Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Join me in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. To begin tonight's meeting, I'd like to ask the clerk to call the roll. I assume Kristen is doing that tonight?

Yeah. Rosa Torres? Present. Pat Jones? Absent. Kim Lehrman? Present. Abel Campos? Dana Crutchfield? Present. Rachel Tills? Absent. Jay Hindlers? Absent. And Jerry Cochran?

Present.

Mr. Chair, there are forum members present and we do not have a quorum.

Okay, I think that just means we can't approve the minutes this month, but we can still hear the workshop items. Can we do the public hearing?

Nope.

Yeah, so we could do the workshop and not the public hearing.

Okay. I'll be short and sweet tonight.

Thank you. Can we start? 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 Planning 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 and on Charter Spectrum Cable PSC channel 199, or 191, excuse me, 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. You click on Video on Demand and make your selection there. There are copies of the agenda for the meeting available on the back table, so you may follow along. At this time, please silence your cell phone to prevent any interruptions. 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, and state your name and city of address for our records. Before we begin tonight's meeting, I need to remind the audience that the Planning Commission 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 they may be benefited or harmed by the Planning Commission's decisions. An objection to any Planning Commission member hearing any matter on tonight's agenda needs to be aired this time or it will be waived. First, are there any Planning Commission members who wish to have a declaration at this time regarding any agenda items? Let the record show there were no declarations. And second, are there any in the audience that would object to the Planning Commission member hearing any of the items on the agenda? We have no audience, so there were no declarations. We as the Planning Commission need and value your input. It helps us to understand the issues more clearly and to make better recommendations to 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 on the official record the City Council will use to make its decision. I encourage you to take full advantage. We will not move to approval of the meeting minutes. These were mailed in advance to the commissioners. If you have any corrections for staff, please send those for next month, and we will next month, if we have a quorum, we will approve both last month's meeting minutes as well as tonight's meeting minutes. So with that, we'll go to right into, we have no old business, and we'll move into the public hearing. As far as I know, we have, did we add another one? Because the one I have just has one public hearing, but we have a workshop item, right, we're going to move to. So we'll pass the public hearing because we do not have an audience and we do not have a quorum, and so we'll move right to a workshop item, which on my agenda, I don't have the title.

So go ahead. Even though nobody at this moment has shown up to hear the public hearing, we would prefer that the Planning Commission conduct the public hearing. We just can't take action, final action, that way.

can say the public hearing was held we won't have to re-advertise and do it all over again and that still would be helpful for us excellent yeah well let's go right into the public hearing item which is the 25 to 20 29 tri-cities consolidated plan and 2025 action plan which I will turn over to staff

Good evening, Planning Commission. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, requires cities receiving community development block grants, CDBG, and home investment partnership funds to prepare a five-year consolidated plan. While the consolidated plan is a comprehensive and detailed document that addresses a wide range of community needs and funding strategies, IT IS COMPLEX AND EXTENSIVE. SO TONIGHT I WILL FOCUS ON SUMMARIZING THE KEY POINTS AND HIGHLIGHTS TO PROVIDE A CLEARER UNDERSTANDING OF ITS PRIMARY GOALS, FUNDING ALLOCATIONS AND HOW IT ADDRESSES THE COMMUNITY'S PRIORITIES. THE CONSOLIDATED PLAN IS A STRATEGIC ROAD MAP REQUIRED FOR CITIES TO EFFECTIVELY ALLOCATE FEDERAL FUNDS THROUGH THE CWG AND HOME PROGRAM THAT BENEFIT LOW AND MODERATE INCOME PEOPLE. OUR CURRENT CONSOLIDATED PLAN EXPIRED DECEMBER 31, 2024. Next slide. You can go to the next slide, yeah.

Oh, I'm sorry, yeah.

We are adhering to all federal regulations by ensuring that the inclusion of the required components, such as the annual action plan, which outlines strategies and objectives for the upcoming year, and the CAPER, which evaluates the effectiveness of the previous year's efforts. Additionally, citizen participation remains a cornerstone of our process, allowing for meaningful community input and collaboration to guide development and prioritize investments. Next slide. This slide highlights the collaborative approach taken to develop a plan, showcasing the integration of public participation and professional expertise. The Cloudburst Group worked closely with the consortium cities of Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland to guide the process. Key steps included hosting six hybrid consulting sessions on September 5th through the 6th involving community partners and stakeholders, conducting virtual focus groups with city staff on September 10th through the 11th, launching a community survey from August 15th to September 20th to gather broad input on needs and priorities. These efforts demonstrate our commitment to being inclusive and transparent, ensuring the plan reflects community perspectives by openly gathering input through public forums, surveys, focus groups, and incorporating this feedback into strategies that align with local and federal requirements. This slide lists the primary goals, affordable housing which will focus on creating and preserving housing for low and moderate income individuals, community and economic development, investments in infrastructure, public facilities, small business support, job creation, public services which will strengthen essential services such as childcare, health services and job training. These goals are directly informed by the top priorities identified through extensive community engagement and stakeholder input, ensuring they address the most pressing needs of our residents and align with their expressed concerns. This also is an overview of the estimated funding allocation for the 2025-2029 period. The total estimated funding is about $4 million with $3.3 million designated for community block grant programs and about $700,000 for home activities. THESE RESOURCES ARE STRATEGICALLY ALIGNED WITH THE PLAN'S GOALS TO ADDRESS HIGH PRIORITY AREAS SUCH AS AFFORDABLE HOUSING, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND PUBLIC SURFACE. BY CAREFULLY TARGETING THESE FUNDS, WE AIM TO MAXIMIZE THEIR IMPACT. I understand this is a substantial amount of information that you received in your packet, and I appreciate your time and attention, and I'm happy to address any questions or further clarification for the commission.

Thank you very much. Commissioners, do you have any questions on the plan, the consolidated plan?

A quick clarification on the amount. Is that the four point, or the four million, is that for all of Tri-Cities, or is that the Pasco portion? No, that's just for Pasco itself. Okay, thank you.

Any other questions? One of the questions I had, you know, as we do the CDBG, one of the things I was noting that when the applicants apply for those grants one of the things I think they don't understand is the definition of these priorities like affordable housing public service and one of the things I was wondering about like I experienced this with my organization I'm on the board of is they apply that I the point I've been trying to make to the executive director is well if you actually read the definition of public services what we do doesn't match well so our score is low is there a way I mean, I was wondering if there's a way as we push out these grant applications or open the grant applications every year, if there's a way to help them understand the definition so that that way when they apply or don't apply, they at least understand the criteria that they're being judged by. Because I think that's one of the disconnects is some of them just apply because they apply and don't even look at the criteria. And then we score them and they don't understand why they didn't get money. But I wonder if it would help at least that little data point I have is like, well, we didn't really know what public services really meant. In our mind, we're public services. Well, you're not the ones that HUD says they should be, right? And then we also had the issue this year with our councilman telling everybody on Lewis Street that they could get CDBG grants. And again, if you read the HUD definitions, it was a completely ridiculous assertion, but there was no education or awareness that this is the definition. So I was wondering if there's something we could do to better, as we open up the grant period, say, and by the way, these are really the definitions, and this is how we're going to score you. So either define your application along these lines and demonstrate how you do that, or just don't apply because you're going to be disappointed.

yeah what we could do is I could actually for each eligible activity if it's under housing I could put what the eligible activity could be so then they would have a better definition if it was community development this is what it was these are the ones that you could say your activity aligns with.

It could also help us because then when we're looking at the scores we know hey this is because you didn't really meet the definition and that's why your score low and I just think it's all about expectations management with these grants and if people apply they think they're gonna get it and then it's like well why didn't I get it?

What percentage do you think come in or make a phone call to ask for help on the grants so they can navigate it and be efficient in their time as well as your guys's?

Since I've been in the position, I would probably maybe say less than 5%. Mm-hmm.

Would that be beneficial to have a spot, like that they must have some sort of either in-person communication or appointment or phone call appointment to help navigate that? Because I clearly do remember we had some situations where it was a service to the community, but they were looking to hire one person. And so then which direction would it go? And so neither side was very clean.

Yeah, and we're actually going to be changing the application this year, so yeah, I could put something in there that if you've never applied or you've never dealt with federal funds, then you need to come and have a sit-down meeting with the administration to figure out if your priority aligns with our activities.

Mm-hmm. Jerry, I had one.

Go ahead.

Kind of on what they were saying, which I totally think that's a great idea, because as I'm looking through these, there's a wide, kind of a wide difference between Grace Clinic and Redder and Company Southby. Isn't the latter one a real estate company? Redder and Company Southby, I think is... real estate company which I mean maybe they do have you know their hand or whatever in in some of the things that we're talking about they're important for the plan but it varies greatly in my mind from what little I know about it from grace clinic mm-hmm well what you're looking at is those were the individuals who actually came to our stakeholder meetings so they were just giving us input

I see, so those aren't the applicants. No, no, no, those aren't the applicants. This is just our plan, and then we have the stakeholder meetings, so we invited a broad range of people to come to those meetings to give us their input on what they think we should spend the money on for the next five years. Thank you.

Anything else? Go ahead.

I will say it is a very broad range. So excellent job on recruiting their help and having a situation where they can be able to share out their input and their expertise in that business that they do and serving our communities with housing needs.

Yes, agreed. Okay. Well, assuming we have Noman online... Then we will take no action. We'll close the public hearing. And what is next for this?

So what will happen is you guys will see me again next month, and then you'll need to make the recommendation to send it over to council for their approval.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So next month, if we do have a quorum, we can take the motion action that was suggested.

Yes. And all of your comments that you guys have said at this meeting will actually be inputted into our document as well.

Excellent. Thank you. All right. You're going to have to help me because my agenda doesn't have the workshop item titled. But we'll move on to that workshop. Oh, there it is right there. Major plans update for 2025-26. And I assume that's kind of in response to what we were asking for last month.

Good evening, members of the Planning Commission. Staff wanted to provide an update to you on where we're at with several major planning efforts that are underway. These have kind of been introduced to you incrementally, but we did have a presentation for you in December that provided an outline of both the funding sources for these major efforts along with their general intent. So today we want to focus on three of these. That is the periodic update to the Pasco Comprehensive Plan, the update of the Transportation System Master Plan, and a new energy resilience study. So on the next slide, just kind of an overview of some of the blended objectives between all three of these. Certainly an alignment with meeting our local, regional, and state requirements associated with the Growth Management Act. I'm addressing the needs and the interest of our community members, preparing for the significant growth that Pasco will enjoy over the next several decades and opportunity to look at ways to enhance our quality of life. And then just pointing out that within each of these efforts, there will be specific goals and objectives that are tailored to the intents and the purposes of each of these planning efforts. So there is some overlap, but there will be some distinct differences. So what we wanna do this evening is just provide you with an overview of the consultant selection process. We advertised the RFP and RFQs for these efforts in early December. The deadline for submittals was Monday, January 13th, a few days ago. And PASCO is quite popular. We had several submittals received for each of these. So just wanted to provide you with an update on those. So the first one is the major update of our comprehensive plan, as we've shared with The Planning Commission over the years, this is a significant piece of work that takes quite a bit of staff resources and in this case will be assisted by the state funding for consultant selection to help us move forward with the next planning guidance and framework for the city of Pasco. We're anticipating nearly a population of 145,000 or more by the year 2045. And so how do we prepare for that? And so we've received two submittals from consultants framework consulting. They're out of Seattle and LDC consultants. They're out of Woodinville. So just in the Puget Sound area as well. This will be the same with all of these efforts this evening, but we're reviewing these right now and anticipate making a final selection by the end of the month. and then coming back to the Planning Commission over the next year or two with periodic updates on all of these efforts. On the comp plan, we've received two consultants. The next one is the update of the city's transportation system master plan. So a more refined look at our transportation plan kind of as a whole and use that as kind of a guidance to think about the way we do transportation planning here in the city of Pasco. We've had three submittals for this one. Fair and Piers, they're out of Seattle, Washington. Seattle. Ardura out of Spokane. And then DKS Associates out of Portland. And then the last one is the Energy Resilience Study, which is a new effort that really is a collaborative effort with our partners at the Franklin PUD, Big Bend Electric Cooperative, and our friends at the Port of Pasco. This was a very popular one. We've actually received a sixth one. It was submitted on time. We just didn't catch it, so it's not listed on your slides this evening. But we received a submittal from Scott Madden. They're out of Atlanta. Siemens PTI, they're out of New York State. Digital Energy Solutions out of Fairfield, California. Eco Northwest a little bit closer to home in Portland, Oregon and then new new grid there at a Littleton, Colorado So as staff reviews all of these consulting Applications will review them based on their criteria that we've issued in the RFP or RFQ and I think one of the things that staff will certainly take into account is the importance of them having some sort of a Level of understanding of our local context our local needs obviously none of these firms are local to the tri cities But city has worked with several of these firms And we work with communities that have worked with these firms as well. So we're certainly take that into account to make sure that the Process that moves forward and certainly the final product Reflects the the goals and the needs and the interest of us here in Pascoe and So the next slide, uh, just pointing out that each of these will certainly have their own set of public engagement, um, workshops and planning efforts, et cetera. So there will be a lot of engagement opportunities, um, and, and fruitful discussions with the Pasco planning commission, uh, the Pasco city council, and obviously our members of the community. And then, uh, I think the last slide just summarizes the funding sources. So all of these are completely funded a hundred percent by the Washington state department of commerce via two major grants. that is a periodic update grant, and also the climate planning grants that were dispersed to communities across the state over the last couple of years. So just kind of a brief presentation on where we're at with the consultant selection. So when we come back, staff comes back in February, we should have consultants selected. And then a little bit after that, we should be having consultants presenting to our community about how to move all these efforts forward in their own respective ways. A quick update, happy to answer any questions I can for you, and thank you for your time this evening.

Thank you. Questions or feedback from the team? Commissioners?

This is Commissioner Lehrman. For the Transportation Master Plan, last time there was that great community resource where individual residents can hop onto their home computer and manipulate the maps to be able to see where they put down information concerns on the different streets and questions, but it was really cumbersome, something that you couldn't be able to do on your cell phone. And I think there was a huge group of people that we missed be able to participate in that. And so whatever consultant that you end up picking, if there's an opportunity to be able to kind of test out their online software program to see how user-friendly it is, because we have people with a little shorter attention span to those that are heavily invested in our community, been here for a long time, but maybe aren't as tech savvy. So somewhere in the middle, please.

Good suggestion. Go ahead.

Yes, I also think, and Jacob mentioned this, that even though none of the consultants are local, that there's going to be, you know, a good interest in making sure that, you know, they understand the uniqueness of our area, even though they may be from New York or Georgia or whatever, that we have, you know, unique and things that are important here in our area. That'll be a great priority. Right.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think, um, and I think this kind of goes back to the comment from commissioner Lerman regarding the engagement, um, elements of these efforts. Um, I think some of you may recall that during the development of both the comprehensive plan and the transportation master plan, those were really happening throughout the heavy part of the COVID pandemic. And so, uh, we had workshops that were canceled. Um, and so a lot of that, if not all of it happened online, I think staff and our consultants to be selected will be excited to be here in person listening to people in Pasco and businesses that do business in Pasco, and then coming back and sharing the results and the progress with this planning commission and our council. So absolutely, plans that reflect the diverse views of our community will be a priority for these efforts.

Thank you. And these are just kind of general overview. There will be plenty of time. later during discussion, because I do have several things on specifics, but I'm not sure that now is the time.

There will be a lot of this coming right back to this on a monthly basis, but there will be some thicker agendas in the future, so absolutely, yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Great, anything else? I had a question about the, on the One of the things I don't know where it's included, we haven't done anything in a while on addressing something like the shoreline, the dike, Army Corps. What's next in terms of some of the things we want to get done with the Army Corps? I know that PASCO has had a desire to chop off four feet of the levee or whatever, but the Army Corps doesn't engage. There was a pretty comprehensive shoreline parks plan that never happened. That be particularly all the way between Wade and she wanna or other parks What's neck? I mean, I think we saw the shoreline master plan, but that doesn't address some of that So I just curious what's next on the shorelines in Pasco?

Yeah, you reference the shoreline master program which really is more of a look at the regulatory nature of what we're able to do along the shorelines here in Pasco But the recent adoption of that master program, the very recent adoption of our parks, recreation, open space plan, which did have significant input from the community about what their interests are along the shorelines, I think this is an opportunity for the consultant to utilize some very recent efforts and then refine them for the needs of the comprehensive plan, in particular the comprehensive plan, which is intended to be somewhat of a regulatory document given its requirements with commerce, but really the comprehensive plan is the city's guiding kind of vision. So if there's an interest in increasing access to the river or seeing additional opportunities for recreation along the river or wherever it may be, you're going to want to see that emphasized in your comprehensive plan. So through the engagement that happens to that effort, Um, the consultants really will have as much access as they want to all of our existing studies along with the survey information, public responses, et cetera. They'll do their own set of engagement as well. Um, but I, I think in your comprehensive plan, you're gonna really wanna push for those more of those visionary things because you've adopted a plan. The hardest part is always implementing it. And so I think consistently going back to your parks plan. And then, um, seeing how you can kind of emphasize that in the city's comp plan, comprehensive plan, and then identifying regulations or strategies or financing mechanisms to actually implement it. That's really how those things are going to become accomplished. Great.

Thank you. Yeah, we'll keep that in mind. I know that when I moved to Pasco, one of the, one of the things I read was the, this is a fairly old plan. Um, it might be 2015 or something, which. had these grand plans for along the river, but they've never really materialized. And I know a lot of folks would love to see more investment along there and more opportunities to make the levee more usable rather than just a trail and all that stuff. So great. Go ahead, Commissioner Crutchfield.

Yes, Commissioner Crutchfield. I do feel I'm glad that there are regulatory processes for the shoreline plan. and the Corps of Engineers. I think we have, again, a unique, very special gem along the shoreline of the Columbia River and also a lot of history as far as the native population way back and the interest of the Indian population in that. And while, you know, the access is certainly important, also the preservation of some of the unique naturalness that we have, you know, for the habitat, for, you know, that kind of special uniqueness of our area. So I know that the Shoreline Management Act of 1972, there were violations of that, they went forward. So I think having a watchdog umbrella there is REALLY IMPORTANT, IN MY OPINION. THANK YOU.

YEAH. AS WE WERE TALKING ABOUT CONSULTANTS AND COMMUNITY OUTREACH, I SAW THROUGHOUT THE YEARS OF BEING ON THE PLANNING COMMISSION A VARIETY OF Methods to be able to attract residents to be able to come in and share out their their input any anything from businesses and services to residents to a micro population of where they live or where they work and And I guess what I want to say is one of my favorite ones that I saw, it seemed like a big engagement. It was a diverse group of people and it seemed like when they left there, they felt like they contributed because oftentimes you take a survey or you come in and you listen and maybe write something down and you don't know what actually happens from there. You don't feel valued. You're just not sure if it was worth your time, but you believe it was worth your time. And I felt like the time we had that workshop downtown Pasco for the downtown Pasco vision, was fantastic. We had the posters and people going around and putting down their comments, meeting each other, people starting off with one thought and then meeting more people and then coming together and developing just much richer content to be able to provide back to the city. So I'm hoping, I feel like that was kind of the gold star of what I've seen over the years, and I hope that that's something that we can continue on.

Yeah, we'll certainly take that as feedback to share with whoever selected. I think we actually served food at that one, too, so that might have been helpful as well. But, no, understood. Thank you so much for that information. All right, anything else on this?

Go ahead.

One last question. It's more a question. It's about transportation, not the future plan, but kind of current, what's already gone on. And I have this one question several people have asked me. Again, it has to do with that Road 100 corridor and that new roundabout that they have up there. There's been several that have expressed concern that as you make the turn, there's no guardrail or anything on the one side of that. And there is quite a, well, enough of a drop-off significant that if we ever get any ice and snow, And even without it, if cars are sliding and there's no guardrail, at least to have some protection. And the turns are fairly narrow, so I didn't know the answer to that. Maybe if it was coming, it was in the works. I don't know. But that is the question that I have.

Maybe a public works question.

Yeah.

Thank you. I think that's northbound, if I remember correctly.

It is going northbound. So it's on that curve where you're going northbound and two lanes. They're fairly narrow. And it's navigatable. in good condition, good weather conditions, but there is absolutely no safety even on that outer corner, someone will potentially have a problem.

to pass along the feedback for sure.

Thank you. So I got two more from Public Works real quick. So thanks for bringing that up. One, I was noticing along Sylvester, the painting, since the summer when it was done, I don't know if it was all the same windstorm or the height of the boom for painting was up too high, but the spray job is not... it's not desirable for how much the citizens pay. And so pass that along. And then we also already lost some of our painting strips along the roundabout off of 68 Court Street within about first, second week of November, there was a big windstorm and quite a bit, hundreds of feet lifted up. So that is all.

I'm not sure I understand. What lifted up?

So they had the reflective tape that was serving as the paint strips. And if I hear right, I believe that would be a permanent feature. But it may have not. And I don't know enough, but that would be my terminology if I didn't hear right.

It may have just not gotten baked down onto the roadway.

Yeah.

Thank you.

All right, with nothing else, I guess we're done with the workshop item. Any other business? All right.

Nothing from staff.

Okay, and since we don't have a coordinator, I won't ask for a motion. We will adjourn the meeting at 7.10.