Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

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

Thank you, Chair. Commissioner Crawford. Excused. And Commissioner Jones. Here. Thank you. Commissioner Lehrman. Excused. Oh, it's written right here. Thank you. First time doing this. Commissioner Waits.

Present.

Commissioner Crutchfield. Here. Commissioner time guest fake here I Commissioner Miranda President and Commissioner Cochran chair chair Cochran.

Thank you.

All right. Well, thank you And it appears we have a quorum excellent

The Planning Commission is an advisory board made up of volunteers appointed by the City Council. The purpose of the Planning Commission is to provide recommendations to City Council regarding changes to the City's comprehensive plan, land use updates, block grant allocations, and zoning code. The Planning Commission is tasked with considering the long-term growth and development of the community, the impact of land use decisions on the community, livability, economic opportunity, housing affordability, public services, and the environment. I'd like to remind the audience that tonight's proceedings are being broadcast live on the City of Pasco's Facebook page and Spectrum Charter Cable PSC Channel 191 and will be rebroadcast several times during the next month. The meeting is also being recorded so you can watch it on the City of Pasco's website which is pasco-wa.gov. Click on the video demand link and make your selection of the meeting you want to watch there. There are also copies of the meeting agenda available on the back table so you may follow along with our meeting. For those present this evening when you're given the opportunity to address the Commission, please come to the podium. Please speak clearly into the microphone and state your name and city of address for our records. Before we begin tonight's meeting, I need to remind the audience that the Planning Commission and the Planning Commission that Washington state law requires public meetings like the one being held this evening, not only to be fair, but also to 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 be either benefited or harmed by the Planning Commission decision. An objection to any Planning Commission member hearing any matter on tonight's agenda needs to be aired at this time or it'll be waived. First, are there any Planning Commission members who have a declaration at this time regarding any item on the agenda? All right, let the record show there were no declarations. Second, is there anyone in the audience this evening who would object to any Planning Commission member hearing any of the items on the agenda? And we have no one online, correct? No, we're not doing online. All right, let the record show there were no declarations. We as the Planning Commission need and value your input. It helps us to understand issues more clearly and make better recommendations to City Council. Furthermore, in many cases, your input here at this Planning Commission meeting is your only opportunity to get your facts and opinions placed on the official record the City Council will use to make its decision. I encourage you to take full advantage of the opportunity. All right, the first item on the agenda is the approval of the meeting minutes from February 19th, 2026. These minutes were sent to the commission members ahead of time. I trust you have the opportunity to take a look at them. I'd entertain a motion to approve or any comments or feedback or questions regarding the minutes. I would note, minor thing, not a big thing, I noticed that I wasn't here but somehow I adjourned the meeting last month in the meeting so I think it was Chair Lehrman or Vice Chair Lehrman that adjourned the meeting. That was the only thing I noticed that needed to be corrected so anything from anybody else? Mr. Chairman, with that correction, I'd like to make a motion to approve the minutes. All right. Commissioner Jones is moved.

I second.

All right. And Commissioner Waits has seconded. All those in favor?

Aye.

All right. Any opposed? All right. Approval of the meeting minutes has passed unanimously. All right. Old business, we have no old business on the agenda, so we'll jump right in the public hearing section of the agenda, and it's the Tri-Cities Home Consortium Citizen Participation Plan, and I assume that might be Ms. Webb.

MS. Yes. Good evening, Chair and Commissioners. Tonight I will be presenting a brief overview of the updated Tri-Cities Home Consortium City Citizen Participation Plan. The Citizen Participation Plan, often referred to as the CPP, outlines how the consortium ensures that residents, community organizations, and other stakeholders have opportunities to participate in the planning, decision making, and implementation related to federally funded housing and community development programs. The plan ensures transparency and provides structure opportunities for public review, and engagement throughout the planning process. Federal regulations require jurisdictions receiving HUD funding to maintain a citizen participation plan. The plan outlines the public participation process for key planning documents such as the five-year consolidated plan, annual action plans, the assessment of fair housing, and the consolidated annual performance and evaluation report, also known as the CAPER. The proposed updates were primarily administrative in nature. They were made to ensure the plan remains compliant with current HUD regulations, improves clarity in the planning process, and reflects current public engagement practices, including digital communication tools. Several updates were made to strengthen transparency and compliance. These include removing outdated COVID-19 waiver language, clarifying how the plan is adopted and implemented, expanding public notification methods to include digital outreach and social media, adding federal conflict of interest provisions and updating amendment procedures to align with the HUD regulations. The proposed amendments were made available for public review beginning February 5th and the comment period closed today at 5 p.m. No comments were received by Mel or any other way. Tonight's public hearing provides an opportunity for the Planning Commission to receive public testimony regarding the proposed updates. Following the public hearing, the Commission may consider making a recommendation to the City Council regarding approval of the updated Citizen Participation Plan. I'm happy to address any questions or provide further clarification for the Commission. And if there are no questions currently, Mr. Chairman, I respectfully request that you proceed with opening the public hearing.

Excellent, thank you. Are there any questions from the commissioners? One of the things I was going to ask is can you clarify the connection between this and, say, CDBG, which are both HUD, or is there any connection, no connection, there's no relevance to CDBG?

No, it is for CDBG. That's what I thought, okay. Yes, we have to have this plan in place so that the public...

So this is required to be able to do the CDBG administration. Okay, that's what I wanted to clarify. Commissioners, any questions or feedback? There it goes. Now it's working. It sounds like the set of things was a good set of update recommendations, but I'll turn it over to Commissioner Jones, who has some questions or feedback.

Thank you. Can we go back to that first screen where it talked about the elimination of certain COVID things? Thank you. Question for Kristen. When I was reading this earlier, there was a word in here that I saw and I should have circled at the time and I didn't and now I wish I would have, but it said something about mega COVID restrictions or some odd word attached to COVID restrictions. And I wish I would have marked it. I usually do. Yeah. Yeah. Mega waiver. Can you please explain what the mega waiver is?

So during COVID, um, anything that we had to do, uh, we didn't have to actually follow our plan anymore just because it was emergency funding that we were trying to give out. So like for instance, um, when we did the, uh, caper, we have to give 30 day notification that there's a review time happening. we didn't have to do that so basically we had a waiver that we didn't really have to sign but didn't really have to follow what our plan said just because we were trying to get the funding out there to everybody so it basically just eliminates the emergency status and makes it back to business as usual correct yes okay thank you commissioners any other questions

did you find that all right we all know know what a mega waiver is All right, are there any other questions or feedback for staff on the citizen consortium participation plan or citizen participation plan? All right, hearing none, I think we will open up the public hearing. And again, the public hearing is an opportunity to get your comments and feedback into the record. I'll make the call once. We have nobody in the audience, but I'll make the call once for anyone that wants to testify in the public hearing. Make the call twice. And finally, make the call three times and confirm that we have nobody online. All right, we will close the public hearing. So if there are no more questions or feedback to staff, I think there is a recommendation that I would entertain a motion for the recommendation the staff provided. I believe that recommends to approve for city council, a recommendation to city council, so I'll open it up for a motion unless anybody has any questions. And I believe, did you provide, I don't have it in front, did you provide a recommendation text for those who need it? It's probably on the first or second page.

It's on the second page of the staff report. Right at the bottom.

It's actually on the header page that's a PASCO header page, not in the plan itself. Move the Planning Commission to recommend that City Council approve the updated tri-cities home consortium citizen participation plan as presented All right, it's been moved by Commissioner waits seconded by Commissioner Jones all in favor say aye aye any opposed All right the motion to recommend the City Council for approval has passed unanimously. Thank you. I All right, we have no more public hearing items, so we'll move on to the workshop item, which is middle housing discussion, and I assume that's going to be Director Watson-Matson.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair, and good evening Planning Commission. I have an overview tonight for the group related to middle housing legislation. We've certainly talked about this before at previous meetings, and I've heard your concerns on the topic and with the blanket state regulations, I thought it would be a good time to check in with the group on the specifics of it since we haven't covered that and how it'll work and what it'll look like in PASCO. So I'll go through these slides pretty quick. I'm not planning on spending a ton of time on everything, but just if you have questions, feel free to jump in or we can answer them at the end. Hopefully with the slides attached, you were able to sort of see where we're going with this. And I just want to preface it by saying there are not a lot of loopholes with this. I do have extensive experience with this bill at the previous city I worked at and the council and planning commission had the same sentiment as our planning commission and council and had asked staff to look at various loopholes on how to get out of it. And we did spend a lot of time with legal and our staff looking into it, looking at other cities. There's just really not a lot we can do to get out of it. And we have even looked at it.

We were told that Marysville had figured this out and you'd solve the problem.

Yes, yes. Well, and they adopted regulations that I think work really well. And we have looked at this even closer with our consultants here, our team framework and the comprehensive plan. We've tried to look at it from other angles too. Can we protect the Riverview area, for example, or limit it in certain areas of town. And all of that, spoiler alert, was a no, basically. So I'll go through the regulations with the group. And if you have questions, let me know as I go along. So just starting off with the basics here, what is middle housing? And it's just a scale of housing that is basically the in-between housing units between your traditional single-family unit, which Pasco has its very large fair share of those already, all the way to an apartment, and these are the in-between houses, so townhouses, cottages, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, fiveplexes, sixplexes, stacked flats, courtyard buildings, and I'll have pictures of what each of these are and then examples that we have locally. Um, so here's some duplexes. These are nice examples. In my opinion, I do like the duplexes that look more like a traditional single family home and not, you know, exactly mirrored and super cookie cookie cutter and not emphasis on the, on the garage. Um, you know, I know the garage in the front is a utility, um, but these are nicer photos that are consultant picked out. So would be curious of your input too. And we can go back to these pictures later if you'd like. Triplex, fourplex, sixplex, some nice examples. Again, these look great. They are more expensive to build this way. So this is, you know, something that we can gain inspiration from. And if there's direction on design standards, we can certainly look into that. Just know that the other side of that is adds cost to the project. That's what you'll hear from the opposition side. And then also keep in the back of your head that the state requires that the city cannot impose additional regulations on middle housing that we do for single family housing. So if you want to define a loophole, for example, which I have looked into in the past, well, let's make the setbacks 30 feet on all sides. Well, then you have to do that for single family. So you're back to square one. So setbacks, height, design regulations, driveway widths, all sorts of everything has to be consistent with single family. So it needs to be fair. So here's some examples of town homes that have been done in different ways. The one on the left looks like a little more modern, less articulation. And then you have some other examples there of townhouses. I like the middle example. And again, we can come back to these and you can tell us what you like. Cottage cluster. These are kind of fun communities. I haven't actually seen a lot of these in practice, but they're smaller homes and you share yards and gardens and you know hopefully you like your neighbors in these settings because you you do have a lot of shared facilities between the uses and i i have seen you know a few examples of these communities i think it would be really cool especially if you don't you don't want a lot of maintenance in your own yard and again like your neighbors there's a really good example of this in kirkland oh in kirkland kirkland has a cottage cluster that's actually really nice down by the waterfront okay write that down because i like to have good examples to look at And then courtyard building, stacked flats. This is, so each floor is a unit. So that's the difference compared to like an apartment. So this has three floors. Each unit is a separate unit, either owned or rented out to the tenant. So that's what the stacked flats mean. You stack units on top of each other. And then some local examples that we've taken, this is a local example of an ADU. I'm just going to go quickly. I don't necessarily want to maybe pick too much on existing examples, just in case it's someone that lives in the community, but just want to show you, you know, there's probably room for improvement on some of these. So maybe if we do talk about design characteristics, we can be more like general about it, or you can refer to these. That's an example of a fourplex. So that's yeah, an older example, obviously, probably Looking for more articulation. These are newer developments. I'm not sure if this is Ivy Glades or not. I know that we did go out to Ivy Glades, but this one, you know, the garage is pretty visible at the beginning. These are houses that are pretty close together. Looks like duplexes. Duplex example there. These appear to be duplexes or fourplexes.

Duplexes, you can tell by the driveway.

So there's some articulation coming out, you know, some different coloring that can be used. This is more of a more modern townhouse concept. This looks like a six plex or five plex attached. And then some different angles. I'm not sure how many units are in here, four to five units it looks like. And then some other examples of mixing stone and wood. This looks like just an apartment complex, probably isn't actually middle housing, but there's an example of that in case you're wondering. So we can go back to the pictures later. I'll just go through really quick what these regulations mean. And this bill was adopted in 2023 and we are required to implement it this year by the end of the year. And it seeks to provide more housing opportunities at the state level. They've identified a shortage of 300,000 plus units. statewide and this effort is to provide a variety of housing opportunities which i don't think is a bad thing to provide different levels for different people with different income levels it is definitely a blanket approach it has effectively banned single-family zoning in the state of washington so that's no longer allowed so it's a very progressive progressive bill and um Yeah, the same approach for all cities on the west side of the state, east side of the state. There's some other bills too that we'll run into near the end of the year related to allowing more accessory dwelling units. The new rule will essentially allow for 280 use per lot. And then the owner doesn't have to reside in either unit. So if we have that in code currently, we're going to be required to remove it. And then there's other flexibility measures related to middle housing and ADUs related to parking. It will be reduced to zero to two spots per each use based on the lot size. And then there's other stipulations.

I'm sorry.

Zero to two. So zero is probably not the best example for Pasco because it's zero if you are within a certain amount of space by active transit. And I don't know if we meet those criteria. And I don't think that zero will be built here. I mean, these do have to sell to people and, you know, unless it's right next to a bus line, I think it would be a hard sell in Pasco. So I wouldn't be too upset with, with those numbers. I do think what's more realistic is that, you know, development coming in doing one to one and a half per unit. And then, you know, if they sell it or if they're renting it out, it's likely that their business model won't provide less parking than needed because then they'll need to deal with it. It's just, if it sells, know maybe we're left with a little bit of an issue but parking is getting reduced across the board and then additional stipulations for accessory dwelling units middle housing in the backyard you can see in that picture there's a unit in the back which i think looks nice it looks like it matches the house and kind of blends in there'll be additional stipulations required to lot splitting so splitting up lots and owning not only the adu but the land underneath it creates an additional ownership for for people looking to buy these types of facilities. So there will be, or these homes, there will be more opportunity for that kind of usage. And we will be bringing the policies related to middle housing to the group. And I'm not sure if I've mentioned this yet. If I haven't, we are working on a global municipal code update to address several state bills that the city of Pasco is behind on. We're behind by about five to six years on some of these, and that's a pretty unique situation. If someone did want to apply for something that our code hadn't updated, we'd just divert to the state law. But it does leave us exposed in some ways. So we are working through not only the comprehensive plan update, but a massive municipal code change that will be addressing these from two angles, the overarching umbrella comprehensive plan and then the municipal code. So you'll see A lot of it at the end of the year, we're going to have a very busy end of the year. And I'll talk about that later at my director's comments with you as far as scheduling. And so here's the nuts and bolts of it. Down at the bottom, it says Pasco is a tier one city. And this means that four plus units are required per lot. And I'd like to point out that it says per lot, what planning commission and what Pasco is used to seeing is density per acre. four units per acre. You have an acre lot and you can get four units on it. The state requires four units per lot. They don't say per acre. So it's just a shift in mindset. So whatever our minimum lot size is in the zones, this is something we slightly talked about during the Riverview comprehensive plan update. is whatever your minimum lot size is in the zone. That's how many units you can, in theory, get on it based on the state standards. Like now realize that there are setbacks, driveway standards, easements. You can't really fit four units on every lot, but if the lot is big enough and the developer is creative enough and they can meet the building code standards, separation, all of that, all of the standards we put in place, they can put four units on any lot. the city of pasco you can put up to six units per lot if two of the units are affordable in perpetuity which i think is just less likely i think that's less favorable at least just based on my experience and i'm saying this anecdotally i don't have the facts in front of me but i think what we're most likely to see is three to four units per lot um if there are six units and two need to be affordable that's just a lot more you know I think that adds to the cost consideration. So what we're likely to see is four units per lot. So just going to pause there and let that sink in. Does anybody have questions about that requirement?

No, I appreciate it. Go ahead.

Well, I had a question on one of the pictures there, and maybe I didn't hear it right. I thought that you said that with one building and then you could have another in the back of it or what have you. So how does that work with the emergency access, like the fire and that? Because I know that there's been a concern or issues in the past in some different settings where there wasn't room for the fire truck to turn around, to get access to turn around, et cetera.

Yep. We would still need to meet all of those regulations. I think that will be the biggest issue for middle housing is, is the, the width of the access. It needs to be, I would say at least 24 feet. And then, um, there's a length, I think you can go 150 feet without a fire hydrant, you know, as far as the hose stretches, I'm not completely brushed up on my fire regulations lately. Um, but I think that will be the most limiting factor in my mind is getting the proper width if you're dealing with a lot that's 50 feet wide and you want to put anything more than like maybe an ADU, like maybe a fire truck access isn't needed for that. We'd still work through that, but I think that will be like the most pinch point for these developments.

And the one other question, and I think I asked this before and you probably did address it, but when we talked about preventing single family zones, So if you have a piece of property, like that's an acre, 0.6, or what have you, you don't have to put these three or four or five different dwellings on it. If you want to put a single family home on it, you can. Correct. We just can't prevent it.

We can't prevent allowing that density. If you wanted to come put four units on that lot, the city could not prevent that. If you wanted to put one single family, you could do that. If there was a minimum density requirement and you're not meeting that with one house, we'd need to work with you on some sort of agreement.

I don't understand that part. Can you elaborate on that part?

If you have a one-acre lot and the zoning code says the minimum density is two acres per lot, You could build the house, but you'd likely need to subdivide it and then, you know, put the rest of it aside. Like you could still have it as part of the lot, but you need to plan for that future density. I think generally, like I did come through the code after you asked that, like as a general rule of thumb, the city doesn't really want to prevent one house, you know, you building a single family house on a lot, even a large lot. So I think we'd find a way to allow that to work as long as you're not, placing it in a manner that avoids that that prevents future density so I think that's something we want to be flexible with um without splitting too many hairs is you know if someone owns a property they want to put a house on it we shouldn't really get in the way of that in my opinion so that is something that I do want to work with our consultants on during the municipal code update just so it's more clear but how I've handled it so far is allowing you know, if they have utilities in the area, they want to put one house and it's like, well, leave the backyard open for additional density later. If you're taking up the whole lot, then I can't really say it meets the minimum density that way, so. Thank you. Yeah, of course.

Other question? Go ahead. You can turn on your light.

Okay. A couple of questions that I had. First, just to clarify, you said the owner of the property doesn't have to live in any of those so they could build at the house and put three additional ADUs on there and rent all four of them out, basically?

Correct. and we don't require the owner like right now if there's a duplex built in a zone where duplexes are allowed there's not a stipulation the owner has to stay in either unit so i think when adus first came out it was just like this huge like they're going to ruin the neighborhood the owner needs to live and eat one of the units or else they're going to destroy the neighborhood well i've seen renters in a single family residence destroy neighborhood you know so it's it's just pretty much trying to just even out the regulation for you know, everybody in every housing type. So correct. The owner does not have to live in either unit. Currently, I think our code requires for ADUs that the owner live on site, but that will be going away soon.

Okay. And the second question I have, and maybe we haven't got to this yet, but it seems like this is going to be more prevalent in the Riverview area and areas of Pasco that have larger existing lots. Some of the newer construction I see are very small lots. I just feel like you wouldn't be able to get more than the one residence on those lots.

Correct. Yep, those smaller lots, they're already maxed out. Yep, they're maxed out, unless you go above the garage or something with an attached ADU. But you're right, smaller lots, harder to develop, bigger lots. In Riverview, there's utility issues, so that would make it hard, but yeah, more room, for sure.

Are there any privacy standards in place? I mean, you still have to meet the same setbacks, correct? Like you would be building a shop or an outbuilding or something, because the more you put on these lots, the closer you're going to get to property lines, and that may or may not be favorable to the neighbors who have their larger lots and want their privacy.

Agreed. We can't put any additional stipulations on middle housing that we would on single family housing. So it's an all or nothing rule. Actually, now that you're mentioning Riverview, I wonder, and I can check with legal on this, if we can make more restrictive setbacks in Riverview across the board and not the rest of the city. I think we can, as long as we're picking on... the units equally like the single family, if we want, but then that doesn't go over that well, if you know, someone wants to do a smaller lot in river view and they don't have a lot of steps. So yeah, to answer your question, we can maintain certain setbacks. You can do five on the sides, 10 or 20 in the back 20 in the front or maintain the river view setbacks for our 15 zone and apply that to middle housing. We can certainly do that. I think this group approved eight feet on both sides or maybe 10, if I'm not mistaken. So we can keep those, those bigger setbacks if we'd like, as long as it stays the same for all types of units.

Okay. Thank you. Mr. Jones.

Thank you. Are, would those be units be, if there's a second unit on the piece of land, would those be rented from the person that owns the land then? Or could they sell it?

They could sell it if they subdivide it. So if you create a legal lot and you can do that by carving just right around the building, which makes it very affordable. I mean, I'm looking at it from so many different angles. you know, when, when I go through this, but you can do a postage style lamp lamp lot where you follow the lot around the building, which makes it a little more affordable. And then I imagine they'd have a shared easements between the house and the, the unit, or if they'd like, if the owner would like to just put an ADU on their property and rent it, they could do that too. They could rent it or sell it, or I think they can even condominium rise it, but it's a little hard in the state to do that for some reason. I think, um, you know, but you can't sell something that's attached to the main house can you um if it's separated by a firewall like there's a concept called single family attached um single family attached units where it it's like a duplex but it's separated legally by the lot underneath it so you you could do that i think you'd need an extra firewall and the line would be between the units and under the unit too.

Okay. And then when we were talking about loopholes back in the beginning is I, you know, we, we of course have to do this, but is there a timeframe that this has to be implemented or do we have plenty of time to study it and look at it before we have to do it?

It's due by the end of the year. Which year? Period. This year. And I guess this is going to sound a little dismissive, but I don't think more time really will help. I mean, just going through this already, I can say that confidently now. I couldn't have said that last year, but... We, we, I've spent a lot of time on this and it just, you just sort of end up back at square one. Like you try all of these creative things and then it's like, well, we can't do ridiculous setbacks because then we're impacting the single family homes. It just brings you back to the point. So I've already gone through all the stages of grief with this and have, you know, and so I know. you know, maybe this group and other groups aren't quite there yet, but it's really the smaller the lot, the harder it is to get more middle housing units. And then that caters more to like single family lots with, you know, smaller setbacks. The bigger the lot, you're going to open up more options for middle housing. So there's really no way to like cheat the system with this. It's just sort of is what it is. I do not think it's as Infill is very expensive, even in Riverview. I mean, to add a fourplex, you're bringing services to it. You need to do... curb gutter, sidewalk lights, connect to sewer, septic. You can't really do that unless it's just a single family house. So it's, I don't think once this is adopted, like Pasco is going to just explode and be ruined as a city with middle housing everywhere. I think it'll organically happen over time. I would suggest the best approach to this just from my professional standpoint is implementing fair design guidelines that require that these middle housing units look more like the pictures at the beginning. That is more expensive And we would have to require that for single family units. But if we want a more elevated product in Pasco, I would say we can't go too crazy with it because you're just going to add more cost. And that's the biggest feedback we hear from the development community. But I think there's some middle ground and some good city examples we can look at. And I already have our consultants working on it. We can peel it back if we want, but we are already working under the assumption that we'd like to have some design guidelines so that we're not seeing like just ice wars everywhere. And that would include single family too. So it's an all or nothing. It's very political, but that would be my suggestion as the best way to, to combat this. And then just, you know, know that some areas are going to develop slower like river view without, you need infrastructure in fire lanes and it's expensive.

Yeah.

Yeah. I have one more question, but hopefully, my question was is there a minimum square footage that's involved with middle housing we've got this tiny house movement going on in theory no i mean i did ask this i think a thousand square feet got thrown around but that's nobody is going to do that for a lot that's way too small but in theory if you can fit it and meet the setbacks there's not really a minimum lot size i would say if we And we did get answers to this at the last city. Like, you can establish a minimum lot size for your zone. So I would say the minimum for Pasco is, you know, in the R4 zone or whatever zone allows the smallest lot, which I think is around 4,000 square feet. But whether or not they can fit everything is a different story. Parking, easements, setbacks, that kind of thing.

Gotcha. Mr. Crutchfield.

Yes, this is kind of a crazy out there observation, but When it talks about, thank you, the, let me find my spot, alternative compliance and so forth, the different bullet points on that. Would any of the area that's close to the river shore be considered possibly in that exemption? Where I'm going with this is if something happens to the dam then there's going to be flooding down there. And it's a possibility, especially in the way of the world now. I mean, the dam, is that not right, Jerry? If the dam was breached in some way, much of that area would be underwater. I live on the river but that's what I've always told that I was just throwing that out there because it is you know the dam I'm talking about would be you know which one I'm talking about so yeah just when it said permit cities to exempt up to 25% Under limited circumstances.

I mean, you know, I can definitely look into that We do we do like highlight mixed-use development near the river in other areas So I'm not sure how much that would fly if we're saying it doesn't work for mental housing But it works for a vertical mixed-use development, but I can definitely check into that Thank you.

I think it probably depends on whether it's considered a FEMA flood Plain air, yes, or not. If it isn't, you're probably out of luck.

That's probably true. We will look into that. So we covered a lot on this slide already. Zero lot line development. That's basically where you can split units through the building with firewalls on each side. Limited parking. Design review can't go through a huge process either. So it needs to be administrative, which means it needs to go through the staff level. It can't come to planning commission or go to the hearing examiner or design review board. So any design elements we implement for middle housing and single family housing, since they're now tied together, it has to go through a pretty transparent like process. And I think there's ways to build into code. Like you need at least three articulation points and trim and this kind of pitch, you know, I mean, we can get really detail oriented, but cost is, is definitely a factor too. So. That is something to think about and then Costco's current codes and policies do support mental housing, a full range of different housing, and we'll be looking at these policies and updating them. So when planning commission gets the full package for the comprehensive plan at the end of the year, we'll go through the policies and what generally they speak for now and then how we're updating it to meet state code. So it's pretty straight forward. forward and we do we do have some trinkets in here talking about innovative housing techniques and and whatnot so it does comply with our current policies and then if it doesn't we will update our policies to meet the regulations the city has already been pretty aggressive with middle housing it is currently allowed in you know several single family zones outside of the riverview area i would think rs 20 which is now going to be r15 it's getting a little huddled up at the council phase, but we'll be adopting it soon. I would say in April. So middle housing is already widely allowed in many zones. So what this change would do is allow, would allow middle housing in all of the zones. And so we do have, you know, quite a bit of allowances. It's not, you know, since it is allowed already in some zones and we're just not seeing a ton of it, that's why I think it'll take a while for the market to catch up. I would say probably next in line is we'll see a lot more townhomes, that kind of thing. crop up and then you know apartments that kind of thing but the true infill development is is rather spendy so but that is allowed now and we have um good policies as i mentioned and we do have to allow six of the nine types outlined by the state so we could decide to x a few of the types i'm not sure if i would recommend it i think compared to apartments, like I kind of like the, the stack flats, but if that's something we have a problem with, because we think it may stick out in Pasco, we could ban three of the types, you know, you could maybe strategically ban a sixplex if you just think that's too much. Um, you know, there's some strategies associated with that. So if anybody has input on banning six of the nine types, and I can go back to the slide, we can certainly talk about that. I think from staff's perspective, that's not an option right now that we're looking into, but we'd be happy to, you know, look at that further. I believe the city that I last worked at banned courtyard stack flats, six plexes, and five plexes, just to reduce... the masses, but we did allow those in other areas, multifamily areas. So it's just kind of funny. It's like, you see it here. Where, where do you want to see it and not see it? So those are options to us. Those are the only options really to the city to decide on. And then alternative compliance, there is a stipulation that you could exempt up to 25, percent of the single family lots if you meet these certain criteria. And just the punchline is we don't believe we meet any of this. We'll definitely look into the shoreline question, but we do not believe that these exemptions apply. They're pretty strict exemptions. So we'll definitely look at those closer, but we don't believe that we qualify for these. And then if you do have exempted lots, there's further stipulations that it can't include these different you know, criteria, which I don't think we meet either. So we've gone through this exercise already. I just assumed I would be asked to look into this, and we have actually been asked to look into it. by at least one city council member, so we did look into it and it does not look like we qualify. Just past practices related to racial segregation. The voids are ability to be exempt from that first sub-item about racially disparate impacts. because we have a history of some of that in basketball. So we've looked at it from every angle. So next steps related to this, we will be updating the comprehensive plan and development code and bringing it to you. You'd likely see it near the end of the year. You're going to see a lot of materials at the end of the year. And my goal is that we've at least touched on every topic at least once that is political. If it's straightforward, I don't want to really spend a lot of time on it. But this group has already looked at climate change. We've looked at land capacity. I have a plan for April to talk to this group about commercial capacity, which will be interesting because I have seen a lot of requests from applicants to convert from commercial zoning to residential zoning. And once you lose commercial, you don't ever get it back in my opinion. It's just, so that's been a little bit scary and we have lots of, you know, I'll bring up high chart that says here's how much commercial we have. There's not like a quick and fast formula of how much commercial is recommended for a city our size, but I would say comparing to our neighbors would be a good start and then, kind of suggesting based on like how many units we have we're typically you know have been a bedroom community in the past and since our economic development goals are to bring more regional uses so people come spend their money here i would think we'd want a good healthy amount of commercial moving forward so that's something we're going to dive into in april and council will be apprised of the same topic so you know there's the joint meeting ideas have been brought up but i'm just letting you know like most items i'm bringing to you that are introductory in nature like this, but like this topic is going to council on Monday. And then in April, we're going to talk about commercial and I'm talking to council. And then I'm just sort of going to share with each group, what each group is thinking. So whatever you guys say tonight, I'm telling council Monday. And then when I come back to you, I'll say, here's what council and planning commission said, and here's what we're proposing. So I'm just trying to keep a constant feedback loop between staff planning commission and council. So anyway, with that said, we, we will be talking to the group about commercial and then, um, During director's comments, I'll talk to you about some meeting schedules. But then the next items we have for you will be critical areas. I think that's pretty straightforward. We have some shrub step ideas that I believe this group would be in favor of just knowing this group already what I've learned. And then we have some more straightforward things like the capital facilities plan. That's the infrastructure that follows the growth. So we say where we're putting all of this growth and then we have a capital facilities plan for water sewer roads um storm i keep seeing storm but not as impactful over here so we have the utilities that that would follow that growth and then dry utilities electricity um i'm i'm blanking on the other utilities but you know all the utility plans for power electric would would follow the plan and then finally like services like libraries um our police our fire do we have enough of those services to provide for the growth. So we have some exciting topics coming up. And then by the time we hit this group at the end of the year with the global comprehensive plan, they're going to be long meetings. We'll walk through everything and say, I'll be sure and meticulously outline for you which topics we talked about, what you suggested, what we've done, and then questions. So it should be as painless as possible for the group. That's my goal. for this. So any other questions about middle housing or the unit types or anything that you want us to consider as we're going through it? I feel like I've got enough feedback from this group and council already to know sort of what you're after and we are already actively working on it. But if there's anything else you want to say for the good of the order related to this topic, or for us to consider let me know and we will make sure and look into it and if we somehow miss something you you always get another crack at it at the end of the year but I would say design guidelines is something we're looking into and trying to thread that needle without adding too much cost but you know end up with cooler products like this but those are expensive you know and I I'm not ignorant to that so I think kind of striking a balance between this and you know, maybe some of our local examples, like something in between that seems fair. So that's what we're working on. If you have any other feedback, be happy to hear it tonight.

Great. Well, thank you. I appreciate that you're going over with this. You know, I think it's such a, you know, I think it's one of those topics where if we really are upset about it, we should elect different people in Olympia. It's not a local problem. We're just being imposed on the local problem, right? And so But I think that probably many of us and probably on the council as well is take a very measured conservative approach. I love your advice around make it, if we have to do it, make it really nice with design standards and so that when we do build these things or are forced to build these things, we have really, at least they are nice looking and they don't make the neighborhoods look trashy and they do have a fair standard. The other thing I think that, I think that the sentiment we've expressed is that, you know, I don't think I agree with you. I don't think there's loopholes, but I think that the council and the commission would be, it'd be helpful to understand, like I don't understand the consequences of noncompliance and I'd like to understand the non, the consequences and is that we just miss out on some grants? Do we get sued? You know, what are the consequences of noncompliance? Because I think there's a, there's a, opportunity to just ask the question, are we willing to forego some grants? I don't know that we wanna get sued by the state, but I would be encouraged, I'd be more than happy to encourage the council to say, let's stop being addicted to grants and say no sometimes if that's the consequence. But honestly, when you talk about the different state bills, I really have no idea, I mean, that's a question for a lawyer. What are the consequences of noncompliance? Because maybe some of those consequences are things we're willing to accept as a city and as a citizenry, right? I think that'd be helpful education for us too to say, okay, I'm willing to say I don't get a transportation grant, what's next? I think some people would be, maybe not everybody, but maybe some people would be.

I concur, yes, Jerry, absolutely.

So I think that would be my feedback and I'll open it up for others as well.

I had one thing on that because I concur with what you're saying totally and now that we're kind of this fervor of the building, I think it's important to, think you mentioned this maybe some of this will be market driven as well I mean the sky doesn't go to heaven and I think it's important for the city also to make sure that they have staffing for building inspectors and so forth because there are some issues that are happening right now that should be addressed without naming specifics, there's some housing similar to, one of these pictures may represent it, I don't know, but they had garages that the doors were not framed properly, they didn't have the right headers, et cetera, and they were in a location where, because of how they were set with where the wind was gonna come in, where they were facing, that they blew in and fortunately nobody was living there at the time but that could have been kind of catastrophic if they had been so they had to all be replaced and so those kind of things that can be I guess looked at by a building inspector and so forth so that we know we're getting quality and we're not just especially if they're going to be rentals too and the owner's not going to be living on site Anyway, yep.

Yeah, and along your lines, Chairman, regarding noncompliance, I mean, you've mentioned before, Hayley, all or none. I've heard this, all or none. Do we get partial credit for partial compliance? I mean, can we kind of cater to some things that are unique to PASCO by still, you know, in good faith trying to meet the state guidelines? Or, I mean, do we have to just go all in, or can we risk

lack of a grant state funding well we don't really want a lawsuit we don't like those but yeah it's all or nothing and and i think most cities in the state have gone through this exercise i've yet to see one that has wanted to pick the fight so i i will when we bring this forward list like you know alternatives i think it would be good to see the number of grants we get from the state that that number might be a little bit um Enlightening for the group.

I think that we are pretty successful with grants I can tell you that they probably have way too many because we've become addicted to them And that's the problem right and but that's honestly not our decision That's City Council's decision and we just make recommendations But you know if I was making recommendations to the council I was like stop being so addicted to grants because it's the crack cocaine that gets cities to relinquish their local control and rights.

Yeah, I Then just one more follow-up to that with you had mentioned some services, code enforcement being one of those. There's already issues with complaints being filed, code enforcement being spread a little bit thin. Now you're going to run an element of these ADUs being able to be kind of hidden, so to speak, because you're going to be able to tuck them in behind the primary residence. So that just lends the opportunity for homeowners to maybe cut corners when it comes to design guidelines, city codes, and it would be up to neighbors or witnesses to call that in. if there was enough code enforcement or we had enough resources, maybe a proactive element could happen just to make sure that design standards are being followed and these existing neighborhoods are staying similar in character and design quality.

That's a good point, and I do have a discussion with the city council in late April about code enforcement, our current workload, which is a lot over 400 cases a month and then two full-time officers. So we just want to check in with the council and make sure that, you know, based on our staffing, we are prioritizing things correctly, but I can definitely add that in as like a future consideration. So appreciate your feedback.

Commissioner Jones and then Commissioner Waitz.

Thank you. Can we get, is it possible to get an answer to Chairman Cochran's question? To say what is the consequence of not doing it?

It's not receiving state funding, so.

Right, but is there possibly more specific answer? Like not doing it means not getting one grant, two grants, three grants, four?

Yeah, we won't be eligible for grants because we'll be out of compliance with state regulations. All grants. I'd say that's the biggest answer. All state grants, state issuance.

All grants.

And likely federal grants, too, that may be tied to state.

I mean, that's what we need to know. I mean, it's fair to know when you ask a question, it's good to know the answer.

Yeah, and that's the answer.

Holding football is a 10-yard penalty. So we need to know what the answer to this question is, and then that helps respond to what a next step is.

Yeah. think director Miller was spot-on just like giving us education on the grants the city has would give you the number and just you know it'll be a big number okay

I think we definitely need to take into account the zoning that exists right now. For example, I live near an area that was zoned commercially that was changed to residential, and now the density is incredibly high because of that. If we can protect that commercial zoning, it will help keep the residential down. So that's my recommendation from us, is to keep as much commercial as we can for as long as we can.

Great, so we already have the answer for the April meeting then. But yeah, we'll be able to talk about it in more detail. I think it'll be a fun topic for this group, for sure.

All right, any other questions or feedback? Thank you so much for this. I know it's a hot topic and it's a difficult topic. And like I said, I don't know that we can solve it unless we have different people in Olympia, so.

Well, thank you. We were overdue for this conversation, so I'm excited to talk to council about it on Monday, too, and just show the facts and then move on and address it as we work through this. Good feedback, everyone. Thank you.

And I will say that... sometimes eastern washington cities are willing to pick a fight with olympia so i i'm probably never going to recommend that but i will take your input and you guys but the council needs to back me up on that and if they don't i'm it's their call not mine so Well, thank you for that and any any other old business any other director items for you?

I have a couple director items First Rosa Torres our planning commissioner has has resigned unfortunately stepped down so I just wanted to take this time to thank her for her her contribution. She's been on the group since 2022, I believe. So I didn't have the pleasure of working with her for very long. Um, so, but I did, I did want to say thank you for her service. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's not easy to carve out this time, you know, in your evenings and everyone's busy. So I just, I just want to thank her and then let the group know that we will be advertising for a new position. I think the clerk's office handles that. So if you know of anybody that's interested, let them know and, um, you know, keep your eye out for the posting. And then the second order of business is just related to scheduling. So I have, um, let's see here. It's March. I have about two meetings left before I go on maternity leave. So I'm due with my first baby. in June, mid-June, very excited. My husband and I are very excited. It's a baby boy. And so I'm planning on, my due date's mid-June, so scheduling-wise, I was thinking that we could hold a meeting in June. with staff, I believe Ms. Weber has some CDBG items. And then I think what I'll do is tack on some items related to maybe the capital facilities plan and utilities. Not the most exciting topic, but it's very important because it coincides with the land use topic. So it won't be as political. And I think I'll have our senior planner or deputy director do those items. And then I was wondering if you guys were okay with taking July and August off. And then just with the understanding that if we're taking those two nice summer months off, that when I'm back in September, we're going to be hitting it hard for the rest of the year. It would be definitely longer meetings for September and October because we're going to go through so much information. But by that time, I think we're trying to hit everything with you before that. So it would either be longer meetings or if we fall behind, maybe even a second meeting in one of those months. I would say if we did do a second meeting, it would be September or October. I know it's busy with going back to school in September. So October is, is kind of the month I'm, I'm eyeing right now for maybe two meetings. If you guys would be up for it in exchange for getting the nice sunny months off. Um, so I talked to the chair about it before the meeting, but if, if anybody has opinions on that, let me know. Um, and it's alternative to, I just, I'll be passing a lot of my duties off on to, so I don't want to create more for them to do while I'm gone. And I think it's actually a good time for a break so that we can get to work and really just take your feedback and use those months to work with the consultants. So does anyone have any, I'm not seeing any frowns or shaking heads, so.

Summer off is always nice, but yeah, I think, you know, the main thing for those extra meetings is ensuring we can get a quorum if we need to make decisions.

And yes, I would appreciate quorums for September, October, November, December. We should be done. So maybe that's a good breather month too. So I would just say September, October, November, please, please plan on, you know, being here for a quorum or else we're going to have to reschedule some meetings.

I would just throw this out as a suggestion. And if we have a lot to cover coming back in September, maybe we can plan now for maybe a series of you know, maybe four meetings instead of two. Meaning that, you know, if we end up till 9, 9.30 at night, you know, some of us have early work schedules in the morning, and maybe that would be allowed the commission to have a series of shorter meetings to get through some of that information. Sure. Just throwing that out there.

Why don't I put a schedule together for us to look at at the next planning commission meeting? I'll attach it to the packet. um i do think by the time we come back it will be a lot of information but the goal is that you're not really surprised by anything like you know i'm not going to sneak anything in their worst in mental housing and it's the first time you're seeing it we're trying to be very strategic with what we've discussed so far. So a lot of it, I don't think we'll, and I'll remind you too, because it's a lot to remember, but I don't think you're going to see, you're going to see a lot of information, but you're not going to be like shocked by anything. So I don't think we'll need super long meetings, as long as you guys just can commit to reading the packets thoroughly. beforehand and write your questions down ahead of time if you read through the packets like i'm going to try and do as best as i can to just really outline what we've done where we're at so i i will work out a schedule and then next meeting go through it with you and maybe maybe two meetings in september two meetings on october just optional in case we need it i would suggest but i don't think we need four i mean i think that would be too much for staff to keep up on and we you know i think i think two would be the most i'd recommend but you know i i don't they shouldn't go too late i think this group is pretty efficient with items and if we do our work and our jobs how we should then you shouldn't have to be struggling too much at the meeting with things because you know as we get to know each other i can kind of figure out what what you guys are looking for and try and guess so that we have more efficient meetings

Mr. Chairman, I very much agree. I would like to try to, if anything passed two hours and I lose my effectiveness, if I have any at all, after two hours, I'm not much good to anybody. Mrs. Jones could confirm that, so I would like to see us keep it at two hours.

Yeah, well, let's just see what the schedule shows next meeting, and we can give her feedback based on that.

Okay, and we're doing lots of planning ahead. I already have pretty much everything planned out for the whole rest of the year with both groups, so I'll be sharing that with you soon. So that's all I have for Director's comments. As always, I appreciate your work and you volunteering for this and another great meeting, so thank you.

Awesome, well, I'll add my congratulations on the birth of your son coming, and then also thanks to Rosa Torres for her service and commitment to serving our community. With that, if there are no more comments or questions, I'd recommend a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Second? Second. All right, it's been moved and seconded. The meeting is adjourned at 7.32 p.m. Thank you, everyone.