Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

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

Rosa Torres. Present. Pat Jones.

Here.

Austin Crawford, excused. Kim Letterman. Present. Rob Waits.

Present.

Dana Crutchfield, excused. Jay Handler.

Present.

Jerry Cochran. Present. Mr. Chair, there are six 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 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 on Charter Spectrum Cable PSC channel 191 and will be rebroadcast several times during the next month. The meeting is also recorded so you can watch it on the City of Pasco's webpage, pasco-wa.gov. Click on the video on demand link and make your selection there. There are copies of the meeting agenda available on the back table, so you may follow along with the meeting. And at this time, please, I'd like to ask for silence your cell phones or prevent interruptions during the 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 and 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 to be fair, but also appear to be fair. In addition, Washington state law prohibits Planning Commission members from participating in discussions or decisions in which a member may have a direct interest or may be either benefited or harmed by the Planning Commission's decision. 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 Commission members who have a declaration at this time on any of the items of the agenda? It should be noted that I think it's a workshop, so it doesn't matter, but I actually live in the West Pasco Riverview area that's being considered, so I'll declare that. I don't think we're voting on anything, so it doesn't matter, but I'll make that declaration anyway. All right.

Commissioner Lehrman, I'll go ahead and piggyback on to what you just said, too.

So you're here declaring that you also live in Riverview?

Correct. Yeah, to myself as well.

Okay, got that noted, great. 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? We'll let the record show there's none declared. As a Planning Commission, we need and value your input. It helps us to understand the issues more clearly and make better recommendations to City Council. Furthermore, in many cases, your input here at the Planning Commission meeting is your only opportunity to get your facts and opinions placed into the official record the City Council will use to make its decision. I encourage you to take full advantage of the opportunity. The next item on the agenda is approval of the meeting minutes. Our meeting minutes are from September 18th, 2025. We didn't have an October meeting. And if these are provided to Commission members ahead of time, we can entertain discussion or questions, or I would entertain a motion to approve.

I move to approve the September 18th, 2025 meeting minutes.

Great. All right, it's been moved by Commissioner Lehrman and seconded by Commissioner Jones. All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? All right, the motion passes unanimously. We do not have any public hearing items on the agenda tonight or old business, so we will jump right to the workshop where we have two items. The first item on the workshop agenda is CPA 2025-001, the Emergency Comp Plan Amendment, Pasco School District Number One, Capital Facilities Adoption or Plan Adoption. And I'll turn it over to staff.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and commissioners. Good evening. And I'm going to start out by asking the question, Have you completed your Christmas shopping yet? No, I guess not. Okay. So, yeah, there's just a little icebreaker there. any case um yeah we are here to talk about a couple of different emergency comp plan amendments this evening and and by using the word emergency you know we don't really intend to create panic or anything like that but really what that means is we're undertaking a comp plan amendment outside of the normal cycle okay there's a couple of items that we definitely need to address that just can't wait for our normal periodic update and we're also not undertaking a normal kind of once per year docket for comp plan amendments because we're undertaking the full update. So in any case, I have the definition for an emergency amendment up there and that means any proposed change or revision to the comprehensive plan that arises from a situation that necessitates expeditious action. So that's essentially what we have here this evening. And the City Council or the City may review and amend the Comprehensive Plan when the Council determines that emergency exists. And that of course has to be in conformance with the City Code and the RCWs and that the City Council did indeed take action on the 17th and adopting a resolution to initiate this process. Of course, we also have to provide 60-day notice to the Department of Commerce, which we have, that we intend to make the revision. And, of course, now we're before the Planning Commission. We are going to be conducting a public hearing before this body. After that, the Planning Commission will be asked to make a recommendation to the City Council. In this case, I'm talking about the Pasco School District capital facilities plan update, and we're intending to adopt the updated plan into our comprehensive plan. The school district did indeed adopt an updated plan roughly March of this year after a pretty extensive process where they took a lot of things into consideration. In fact, there's really six primary elements in that plan. That's the district standard of service, inventory of facilities, capacity by grade span, six-year enrollment forecast, facility needs and costs, and of course the finance plan and calculation of the school impact fees. One thing I want to note, you know, we've had a number of hearings before either the hearing examiner or the city council recently involving either annexations or subdivisions in certain parts of town. And one of the things that was a pretty common argument item of testimony I'll say is that people testify that they felt that the school district or the classrooms were overcrowded and the school district can't handle this growth. The truth is I think most people aren't aware of this plan. the capital facilities plan that the school district works on and adopts regularly, actually. And they do adjust based on the growth of the community. They pay very close attention to what's happening, and they're planning for that in this document, particularly in the six-year enrollment forecast. What's really interesting is to go back and look at previous additions of the plan, particularly when you look at... enrollment forecasts, and it's a little bit surprising, even as quickly as PASCO is growing, the enrollment increase isn't quite what you might think it would be. Certainly we're growing into new areas of the community, you know, particularly the Northwest. But and and obviously we've been they've been very very busy Constructing new school facilities to new high schools and others to handle that growth because I just really wanted to make that note because it's been a consistent item of concern from the community and I think the school district is doing what they can to Plan for that that growth After the school district adopted the revised or updated capital facilities plan, On June 15, 2025, the City Council adopted Ordinance 4774, which revised the school impact fees. Now, that was probably the most visible thing that came out of that to most citizens, particularly the developers and builders in the community, because the single-family dwelling impact fees were completely eliminated at this point. And multifamily changed from $4,525 per unit to $2,595 per unit. So obviously that's a pretty dramatic adjustment to the impact fees, and I think people were celebrating in the streets right after the council meeting. And that's really all I have to offer. We do have a guest, Denise Stiffarm, online with us who's here to answer any, and she's representing the school district, and she's here to answer any questions that the commission may have of her.

Great, thank you. Can you also kind of explain for the commissioners, I don't know that I, what is the clear emergency? Is it because PASCO has a new plan or out of compliance somehow? Can you explain that?

No, I mean, really, it's because we need to make an adjustment to the comp plan. now rather than 18 months from now. We really can't wait to go through the formal comp plan adjustment or amendment process. We really need to do these sooner than that. Why?

The Pasco Municipal Code specifically, and it doesn't have to say this, it just does, it's a Pasco special that maybe we'll look at fixing in the future, but it does say that comprehensive plan amendments are not to be brought forward during the periodic update cycle, which we are in the midst of. Whether or not that means for applicants outside of the city or city-led, I'm not sure. Legal advised us to be safe that it means city-led applications. So I would propose in the future to change it to say if the city would like to initiate a comprehensive plan amendment during the periodic update, we should be able to do that freely without establishing an emergency. So it is a just procedural issue in my opinion.

Okay, thank you. That's what I was looking for. It's driven by the fact that we're in the periodic update, and so therefore it triggers that emergency, and then the council has directed it, so that's another reason.

And this capital facilities plan is updated every two years.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions from the commissioners? Go ahead.

And did I see correctly that Pasco School District put it forward in March of this year?

March, that's correct.

Okay, so about nine months ago. Is that a common amount of time for an emergency?

You know I think under the circumstances it's not unreasonable you know we've had plenty of other things you know going on and dealing with the amendment process also with the City Council adopting the new fees in June Yeah, again, the only thing that really makes it an emergency is that it's an out-of-cycle amendment. It is important to make sure that the school district's capital facilities plan, the city's comp plan, and the city's ordinances are consistent with each other, which is why we're not waiting the 18 months, and we're doing it now. Thank you.

Commissioner Jones? Thank you. On page 3 at the Top of the page, item number three, it says, does the proposed amendment correct a mapping error? And the answer that's stated is the amendment does not correct a mapping error. Is that a mapping error in in wards or in neighborhoods or determining who goes to school where or what kind of a mapping error are we talking about here?

So the criteria for consideration of comp plan amendments are really just kind of general and broad criteria because sometimes you'll find that we'll bring comp plan amendments that deal with mapping adjustments. or an error in some cases. This is not one of those situations. This is really more of a capital facilities plan update and not relating to maps whatsoever.

So rather than it saying it does not correct a mapping error, it could say there is no error in need of correction for people like me who need that kind of assurance?

That would be another way to say the same thing, yes.

So there is no error that needs to be corrected at this time? That's correct. Okay, thank you.

Again, I think it has more to do with the comprehensive plan amendment requirements versus school district. It's not driven by the school district. There's a set of criteria for amending the comprehensive plan. That's just one of them, right? Correct.

Thank you.

Other questions from the commissioners?

And again, we have Ms. Stilfarm online available for any questions that you might have of the school district, if there are any.

I don't know if it's a school district question or staff question. I was just curious has I mean obviously from a from a perspective, it sounds great to remove single-family dwelling impact fees and reduce the multi-family from 4,000 to 2,000-something. But I wonder, with the changes in our zones and our building and our mixed residential and more density, does that actually hurt developers more? Because I'm looking at the broad, more massive, like, giganto... apartment buildings, that actually might really be impactful to developers. Has there been any analysis? Is it actually worse? Because we're not building as many single family, we're building more mixed, and some of those massive apartment buildings, that actually might be bigger hits on developers. I don't know if that's a school district question or a staff question. And I don't know what the developer's response to that is either.

I'm sure that the school district had to, and Ms. Stiffarm, if you wanted to chime in, you certainly can, but I would assume that the school district took all of those things into consideration as their budgeting, you know, based on the amended impact fees.

Okay. Any comments? We can't hear you, sorry. Can you hear me now? This stiff arm, we can't hear you.

Oh, boy, let's see here.

Oh, dear.

Darn.

Are you able to hear me now?

Yeah, I don't know why we're not picking up her signal.

Let's see, you can't hear me at all. That's not better?

Yeah.

Okay, well, we can, it's a workshop. Maybe we can ask that question in the next round. Yeah, and we can bring that back. I apologize, I don't know what's happening. Apologies, Ms. Stivarm, we can't hear you.

Did the school district generate that change?

That was kind of my question. I wasn't sure what it was driven by. I'm sure they do the analysis and they probably found that because of our zoning changes, they would actually probably do better to collect for multifamily impact versus single family because that's what we're building.

Planning commissioners, we're going to get her on the phone and I'll put her on speaker. Thank you. Just one moment. If you don't mind waiting for about 30 seconds. No, we can pause.

Thank you. We have time.

It might be on her end.

All right, I'm going to put you on speaker and you can talk into the microphone. Okay, can you hear me?

All right, sorry about that. I'm not sure what was going on. So I'll try as best possible. First of all, it's Denise Stiffarm with Pacifica Law Group, and I am outside legal counsel to the Pasco School District. As best as I can understand the question, I think there was a consideration of whether multifamily fees relate to the type of multifamily development that is in the city of Pasco. And what, um, I can tell you is the school district in doing their analysis in their enrollment projections included an analysis of what may be in the development pipeline. And the reason that the, sorry, can you still hear me? Okay. Yes. Okay. I think the key for me is maybe to explain why the fees have changed in this capital facilities plan from previous plans. And in the previous plans, the projects include... and the high school level. And when you include those projects, the student generation rate, which really drives that impact fee, the elementary school projects and the high school projects are now complete, and so they are removed from the impact fee calculation. And what the district's current planning is based on is a new middle school project, so a new middle school number five. And that relates to where the district needs additional spaces in schools to serve new development. But because the middle school student generation rate is much smaller than what was in the previous plans, that fee drops accordingly. And that's why you're not seeing a single family fee is because there are actually more students living in multifamily units than in new single family units. So that's what's driving the impact fee. So even though the impact fee for multifamily units has dropped, it's about half of what it used to be, it still directly reflects the needs for new student capacity to serve grow. In terms of how this relates to developers and their costs, under this new capital facilities plan and the new impact fees that the city has adopted, the actual development costs are reduced because the impact fee is reduced. So I hope that information responds to the question. There's a lot of different things going on.

Yeah, I think it helps. Thanks for trying to explain that. I think it helps a little bit. I actually think it probably benefits the school district because they collect more money because of where we're building and what's in the pipeline.

I'm sorry, I can't hear anything right now, so I'm not sure if there's any further follow-up.

Can you hear it off Teams by any chance?

Okay, hold on. I muted that so I wouldn't hear an echo. Let me try one thing really quick.

Go ahead and repeat your comment.

Oh, I think it's probably, my guess is that when you did the calculation, the focus on middle school and where the middle school students are living in multi-family homes, but I also suspect that the school district actually makes out better based on where we're building and what's in the pipeline. It doesn't require an answer, it's a comment.

And another comment too is with single-family homes, it's 65-year-olds on average that are moving into the area, and so it makes sense to charge for those that are serving, those that are served.

All right, any other questions from the commissioners on this item? What are the next steps for this public hearing?

Yes, we'll be scheduling a public hearing before the Planning Commission next month, I believe.

Go ahead, Commissioner Handler. So why was the impact fees dropped on single family?

And I think she just kind of explained that. She kind of explained. I think because more of the students were living in multi-family units, more so than the single-family units.

I think the comment was that the demographics for middle school from high school have shifted from single-family to multi-family, and I suspect also the pipeline has shifted as well.

And they've completed, for the most part, the high school and the grade school projects.

Okay, yeah, it goes without saying that these impact fees present serious line item issues for developers. For sure. Enough so that I've seen it kill projects. Just FYI and for the record.

Yeah, I think that's where I was going to. Hopefully we'll have some developers for the public hearing to weigh in on kind of their perspective on how this impacts that part of the, so thank you. Any other questions or comments? All right, I guess we can move on to item number two, which is the comprehensive plan use map amendment, CPA 2025-002, which is the RS-20 zoned and low density residential land use changes. And again, we're not voting, so those of us who live in that area, we can just kind of think about what that means, and we'll have to recuse ourselves when the recommendation, or we'll have to decide if we have to recuse ourselves when the recommendations are made.

And I believe you still can vote. There's just some stipulations so I can check in with the city attorney before the public hearing just to be able to advise you just for comfort purposes. So don't count yourself out yet, but you may or may not wish to just for perception purposes. Anyway, thank you, Chair, and good evening, Planning Commission. My name is Haley Mattson, the Community and Economic Development Director here at the City of Pasco, and tonight I'm bringing forward to you the second portion of the Emergency Comp Plan Amendment, and I'll skip the description of what an Emergency Comp Plan Amendment is since Mr. Raymond did a great job describing that before. And this relates to a discrepancy between the RS 20 zone in Pasco and the land use designation. And what I'm showing here on the screen is a land use map also referred to as the comprehensive plan map. And if there's an opinion on what we should call it moving forward, it would be a good time to suggest that as we move forward with the comprehensive plan update. I've seen many cities use land use and many use comprehensive plan maps. So for now this is what it's called the land use map and this is a picture of PASCO and these are land use designations that dictate what different types of uses go throughout the city. So these are the overarching land use for the city and then under each of these land use categories there's a series of zoning jurisdictions that fall under it so this is the big umbrella that guides what goes in pasco and so the large yellow area makes up most of the um land use designation throughout the city the gray is industrial and then red is commercial and then there's just odds and ends different colors that you can see on the key there The current land use designation for residential, your traditional single family to middle housing or apartment uses is designated under the low density residential designation in PASCO. And it is three to six units per acre. That's the designation. And in the RS zone, I wonder if my map, Doesn't look like I have the zoning map on there. It's shown in light yellow there. It's a little hard to distinguish. I'm going to hover my mouse above the area. So this light yellow area here, I don't have the zoning layer. turned on, it doesn't look like that map made it into the presentation, but this light yellow area is what the RS-20 zone is in Pasco. And there is a conflict with the comprehensive plan change that occurred in 2023. And council had approved a change from two to five units per acre to 36 units per acre. And the RS-20 zone only allows for two units per acre because the lot size is 20,000 square feet. So there was a contradiction and we've had applicants come forward to the city looking to develop and it was an oversight is the easiest way to explain it on staff's end. So that is something we will work to look closer at in the future. So the RS-20 zone allows for two units and we brought this issue to council to get advice on what to do and we were advised to allow for two to five units in the Riverview area and that would require a comprehensive plan designation for only those portions. We don't recommend that we reduce the citywide land use so this map is showing the proposal which would create a new low density residential district from a land use standpoint and it would allow a density of two to five units per acre in Riverview. And this is a major shift to the RS-20 zone. Before the code change and before the discrepancy occurred, that zone allowed for larger lots, so two lots per acre. And so with this code change, it would allow for two to five units per acre, so lots down to 8,700 square feet in size. I can tell you you know, based on my conversations with the development community, they are very appreciative of this proposal for two reasons. One, allowing for two units does allow development community to utilize septic systems for areas that are too far away from city sewer services. There's some areas where you're 1,000 feet away from sewer or 500 feet, and it just is not viable for people who have owned their properties and wish to develop it to extend sewer all the way into that area. We are actively working with the development community to extend sewer into the area it's just not so easy to do if we don't have the immediate funds available so what we're trying to do is collaborate with different developers to bring in a lift station but there's you know 10 or 15 different stakeholders including the city lots of moving parts there's easements that need to be granted or purchased from property owners and there's some property owners who don't want to see development so they're not too excited to sell the easements for you know a cheap price they have a very high price tag on that so It is difficult. So in the interim, we would like to allow for low density development, two units per acre to utilize septic. If you do develop at three units per acre or more, you are not allowed to utilize septic based on Ben Franklin County standards. I believe you have to have a lot size of a half acre or more to utilize septic. So if the density increases, That would require connection to sewer services. And the reason I bring that up is that not every parcel, you know, there may be people who live in the area or people against additional development in Riverview. It's not likely to, you know, grossly densify overnight because of the proximity to sewer services. So that's the proposal at hand would be to change the land use designation for all properties currently zoned RS 20 to two to five units per acre as the land use designation and then subsequently go in and change the zone from RS-20 to a zone called RS9, and this is just an example of one of the code changes. This would be adding a new low density residential Riverview area, and then the code change itself is fairly simple. We would just be renaming the district across the board from RS20 to R9 low density residential district, which allows a minimum lot size of 8,700 square feet, and I rounded that number down. If we were to technically take the size of an acre and divide it by five, it would result in lot sizes of 80 um 8 712 square feet i rounded it down but then put a stipulation that you may not exceed the five units per acre to cap that and this relates to single family dwelling units and i i do want to foreshadow a bit for the city related to density just it may help this conversation so just when we're looking at this just just think this applies really to single family residential By the end of next year, and we'll have a workshop on this either in December or January, by the end of next year, any lot that is zoned for primarily residential uses, which is everything shown in yellow on the screen, according to state law, every lot will be required to allow up to six middle housing units per lot, regardless of where you're located. So the state has taken a very aggressive stance with all cities in Washington and has effectively removed single family zoning from cities in Washington and they've banned it. They have said cities you are not allowed to create zones any longer that only allow for single family uses and the states identified a housing crisis at the state level there's a shortage of about 300,000 housing units and it's the state's opinion that all cities should densify and allow for a variety of housing options. So the reason I'm bringing this up is just if there is an opinion or sentiment that this area should be untouched and only kept for farms or large style lots, that's fine. We can if that's the direction we receive. keep the lot sizes at 20,000 square feet each. Just know that that would mean by the end of next year that those houses would allow for one single family dwelling, but would also allow for up to six middle housing units per lot. And that's not based on acreage, that is per lot. So if you can fit six units on a teeny tiny 5,000 square foot lot, you can, or on the 20,000 square foot lot, so you could fit six additional units. So do you want to allow for maybe more single-family lots in this area, knowing that maybe that would leave less room for middle housing? Or do you want to keep big single-family lots that would make it easier for someone to come in and pile duplexes and triplexes? So it's kind of a, you know, I don't know if there's really a good approach. I know that there's cities on the west side, one that I actually came from, was more conservative in their thoughts and didn't appreciate the state's mandates. We, you know, went around and around with our city council trying to find a way to create loopholes, like, can we make the lot so small that nothing fits? Well, yeah, and then you have super tiny lots with houses on them. Or do you make the lot super big where, you know, they can fit six units? So there's not really, like, I haven't come across a city that has really succeeded in circumventing the regulations. The law is written in a way that you will see density. And middle housing is defined as duplex, triplex, fourplexes, townhomes, stacked flats, cottage housing. I might be missing one, but everything in between a house and an apartment is how middle housing is defined. And there's nine middle housing types that the state is mandating. If we adopt everything on time and follow the rules, we can pick six of those nine units. So I'm just foreshadowing a little bit. And if we were to... Back up to today, the issue at hand is just to modify the RS-20 zone shown in light yellow. And I did want to point out that most of this zone is in the Riverview area. There is a tiny part of RS-20 that is located. I'm going to hover my mouse over the area. down here below the Broadmoor area. So it's close enough to the Riverview. I'd still like to call it all low density Riverview, but there is a little section of RS-20 here. I would propose we change the entire zone. I don't think it's good practice to leave just one zone, RS-20, over here on its own. So with that, I gave you a lot of information, but we're trying to fix the discrepancy in this zone. That's why we'd like to move this forward now and not wait until later so that people have some way to develop in this area. There are a lot of people who did purchase land in this area with the assumption that the city would allow three to six units at that density. And then they learned the code was in conflict and it's, you know, it's taken way too long, in my opinion, to bring this forward. And I can, you know, just state we've been short staffed and would love to have brought this forward five months ago. So Not that it is necessarily your problem, but staff did sit on this for a while because of staffing issues, and I would like to move this forward and bring this to a public hearing in December with the Planning Commission and then to a workshop and a decision meeting with the City Council in January so that these customers are not waiting for an answer that I think we can easily make here. And there's different directions we can go, but this is what staff is recommending and what council has recommended that we do as well.

All right, thank you. Go ahead, Commissioner Handler.

So, very interesting. Have they done anything to coordinate parking requirements? As an architect, what you're outlining for me would be a nightmare. for parking to have to be, you know, compliant with what are the parking requirements now. So is there any softening of those requirements or... Because, I mean, that could take up the entire lot in some cases.

Yes, and based on the sentiment, how you posed the question, I think you may not like this response, but the state is also... very aggressive on reducing parking requirements statewide. So in most cases, parking will be zero to one per unit, regardless of bedroom size, regardless of unit size. I believe Pasco requires two spaces per single family, residents currently, and how the state treats middle housing parking, which isn't exactly related to this, but I just want to give you a foreshadow, is if you start with a lot that is over 6,000 square feet, then the requirement can be two spaces, one space per unit, and then if it's less than 6,000, zero spaces per unit, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense for cities that aren't Seattle, which is very frustrating to know a lot of communities and i'm not making assumptions for pasco but i would believe it would be alarming you know for the community to to know this so there are some things we can do if we this is why i want to adopt the middle housing regulations at the end of next year is because we could hire a consultant to look at our city and say this is unsafe you know we can't have people parking in the streets or miles away from their homes With that said, not every developer will build zero spaces. I mean, I think they'd have a hard time selling a house without anywhere to park or an apartment unit. But there are some people who have certain price points and may not be able to afford a vehicle and would live there. So it could make sense. I'd like to think the market wouldn't build that little of parking, but they could. And then, you know, kind of leave us with that to deal with as the city.

You know, in a dense city, I spent most of my life in San Francisco, and you could build a 200-unit building there, and now I don't have to put any parking in it at all, meaning that they're trying to keep the cars out of the city, which, you know, it's a big stretch. But in any case, in a lower-density area like we have... My mind gets cross-threaded thinking about six units on a small lot and not having to put any parking there That's a formula for problems in my opinion I'm just raising some thoughts that come to the surface of my mind and I'm sure going forward you'll be dealing with this, but with these density requirements, there's going to have to be some serious thinking about parking and how it relates to this new philosophy.

And we will look at parking for middle housing. For the proposal at hand tonight, we are just simply looking to change the existing single family zone to another single family zone that allows smaller lot sizes and more density so our current code would prevail at the moment to spaces per unit per house and I believe the state law does not dictate parking as strictly for single family homes if I'm recalling correctly so the parking issue we can definitely I hear you we can address that next year when we look at middle housing um for now tonight is is rs20 zone going from minimum lot sizes 20 000 square feet down to 8 700 square feet and then revising the land use map to adjust to that density for single family homes only we don't have middle housing in this code yet but it's coming i just wanted to foreshadow but i didn't want to i just didn't want to come in a few months and completely surprise this group with it so i'm trying to dip the toe in tonight, but then keep this still on topic at the same time.

Thank you. Just a tad bit more on parking, then I'll move on to my actual question. You have issues of being able to get emergency vehicles down the streets. You have garbage trucks. We've had the garbage people in here at these meetings when I first got on this commission talking about how they're buying big trucks and we have to make sure the streets are wide enough for their big trucks to be able to come in and turn around. There's all kinds of considerations about parking. Parking is a big deal. So whenever these kinds of things take place, I've learned over the years that there's two major considerations. One is how is it going to impact the people that already live there? Is it going to force people, for example, to have to, if they're already on septic, are they going to have to participate in paying for being on sewer? So is something like that possibly going to happen? And then secondly, for the people, new people that are going to be coming in, are they going to be able to buy and build on new smaller lots and then be in spots where the next door neighbor said, well, I was promised that I was going to have this view and there was never going to be anyone living there. And now how come you're coming and buying this and building on this land? So those are my questions.

So for the folks that are on septic, they are considered vested with that. The city will not come in unless there's like a health issue where the septic tank fails and there's sewer next to the property. That would be where I believe the city could require or we could make a policy decision that they could keep their septic tank alive and kick in for the next few years and do not need to connect to city sewer services. But the likelihood of the city coming in and sewer servicing the whole area, I mean, that's a ways out. But when sewer is available, the city would like people to connect, but they wouldn't require that they connect unless there's a failure that occurs.

Even if there's more than the two people on the lot, like you said earlier? Well, you can only be that there's more than three on a lot that they had to do.

If there's there's not you, you cannot do more than three units per acre, regardless of what you're doing without connecting the city sewer. So that makes development in Riverview. If you're out of the area of where sewer is available and you can do septic, you can only develop at two units per acre. So if you have three units per acre out there, I'm not sure how you pulled that off, but it wouldn't be allowed per current standards, Ben Franklin County Health District.

Okay. And then outbuildings and fighting fire, is there going to be a requirement for space between outbuildings and homes?

Yes. So all of the separation requirements will still be in place. You'd still need to meet setbacks, fire separation, fire safety. It doesn't mean you can just cram... a ton of units on a lot and ignore all of the regulations. So there are some cities who put a little more strict setback regulations in place, knowing that this regulation is coming. So there are things you can do to, you know, give a little more breathing room for when middle housing comes. And I missed your second question that you asked after the septic question.

The people that are going to come and build on a piece of land that their neighbor promised they weren't going to ever have to look at anything, they have this beautiful view, and now they're seeing Bob and Ed's kitchen instead of this beautiful view that they were promised.

Yes. So the city has no control over the middle housing ordinance coming soon. At the end of next year, it just will happen and people will lose their views in certain instances. I suppose the zoning code now, if we're worried about adding extra density, we could just change the land use to say two units per acre. But I feel like we're just sort of preventing the inevitable with the new state law coming. I think allowing... homes at a density of two to five units per acre may disincentivize more middle housing options, that people can build more single family traditional lots. So it is, you know, if you live in the city limits, you should not, unless there's a view ordinance, which very few cities do that, you should not have the expectation that your view is never going to be impeded. I mean, it's urban level development. The state requires that cities densify, and I think People don't understand that. And we do our best here in this department to educate people moving into the city. When people purchase homes, I'm not sure if it's explicitly expressed to them by real estate agents or they may not know either. So I'm not even picking on real estate agents, but. If you move into a house and you have a beautiful view of a field and you're in the city or on the edge of a city and that's county, there should be no expectation for anyone living in a city that it will never be developed. I would love to tell everyone moving into a city, If you have a vacant land around you, it will be, it's not a matter of if, it's when. And their house blocked someone's view, I'm sure, too, when they were built five years ago. So it's just, cities are required to densify, would be my response to that.

And then my last question is, if I may, Chairman, so I've sat here for many months now and keep hearing about the state saying we have to do this and the state saying we have to do this. And sometimes the cities know better what's best for their cities. than the states do, so what if, you know, we just, the Pasco City Council decided, you know, we like the idea of residential and this kind of thing, and we don't want to do this thing that the state's telling us we have to do, theoretically. Then what?

And City Council asked that very question a few months ago when I brought the comprehensive plan update, intro to the group and my answer to them and to this group is that we could, it's not advisable to and if you're not compliant with the Growth Management Act, the state can withhold grants, grant funding for you. So if your city is not compliant with the state law, If Maria Sarah, our public works director, their team applied for a grant for a road improvement project over on Broadmoor or maybe a new bridge, not that we have that much money right now, but the state, we wouldn't be eligible for state grants. And I believe we use a lot of state grants to fund our infrastructure projects. So that is where the state sort of has us on that. And I know that there have been a lot of cities, even the last city I worked at, Marysville, you know, had looked into how can we push back on this and I think after we looked into it more, we decided it's probably not a good idea for our residents to go against the state. I would love to see another city in Washington do it, but maybe not Pasco, just because I think it might be expensive. So, socially, I'd love to see another city take a run at it, but I don't think that's a good idea here. I wouldn't recommend it.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. Go ahead.

Well, with all due respect, I don't agree with this at all. And... This is a classic ready, fire, aim. And I'm sorry to say this is not a city, and I'm not worried about views, but I'm worried about the densifying of residences and the cars and the whole impact of low density areas. So I just want to go on record as of right now, I am not in favor of this. I don't care what the state says.

period i'm done thank you commissioner handler i i think that's what is hard with this right is that um we can't be upset with the city council or the staff we need to have different people in olympia they're taking away local control but i do think there is a good potential test case to um you know what if The problem is it's like crack cocaine. You become addicted to the grants and then you have to say, do what the state says because then you lose money because you're addicted to the grants. And so I had this comment. I actually spoke before the council a couple months ago and I said, you guys are addicted to the crack cocaine and you need to stop. But I think it's where we're at and I agree with your advice. I think it's until you change Olympia, you're not going to change where we're at and maybe we're not the city that... should do that because we do want to invest in places like fixing roads and things like that but it's unfortunate that we've become addicted to the drug so um are there any other comments or questions by the commissioners so i've taken a look at the map i think that i'm fine i'm not um affected by so i'm not in the low the lightest yellow right that's what we're talking about for the sr20 okay yes I am. I'm in the light yellow. But I think, well, you can kind of weigh in with the city attorney and what our advice is. And it'd be great to hear what the public comments and from the developers, the community, you know, if there are neighbors that are in this position, you know, I think it'd be great to hear what the impacts are, right? The only comment I'll make is it seems drastic from 20,000 to 8,700, but I get how you arrived at that and that makes sense, but it would seem almost like keep the 20,000 and go to the six, three to six, right? That might be a better approach, but we'll see what the developers and the neighbors say when you do public hearing, that'd be great.

And we plan to notice the public hearing how our code requires us to. So we don't have listening sessions or anything scheduled such as that. So we'll provide you the feedback when we receive it. And there are other options if we do want to hit the mid part of the range. I would still recommend going at the lower range, too, just to allow for customers to utilize that. septic development. It's not the most efficient, you know, approach from a utility standpoint, in my opinion, but I think giving people an option is a good thing. So if we did want to adjust it, two to three, we could I just with middle housing coming, I think it's probably the best decision to go two to five so that you can have 8,700 square foot single family lots as opposed to like a 20,000 square foot lot where someone would have enough room to do plenty of middle housing units. So it's just more what do you want to see in the Riverview area? And I think this density range would allow, yes, for smaller lots, but you'd likely see more single family development with that range. If you have big single family lots, I think infill would be more desirable for applicants. So it just depends on what you'd like to see.

Yeah, that's good advice. Commissioner Laramie?

So, point of clarification. At this point in time, there's no lots that are currently being built on that have more than two units per lot.

So if it's near city sewer, you will see development in the Riverview area, and they're likely located next to sewer services. So if they can connect to the sewer in the road adjacent to their site, or if the site's close to sewer, you're seeing development. Actually, if they rezone. So the RS-20 zone, there are some folks that have come and done little rezones to R1 or R4. So if you see anything very dense down in that area, they've likely come through and gone through the rezone process. Anything currently zoned RS-20. is not developing any higher than two units per acre. Right now it's zero units per acre because there's a conflict in code and people can't build and haven't been able to in the last several months, which keeps me up at night. But yes, so RS-20, two units is the limit per the zone.

The two locations I'm thinking of is right past the Court Street roundabout, that new development that's coming in.

In your sewer.

Yep. And then second one is off of 5056. Yep.

I would believe those went through a rezone. There's some duplexes, I think, that received a lot of attention. That was a rezone that occurred, or single-family attached units. Thank you.

When Ordinance 4663 was passed in 2023, what were they trying to accomplish?

I believe they were trying to accomplish more density citywide and to not allow for new septic tanks to be built throughout the city. Because when you go to three to six units citywide, that means that anybody even in the Riverview area cannot utilize septic. And it's just from an efficiency standpoint, like if you were to ask any planner or a public works professional, they'd say it's just best to have everyone on a nice unified system. It's easier for maintenance and whatnot. So I believe that was the idea is to up the density citywide and to reduce low density development in the Riverview area. But my opinion, and I think the council's opinion on this has changed. There's been several new council members since 2023. So it is a policy decision, but with middle housing coming in, we're still going to, you know, see that required density at the state level. So I think it sort of makes it more or less a moot point, in my opinion. If we go down to two, yes, we'll see more septic systems, which, you know, there's pros and cons to that. But I believe, you know, by upping it two to five in the Riverview area, it will balance out pretty nicely in the RS-20 zone.

Okay, thank you. Okay, any other questions or comments from the commissioners? Okay, thank you for this, and so next steps are a public hearing in December, you think?

Yes, public hearing in December, and we'd appreciate a quorum for that. I'm not sure how attendance is for planning commission in December, close to the holiday, but we'd appreciate a quorum, or if you cannot make it, let us know. I have time, and maybe we can move the date if needed, just so we can... Stay on schedule. I did commit to the development community that this would likely be done by the end of the year. So we'll be a month late yet. But I think if we can keep this moving, that would be amazing. And we'll let you know if we get feedback along the way and include it in the staff report. But we'd like to schedule a public hearing in December for this group.

So December will have this item and the Pasco School District item?

Yes, sir. And I would like to have a discussion about the comprehensive plan and economic development with the group, too, and just to foreshadow a little bit. I can do that during Director's comments if that's on the agenda. Yeah, but we plan to take these both for a public hearing.

December 18th, correct?

Yeah.

That sounds good.

Yes. I'll be gone on the 18th, just to share out.

I will be here.

Yep, December 18th. It's cutting it a little close, but I was hoping since it was the week before, we could make it work.

Okay. We're actually getting into other business in the closer, so anything else from staff's perspective on other business?

Other business in December, I would like to hold a workshop with the Planning Commission on economic development and what we want to see in PASCO mainly. Do you want PASCO to... you know, seek unique retail uses that brings other people from out of town into the city that would increase our tax base and enable us maybe to be less dependent on the state drug grants? Or, you know, do we just want to try and maintain what we have and be a bedroom community? And just, I was hoping I could talk through just anecdotally and briefly, nothing too technical about PASCO strengths and weaknesses, our industrial base, obviously. and things that we do really good and things that maybe we can improve and just get your feedback so it won't be too formal it's just since you all live here just you know speak from the heart or the head whatever you'd like just give us advice and we'd like to take that in as we're formulating the economic development element and then for every month until the end of next year we'd like to hold planning commission meetings so we're going to have our work cut out for us for the comprehensive plan it's a once in 10 year activity It's our time to dream for Pasco for the next 20 years, so we will be having a built-out agenda. We will talk about middle housing and parking and get more input from the group and then just sort of go through each of the elements and get your input. And I'll be checking in with council as well. Every topic I bring to planning commission, I'll likely have a mini workshop with council to combine two of our topics here with them. So it'll just be like a feedback loop between the both groups until we get to the end so that no group is surprised or shocked by the outcome.

Great, thank you. And I think we'd appreciate you coming from Marysville. I think we find ourselves probably very similar to Marysville, so I think the strategies you used or they used or the ones that they tried and failed or the ones they tried and won, that would be probably pretty useful just to have that perspective for us. So I appreciate that.

And they're sharing notes with me even continuously, so it's a good relationship. And, yeah, there's a lot of synergies between the cities, which is one of the reasons why I came here.

Awesome. Thank you. All right. Any other business?

Go ahead. Just final, I think of all the time I spent on this planning commission, let me just say I think this is the biggest issue facing Pasco. The biggest issue. And this needs to be thought out. And I'm just telling, you know, it has serious implications on the future of Pasco and the comfort of living in the city of Pasco. Anyway.

Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. All right.

I did have one more thing. Go ahead. Two more things, actually. I wanted to introduce James Bagley. I'm sorry. Bagley, yes. And so he is our new planner, too, that has joined us a month ago.

Yes. Yes.

Yes, and he came from, did you want to introduce yourself to the group, if you don't mind? I'm sorry, I did not prepare ahead of time. I do know about you, I just did not, yeah, so go ahead.

Yeah, so new planner too, got hired by City of Pasco. Started this month, I've done just a little bit of planning in the state of Washington, but I did come from Oregon, and I have a background from planning in Idaho, where I was a planner for five years.

Oh, yeah.

That's a little bit about me. I played football for Idaho State. If anybody has football questions, we'll have to talk about it. Welcome to the team.

And the last thing I had was just thank you to all of you. You are volunteers, and I appreciate your hard work in coming here on a Thursday evening to talk about, you know, sometimes unpleasant issues, but very important issues. So I appreciate all of you, and welcome to our new members. And we'll see you next month.

Thank you very much. We appreciate staff as well. With that, with no other questions or comments, I will recommend a motion to adjourn.

Second.

All right. We are adjourned at 7.33 p.m. Thank you, everyone.