name is Chuck Rambo and my property is on Wearnette Road between road 64 and 68. So my comments are along the same lines that were just discussed. I think it was inadvertent, I don't think anybody would write this on purpose, but actually prohibits short planting of a piece of property that's between 2.4 and 2.5 acres because 2.4 is as far as you can get with a 20% addition to a half acre. 2.5 is as small as you can go to be compliant with the health department requirements for a half acre minimum size. So you can't fit four lots, you can't fit five lots. And I don't think that was the intention. I had some suggestions that maybe it should, at least for smaller pieces of property being subdivided, a 25% leeway would be workable for a piece of property that's that size, happens to be the size of my property. So as it's worded with only 20%, I just would be prohibited from subdividing the property. And then what the state and the city ends up with is one house per two and a half acres, which is, I don't think anybody's intent here. So I probably, should just discuss the details of this with Haley later, rather than trying to give somebody a markup of 25 instead of 20, and minimum or maximum instead of just maximum.

Thank you.

So my name is Brett Lott, and I live on Castle Holly Court in Pasco. I'm working with Mr. Wright on the same project, and looking at that and trying to fit that, as talked about, we definitely would like to do sewer. Definitely blocked from the city from continuing that, so that isn't even an option, even if we'd really like to do that. So when we come across some of these kind of things, most of the stuff fits within a box, but then every once in a while you have something that just doesn't fit in the box. So if you write a policy that just says, well, it's this, and then you leave out some areas that are kind of unique. So my suggestion would be to write something in the policy for those kind of things that come up and all of a sudden you come up 400 square feet of the 20% that's over the half acre. It's like, well, it's so darn close. And then all of a sudden the hands are tied by the people that are issuing the permits. They're going, this is what's written. In six months or a year down the road, all these meetings are going to be forgotten about how we're really trying to. The intent is to get homes built. We need 50,000 homes a year here in Washington state. There's a huge national shortage. Affordable housing is really an issue. I'm a builder. I build homes, and it's really a challenge. And every day, literally every day that we go longer and we can't develop the property because we're being pulled back is raising the cost of the price of the house. So anything that we can do to move forward to do that. And so I would just say if there could be something to be written in there, If you put a strict guideline that still frees the hands of those that are issuing the permits or making the decisions on that, that allows them for certain situations to be able to go beyond the mark, whether that means broadening that a little bit instead of 20%, it goes to 25 or 30 that was suggested there, or a provision that allows something to be looked at with a decision making of that. So in our particular situation, the city is prescribing the road. We kind of put lots on one side. We kind of put lots on the other side. The lots on one side work at half acre. The lots on the other side are .64. So we're just like barely out of there. And If we could put this sewer in then yes, it would be great and more homes would be on sewer But there's the reality is as much as developers would like to pay for all the sewer and get it in everywhere Not everybody's doing a 50 or 100 acre development to pay for the sewer to come in there so I think my ask would just be a little more flexibility in some way to kind of meet some of those needs because we're just such a tight constraint that leaves some people out of the picture. And I think just saying, sorry, you can't do it because it doesn't meet it is not really the city government should be. Let's find a way to make it work and make it happen for everybody. Thank you.

Thank you all for your comments and feedback. Are there any questions from the commissioners for the speakers that you have based on their comments? Go ahead.

Gentlemen, there seemed to be a theme of all three of you that if there was a little more leeway of perhaps 25%, that seemed like a common thread that that would allow your projects to go to move forward or might make things better. Is there some truth to that? That if 25%, like let's say we did 20% with the ability to ask for up to 25% as a possibility. I know the last gentleman that spoke said even more, like up to 30% or something. I don't know if you said 30, but I know you went even further in yours, I believe, sir. But the other two gentlemen.

I get it.

But I know I heard 25% at least a couple of times. and the asking to do so because yeah, not everything is perfectly square, not everything's cut and dried. It's land we're talking about. So yeah, I totally get that. I wonder if something that is in place here that 20% and there could be a codicil that said that the developer could apply or make a request or whatever the verbiage would be for a 25% leeway or something, review, special review to fit the circumstance. Developers, they're good people, they work hard, they know the land, they're the people that are the ones doing it. They know what needs to be done. So if they came forward and said, here's what we need to do in order to build these houses, it would be in the city's best interest to sit down and work with them rather than just say, well, no, we can't. So I think we should consider something along that line, just, I mean, have some discussion on it because it seems relevant that something like that would be worth discussion. it's not asking for the moon, it seems worthy of discussion to me.

Let me ask Director Mattson, hearing these comments, do you have, does staff have any suggestions on a mechanism that would allow exceptions but not rules, but also without defeating the whole purpose of the change because part of the problem is if you allow too great of flexibility, you kind of defeat the whole purpose of what we're doing here. So if you have suggestions on based on what you heard that would kind of with that at that discretion, uh, I think we'd love to hear about it and then we can have some discussion about it. Sure.

The short answer is no. And I did spend a lot of time trying to figure this out when Mr. Wright provided the comments. Um, and I know there's other situations and you know, we looked at this extensively to see, you know, how it could work. If we did go up to 25%, as Commissioner Jones suggests, then you're going outside of the density range of two to three. You're effectively allowing one to three units per acre. So yeah, it's just a math problem at that point. So it does lock them in. Like the suggestion I did have for the 20% swing doesn't really help if the lots have to be bigger for septic requirements. But then that goes back to the competing interests, right? So the city does not... you know it's not in good business for the community and the residents you know to allow septic systems everywhere they start to fail then there's an expectation the city steps in so the the best answer would be to include a coordinated sewer system which yeah the city has um you know attempted to make that work but without you know being flesh and cash for the sewer system it's it's moving slow and and possibly has stalled right now I do know that back in September of 2025 the city sent out a notice to the group of developers that we were working with in the area and trying to coordinate it. You know, hey, we had a meeting. We're waiting for responses from some of you. We've only heard back from one. And, you know, it was ghost town. And I think the reason is because some of the developments fell through or easements weren't able to be obtained. There's people holding out. So it just sort of crumbled, you know, when the city was working on it. So I wouldn't say it's accurate that the city is tabling it. I think it's accurate to say the city doesn't have Funds available right now to, you know, make that a priority, but we're, we're looking and if there is a way to find it, we know there's an issue and I don't think it's right to have. This area in the city, and then not address it, but it was an annex. You know, this is, this is what happens with cities and you have older areas coming in. to town, you inherit these problems. That's why we're not too excited to take on the donut holes because it's the same situation. It's not city services. And if we take it in, then people want to develop right away. Well, city, where's the sewer? I'm in the city now. That's why we're not excited to take those in. I mean, it would be great from my OCD standpoint, land use standpoint, to take in all the donut holes. create one city. But in reality, just the timing of how things were built and where infrastructure is going and how we're moving up to the north, it's just not the reality right now. So short answer, I don't have a solution. If we did allow Bigger lots, which I believe is a common sense approach from that angle, you know, just allow us to develop with these subjects. I'd be saying the same thing if I owned property and I was developing. So I'm not too thick to understand that. Yeah, we could give a little bit there. But if we do, like I mentioned before, we're opening up. the ability to have everybody do septics in that area, and then we lose the ability for a coordinated sewer system. So I don't have a good answer to solve every issue that's at the end for this topic.

Well, and like you said, you defeat the purpose that we need to align the inconsistency, and you're dropping it to one if you go beyond 20%. So you have another comment, and then I know Kermit should go ahead. Go ahead.

I just have a question about the sewer, Director, because I think it's probably the same as in the past, but the city will put out the main trunk line, right? And then As builders want to build a development, then that cost of connecting to the trunk line or what have you is passed on to them, and then the owner of the property, I know when I connected to sewer, it's been a while, but it was expensive, even back then. I believe it was at least $6,000, maybe more, probably more. So is that still the way it works? It's passed on to the property owner.

Yes, if the property owner elects to connect, then you pay a connection fee that pays for your capacity in the plant. And that pays for the plant and the maintenance and the whole system for the city. If it's a vacant lot and there's a developer connecting into the city's trunk line facility, The connection fee is paid. It's likely passed on to the home buyer, to be honest. I mean, the developer pays or the, you know, it's paid at building permit fee. So I'm not sure who.

Part of doing the project. And then for the homeowner, it's part of having the property.

But then you're connected to a system. You don't have to mess around with septic. You know, you can use your four yard. I mean, there's been, it is costly, but it, you know, it costs money to run a city.

Yes, absolutely.

And provide, you know, people can flush their toilets and use the roads. I mean, all of that just costs money. So, yeah, there is a cost.

Thank you. So, Director Mountain, the trunk line is the cost that right now the city doesn't have to certain areas, doesn't have the funding for.

Yes, to bring sewer to that area would be multi-million, you know, dollars. And sewer lift stations, and this is where it's getting a little out of my expertise, sewer lift stations, you know, where you don't have gravity to install the lines and you need to pump it to certain areas, I mean, that gets way more expensive too. It would be a capital project, and if we had, yeah, funds for it, I imagine that would be a priority. But there's also, you know, existing infrastructure that needs to be Maintained and or upgraded there's you know, probably other deficiencies around town that we need to fix And if we could fix it all and we had enough money to I'm sure we would so the trunk lines the city pays for not developers not the developer so if we don't have it in our plan, so we have a Six-year capital improvement plan and that lists all the city projects that we're going to do if it's not in our plan to extend sewer to a certain area and developer would like to develop their site and let's say they unfortunately can't meet the septic requirements and they want to do 300 lots we'd say well the city isn't just going to out of the kindness of its heart go build and extend sewer to facilitate that development so the developer would be required to extend sewer all the way to the site and then connect to it and pay the connection fees but we could credit I'm not sure if we can credit connection fees or not I believe you might be able to but either way they'd be able to do like a latecomer agreement People around the area who have been waiting to develop would likely hook into it and then pay them back some of the fees. It's not a guarantee they get everything back, but they'd be on the hook for that.

So out in the Broadmoor area a few years ago, the city council passed the TIF funding.

Yes.

So is there a mechanism like that that can be able to utilize for these smaller pockets of development?

Well, are you talking about tax increment financing or are you talking about traffic impact fees? There's two acronyms that are the same thing. Yeah, tax increment financing. Not exactly. The tax increment financing, and I'm going to do a terrible job of explaining it, so I'm probably going to pass on that. But I... Maybe that is something we could look into. Actually, I think it's the same concept. And I'm not sure if there's a limit how many you can do in the city. I know Washington's pretty, you know, just recently allowed it a couple of years ago. So I think we were one of the first cities to utilize that or close to you. So yeah, that's a good suggestion. And I'm sure this conversation will bring to light the frustrations of the area again. So I see this all as a good thing. I know, if you're trying to develop and meet the septic and everything, it's probably very frustrating. But I think talking about this with the planning commission and then eventually council will bring more light to it as we talk about our biannual budget and just maybe there's going to be more direction to focus on this area. Um, but there are a lot of areas we need to focus on in the city too. So I just think talking about it and brainstorming ideas, I know that CED will definitely keep your eyes out and public works well for that area because we don't like seeing the area sit stagnant either. And you know, nobody is out there to, you know, make it not develop. Well, I think we, we all want to see that. It's just what, what can we actually do within our means without costing the public? ideally it's grants and we figure out a way for development to help pay for it and it's nice if someone starts and then it just keeps extending, but that's not reality right now. It's just too far away in some instances.

Just one question about like septic and that, so the health department still regulates that, is that correct? In the past I knew they would do a certain system that they had to do and then it got a little bit more, sure expensive or you know they had new regulations but they're still the ones that govern that the septic yes that's correct we do not because once the the property has like your drain field and so forth once it fails you're kind of Yeah, you're basically in a problem. Yeah, I heard that. Because I had a neighbor that was out there one time on road 50, and they could only do laundry once a week because their drain field was, they didn't want to connect to sewer, but it was available. So I guess, anyway, but you answered my question. The health department is the one that makes sure that

Yes, and that story you just mentioned, that highlights why most cities don't allow new septic systems to be installed. So I think PESCO is being very flexible with proposing two, because a few years ago there was a stance made that three, right? So that eliminated septic altogether. So we are allowing like a small sliver of septic, but... it causes so many issues that a lot of cities don't allow new septic under only under extreme circumstances and this could be looked at as extreme with this right because it's very rare they wouldn't have another enough room for another drain field right if there was an emergency situation where a septic system failed and there wasn't sewer nearby i think we'd work with them you know that wouldn't be right but if there is sewer nearby i think the code says you need to connect which is expensive but you know At some point, we want to get people off septic under the system.

In part of the paperwork we received, there's two motions that you recommend that we make to approve all this. In these motions, would that include the 20% flexibility as part of the overall plan?

Yes, and just point of clarification, have we closed the public hearing yet, or was your intent to keep it open? Okay, you can leave it open, yeah, and I'll answer, I'm just going to keep answering it, just sorry. I used to, this group is actually very good at following the procedure, so I need to not jump in as much because I don't need to. To answer your question, yes. The motions as read, so I have two, and it's, you know, we could probably do one. I just divided it into two just in case we pulled apart the two issues. So the first motion aims at the land use change, which is shown on this screen. It's that top part where it says land use, you know, we're going from three to six to two to five. So that's what the first motion says, just land use, the comprehensive plan designation. And then the second designation relates to the zoning change, which is part two of that slide where we're going from RS 20 to RS 15. And then that also incorporates the, it says associated zoning and comprehensive plan text amendments. But now that I'm reading that, replace. the associated zoning, and it should just say text amendments. So I think what Ivan and I would like to do for the second motion, since we did find a code reference that needs to be included, we would like to share the screen for motion two when we get to there. But both motions will approve everything as written. The code changes in there. I just have like one minor tweak. I'll throw it up on the screen for you.

So I think what I'd like to do.

Any other questions for the speakers that testified today?

Any other speakers? I think we've got a bridge in the company online.

I'd like to make two quick comments. One is that the state of Washington has been extremely strict over the last 48 years. You're going to find a lot of septic systems that

are old that are problems, but not the newer ones. They're really, really strict about putting in drain fields that are all pressurized.

They come out and watch to make sure that every stream of water rises the same height so that you can't have a plug where the drain field gets plugged up and that sort of thing. The other comment is that the 20% That covers anything more than three acres as far as just how do you divide it up into half acres.

But it doesn't cover anything less than three acres.

And I think Haley mentioned the fact that you don't want to have these pieces of property that are two and a half acres like mine. Nobody lives there, it's surrounded by nice residences, but you can't do anything with it and it becomes

a problem for the community, just having a vacant lot that's not improveable.

So I think that would be in favor of a 25% latitude, at least for smaller pieces that really need it to satisfy the health of our people.

I'm gonna go ahead and close the public hearing, because I think we need to move on. So for commissioners, are there any other comments, feedback, or questions before we entertain motions?

Go ahead. Okay, thank you. So if I wanted to make a motion that changed the 20% to 25%, where would I make that within your two proposed motions? The second one?

So the first motion is okay to fire away. And second motion, I would like to throw up the second motion on the screen for you to read. So I would recommend doing motion one first. That's just for the land use change. And then the second motion, we just have some wording that we modified to include a reference I missed in the code. It said RS-20. It needs to say RS-15. It's a very minor change. But I would start with the first motion, and then we can go to the second, and I'll advise you on that.

This is Commissioner Lerman. Okay.

I move that the Planning Commission recommend the City Council approve Comprehensive Plan Amendment CPA 2025-002, including proposal land use map amendment, establish the low density residential Riverview designation 2-5 DU and acre development. Okay. As shown in Exhibit 2 and the 2018 Comprehensive Plan Addendum shown as Exhibit 7.

Second. right been moved by commissioner lehrman and seconded by commissioner jones all those in favor for motion one on the land use say aye aye aye are there any opposed all right let the record show that the motion for comp the land use uh amendment has passed unanimously all right and then i'll turn it over back to director madison because i believe you guys want to show something on the screen regarding the language for motion two.

Yes, and I hope everyone's okay with a minute of awkward silence because I need 30 seconds to type this and send it to Ivan if you don't mind.

Thank you. You weren't multitasking and typing with one hand and talking with the other.

Thank you.

And just to summarize, Ivan will be sharing this on the screen. We are revising the motion to include a code reference in the municipal code that references RS-20 zone. So when we make these changes, we go through the entire municipal code and anywhere it references RS-20, It needs to be changed to R15. And so I missed one of them. And this isn't really a political change. It's just replacing the reference of RS20 to R15. So we just added that as a last part of the sentence. And then the rest of it remains the same. Commissioner Jones asked if the second motion covers the code changes. And it certainly does. There's a section in here that says... You know, the map revision and approval of the associated zoning map, comprehensive plan, and text amendments identified in Exhibit 6. So this covers all of the changes as shown in the packet with that extra revision. So it's shown on the screen if somebody can... Read that, or if you want to make that motion, it's there for your convenience on the screen. Thank you, Ivan, for your help with that.

So it was just a missing component, not a change?

Yes, sir. We just caught it at the meeting, and I'm sure that's the only one because I went through the code several times and searched keywords. So it should be the only one left.

All right. Again, I'd entertain a motion for this, or go ahead.

I move to recommend that the city council consider approval of the rezone replacing the RS-20 zone with the R-15 low density residential district as shown in the zoning map revision parentheses exhibit four closed parentheses and approval of the associated zoning map comprehensive plan and text amendments identified in exhibit six. This includes revising PMC 21.20 to replace references to RS20 with R15. I would like to revise that though to be 25% rather than 20%.

Point of order on that motion. I mean, the 25%, I believe, does move us beyond the density limit, right?

if you leave it at 25 then it requires it would allow for lots 25 larger and 25 smaller and the stipulation still stands that you need to meet the density range so what it's doing is just allowing slightly smaller lots under 11 000 square feet and slightly higher lots but it isn't setting us out of the density range because the code still says density range so it just adds a little more flexibility With lot sizes, but does not mess with the overall density range and it's still within the discretion of the director to say yes or no Yes, but as I've stated it's written very flexibly flex Yeah, it's it's written in a very flexible way that you know, I think a director not allowing it would be super strict Great.

I just want to make sure the commissioners knew what they were voting for. So thank you for the clarification So do we have a second on that motion?

MS. Point of clarification. I thought at one point you said that when it gets to 25 percent, then it moves it to a 1 to 3 density, which would put us out of the 2 to 3. MS.

It does if we allow larger lots but not the smaller lots to balance it out. So what the applicants and what I understood the public hearing comments to be was allow larger lots than a half acre for multiple lots. If you do the smaller lots, then you're less than 20,000 square feet and you can't develop septic. So if it was 25% larger but we didn't adjust it smaller and make the density range, it certainly would be. But as stated, it would be. allowed in the density range. It's just allowing a bigger swing. Just a little bit. 5% more.

Commissioner Lerman seconds it.

All right. It's been moved by Commissioner Jones and seconded by Commissioner Lerman with the modification in the text. The text amendment to move it to 25% and 20% of the director's discretion. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Yes. I'm opposed.

Okay. Thank you. The motion passes, not unanimously, with one opposition. And what's the next steps on this? right I assume we go to City Council for a workshop and then the City Council would do the and and for those of you came tonight if you have more feedback the city you know we are recommenders we're not deciders so if you have more feedback for the City Council I encourage you to make your thoughts known when the City Council meets on this for both the workshops or for the the public hearing

And I'm happy to take comments in after the fact and include them in the city council packet if that helps. Yeah, the city council will be, yeah, considering it at a closed record hearing, they could decide to hold their own public hearing. So if planning commission holds the public hearing, council does not have to hold a public hearing, but they may elect to. So if we do get a lot of comments, I will commit to including those in the packet and And whatever I forward to city council, I'll say, here's the comments that were provided for the public hearing, and here's comments I've received in between, and I'll put them in there and let council know. They may want to err on the side of safety of holding another public hearing, especially if they adjust part of the recommendation from planning commission. But yeah, the next steps are that staff would work on this staff report. We typically put these in the system about a month before it goes to council. So I would say the soonest this goes to council would be mid-February for a workshop and then end of February for a decision. Most likely it would be, you know, end of February and then early March for a decision.

Thank you. All right, thank you for the good discussion. Thank you for speaking on the topic in the public hearing. With that, we have no workshop items, and I'll turn it over to Director Matson for any other business for the commissioners.

Sure, so I have two items. First, I wanted to introduce our new senior planner, Dan Levitt, and he's recently joined our planning team. And he comes to Pasco with over 15 years of planning and community development experience in central Washington. So we're very happy to have him. Most recently, he was a senior project manager and land use planner with a private consulting firm. So he helped applicants you know, look at the codes and propose things to the city. So I always appreciate that insight. I did come from the development community myself in the government trying to fix everything. And then you learn you can't fix everything and you try and do your best to balance it. So Dan has a good perspective from the applicant's perspective. So we're really glad to have him. And he did present to planning commissions and councils. He was also a prior community development director for the city of Euphrata. and he oversaw the planning and building and code enforcement. So he has experience with the State Environmental Policy Act, zoning comprehensive plan subdivisions and public hearings. So he's jumping in. He will be helping us with code changes and Ivan as well. So we're going to try and bring them back to bring code changes to you and then he'll be helping with the comprehensive plan update. And we did recently hire framework to help us with municipal code changes. There's a lot of state code changes that we're behind on. Unfortunately, I don't tweet about it to the state or anything because I don't want them to know that we're behind, but we're several years behind on some code changes. So Dan and framework are going to help us get in compliance. So by the end of this year, we should be good and tidy and in compliance. And then after that, when we're done getting busy with the comprehensive plan and those code changes. I'm hoping Dan can help spearhead cleaning up our codes. There's a lot of codes that haven't been updated since the 70s, and there's conflicts, you know, outdated references. So we want to make everything as easy as we can for the public to understand and applicants and not get into the situation where there's lawsuits or things arising and costing the city money. Like our codes should function really well for people and be easy to read. And if we can't understand our codes, then how does anyone else understand them? And there's several codes I'm reading that I don't understand. And so Dan, you know, he has a lot on his plate already and we are going to have his help with that. So I'm excited that Dan's going to be here. And I do have another update, but Dan, did you want to say anything to the group? Not to put you on the spot, but putting you on the spot.

So I'm in my ninth day today. I'm still trying to get up to speed, but I am very excited to be in Pasco. And as Haley said, I'm a native to central Washington. I was born in Moses Lake, grew up on a farm north of Warden. Yeah, just really excited to be here and to contribute to the growth that's happening in Pasco. I look forward to getting to know all of you better. Great. Welcome to the team.

And you're fully staffed now, right?

Well, that's a subjective term, but we're still waiting for a Planner 2. We have a Planner 2 vacancy and a Permit Tech vacancy and a Senior Plans Examiner. But the 3 is a lot better than 9 or whatever we had before. So we're getting very close to being full staffed. And the staff we have now is great. So I'm very excited to see what we can do. the second update i have is on our permit system um it did get delayed for reasons that were outside of our control but we are planning to implement the online permit system february 9th that will allow online payments so you don't need to drive to pasco anymore to give us a dusty old check to pay for your permit which is you know i i feel like i need to apologize for that but we just that's that's our system in place right now so we'll allow online payments And then by mid-year, we're hoping to have all the permits in the system so that you can apply for permits from the comfort of your home. It'll walk you through easily what to submit, how to submit it, and then be more streamlined and give customers updates. Where is the permit? Because people don't know where their permits are. I think they have a better sense now, but before it wasn't too obvious where the permit was in the process or when they're receiving it. We want to provide good updates to the development community and a better service. So that's coming down the pipeline. And again, thank you guys all. I was mentioned at the public hearing, you work for free and I know that you have a lot going on in your lives, but I appreciate the conversation, especially tonight. I know it's a really dense. tough topic and it's going to get tougher throughout the year so this is a good building block conversation but you know as you can see there's not a good answer for every land use issue that makes everybody happy and i appreciate your roles and i know council appreciates your recommendations and the fact that you dig deep into items and by the time it gets to them they have pretty good understanding of the topic so i appreciate you and and that's all thank you thank you director matts

I have a question for, or a statement for Director Matson. in the spirit of trying to be able to help the public follow along with this very formal formatted meeting that has a lot of heavy jargon that is not commonly spoken in conversations. Could we, towards the end of the meeting after motions are passed, show a graphic or flow chart of the upcoming steps in order for the motions to then become

code yes we will do that and we can add that in our presentations to each time even in workshops and just start you know getting because there is that's a good point there's a very thick process for land use changes so we we can make sure that we coordinate that on our presentations and say next steps great so I yeah I'd recommend you know landing on it at least if not twice I'm having it in there and then

Second, as much graphics and picture examples as possible, because graphics and pictures helps bridge some of the language gap that a lot of our residents have. You know, English is not their first language. And once again, also I'll help out with, like I said, there's a lot of specific jargon to this planning commission and what you do that is not commonly spoken.

Yes. Thank you. And we are trying to do that at the council level, so it does make sense to do that at the planning commission level. Like our packets at council go through a review and it's supposed to be easy enough for like a middle schooler to read it. I will say for land use, we do site code and the code is the code. So sometimes it is confusing, but I love that input and we will do better I think Ivan did a great job today adding graphics and pictures, so the rest of us can jump on that too and start including that. Appreciate your feedback.

Good suggestions, Commissioner Lerman. All right, with that, if there's no other things, I'd entertain a motion for adjournment.

So moved.

Moved by Commissioner Jones, seconded by Commissioner Lerman. The meeting's adjourned at 8.18. Thank you, everyone.