Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We'll do it that way. Good evening. My name is Kim Lehrman, and I would like to call the City of Pasco Planning Commission meeting to order. I would like to welcome all those in attendance this evening and ask you to 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.

To begin tonight's meeting, I would like to ask the clerk to call the roll.

Rosa Torres, excused. Austin Crawford, excused. Pat Jones, present. Kim Letterman, present. Rob Waits, excused. Dana Crutchfield. Ryan Tungstiff, present. Miguel Miranda, present. Jerry Cochran, excused. Ms. Chair, there are five members present. We do have a quorum. Thank you.

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 the 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 would like to remind the audience tonight's proceedings are being broadcast live on the City of Pasco's Facebook page and on Charter Cable PSC channel 191 and will be rebroadcast several times during the next month. This meeting is also being recorded so you can watch it on the City of Pasco's website which is pasco.wa.gov. Click on the video on demand link and make your selection there. There are copies of meeting agendas available in the back table, so you may follow along with the meeting. At this time, I would like to ask you to silence your phones and to prevent interruptions during our meeting. 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, city of address for our 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 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 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 at this time or will be waived. First, are there any Planning Commissioners members who have a declaration at this time regarding any of the items on the agenda? Let the record show that there is no declarations. Second, is there anyone in the audience this evening who would object to any Planning Commissioner member hearing any of the items on the agenda? Let the record show that none was declared. We value your input. We as 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 in the Planning Commission meeting is your only opportunity to get your facts and opinions placed into the official record the City of Council will use to make their decisions. I encourage you to take full advantage of this opportunity. approval of the minutes. The next item is the approval of the meeting minutes from January 15th of 2026. The meeting minutes were mailed out to the commissioners ahead of time and I trust you had the opportunity to go ahead and review over the minutes and at this point in time, I would entertain a motion to approve the meeting minutes.

I'll move approval.

All right. Commissioner Jones made a motion for approval. Do I have a second?

I'll second.

All right. Commissioner Tungsten? Close enough. Tungsten? Yes. Yes. Seconded. Okay. So let the record. Okay. Next, let's go ahead and take a vote. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Okay. It is unanimous. Let the record show. We have no old business for tonight. We do have a public hearing for the 2025 Consolidated Annual Performance Evaluation Report, also known as CAPER. And I'll go ahead and turn it over to staff.

Good evening, Planning Commission. Tonight I'll be reviewing with you the Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation CAPER for the 2025 fiscal program year. This is a federally required document that reviews how HUD funds were used over the past year. It measures progress towards community development goals and helps ensure transparency in the allocation of federal dollars. The CAPER provides HUD and the local community with a detailed assessment of projects funded through programs like CDBG and HOME. It helps track accomplishments, challenges, and areas for improvement in housing, economic development, and public services. This year's CAPERS report is the first year of the 2025 to 2029 Consolidated Plan. The findings in the CAPER will influence the next strategic plan and future funding decisions. Each year HUD requires the CAPER to be submitted within 90 days after the program year ends. This is an overview of the CDBG funding. The community block, Grant program provides flexible funding to support housing, economic development, infrastructure and community services in low to moderate income areas. This breakdown shows how the 2025 CDBG funds were allocated across different activities. The major funding areas were housing. We had 16% receive the largest share of funds, reinforcing the city's commitment to affordable housing, rehabilitation and home ownership programs. Repayment of Section 108, that was at 42%, was a significant expense covering obligations from previous large-scale community development projects. The third one was economic development. That was at 13%. Supporting initiatives aimed at job creation and business support helped stimulate local economic growth. Under investments in infrastructure and services, public facilities and improvements was at 2%. These funds were used for the design of Peanuts Park North, and for ADA equipment replacement in one of the city's parks. Public services was only at 5%, which covers essential programs that benefit vulnerable populations, including senior services, youth programs, and homelessness prevention. And if you remember, in 2025, we did not fund any public service activities, so this 5% is actually a draw that happened in the beginning of 2025 for 2024 activity. Under the administrative and planning caps, general administration and planning was at 22%, which covers the cost of program oversight reporting and compliance to ensure funds are used effectively. While this is over the 20% cap of the allowable amount, there was a draw also done in early 2025, which covered the fourth quarter of 2024. So once this adjustment was made, we were under the cap. The total grant expenditures was $600,919, with each category contributing to the city's broader community development goals. This bar provides a clear comparison of how CDBG funds were distributed across different project categories in 2025. The height of each bar represents the total expenditure for each project type, allowing for easy identification and priority funding areas. The distribution of funds aligns with the city's goal to support housing, economic development, and community infrastructure. Moving forward, the impact of these investments will be evaluated to ensure funds are effectively addressing community needs. happen there these are the next steps moving forward tonight the Planning Commission will hold a public hearing to allow community members and stakeholders to provide feedback on the caper once public input is gathered the hearing will be closed and in and any necessary adjustments can be considered before submission after the public hearing process the city manager will sign the official submission letter confirming the city's compliance with head reporting requirements This step ensures that the document reflects a complete and accurate summary of the City's CDBG program activities. City staff will submit the finalized CAPER through HUD's Integrated Disbursement and Information System. The submission deadline is March 31, 2026, meeting the 90-day requirement following the program year's close. Once submitted, HUD will have 60 days to review the CAPER and assess. whether the report meets all federal requirements, and if needed, HUD may provide additional comments or request clarification before finalizing approval. The CAPER is approaching its final approval stages with key steps involving public engagement, city authorization, and formal HUD submission. This process ensures accountability, transparency, and compliance with federal guidelines. Once HUD completes its review, the city will receive confirmation closing out the 2025 program year. Again, I understand this report is a substantial amount of information, and I appreciate your time and attention, and I'm happy to address any questions or provide further clarification for the Commission. And if there are no questions currently, then Ms. Chairwoman, I respectfully request that you proceed with opening the public hearing.

Commissioners, do you guys have any questions? which I recognize as Commissioner Jones.

Thank you very much. Since the repayment of Section 108 loans is by far the largest part of it, could you just give us some examples of what kind of projects Section 108 loans supports?

So those actually support big infrastructure projects. So the City of Pasco actually used the money that we received from that loan to help redo the Peanuts Park. So we received $3.7 million. And just recently the city of Pasco has decided to pay that loan off and CDBG funds will pay back the city of Pasco due to a non-fixed interest rate that we were receiving.

Any other commissioners? I do have a question for Ms. Webb. Current year entitlement, the 26,000, can you share where that comes from?

Say that again? The current year entitlement? Mm-hmm. What are you looking at?

Page one.

Of the report?

Yep, right after source funds.

I don't see where you're... I don't see where you're...

saying that again so if you go on to page one after overview assessment goals and objectives the source of funds so yeah I just wondering what that 26,000 what it represents oh that's um so that's program income you're looking at stop report so anytime in the past

CDBG funds were used to either do a down payment assistant loan or rehab on somebody's house. So if those funds are paid back, that's what's considered program income. So that's funds that were collected in 2025. Thank you.

And I'm just curious, on page 19, it talked about the city employees bilingual staff that is available. It also talks about participating in a language line. What contract service do you guys use for that?

It is called language line. So it's a number that we can call. And if we have somebody who speaks Portuguese or something, then they can translate for us.

Wonderful. I don't remember that being included in the past. Excellent job.

No, I think we've only had it

know maybe a year or so yeah excellent good job and another question and I could begin confused with another programs that CBG that we carry out with it Thought I remember like a cap of no more than 20% of administrative fees. And here it says 20% plus planning. So I wasn't sure if planning was added to that or this is a different criteria, a different standard.

No administration and planning are under the same bucket. And so, yeah, it is 20%. And if you look, we did go over, we were at 22%, but that was due to a fourth quarter draw for 2024. That was done in the beginning of 2025. So we actually ended up at 19.47% for the year. Excellent. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate you explaining it.

Okay, so seeing no other additional questions from the commissioners, we'll go ahead and open it for public hearing. At this time, any individual who wish to speak on a particular item, now is the time to come forward and speak and please state your name and city of address for the record. And do we have anyone online? Nope, okay. Do I count to three Mississippis? All right. Well, let the record show that the public hearing is now closed. All right. Do I need to do a motion for closing the public hearing? No.

No, but there is a motion in the staff report that won't need to be heard.

There is a motion in the staff report? Oh, okay.

On the second page, yeah.

We may need help where to find that, but I'm sure it's something to do about forwarding this on.

Okay.

Okay. All right. Is there a commissioner that would like to make a motion at this time? Okay, Commissioner Jones.

I move the Planning Commission recommend the City Manager approve the 2025 Consolidated Annual Plan Evaluation Report as presented.

Okay, is there a second for the motion?

Second.

Okay, I'll let the record show that Commissioner Jones stated the motion and that Commissioner Miranda seconded the motion and now if I can have commissioners vote on it all in favor say aye aye aye aye all right so let the record show that it passed unanimously okay all right so next we have director Are you ready for the workshop? Yes.

Or is there another step I need to do? Nope. I think we can move on to the next item.

Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. All right.

Well, thank you. And my name is Haley Mattson, the CED director. And tonight I have three different presentations for the group. So we don't need any formal action tonight. You guys can just sit back and relax and give some feedback. So no pressure on decisions. We're just wanting to introduce some topics to the group. And this first topic is fun, in my opinion. It's a lot of what we do related to land use. And this might be a refresher course for existing planning commissioners or something that you already know. So I'll try and be brief. and just allow for questions but since we do have some new commissioners on the group i thought it would be good to share this presentation that i shared with the city council a few weeks ago related to land use and it can be a very confusing topic and you know there's a lot of jargon just like in government you you know lots of acronyms um things start to sound the same what are all these different things shown on the screen so i'll just do my best tonight to just tell you how they all work together and if you have questions please feel free to ask i am keeping this very high level intentionally and just just just know if it does get confusing we have you know 30 people dedicated to this full time every year working on these things so it's not really an easy topic to explain i feel like You know, with infrastructure, it's pretty black and white. You know, you've got a pipe, it's a certain number of feet down, and with land use, it can really get, you know, there's a lot of gray areas. So this is the overview of how it works in Pasco and in most cities in Washington State, most cities around the nation. There is a comprehensive plan, and that's the overall plan. plan for the city. It's the blueprint. It's the long-range plan. It's the vision. It's the dream. It's what we want Pasco to be. So the comprehensive plan looks at all elements of the city, utilities, roads, anything underground, anything above ground, you know, where we want certain uses. And it's our aspiration and more of a high-level document. And then that is followed by master plans for specific areas. And Pasco has two unique master plans, one for the Broadmoor area. So that's that vacant area you see around the aquatic center, basically. and we have some great goals for that area, including mixed-use residential, more commercial development, and ideally more pedestrian-friendly commercial development that doesn't quite exactly mirror the existing Road 68, but provides a good, healthy mix of uses, like you'd see in maybe Totem Lake, but dialed down more over in the Kirkland area or U District, but more Pasco-centric. I don't wanna compare to the west side because we aren't the west side, but just more of a walkable, community. So that's our vision for Broadmoor. And then, of course, our beloved downtown in our downtown master plan that follows it. That's just a plan that shows where we want to go and how we want to enhance again, walkability, keep that tradition in Pasco that that walkable feel That downtown that we had before the regional malls came in and sort of killed downtowns everywhere around the nation. So we're trying to breathe life back into the Pasco downtown and we've done so with Pasco specialty kitchen, the farmer's market, and just all sorts of incentives. We want to be nice to our business owners down there, have a good relationship. with them so there's a lot of things going into those two plans and those comply with the overall comprehensive plan for the city and then there's zoning there's a map that shows the different color codes for each zone you typically don't want to mix industrial and residential uses for instance you don't want to live in a neighborhood and have a smokestack right next to you blowing smoke or you know a slaughterhouse next door I mean there before zoning These things just kind of popped up wherever and you just had undesirable uses mixed together. So we have our zoning code and remember the state does help with mandates. So there are some things the city can't control related to zoning. And then we have the municipal code. That's the blueprint. That's the words that meet the zone. So if you look at the map and find a color code of a zone, the municipal code will tell you what you can do in that zone. So that's it, we're all experts now in zoning, comprehensive plan, master plans, and so that's how they all work together. That's the initial diagram that I'll show at the end, just to reiterate it. And this is just a slide showing why land use planning matters. I touched on it a bit, but it's to ensure orderly growth. So we aren't putting residential neighborhoods 500 miles away from the city. We're compact, and Washington State is very, you know, adamant about this, like the compact growth management strategy where you have people living, working, transporting, shopping, recreating in the same area. So you're not driving in your vehicle a thousand miles this way to go to a park. And then, you know, you want a cup of coffee and, You have to climb a mountain to get there. You want everything kind of consolidated so that everything underground and above ground can be in this nice, tight little area. And then you have open land around the cities that provide environmental habitat. That's the general sense. Obviously, there's different scenarios that play out, but that's what Washington State Growth Management Act is, is compact development, responsible development, and avoiding just like miles and miles of sprawl. And the comprehensive plan I touched on it, this is typically a 20 year vision. Um, we do look out, I would say a hundred years, but it's more theoretical at that point. Like if you ask me, where are we growing in the next hundred years? I could probably tell you we're going further north, probably north, um, east, you know, obviously we can't go south. There's the river and then past the river is Rachel land. We have some nice boundaries in place. So typically we plan in 20 year increments. And this year is one of those years where we are looking 20 years ahead and going through all the elements, which we'll be bringing to you every month for the rest of the year. We'll be very busy as a commission and as a council looking at these things. And this is the map that coincides with the comprehensive plan. Yep, very busy, no breaks this year. This is the land use map and it's color coded to show which uses go where. And the yellow that you see there coincides with residential uses. So that's where most of our neighborhoods are, our traditional single family neighborhoods, and then we'll see different types of housing come over time. The red and the pink, that's commercial-esque uses, and that follows primary arterials in town. So you can see commercial is strategically located around Pasco next to major interchanges, maybe near industrial. It sort of follows these main arterials, so you don't have commercial just kind of everywhere where people are trying to live. And then the gray area is industrial area. So that's where we have a lot of our manufacturing and Pasco has a very robust food manufacturing and, um, job base in the community. And it's really cool to see the synergy out there with food manufacturing and agriculture. I think that's unique here. And of course the airport, that's that big X you see sort of in the middle of the city. That is the Pasco airport. So this is our land use map or blueprint, and this is associated with the comprehensive plan. And then I've already talked about this. We're in the middle of updating the comprehensive plan, and we'll touch on these things actually later in the meeting. The big highlights from the state level this year for the 20 year update is related to housing needs, of course, and climate change. That's a big topic at the state level. And then infrastructure capacity to coincide with the growth. And then switching over to zoning, this is the layer right below the comprehensive plan. So there could be a residential designation in the comprehensive plan and there could be a multitude of children or zones that fit under that parent comprehensive plan designation. So that's where you have the more detailed zoning Lots of green here. We're going to work on that so that the zones are easier to tell the difference. And during the update, we may be consolidating zones that are going to be a lot more similar after the state mandates. This is a color-coded map of the city showing the different colors of the zones. And those white, big white blocks, those are actually county designation properties. We call them donut holes here. There's about five, four or five. Looks like five in the city. So those are technically county jurisdiction. The rest of the colors are in the city and have a zoning code associated with it. This just shows the dynamic between the regulations. So you have the overarching comprehensive plan where it's looking ahead and then you have the zone saying what you can do. And then you have the code and the zoning regulations that say in this zone, You know some of you live in the Riverview area if I remember correctly Well, you can't build a 70-foot house in Riverview. That doesn't fit. It's 35 feet or 30 feet around there I'm not sure the exact height, but it's low and it's meant to coincide with the existing development so we permit setbacks in zones heights, you know lot coverage and parking dimensional requirements. And if there weren't those rules, we would leave it up to the development community, which they do make good decisions, but it's a way to just regulate certain zones and how we want the building form to look. So that's how we use the zoning code. And to take it a step further, the CED department, our primary role is permits. We have CDBG also in our department, but we have code compliance, permit review, And we pull up the zoning code and we look at submittals for each property down to the square foot. And we look and see, are these zoning regulations met? So it does get very complicated very fast. But the general principle is you have a general plan and then you just kind of work your way down through the steps. And the municipal code dictates in each zone or each project type what the rules are. So if you want to subdivide a property where you purchase a property, you want to split it up. You know, before these rules were in place, you could just sort of split it up. I think people like battled physically over property and then they used chains to say, this is my property and split it up. Then as time goes on, the rules get more and more complicated. So if you do want to split up your property, It's called the subdivision and there's regulations that dictate how big a single family block can be and what sort of easements you need on the property to facilitate utility placement and how close it can be to your neighbors based on zoning rules and fire separation rules. So there's different, there's different codes and then codes that relate to environmentally sensitive areas. So in this area, mostly like shrub step and the burrowing owls and those types of wildlife. So there's a lot of codes. There's a million codes that you look at related to development that we go through that coincide with the zoning and then how you can develop in a specific way. And just to, this is like a little bit of a sidestep on the topic, but I thought it was important to tell council and I'll tell you guys too, since this is the same presentation, if there are things in the community that we want to change at the policy level, such as sandwich board signs, we just looked at that recently and that was a suggestion by a council member. I wanted to reiterate that, you know, I came from the private side and I think government's slow and I think a lot of people think government is slow and I think, There's a reason for it in some cases, just so we're not moving too fast so the public can be involved. So it's like a hurry up and wait kind of scenario. We try and go as fast as we can. But there is a public process in place required at the state level and the city level to require public input and require that things go through the planning commission, which I think is a great idea. You guys are the experts in land use, so by the time it gets to council, they don't have to do as much heavy lifting because you've done all of the in weeds review so when there is a code change suggested at the policy level or by the public you know the quickest we can really take it through is three months even if we're changing two two words in code i mean you have to notice the public you get to notice the public and you take it to planning commission for a workshop and then planning commission for a public hearing and then you get it on the council agenda so it adds up to hours of work and it just you know it's kind of mind-boggling when you think about it but there is a public process in place so that the public can be involved. And I would like things to go faster in some ways, but that's just how it's set up currently right now. So this was just more for council and the public. When you're asking for a code change and you get frustrated why it takes so long, this is one of the reasons. And then priorities, of course. Are we working on other items or other state mandates? So back to the slide that I started on after our journey here, I went really fast through it. I'll leave this slide up and leave it open for questions. And this was meant to be just a refresher. We can, you know, most likely throughout the year, I could do more training sessions that the planning commission likes. If this is enough, that's fine. But if you want a deep dive in any of these topics, I can slide it into a future agenda, but happy to answer any questions that you have. And I hope this was high level enough to where it didn't overwhelm anyone, but helpful enough to where you know a little more about it now. So happy to answer questions.

Commissioners, welcome to ask questions, fire away. So how many master plans do we have? Because I think I can think of at least two, maybe three more for our list.

well i'm aware of broadmoor and downtown because i've worked on those the most and they're the most recent um if there are i i i'm not saying there's not other master plans i just don't know off the top of my head i'm sure that we do have others but they they may be out of date or not used as much as my guess

I guess I was thinking of transportation as well as parks and shoreline master plan.

Yes. And so, yeah, this is just one of those nitty gritty things where the master plans are like a full service plan for an area where you look at all those components, transportation, everything that you just mentioned. So the parks plan, transportation plan, utilities plan, capital facilities plan, economic development plan, those are all elements in the comprehensive plan for the whole city. and so the master plans you could look at is like many comprehensive plans for certain areas so i believe we only have two we might have more but what you're talking about is is a master plan for that specific topic but it applies to the whole city and in these master plan areas so it's like i could do a diagram that's probably super layered like an onion to to explain it but yeah not quite exactly what the broadmoor and downtown plan are but they do feed into it but yeah you're you're exactly right there's there's lots of plants

I want to say that I appreciate so much these fantastic graphics. I can definitely tell you guys took the time to, like you said, put it at a high level, kind of chunk it. So a little easier to digest and not just for us, but as well as for the public. So thank you.

Yes. And thank you AI for your help with this. I mean, some of these things, you know, they, you ask it to do something and you get something crazy, but AI is actually extremely helpful in, in helping with these diagrams. So. Yeah, I did not do these AI did, but thank you. But trying to incorporate more diagrams since it was mentioned at one of the last meetings.

I recognize Commissioner Jones.

Well, I wasn't going to jump in because I jump in too much, but since you opened the door, Chair, I'm going to. I came here with 14 years of city council experience back in South Dakota and have sat in on many, many trainings on stuff like this. this is by far the best one i've ever seen with with the graphics and everything and the way you took us through one leads to the next the next this was awesome because each term i mean this stuff can be it's like putting a jigsaw puzzle together with the pieces upside down it's very very baffling and confusing And they do, everything has to work together. This was wonderful. Hats off to everyone that did this because this is great. This makes it easy, not easy to understand because it's very complex. But these are the tools that we're going to be using for the next many months, year, right? And so thank you. This is very, very good. Very good. This gives us the terms and the tools that we need. So thank you. Really, really good. You know what? It was fun. It's very nerdy to say that it was fun, so there's at least two nerds in the room who thought this was fun, and I really compliment you, because this was good stuff, usable, really makes sense, so thank you.

I appreciate that, and we will likely use something similar to this online. We do get a lot of traffic online, and I think sometimes going back to the basics or having like, um, tutorial videos online would be fun. Um, you know, I did that at my last city where we did zoning one-on-one what is zoning and you know, the community did enjoy it. And then, you know, this format I would likely use if I got invited to, um, you know, chambers or, or something like that. So you guys were the test case and I might water it down a little more to make it easier to understand because you can only cover so much, but yes, I appreciate the feedback. Thank you.

I also want to piggyback on what Commissioner Jones said. So your guys' next steps, if we can continue to include that in every meeting, I think that would really help the public know what to expect as well as when they can be able to step forward around whatever topics that interest them. I appreciate also how you have dates in there too, so that helps them lock that into their calendars. So the more public input we can be able to get, the better informed decisions we can make in order to be able to make our recommendations to the council.

Thank you.

Commissioner Hatfield?

No. Crutchfield. I am sorry. That's okay. Sometimes the Hatfields and McCoys, you never know. Anyway, in this setting, thank you for basically these sheets as a review of something that I've kind of known about for a long time, at least on the perimeter. But you did kind of, you know, simplified as far as comprehensive plan, zoning, municipal. And there's several things interfacing here that I really especially like, and I highlighted them. It talks about this process in municipal code, avoiding conflicting or piecemeal changes, providing meaningful public input. And it talks about changes that will make sure that the specific cost, environmental resources, quality of life, make sure that growth happens in a thoughtful and coordinated way. All of those things are really important to me and I was glad to see it here. And I think sometimes, you know, that statement about piecemeal change and requiring public opinion and kind of stepping back and taking a look, sometimes it isn't fast. Sometimes, you know, I tell my kids this quite often. Sometimes you got to step back a little bit. I know some people want to do things. We want to do it right now. I hear that from my children not infrequently. And my response is, well, let's just kind of take a step back. And so I think that the statements in here kind of support that way of thinking so that we don't make a mistake and then have to kind of you know, go back and try to revise things. So thank you for that, for these bullets and important information. I have some other questions, but maybe not at this time. I don't know where you're at on this.

Okay. For Commissioner Tumsvik? Yeah. There we go.

Yeah, I just wanted to add regarding the graphics and the future potential use on the Web City website as a great learning opportunity for the public. I know years ago when I went and started learning about codes and densities and all that, it was a little harder to move through and to find. You had a lot of back and forth and this length and that length. So to have kind of a nice AI-generated, you know, So roadmap, if you will, would be very helpful with links and kind of take you through the process. So it's easy to see, okay, we all want to see, you know, what's the municipal code? What is the zoning? It's just there's a link. It just takes you right to it. Very user friendly that way.

Commissioner Crutchfield, there you go. This has to do with zoning, though. And what do you do if something happens that obviously isn't permitted in the current zone? Then what's the process? What do you do? I mean, we don't have code enforcement, at least not much. How do you handle that? Specifically, I'll give an example. On Court Street. about road 16 of Court Street. There's an existing home and there is a home connected to this home. It's not a detached garage or structure. It is huge. The pitch of the roof of this new building is much higher than the roof of the extending building. It has I believe at least a two-car garage that's being constructed kind of turned. And I've never seen anything like that before. I don't know. Do you know which one I'm talking about? No. It's interesting. It's on Court Street and Road 6. Have you driven by there? It's not too far from. And I just don't know how it fits into current.

zoning sure yeah if it's a legal construction then you know we're likely to make contact how would that get permitted um it there's there's there's a lot of flexibility in code it's the market's changing and you're going to see new developments around town you know utilizing the code in creative ways that is true yeah so the market may be changing but it still merits um

conforming to the current code status, in my opinion. And it also, although the market's changing, it still is necessary to recognize the current development of where you're putting something next to something else that has been there for a long period of time and the neighborhood has you know, made a substantial investment in that, so.

Yeah, understood.

I mean, that's, to me, kind of at the top of the food chain on that. I just wondered, at that point, maybe, you know,

someone looks into who looks into the zoning compliance then we do before the permit is issued we look into it so i'm assuming that's a permitted use it might look funky you know to certain people or you know they may say it doesn't fit in but i would assume it's permitted and the permit has been issued so we we do look at the zoning when we get a building permit it gets routed to our planning division and they look at the heights and you know

Well, it's easy enough to find out just by going into the website and looking and seeing if it's permitted, but I was never, you know, under the impression that the roof pitch could be, you know, it just looks.

Yeah. I mean, there is flexibility in roof pitches for, you know, the intent isn't to have every roof pitch. It's not Leavenworth. Like, that's not our intent to have everything match. existing development. So there are, you know, flexibility measures and sometimes there are things that stick out like sore thumbs.

And yeah, this is, this is definitely, yeah. Yeah.

This is definitely, and sometimes that does, you know, maybe it's an example of like, wow, is that really what we intended? Or maybe the applicant found a loophole, that kind of thing. So, um, but I would assume that one's legal, so I wouldn't send code enforcement out to it. I mean, we're going to check now because of curiosity, but yeah, curiosity.

Yeah.

Yep. So, Yeah, good feedback. Any other questions regarding about zoning or comprehensive plan?

Okay. All right. Director? Yes, chair. Now that we're done with that discussion, is it okay to open up for other business or other inquiries? Oh, you've got more.

I'm sorry. We have two more items on the agenda and then director updates and then, yeah. I believe so, on the agenda, yeah. So we have two other items. So if you're ready, I can dive into this topic. And now that we're experts, I did this in order so that now you're land use experts, this will get a little technical. So again, I'm going to keep it high level. Don't feel pressured to solve all of our density issues right now in this meeting. The purpose of this is to provide an introduction and to hopefully let you know what the state mandates are. And I think we've talked enough about our feelings on the state mandates. I guess the point of this meeting is it is what it is, and we need to follow it. So I'm just going to walk through a concept called land capacity in PASCO. And this is the first step in the process of the Comprehensive Plan. It's often the most difficult and the most political. So we start with it first head on, and then once we can figure out our land capacity, in the city we we built all the other plans around it so i'm going to walk through what the process is feel free to jump in and ask questions i'll pause at different times and then at the end i'll be asking you um you know spoiler alert we do have a shortage in a certain type of units in the city that we need to address at the state level lower income level apartments or apartments, ADUs, that's mid-rise, low-rise apartments. So we have a shortage of apartments in the city, and we need to know where to put those apartments. We can't say we don't want them, we have to put them somewhere. So that's going to be the punchline that I'm just giving to you right now, and I'm going to walk you through how we got there, and then we can have some conversations on some ideas where to put apartments another spoiler alert we're not suggesting that we're putting apartments in riverview or existing single-family residential neighborhoods so just you know hopefully that puts you a little bit at ease as i go through this um here's the agenda and i'll go through just kind of how we get there um to the land capacity so what we do is we look at the city this is a land use exercise and it is fairly technical i have consultants helping with it at the last city i was at we did it in-house but we had five senior planners that had been there 15 years each so it's a very dense topic so we have consultants helping in pasco right now and what we do as a starting point for this exercise is we look at the existing lane use throughout the city and this diagram is a little tough to read but it's color coded so the light green is agriculture the orange is services uses where the airport is the yellow is residential so this is just sort of like an overall look at the existing land use this is the road map to what's in the city and it does coincide pretty closely with our land use map which is good right if this was different i would be a little nervous so those are the existing uses you see pasco and the river there and it's color coded And this is a breakdown of the uses. So primarily residential, which isn't a surprise. You saw on the previous map, you know, Pasco is mostly yellow, so we have lots of residential uses in town. And we have 30% residential, and then another breakdown of the different uses in town, and then 22% is undeveloped. And I'll tell you what undeveloped means as I go through the slides. This is a snapshot of our 2018 plan where we have different land uses plan that coincides with the land use map I showed you in the earlier presentation. And this is, again, our housing allocation. The main point here is Pasco is anticipated to grow to 121,000 people in the next 20 years. Currently, we're around 85,000 people population-wise. And with that growth, the state is mandating that the city accommodate through zoning regulations 18,000 units, 18,831. I'm going to say 18,000 just because it's easier to round. So we are required to accommodate 18,000 plus units in the city. and even emergency housing that's a new requirement we don't have to build those units we don't have to force people to build the units and they don't even have to come we just have to show that we have codes in place that allow for this type of development if the market allows so that's a distinct point i wanted to make and so we have these units and the state also breaks the units down into income bands which i'll touch on later So is everyone following with just this first concept? I'll just pause and just make sure we're good because this will be our launching pad into more details. You guys good with that? Okay, sounds good. We'll keep going. It gets deeper. So then we look at all of our land within the city. The state says you need 18,000 units. So our next task is to look at the city and say, can we fit these units in the city? Is there room? And if there's not room, we need to make room, either by going up or changing zones. Going out in the city boundaries is the last effort that the state would like us to do. Instead of expanding out and growing, I talked about the Growth Management Act earlier, the state requires that we look in our city and pack those units into the city before we expand out. And so we evaluate the current land use, we calculate the capacity, the city what is the current capacity how much is in the city right now and how much can the city offer as far as space and then we look at income levels served in each zone so it gets broken down now not just by capacity for housing units it's also broken down by housing units and income levels and so we have different land designations now that relate to this topic only so just land that's undevelopable um, vacant underdeveloped pipeline development or developed land. So those are the categories and they are shown on this map. There's a few parcels that are considered undevelopable. The biggest one on the screen here is the airport that's considered a facility. And so, we aren't looking at that to say, hey, how many housing units can we put on an airport runway? So it's exempt. So that's what that means. So we have some parcels that are undevelopable for whatever reason or marked as exempt because of their land use designation. So the blue is like off limits, I would say. And the white on the screen, that's just a series of properties around PASCO and we've classified them as either developable, partially developable. And we're just looking at starting to classify these as far as like how much space we can fit these units. And then we have vacant and underdeveloped parcels. And so I wouldn't spend too much time trying to memorize these colors and where they are. I think just the concept we're trying to pass along here with this slide. is that there's a lot of parcels in Pasco that are considered vacant or underdeveloped. And underdeveloped would mean to me like a house on five acres where you have plenty of room for plenty of other stuff to go in there. So that's like underdeveloped. And then vacant obviously is just vacant parcel, strub stub. know dust nothing on there so we have a variety of those and then we have pipeline parcels that we're denoting as parcels that we anticipate development coming forward in the next few years so we've classified you know here's the parcels that we're not including in the calculation because airplanes land there and then we've taken it a step further and said here's the parcels that are vacant or underutilized. So that's, we're onto that step now. And then it goes to then looking at each zone and those parcels and determining the net buildable area for each of these zones. So you don't need to memorize these numbers. There's no quiz or anything. This is just separated Broadmoor overlay area. On the left hand side, we show zones and then we show the net buildable area in each of these zones. And so we do this for city zoning, residential, citywide. And then with those zones, we look at the housing capacity by zone. This is just more showing the work that we're doing. And each zone, we look at the different units per acre that can be achieved. in the different zones. So that's listed on the screen. This is different than what the zone allows. This is the capacity in each of these zones. Yes.

Thank you. So this could be developed based on the land the way it is now?

Yes. This is just showing, here's the amount of space. Well, it's actually just showing this is the capacity right now for housing in these zones based on the current regulations. So these numbers, they are strikingly similar to what the zone allows as far as density, but this is basically, this slide is trying to say

here's the zone and this is how many dwelling units per acre could fit based on all those other factors i showed you based on underutilized parcels utilized parcels and all of that math so but some land is is buildable right away some would require significant site development yes this is pushing that to the side and just saying this is how much site we have available yes correct like capacity yes okay thank you yes

So, and I'll get to the policy questions later. I'm just trying to give background and the main purpose is just to show you there's a lot that goes into this. It's not to overwhelm you with information, but there's a series of steps we need to do and there's a very methodical way to do it to get to where we go. So we're just showing our work here a little bit is what I'm trying to do. Not trying to blast you with information or, you know, not, you don't really need to retain much of this, um, I think the key takeaways is that we, yeah, need to fit 18,000 units in the city and the units have to be a diverse range of income levels. And here is where the rubber meets the road as far as the policies that are required at the state level this time. Last time it was a lot easier, they just said, fit 18,000 units in your city and we said, okay, they're going to go here, here and here, we're done. This time around 10 years later, the state says, here is the amount of units and in those units, you have to have a very diverse range of units. You can't do 18,000 McMansions in Pasco, which some people may love and think that's a great idea. We have to have a mix. Down to accessory dwelling units, different, densities, mid-rise, low-rise, multifamily. And the multifamily is closely tied to our AMI, and that's area medium income. And there's a huge range for PASCO, like area medium income. I have a table here that I chose not to put on the screen just because it is pretty dense. like 80% of the area median income for a two-person household in Pasco is $84,000 a year. So the medium income bands, zero to 80% AMI for a typical family, we can just look at like a four-person family. So if we're looking at that top row, mid-raise multifamily, which is like, I would say three to 10 stories or maybe higher, just multi-stack departments. That typically caters to folks in the low income range to 80% AMI. So for a four person household, 30% AMI is $32,000. So that's pretty low. And then if you go any lower than 30%, you're down to zero or homeless population. So people may be in transitional housing. 80% AMI for a four-person household is $84,000 a year. So if you think about apartments, that usually caters to folks making $80,000 or less, like families. And then the AMI changes when you get to less people in the household, so there's quite a range. But you're looking at providing zoning that allows for these houses that caters to these income levels. So it's just another layer put on by the state. So all of that to say, PASCO, Has a surplus of single family homes. So the state has looked at our single family homes and the state has said. You know what you have a surplus good job, but now you need to address these lower income needs and that helps with just housing diversity in general. So we do have people that are likely. making higher incomes, but maybe there's not a really super nice like house available for them to move into. So they've purchased down than what they can afford. And it kind of just goes downhill from there. So you could have someone with a decent income and like a really nice apartment, they could afford a house or a townhome, but there's just not that upper band. So we have a lot in that middle band, just the single family house, but we don't have the bigger houses that range at the 120% AMI or higher. So if we do, we're missing the lower income range and the upper income range. And so if we balance that out, then there's more of like a healthy mix for housing. And the results of the land capacity analysis, which I alluded to at the beginning of the presentation and just now, like a few seconds ago, is we are short by 6,200 units in the city. And I wish I could remember the existing units we have citywide so you could compare the percentage. I don't have that on me right now, but we do have a shortage deficit of 6,200 units For low-rise, mid-rise, and ADUs. So for apartment units is what that says. We're short by 6,200 apartment units, if you're looking at how much room we have in the city and what our current zoning allows. And then if you go forward, we have a surplus in moderate density, which is more single-family homes, townhomes, duplexes, triplexes. And then a little bit more surplus of the, the AMI for low density. So we have a surplus of, of single family homes and single family homes on bigger lots. And we have a deficit of apartment units is what this slide is communicating. And you can't interchange. Like if we have a surplus in housing units, like 10 years ago, it was really easy. We just said, well, we have a surplus here and we're good. And the math works out. And now it's, you know, we have a surplus, which is fine. That just means we have that checked off for probably a couple of comprehensive plan updates. but we do have the need to address where apartments go in the city. Are we following so far on how we're getting there? Okay, then the fun part, or not fun part, I guess, is looking at the policies. And before we get there, just quickly, population target. I have covered this already, but we do have, this slide is just communicating we have enough room for the population, which makes sense because we do have a surplus in certain houses. So if you're just looking at people we have enough room for the people anticipated coming to Pasco in the next few years. And then same with jobs. We have a surplus in jobs in the, in the community.

Can I ask a question? Of course. Cause it'll slip. It's kind of within this. Remember when we taught, and I'm not sure I'm going to come exactly right on this, but remember when we talked about projections and that the projections that were before this comp plan were so many hundred thousand or what have you, and that that didn't actually materialize. We actually haven't even reached that at this point. Yes. Do you remember that part? I do. So my question is, with the shortage that we're talking about and the projections where we're not even at the projection that we were supposed to be out, you know, however many, five years, six years, whatever, we're under, then

where do we draw the line and say wait a second we've already got this for we're not even at the numbers that we projected i mean when when do we go like too far into it yeah does that make sense kind of yes i so i believe what you're referring to is during the 2018 comprehensive plan the state said you are going to grow toward and it's really weird it's like almost the same number like 122 000 people so way off right because we're at 85 000 right now exactly So the good thing is we plan for that growth with infrastructure and transportation. There's been a few state mandates updated since then related to those things. But the good thing is we did plan infrastructure for it. So there's not like a huge shock to the system. Water rights is always an issue. So I'm not going to claim that. Yeah, we have all the water for everything that we need. That just is always an issue. But the number for this, so before the 2018 plan, planned 20 years. So through 2038, the state said you'll grow by 121,000. And I'm not sure how many units that equated to. I would think around 15,000 units. I think more people live per household or the other way around. So I would say around 15,000 to 18,000 units. So we plan for that. The difference is this, so the population target, the number of people is the same, but the housing types is different. So that's why we can't just say, hey, we're good, like we've met the target. The target now includes a band of different housing types within those units. So that's why we can't just say no.

Yes, no, I understand.

But we are a lot more ahead than, since it was slower, I mean, it's good and it's bad. I think I'm neutral about it. It's just, it's all projections. But yeah, there's things we've planned for that we're not having to do this time around because the number didn't change too much.

So that does explain some of it, and some of the really beautiful apartments that are up in the Broadmoor area, which, you know, the sand dunes are gone. It's sad, but they are. But those kind of, for people that need an apartment, are wonderful. But all the smaller, smaller houses, I don't know how that is... helping people that need the lower income. Like some of the really small lots, and you are in real estate, so you know I went into like a 1,700, 1,600 square foot home. They're right next, I mean, it's, and it was 410,000. Yeah. That's not a, that's not a, you know, a low or, I don't think. I think the apartments and the townhomes are.

Yeah, and there's a range for everyone. So those houses, yeah, maybe they don't cater to the low income, but somebody's buying those.

And they're building, building, building, building, building those, thinking that's a source for low. I don't know. I don't.

Yeah, and that might not be the intent. That might be a source for 100% AMI so that they move there. They're out of the apartments and freeing up space for the other folks. So there is a market for it. They're building them and they're selling. So whether or not that fits... A certain AMI, you might be right, but the market, they're flying off the shelves. Those types of houses, people are buying them. I'm not sure which AMI those fall in, but I'd be interested to look.

Yes, thank you.

Of course.

So I do have a question. So what if you keep getting permit proposals for a certain band that's

overdeveloped do you guys start denying those permits or is there some sort of like no we won't deny them if the zoning allows it we really can't legally i think we'd be in hot water i think for the purposes of the state exercise we just need to show there's bandwidth if the market goes a different direction that's fine we could go a step further i mean i think the city of everett created some low income zones and said you have to have affordable housing, you know, as defined as below 30% AMI in these zones, but that would be a policy decision. And, you know, I know at least that the last city was that they didn't want to do that and be that, you know, pick properties and say, these are going to be affordable. I mean, the people who own those properties probably wouldn't Appreciate that. I'm doing a lot of assumptions and maybe some of my Personal opinion is mixed in too. But you know you you can do that, but we wouldn't we wouldn't deny That's not what we're recommending is denying if you're if we're gonna have a surplus. Let's just Have more of a surplus and you know, make sure the zoning accommodates the needs and hopefully it balances out over time So along those lines I was curious so

The last stat was 6,200 units that were underdeveloped or were missing that we need to put in. But is that related to the projected growth that we're supposed to have by 20, was it 38 or 40? So I guess what my question is is, so if we don't make 120,000 people by that timeframe, can that be adjusted so we're not disproportionate in apartment units versus a different kind of unit? And I say that because we didn't hit our mark the last time around.

Those, those numbers will be our numbers. So it's, it's like a compound requirement. Like we don't have to grow to 121. They're projecting that we grow to 101 and they want to, and the state requires that because that's our, our growth allocation, you have to show that you have enough room for those 6,200 units. Yeah. If we're not growing that fast, I don't know if we get a new crack at, Hey, give us a new, you know, number. I wouldn't want to look at it every few years, to be honest. That sounds exhausting. I think every 10 years is, you know, if you don't hit your mark, then we recalibrate then. The state does require check-ins after every five years now. So we'll be looking at it every five years and adjusting as needed. I'm not sure if you can go to the state and say, hey, we're not hitting our growth target. Can you reduce our allocation? It's just the zoning needs to show, right? So there's so many factors that go into it. We need to show can fit 6200 units whether they're built is a different thing the state you know can't knock us for it not being built and i sound combative about the state requirements i guess i need to change my tone but it is just the requirements of the states but yeah i don't think it works that way i don't think we can say we're not growing this fast so can you tone it down i think they just you know give us the new production projections after the next 10 years and we go from there

So we do have some flexibility to look, say, 10 years down the road instead of 20 years and say, because I guess it depends on.

Every 10 years is when we do this update. It's a 20-year plan, but the last plan was in 2018. So it's every, I know it's not exactly 10 years. They've changed it to every 10 years. It used to be every seven.

So maybe for every, in the next five years we look at.

So in 10 years they'll give it, they'll look and say, you know, maybe our projections are still on target or maybe. Maybe they're not. So it's every 10 years.

Yeah, I guess I just where I'm going with this is can we do we have the flexibility as a city to say, wait, hold on. We're kind of getting disproportionate because let's say there's builders out there that want to build the apartment complexes that. our zone for this area that make up that number. But if we're not growing at that rate, does the city have a, basically a timeout in your pocket to say, wait, hold on. We don't necessarily have to approve that yet because we don't want to build when we don't have people coming or they haven't come yet.

Yeah, it is. I understand what you're asking. I think once we change our zones and allow the apartments, we can't just stop. in the middle and say, hey, we're not hitting the growth, so we're going to stop building. You're supposed to. That's the thing. Here's your target population. Show that your city can fit this growth, and you are to allow it. Because in a few years, maybe we aren't meeting the growth targets, but that doesn't mean the 19th year we're not going to. So it's really hard to push back. I don't think we can just hit pause and say, we think we reached enough apartments, and that's all we're seeing right now, and then just stop it from there. Okay. Not a lot of flexibility.

Commissioner Jones was next in line.

Thank you. I know there are a lot of cities that when they're working with contractors to encourage them to provide low-income housing, they will require them to, let's say in the 10-story building, have two floors of low-income and then two floors of mid-range and then a couple floors of upper level. Does that take place in Washington, or is that something that the city of Pasco does to work with contractors when they build? Sure.

I think that is not a mandate yet. I think that that's up to the city or the jurisdiction if you want to require a certain amount. I think that affordable housing is incentivized, but I'm not aware of anything that says... You know, we require affordable housing. The closest thing I can think of is middle housing. In Pasco, you'll be allowed to have four units per lot, but you can have six units per lot if two are affordable housing. So that's a state mandate that we can't push back on. So, yeah, I would like to move to the policy questions, too, at some point. And, yeah, happy to field more questions, but we do have several policy questions I would like input on as well.

It's a quick one. how do we determine how much is enough at a certain point in time I know that other cities have done that and I'm not saying it's an easy or necessarily popular with some part of the business community others it may be a wiser just to take a pause so that it just doesn't get to be more than what the market may be hot until it's not. And you're probably too young to remember Seattle. You probably all are, except maybe you. Anyway, my grandma told me this. The last person to leave Seattle, please turn off the lights. things just fell. And I don't remember when that was, like I said, but that just, you know, it's like, anyway.

Yeah. I, I don't think that there's, unless we wanted to take a stance on state regulations and, and be not in compliant with the growth management act. I don't think there's a point we can just say, Hey, we've had enough or a moratorium for a certain period of time. I wouldn't advise that. Yes. Um, it would cost the taxpayers money. I mean, it is hard to, you know um accept i guess and i i understand i i'm very jaded to it i've already gone through this process a few times at other cities and you know i've heard heard all of this so maybe that's why i'm a little desensitized to it or come across that way but there there really isn't we can't you know if four apartment complexes get built we can't say okay we're done with our fair share of apartments unless we've met the numbers you know if we do meet the numbers then that's where we're trying to strike a balance where our zoning right now doesn't show enough of that. We need to show that there's more, but we don't have to go above and beyond and a lot more than that. The deficit, we can hit the 6,200 right on the nose and cross that box out. We don't have to open it up to 30,000 apartment units.

And that's what I was, that's what I'm getting. Yeah. We don't have to go above and beyond.

And I wasn't, yeah, I don't, I don't think that's the direction I've received so far with this group. Not that I've asked you directly, but just, From previous conversations, we've already assumed at the consultant level and staff level that we're just trying to meet the mark and not go higher. Okay, so there are four options that we'd like the group to consider in order to accommodate this deficit. And the first is to increase density where multifamily is already allowed. And that would mean adjusting the density assumptions in the mixed use in R4 zones. So I'm just going to pause there and let you think about that concept. We don't really need to look at a map or a graph, just kind of think. Okay, where multifamily is already allowed in PASCO, where we've already paved that path, designated these areas of such. How does the group feel about adjusting the density assumptions in those zones that are typically in the mixed-use zone, 5 to 29 units per acre? So a little higher. 22 units per acre is typically like two- to three-story apartment complexes. So it sounds like a lot, but it's really... It's not like a tower that you'd see in Seattle or anything. It's like two or three stories, 22 units. So 29 would be a little bit higher. Four or five stories, I would say. So... Typical ranges and mixed use commercial is five to 29 units. And then in our four zone, 21 units an acre. So how does the group feel? And I can, how about I just quickly say all four options and then we can just go back and talk about each individually. So you know what's on the table and what's not on the table. So first option is to increase density where multifamily is already allowed. The second concept is allowing more missing middle housing. than what the state is requiring. And I might already know the answer to that based on this group. But that's an option where we'd allow more duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, cottage clusters, and more infill options on top of what's required, which is four to six units per lot on every residential lot in Pasco. The third option is to increase height in commercial and mixed use areas. So semi-related to the first, but if you picture our commercial zones, that slide I showed you showing the red and the pink areas increasing the height. So our current heights in town, not that anyone's really building anywhere near that is around 60 to 80 feet in the mixed use zone. And then commercial zones, it ranges from 35 to 45 feet. So if we want to increase the height, and maybe open up more allowances in commercial zones. Currently you can build residential above the first floor in commercial zones. So maybe we make that a little easier and go up in height. How do you feel about that? And the fourth option is to expand the mixed use zoning and targeted areas. So that would be actually changing the zoning. So the first three options, I guess two of the options are kind of go up further in existing zones. And then two of the other options is kind of changing the zoning a bit. So I'll start with the first option and tonight I'm looking for general feedback so we can either knock some things off the list. We can certainly come back next month and dig into it. At some point we do need to make decisions on these matters and that will come in the form of an updated comprehensive plan for the group. So bringing this up early because it can be a tough topic. It seems to be the toughest topic of the whole update. So if you're feeling stressed, it'll get easier from here. We're starting with the hardest one. and then everything else will feel like a breeze. So let's talk about the first one. And we have four topics, so I'm hoping, you know, let's spend as much time as we need, but try and be, you know, concise and just kind of give just your initial thoughts on it is what I'm looking for tonight. Nothing will be set in stone. I do have this presentation planned for council on Monday as well. So I'm serving as a liaison between the two groups, get their input, and then just sort of kind of bounce back and forth between the groups. But you will... You're going to get way more check-ins than them before the end, but I need to check in with them so I don't get them the whole comprehensive plan at the end of the year and just shock them. So we're gonna be checking in between the groups. So first one, increased density where multifamily is already allowed, and that means increasing density in the mixed use in R4 zones. How do you feel about that? Okay.

I was going to say something along those lines. So I'll just use the Broadmoor location for an example. There's already commercial development planned. I'm sure there's R4 and other mixed use zoning in that area. That is something that you could increase, you know, instead of having a three or four story apartment building, you could probably get five or six or even seven in the backdrop of larger commercial buildings. It wouldn't be that much of an eyesore and it's a way to

by increasing the density get us to this number of units okay thank you chair as well as uh oh sorry you might want to agree with what commissioner i'm sorry brian um said respecting where these are going to go in like areas like areas like

you mentioned I think that's paramount paramount has to be and by putting housing together coupling it in like areas then you can be able to utilize the infrastructure there parks systems roads things like that the walkability that was discussed earlier that is yep a characteristic of Pasco that we're aiming towards Commissioner Jones

Thank you for saying infrastructure because bigger water lines, bigger sewer lines are likely already going to be there and be able to tolerate another layer or two or three of things being built. So that would be, again, easier to adjust in those things. So all, yeah, easier to do. I'm all for that.

Okay. Thank you for the feedback. And we will still continue to look into this topic. So just getting general feedback tonight. Second topic is allow more missing middle housing. And before you jump in and say, we're already getting forced to have four to six units on every lot and we don't want any more, why would we want more? Allow me to just offer a different perspective. If we did allow more missing middle housing in key areas, we don't have to allow it citywide. Riverview, we can just stick to the minimum four to six units per lot, which sounds like a lot, I know. But we could be strategic and allow more middle housing in certain areas. And that would introduce gradual density throughout the city instead of solely relying on apartments to take all the heat. So there's kind of a balance here. And then I wanted to also mention not one of these rules will solve our problem. So we do need to stack a few rules on each other. So sorry to add another twist to this riddle. But allowing more missing middle housing, and you don't have to give me an answer. You could say something like, I hate the idea, period, or open to it in other areas as long as it's not the lowest density areas in town. Please look into that further or how you feel temperature-wise on it. So you can give answers like that, and I will take all of this back to our consultants. Chair recognizes Commissioner Jones.

Thank you. Based on our discussions in our last couple meetings about the Riverview area and everything, obviously, you know, areas like that increasing, that would be a risky proposition to say the least. But there will probably be areas where it could be done. And I think the pace of doing that would be the key. Look at it strategically, slowly, how it's gonna impact the area, and then perhaps allow it to be done in a slowly, well-planned, strategic manner following everything that you just showed us in that initial presentation. It could be done. It would just really need to be done carefully and the pace of it, not a lot at once, a few once out of the street or something where it's not overwhelming to the people who are already in the area. think that that's something where some of these developments go sour is so much happens at once the people who are living there can't stomach it and it's too much for them where a smaller amount sometimes generates excitement so there's a fine line in there and I think for that's that element of it that might be how to move forward with that

So proceed with caution?

Yes.

Gently.

Gently. Wow, I said that twice tonight.

All right. Understood. Commissioner Crutchfield? Yes, I agree with these thoughts. Proceed cautiously, slowly, with the idea in mind of, you know, what developments you're coming up adjacent to. One of your comments in the beginning was I could just say I don't like it. And I don't, but I realize that change is necessary. I obviously realize that. And I think that there's one really good example on Court Street that has been there for some time. And granted, it's probably something that we're used to seeing. That may be part of it. But it's higher density than the surrounding, and that's Ivy Glades. Whatever reason it was planned or whatever, it just seems to work and kind of

know fits into that area so anyway thank you yeah we do have some model areas in pasco like teravita you know higher density living um two three-story um homes but also a community um park uh recreation center um things like that that people fill feel proud and connected with their neighbors. And so these housing opportunities can absolutely have that as long as proceeding with caution, slow rollout, and being very intentional about these housing opportunities. Any other commissioners? Here you go.

just something to add to that i think it's important too to realize when we're blending existing larger lots with smaller lots and more dense construction sometimes simple boundary objects like fences maybe even shrubs or other kind of growth help kind of absorb the the views and the dist or the it helps blend it but it doesn't put it right on top of the other person so to speak so you can still enjoy some of your space even though density comes in next to you there's a way to kind of not block it per se but kind of blend it and absorb it into the environment

Okay, putting a star next to the word blend. And then I wrote down Ivy Glades and Terra Vida as examples. If you have others happy to hear that too. Visuals are always helpful. Um, so, okay. So we'll work on that based on that input and there'll be check-ins on this. So we will check back in with the group, um, you know, when we get further along and we may not need all of these. So I think I'm just getting kind of, you know, your input and then we'll take it to the consultant and we'll try and, you know, design it to how you are suggesting. And then if there's something that goes wrong or doesn't quite fit, I'll bring it back to you. Then moving on to the third topic increase height in commercial and mixed use areas, so, if you look at the screen like that would be the red. The pink commercial and that that sort of folds in with the first question I asked about increasing density. in the mixed use zone. This is now including commercial, which allows residential above the first floor. We don't see a lot of that built. I think it just doesn't pencil out. The commercial on the bottom is what the hardest. So we could allow like less commercial on the bottom, like maybe the front 20 feet of the building instead of the whole building. I mean, there's ways we can look at it. And then increasing height, whether or not it's built, I'm not sure. This might be one of those pencil whip exercises, to be honest. But we could show that we meet the density in that. So that's an option, too. How does the group feel about increasing height in commercial mixed-use areas? And to reiterate, this would support vertical mixed-use housing. This modeling could add approximately 1,000 units to our deficit. and this could include step backs and transition standards, which was mentioned in the last comment, blending. How do you feel about that? Commissioner Jones is ready to go.

I want to talk about the possibility of loft housing above commercial buildings downtown. When I was on the city council in Rapid City, we have a beautiful downtown area that was impacted by malls and everything that we talked about earlier on. And we allowed all of the buildings in the business area, the business improvement district, if you will, to do that, to go above their main level shop and create residential. Some of them have had it for 100 years because they're old buildings. Some of it was just blank space. And we said, you know, to increase housing, to develop more foot traffic downtown, we made it user-friendly, we changed the zoning, made it very easy for them to do it, and still be safe, of course, you know, with all that stuff. Hugely successful. Extremely successful. The idea of walking around downtown, having services available, grocery, restaurant, entertainment, for a certain age group right now is super popular. I think it would be a great idea. I would support it 100%. The potential of it to be popular and work, I think, is very high right now and will continue to be for several years, and I would support that a lot. I really, we love the idea there. It worked well, and I think it's a great idea.

Commissioner Miranda?

So with that concept of commercial on the main level and residential on the higher levels, is that currently allowed right now in the city of Pasco?

Yes. This is... This is to me, and the consultants will listen to this recording and probably laugh, but to me, this is just I don't know if realistically it will be. Built or not, this is just to show we have the capacity to the state to say we've met these certain numbers and maybe maybe if we go higher, that's what people need. Maybe there's a few applicants that. They would build this if only we allowed 100 feet tall in certain areas, you know, as an extreme example. But it is allowed. And we would like to see more of that. I would. I mean, I have a planning background, so I'm probably clouded by planning principles. But vertical mixed use, I think, is awesome. You have commercial uses on the bottom, your coffee shop, people above. It's pretty cool. So it is allowed. This would just be... increasing the height to model that we can fit those extra units that we are in a deficit. Whether or not it gets built, I'm not sure. But this is just an option to kind of tweak areas that already allow this instead of globally. And that's an option too. We can take all the zones and up it by one unit per acre and hit thousands of units that way too. I just wasn't getting the... you know, direction from this group or the council group that that was the first option. So we tried to look at these first.

All right, Commissioner Crutchfield. Yeah, it's just on this last number three. So going up, like the building over by the casino, the white apartments that are relatively new, how high are they then? Because they look very nice.

Yeah. And so over by the casino, I, I'm still, it's over there.

Well, yeah.

Oh, the eighth street. And they're, oh, the, um, by the, the casino.

I mean, I've never, oh, river off the eighth street along the river and crazy news casino.

Um, I'm, I'm actually not sure how tall those are. If you're what? I'm not sure what the height is. I don't know what the building looks like. I don't know if I've had my eyes on it. If I knew how many stories I could tell you. Do you know how many stories there are approximately?

Probably maybe three.

Okay. So 35 feet, I would say. 40 at the highest.

It looks very nice. I mean, it really does. And I think the other concept is kind of cool too. But again, I say it depends on where you're going to put it. I've seen the commercial on the bottom and residential and I'm sure you're familiar because you've lived over there Pine Lake it used to be forested and now that city's developed and they have that Mercer Island same concept city of Mercer Island but different than here for sure sure but so I think both are great ideas it just depends where you're going to put it yeah well for this instance it would be the red areas on the screen

The commercial areas that follow.

Like Broadmoor.

Broadmoor and the arterials that those commercial zones follow.

And I think in that area of Broadmoor, I think that that is doable, really. I mean.

Yeah, it's doable. I think, yeah, from a perspective of showing capacity, whether or not it's built is another thing. You know, some people don't want to build that high. It's not penciling. But, yeah. I hear you. So yeah, that would be in areas like Broadmoor and existing commercial zones that are shown on the screen that are already marked for commercial.

Right. Thank you. Of course. So downtown Pasco, I believe there's only one building that is commercial and then residential up above. I could be wrong about that, but I have heard from others that there is, there is interest. Sure.

Yeah.

Um, like commissioner Jones talked about, you know, um, having those coffee shops, walkable city on those services that are available. Um, I think a well planned out community would be excellent. I think it would be difficult to, um, well, I guess added to downtown without a whole lot of destruction of current and historical buildings. So that would be, be interesting about where that could be placed.

Yep. And it is already allowed in downtown and just be making it slightly higher. It's extremely expensive to build vertical mixed use. buildings. That's why we're not seeing a lot of it. I think it is a desired trait. And I think a lot of people downtown would love to see that it's just expensive with the lots you have. They're pretty small. So infill is expensive taking out whatever there's a lot of structures already downtown that are worth something. So to demo that is a cost. then you lose the value of whatever structure, even if it's not in the best shape, there's still value to it. So for it to pencil, you almost need to consolidate several lots together, and that's an assemblage. I mean, it's a lot of work. So I think it is a desired use. It's just a quite expensive feat to accomplish. Yeah, economics weigh in. So this would allow it, and it would help us get closer to the numbers.

Okay, I feel like I have good input on that topic.

So the last one is to expand mix use zoning and targeted areas, and that would create more opportunity for vertical housing. And this would require infrastructure and location analysis, some more technical analysis on where this would work, but the. The basis of it is possibly converting some residential areas to more mixed use or commercial areas to mixed use. So, you know, it would be a little impactful to existing residential areas because it would be allowing more uses, higher density commercial type uses, and then in commercial areas allowing more residential. So is the group interested in looking at expanding mixed use zoning in targeted areas?

Chair?

Commissioner Crutchfield? It sounds really complicated, but I would say just not really.

OK. Yep. That's fair.

Commissioner Jones?

I'm not in favor of losing any current residential areas. Neighborhoods are to be cherished. One of the cool things about Pasco, especially in this part of town, are the neighborhoods that are around the pool and all of this area over here. I love it. It reminds me of where I grew up in Rapid City in the Robbinsdale part of town. Shout out to Robbinsdale. It's beautiful and they should not be allowed to be disseminated and government One of the roles of government should be to keep those intact, not dissect them. So I would not be in favor of doing something like that.

Okay.

Do we have a healthy lot of commercial zoning acreage?

I need to get the technical answer for it. My anecdotal or what my heart's telling me is, you know, we can't really lose any more commercial in Pasco based on our residential area. um ratios and you know it might be just because i know in the back of my head that once commercial converts to residential you never get it back so maybe we have a little more than we need right now but the you know protective side of me for the city knowing that commercial is part of a living thriving city is protected even though it may not pencil i'm sure you know lots of people who own we do get a lot of requests from applicants wanting to convert commercial to residential because residential is red hot right now. And it just, I'm very hesitant toward it just from a professional standpoint, because I know you just don't ever get it back. It's very unlikely someone approaches the city and says, man, can I convert these 500 acres of residential to commercial? It's just, you don't get that. You get the opposite. So I appreciate your question. I think that I need to that base um back up what i'm saying with facts um so i just think anecdotally pasco has enough commercial designated right now to be okay especially in the broadmoor area if it keeps getting cut into i would start panicking and feeling like we're going to forever be the bedroom community to try cities and everyone will leave and go spend their money in kennewick and richland and live here you know and then that self-sustaining you know as far as sales taxes and those are um volatile so you don't want to you know as a budget standpoint rely too much on that because if the economy goes down you know and you're relying solely on you know people shopping and spending money that could go up and down but i think as part of a healthy city we need commercial um so Did I answer your original question? Yeah, you did.

I think I remember a couple years ago, a former director said that we were under stock of industrial area. And isn't it usually goes more like industrial to commercial?

Yes. I don't think we're under an industrial. We have lost industrial since the last update. There's a little pink, I call it a boot-shaped lot. It's over... there's no way i'm going to be able to point the laser oh i think i can no i can't move them outside off of a street so this yeah that area that's several hundred acres um i can't remember exactly the precise amount but anyway there 200 acres. So we are down 200 acres than the last update. But we haven't seen in the numbers that there's a shortage. Pasco has a lot of industrial. We have a lot going for us. Our industrial, the airport, plenty of commercial uses too. I think that we have enough industrial. We could use more. I think any variety of jobs is good for the community as well. But I don't see that we have a deficit, I guess, to answer your question.

Isn't the airport port land?

Yes, but it's in the city. So we claim it. It's in the city. We don't own and operate it necessarily, but it is a cool use in our city, an industrial use. But yeah, it's owned and operated by the port as far as I know. Okay, so I think I have good input from the group. And just to reiterate, and this isn't, we're not signing in. It's down here or anything. So this is just a discussion and we'll work on this further and bring it back more refined when we get further on it. As far as option one, increased density where multifamily is allowed gently do this and then be strategic with it. So that's the feedback I'll bring back to the consultants. And then allowing more missing middle. Some did not like the idea, which is okay. And some suggested be strategic, look at it slowly, see if it can be more thought out and not just a blanket approach throughout the city. And then I heard increased height in commercial. So for increased height in commercial and mixed use areas, this one didn't seem to have as much negative feedback. So I think we'll, you know, move forward with that one definitely as an option. Um, and then option four seemed like the least favorite. So just based on what I'm hearing, it seems like a mix of option one and three, which is to increase heights and commercial zones, one to increase density where multifamily is allowed, you know, in a thoughtful way. And then probably third option, if we still need more is looking to how we can incorporate missing middle housing. Is that sound accurate? Okay, so I will take this back to our consultant team and do more work on it. You'll see a more final draft later on. I do have a meeting with council and the reason I wanted to meet with you first is so that when I do the presentation to council, they'll get a lot quicker presentation. and I'll be sure and tell them this is where the Planning Commission was leaning as far as the fourth options. And you can add more options. I just didn't include options I didn't think the group would want to go with, and so did our consultant. So if you think of other options like raising density in single-family areas or things like that that we didn't suggest, those are on the table too. Anything's on the table. So thank you for the feedback. I have direction on this item, and we will be speaking again on it. So I do have another workshop item that will go really quick when you're ready, Chair, if it's okay.

You guys ready?

There we are. Okay. So this will go really quick. It's just a very related topic that stems off this, and I could have almost combined it into two presentations. So this is going to be part of the comprehensive plan update. So the reason we're talking about land capacity and all of this technical jargon is because we need to create housing policies for the city. And there's an existing housing policy list in the existing comprehensive plan. And there'll be things that need to change to align with these numbers that we covered. So I'm not going to cover that again. Those were our target populations. And then this slide is basically saying we need to comply with the Growth Management Act, which we already touched on. And then state law that is required to comply, we're required to comply with, which I've already hit on too much tonight, so I won't get on that more. And then there's some stats on the housing market just saying that we need different diverse housing. So 77% of the homes in Pasco are single family detached. So that's quite a bit for our housing stock. So this is just reaffirming our need for that diverse housing options. And then 64% of renters are housing cost burdened. And then one in five homes were constructed after the year 2000. So a lot of our homes are new is what that slide is trying to tell you. And then population growth after the year 2000 is increasing by 260%. So PASCO, this is just saying PASCO has exploded over the last couple of decades. And we used to be a lot smaller and we annexed a lot of land in over the recent years. So PASCO is... you know, I think a very big city, but still maybe in the teenage phase just because of the quick growth. So we're just still trying to find, you know, who we are and identity because we've grown so fast. So we almost have different identities going on. The old Pasco, the new Pasco, and just, you know, becoming one big city. And it didn't happen slowly, so it almost feels like a shock if you look at it, how quick Pasco grew. But that's okay. I think we can still do a great job, and we are a great city, and I think we can make all of this work and still have a great identity and be a fabulous city here in the Tri-Cities. So here for every home that was built since 2000, Pasco gained 12 new residents. So they're not all in each home, but that's just trying to say there's a lot of people moving into the different housing types in Pasco. And then here's a demographic, um, you know, makeup and it is anticipated to change over time because we are going to have more aging residences, um, residents, smaller households and workforce households, or for folks, you know, with workforce households as in households that are, um, catering to the workforce and are more affordable. And then we'll still have a continued demand for a range of housing. And our policies that are listed don't quite align with what's happening at the state level and what's happening in Pasco now. So we will need to cross check all of our housing policies and we'll be bringing you a list of new housing policies to look for that kind of play into our land capacity and our housing needs. And, you know, emphasize flexibility, defensibility, compliance. So we can't make policies that say, for example, this area will never grow in one house per lot. You know, we just can't. There's some things we can't comply with. So there's some examples of different goals and policies that we'll need to look at and revise and we'll be bringing those to you. So the current plan shows goals and policies, you'll see this. So this is where the actual plan is where we're building up to this point to where we actually formulate policies that are based on a number of factors. And then after we do all of these policy alignments, like the process goes, once you update the comprehensive plan with all of these requirements, they get submitted to the state and they look at it. And we ideally have met all the regulations at that point. So that's where the black and white work will occur. But we do all of this background policy conversations to formulate that so that I don't show up to a meeting With 20 new policies, and you're like, what do these mean? Where did this come from trying to build the stage for you? And I know this is there's been a lot at this meeting, but each meeting we will have different topics to cover with you. And this meeting happens to focus mostly on housing. So just wanted to go really quick through that just to, I guess, say. Once we know where we're going, then we will actually start writing the policies. And then those policies will guide the comprehensive plan map that I talked about at the beginning. And then those policies will also guide our zoning maps and municipal code. So it all just kind of flows together. So any questions on that topic? And if you don't have any, that's OK. It does kind of fold into the last two topics. A lot of different angles we were trying to show you tonight related to this so that it helps stick, you know, because it can be a lot.

Well, I'll remember evolution, not revolution. I was surprised you didn't say that. I was like, oh, that's good. Any questions from commissioners? Okay. I guess seeing none, then we'll close the workshop. Here we go, Commissioner Ludwig.

As we get more dense as a city per the state requirements, I just noticed driving around town some of these new developments going up. The houses seem to be so close together that you could literally pass, can I borrow a cup of sugar? Sure, here you go, and they can reach out and grab it from the other window. One of your slides earlier talked about middle housing and concerns with setbacks and fire regulations. How do the fire regulations come into play? And maybe you're not the best person to ask, probably somebody from the fire department potentially, but how does that come into play? Because I know bigger structures have fire suppression systems. But houses don't typically. So, you know, in larger neighbor or more spread out neighborhoods, the houses set away from each other. So if one goes up, it's probably going to be contained to that one house. But I see an issue with these houses being close together. If one goes, it's gonna reach the next and the next and the next. Just curious what thought process or how does the fire department weigh in on that?

Yeah, and it's based on international fire codes, international residential codes. So it's separation. So if most houses, they do look like they're super close, but they're likely 10 feet apart, five feet on each side. And then there's, if you go closer, there's firewall requirements. And a firewall, I think, Um, in my building official, hopefully he doesn't listen to this cause this is embarrassing, but I think it's sheet rock and two different types of materials stacked on each other that don't burn very easily. So if the fire does start jumping over, you at least have like a wall that's going to take the heat for a long time along enough for people to, yeah, yeah. Two hour fire separation. So in theory, if it works correctly, the fire hits and it burns for two hours before it gets inside the house. So that's plenty of time hopefully for anybody to get.

Okay.

out of there. So it's international fire codes. The closer they get together, the more requirements you have about those walls and the fences and know think people do put flammable materials in between buildings so that does not help the situation but ideally you'd have the house and then like the fence at a certain distance so it doesn't jump as easy but if it does jump over firewalls and then if you start going up vertical like with mixed uses then sprinklers are triggered so there's just there's a series of requirements that are triggered the closer things get and the more stacked things get because the easiest way to put it okay thank you

Commissioner Crutchfield? It was along the line of what Commissioner Bryan said with the fire. The importance for the city of making sure that all those hydrants and what serves the hydrant has the capacity, because as the city has annexed and grown, a lot of that was in Franklin County. And it was a different method of delivering of the water to put out the fire, whether it was a pump or truck or whatever. so as development just explodes we need to make sure that all of those hydrants and so forth that serve those will be functional to prevent a disaster because i yes it has happened yep and we do every project that comes into the city goes through a development review process and troy hendren is our building official and fire marshal and

He has a million certifications. He's very qualified. And you know, we, we look at that and we look at it with the fire chief and there's international codes that regulate this too. So, you know, new development is, is subject to a lot of the regulations and it is expensive. So we do get feedback from the community, you know, where can you be flexible? And it is hard, you know, to want to be flexible for your applicants. but then maintain life safety. And I think we do a good job balancing it.

Because a lot of these places were annexed from the county and it went kind of rapidly.

Yes, and if there's, you know, there's vesting too. So if there's new development, it's subject to it, you know.

Thank you. I'll wait. Okay, so speaking of those donut holes and absorbing the county land into the city, when is those five last donut holes going to be absorbed? What is the timeline on that?

There's no timeline right now. To be transparent, the city isn't eager to... take in a donut hole that's built to county standards and then we are maintaining it. It's in the city, but then the folks in those donut holes would likely want city services, sidewalks, streetlights, that kind of thing. So there's not really an incentive economically right now to just take that in and say, we're going to take in this old infrastructure now that infrastructure is our problem. So we do eventually want to take in those. It just makes sense to have all the services provided to those and not have these pockets of County land. But right now there's not really a plan. You know, if you were to ask a scholarly planner or someone like me looking at the map for the first time, when I got here, I, you know, it bothered me. Why, why don't we have those into town, you know, more OCD than anything, but it's just, you know, financially, I think is the biggest reason. And, and some of those folks are in the County and they don't want to be in the city. So that does play into it. I would say maybe not necessarily, as much as the financial, I'd say both to be polite, but I think there are people in the county surrounded by city and they don't want to be in the city, but they're in the county and they're surrounded by city. So it's inevitable. I know that sounds rude, but you know, just by proximity, they're completely surrounded. So, um, but right now there's not a timeline. Um, ideally how it would work is slowly over time. People want to become like, we have people calling us saying we'd like to connect to city services. And build the county standards. Okay. That's not fair for the city. We're not going to give you services and then you build the county standards. So if you build the city standards annex into the city, you can have our services. So ideally we could just kind of take little bites over time in a perfect world and just slowly kind of ease into it. That would be more financially stable. I believe not an expert in that topic, but that's just sort of what I've learned since I've been here the last year.

This isn't really a question, it's more of a suggestion since we're in the infancy stages. We talked a lot about density and we mentioned infrastructure, but one thing I wanted to also mention is the roadway infrastructure. As we get this population increase, in the city of Pasco, you pretty much have to leave it via an interstate. So we have a premium on on-ramps and off-ramps. And I think as in the Broadmoor area, it's kind of like the shoot of an hourglass where the top is getting fuller, the bottom's getting fuller, but the shoot stays the same. So we're going to probably need to start that conversation on how we can increase that in the future, especially if we're going to become a city of 120,000 people.

Well said. Any other commissioners? Okay. Director, as we've talked about state mandates and different issues in current legislation, is there any House bills or Senate bills that as a planning commission that we should be in the know to be able to do our research and decide if we want to write in or advocate for or against?

sure and i believe a lot of those are slowing down right now so i'll make note next year to bring that forward to you if the group wants to hear in advance and and participate we the city does have a legislative representative that's in olympia and helping us So I would imagine a lot of the comments we've submitted are aligned just from what I've learned about this group. I think a lot of the comments staff has provided in the mayor and our representative have been more or less aligned with the group. And I'll give a couple examples. Um, you know, one example at the state level was to propose allowing housing in all zones, except for industrial and just open it up. So effectively, um, making it so commercial zones were no longer commercial zones and just open it up, you know, so we provided comments on it. This is too extreme. We need commercial and they've, they've tailored it back a little bit from there. And then there's other, there's other, um, legislative priorities related to, and I'm just talking zoning mostly. There's so many others related to like police and public works, but as far as zoning, there was a few, um, that came down related to efficiencies and timelines and providing refunds if you don't meet timelines, you know, and they're stacking on other rules from last year that we haven't even really caught up with. So there's just the sheer volume of changes is unprecedented and just not what most city planners or cities have seen. So just more emphasis on housing, I think, is the general theme. And we provided feedback where we could. And I feel like there was a lot of... A LOT OF FEEDBACK WE PROVIDED THAT WAS LISTENED TO AND WE MADE A DIFFERENCE. OF COURSE, WE HAD OTHER CITIES PROVIDING SIMILAR FEEDBACK. SO I THINK, YOU KNOW, TO GET THROUGH A WHOLE LIST, I WOULD WANT TO PREPARE AND GO THROUGH THAT. I JUST THINK, YOU KNOW, REST ASSURED, WE'RE PROVIDING COMMENTS WHERE I THINK THAT WOULD BE MORE ALIGNED WITH THE GROUP'S THOUGHTS, MAKING A LOT OF ASSUMPTIONS HERE. BUT, YOU KNOW, HOUSING, AND WE PROVIDED THAT. SO I DON'T HAVE A CONFERENTIAL LIST TONIGHT THAT I HAVE PUT TOGETHER. helped comment on like 10 to 15 different ones just in my position and I know our public works director has helped and our city manager's office has been scrambling I mean this is just around the clock for the last month with our legislative you know it's just so much going on at once but we've been following it and commenting where we can any other questions or comments from commissioners or staff okay

One more from Commissioner, or more, from Commissioner Tungvik.

I guess this is more of just a suggestion. So earlier I mentioned we should, on the city website, have that diagram that you had, that graphic that explained the overall comprehensive plan and how that flows down. I think the same could be said for the Growth Management Act and some of the requirements that are coming out of Olympia and the west side of Washington. And I say that because a lot of people that I talk to, they think of it in the mindset of, well, this is Pasco. Why do we need to go up? Why do we need to be dense? Why do we need to be anything that's over in Seattle or in that area? But they don't necessarily understand. And as this process progresses, I think it might help people to have a resource where they can go and say, hey, this is not us that's necessarily driving this. This is requirements that are coming down upon us that we have to fall within. And that's why these suggestions are being made. Because I can see maybe some pushback at future meetings, whether it's here or the city council meetings, where people are going to be upset with high rises and six and seven story apartment buildings and residential on top of commercial. But that would maybe help kind of ease the fire, so to speak, and give people a resource of where they can go and kind of educate themselves before they come here.

We had very, very robust conversations about what the state is shoving at us and our lack of delight in that. to what you're saying. So yeah, those discussions have most certainly taken place. I think that's a good idea. As all of this moves forward, I'm sure a lot of people are going to react the way this group has, and it's going to be a hard pill to swallow.

and we do have a dedicated comprehensive plan landing page if you type in pasco city comprehensive plan there's a dedicated page and there is actually a diagram of what you're talking about it shows the state and then the county and then the city and you know the flow and so we we do sprinkle that throughout the materials like when we did the climate change effort we made sure to say this is a state mandated effort so we do have a landing page they can look at and see So yeah, I didn't include it tonight in the presentation because we have a lot of different things to cover, but there is a website that does cover the basics in a pretty simple way with diagrams, so I think it's helpful. Thank you.

So my view is similar to what you said, and as an educator, as much as we can possibly be able to educate the public, then they're in the know as much as we can be able to put in a variety of languages as well as graphics to be able to help bridge that gap between first language English and our second language English learners, as well as not painting ourselves as a commission that leans a certain way either Um, we make recommendations up to the city council that is supposed to be nonpartisan. And so, um, allowing our, um, residents in public to be able to come in here and feel, um, that their voice is going to be heard and valued, um, is something that I really strive for and value and, um, welcome our new commissioners onto the board too. And, um, hopefully, um, that speaks to your heart and your values as well.

And I appreciate that comment. Outreach is just hard. I've been in the industry for 10 years, and it's hard to get people to understand what the comprehensive plan is. And we've had some outreach events. We had some really good input earlier last year. from a focus group but it's hard to get the community to come when when we see the most community members it's when it's too late it's when the you know level three sex offender housing comes into their neighborhood or it's when you know the dense apartments come next door and they can see it and feel it and then they're upset and then we see hundreds of people but when we're doing the planning for it it's just such a dense topic i think it's hard to get people and everyone's busy i mean they're working hard and they're in this community living here and time is precious and, you know, we've tried all sorts of methods. I have at the last two cities I worked at. So I'm just always had a hard time getting people to planning commission meetings. Um, they do come to hearing examiner meetings when there's a development right next door and they can see it and feel it. Um, but yeah, I, that's just a, I've never been able to really solve that. And, you know, we also don't have unlimited time and unlimited staff to go out in the community and knock on doors and, And do everything and anything there's just not budget for that. So we do what we can. We do a lot of Facebook posts. We have an online. We have a little survey online. The comprehensive plan designated page. You know, swipe left or right. It's just so easy. And there's just things we're trying to make it as easy as possible. And, you know, we received, like, 30 survey response, but we have 85,000 people in the city. So just has it there's just so many things people are. you know, bombarded with each day that I think just haven't been able to really get everyone to participate and there are some things that are just out of our hands anyway. So I think there might be some sentiment like my voice doesn't matter. I don't think that's true. I think it does matter. But yeah, I appreciate your comment. I just wanted to point out that if we could go out and knock on every door and get input from everybody, we certainly would. It's just not realistic with our staffing. This is just one small part of my job. the comprehensive plan update and it's so dense and overwhelming. You know, we have, we're trying to take in online payments, work on processes. It's just, there's a lot going on in, you know, we just, there's reality in it too, but I appreciate that. If there's ways to get more people involved, I would love it. I think what finds, what I find works best is when I get invited to things and I can just go talk in a presentation and, you know, pretty simple terms and bring a presentation like I brought to you for the first slide and I go to chambers like other cities. I went to BIAs. I even went to some different Latino organizations. Like, so if I get invited to those groups, I mean, as long as it's a safe group and it's, you know, either open to hearing input, I'm fine going and bringing a planner with me. So if you guys hear of those groups or if there's people that get together, like there's little downtown groups that I've gone to, like that seems to be the easiest way for me to come into an existing meeting that's already set up or even an HOA meeting. So if you hear of any of those, let me know and we can try and penetrate the community and get out there. But it's, yeah, I've always scratched my head because we usually don't get a ton of people at these meetings.

Another value that our planning commission does a really good job at, and once again, this is an introduction to our two new planning commissioners, is showing value to the director and your staff. We recognize you guys are working hard and doing a good job, but make sure we take the time to say it because, yeah, your job, all your guys' jobs are pretty thankless. Like you said, when people show up, in the revolution phase right um so we appreciate you um as well as um showing courtesy and respect to our um consultants that come online and or meet in person and so um one thing i've heard throughout my four and a half years on planning commission is that it is a commission that is unlike many boards in Tri-Cities, many boards even across the state and across the nation. We get along well together. We're very respectful and very respectful to the director as well as those that serve in the CDE office. So thank you so much. Appreciate you.

Thank you. Appreciate it. And the next item is director comments, so I'll dive into that if that's okay. I just wanted to remind the group that we have an open record public records training scheduled for monday i believe at 6 p.m if i'm not mistaken and that's part of the regular meeting so we encourage you to attend if you're not familiar with public records i believe we'll have some council members there too so it might be a good way to to mingle but there's training that carmen sent as a reminder so take a look at that and yeah i don't have any other comments other than thank you guys and you are volunteers and we appreciate your your work as well any other questions or comments from commissioners

Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Okay. Move to adjourn. Second. It's been properly moved and seconded. Good night.