Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

We can get started.

Okay, perfect. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the May 26, 2026 Planning Commission meeting. I call the meeting to order. Roll call, please.

Chair Drukovich?

Here.

Vice Chair Manley?

Here.

Commissioner Lewis? Here. Mr. Starr is absent today. Mr. Sondheim?

Here.

Commissioner Burke?

Here.

And Commissioner O'Leary?

Here.

We have a quorum.

Okay. Before we get started, I'd like to say the Planning Commission is principally an advisory board to the Pierce County Council. Actions taken by the Planning Commission on almost all agenda items will be forwarded to the County Council as a recommendation for its consideration and final actions. First item on our agenda is approval of the March 24th, 2026 meeting minutes. I'm assuming everyone's had a chance to review those. Any questions or comments before I call for a vote? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

Aye. Aye. Opposed?

Any abstentions? Okay, perfect.

Could we use the motion to second? Who did the motion in a second?

Oh, I guess we didn't.

So moved. Okay. So who is the motion maker? I'll make it. Okay. Thank you.

And I'll second.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay. Are we ready? Yes. On our agenda today, we have three presentations from staff. The first one is long range planning division updates. Turn it over to staff.

Morning. Morning. Long-range planning manager. Not so much a presentation, just updates. In the past, we discussed bringing back to you just updates on where things you've previously seen have landed. So there's six of them at the moment that I think are worth the child care package. Sydney, presented to you, will be at council this very afternoon. There were some amendments in committee a couple of weeks back. That will be discussed at 3 o'clock today. I think it's the last thing on the council agenda today. Cottage housing, that was previously here. Ben McCord-Becker presented that. We'll be at Community Development and Environment Committee next Monday. If you recall, that one includes the unit lot subdivision as well that applies beyond cottage housing. On June 15th, battery energy storage systems that you heard here will be going to Community Development Environment Committee. And then there are three topics that I think you heard slightly less about that are worth bringing up that might be a very busy day on June 15th. There is an annexation resolution with the City of Sumner who would like to work with us on their potential annexation areas. School impact fees, mostly to handle state law that says you can't do them by single family or multifamily. It has to be done either through trip generation rates, through square footage or bedrooms. An approach that Council-led work group came up with is number of bedrooms. So that packet will be moving up. And finally, changes to the countywide planning policies. I think you heard from Justin Patterson about that. going up on June 15th as well. Just a few other updates, not workload related on things you've already heard. Our comprehensive plan amendment cycle will be open in July. There will be information coming out starting next week. Just to share on how the process is going to work and what needs to be submitted. Website is already updated on that. And we will be moving in the future to an annual comp plan amendment cycle. We are far too big of a jurisdiction to do this every two years. Of course, you can't do it while you're also amending the comprehensive plan. So we didn't do it in 2024. So it's been quite some time. We're anticipating quite a heavy workload in July as applications come in with that. Today is mostly a study session with topics coming before you and this is really to address a conversation we've had, ongoing conversation about bringing you things early. So excited to bring you these two topics before a single line of regulation has been edited or written. So you really get a chance to weigh in on things very, very front. We will be bringing these topics back and I think Appreciate your take on how often you would like these two topics in particular coming back to you. Next month, however, there are some action items for you to consider. We'll have a current use open space program. We'll be back as they do every summer, as well as our finance department will be here talking about the capital facilities plan and amendment to that. So we'll have slightly more work items in the June meeting. We've contemplated a little bit about meeting location, especially as additional members will join the Planning Commission. We are here for the time being. We had hoped that maybe we could move to Market Street, but your meeting on Tuesday mornings conflicts with various council activities, and there is a real concern about parking your Market Street building at this time on Tuesdays. So for the foreseeable future, we will still be here, but we will and other facilities that we can use. And finally, I think appointments are slowly making their way, so eventually we will have new commissioners come to join us. But absolutely the most important thing I could say to all of you today is truly our deep, deep gratitude to you, Chair Jerkovich, for all your service as our chair and the planning commission for all these last eight years, I believe. Eight years, yeah. So thank you. Really appreciate you today and for everything you've done on behalf of This planning commission. Thank you.

So the question on commission appointments what where are they where does it stand and I mean because now you're going to have 3 positions to fill which is going to you know make quorum challenging does going forward. I believe there is one.

at-large position that is making its way to council. That's already through the executive. It's one of the two at-large positions. You'll recall we had two. They were representing different districts, one for District 4 and one for District 7, but both were in Tacoma. And so we had a little mix-up there because they have to be from both different cities and different districts. Tacoma is the one that's split across two districts. So one of those two appointments is moving back towards council for appointment there. Other two are cast a series of interviews from the department and are making their way back to the executive's office for their review and for them to eventually send to council. So that will take a little bit more time.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Go ahead.

Hard check.

Yeah. So I have a question. In our, I believe it was our February planning commission, we made, actually it was March, excuse me. We made a motion and it was unanimously passed for the, regarding cottage housing, that the open space requirement change from 600 to 400 square feet per dwelling unit, and then the maximum square footage for single family units increase from 1,000 to 1,500. And my understanding is that's not reflected in the document that's going to the council. So can you tell us how does the protocol work when we make recommendations here for that to be memorialized when it goes to the council for review.

So at that point, it would go in the letter to state why you would or would not have approved or if you would have written something. And I don't remember exactly what was written, but it would say state either, yes, we support staff recommendation. No, we don't support staff recommendation, but we would support it if you did X, Y, and Z. So that might be the way we would have written that one or No, we don't support it. And here's why. So that's where it would come in when it gets to just a hearing is at that point, we don't change the package by the time it gets to the final hearing. It's a letter that describes your opinion of the final package. That is also why we are starting to come to you now much earlier in the process, as you'll hear today on the Shoreline Master Program and on detention facilities. The intention is that the things you comment on now will actually make their way into these packages, and you'll see them again as we get through the process with the idea that that would have been Those comments would come at a time where we actually have the ability to incorporate them because it's not at the very end of a process. Hopefully they come in sooner, but you say today will be reflected in code that you'll later see.

I haven't seen the letter that you're referencing. So how does that letter get produced and then submitted? Is it submitted along with the packet, separate from the packet?

It goes with the packet that goes up to council. It's written by, well, it's been written by Sarah historically, but eventually it'll be Kristen, our new clerk, who will write it. And it's written based on your comments at the meeting. And I believe it goes up to the chair to sign the letter and send it on as part. Have you seen the letter?

I have not seen the letter. Okay. I just think it's really important that recognizing that the past procedure didn't allow for it to be in the packet. Totally understand that. And I'm looking forward to it, the change that's being recommended. So thank you for that. But I think it's extremely important that if the packet goes to the council, the letter needs to go to the council at the same time. I will double check. I believe that it does.

How is it presented to the council? In written form, or is there an actual narrative from your staff?

It does not come from us. It does come in written form as a letter that states what the Planning Commission recommendation is.

And I have to take that back. I have seen that letter. Because that gets sent to me once we actually vote on something. They send me a letter to sign. I don't recall the contents of that one particularly.

That's fine. I just think it's important if If we come up with an idea and vote on it and the majority wants to move forward, that any corresponding packet of information that staff puts together, the recommendations from the planning commission should accompany that at the same time. So council can evaluate both. It does. It absolutely does.

And usually this is one of the final things that council staff, when they briefs the topic before presentation, usually one of the final things they say is, But the Planning Commission reviewed this topic and at that point would say whether you approved it, did not approve it.

When staff does their presentation to Council, do they mention that it's gone to Planning Commission and this was Planning Commission's recommendation?

It varies by topic. Usually, yes. I won't say that that's every single time. There are certain things that make their way here that merit more conversation and that get discussed when we do a staff presentation. And there are things that just don't have much conversation here. And so don't rise to the level of bringing back up when we present there.

Well, I would think it would be important to bring it up if our recommendation was anything other than unanimous to staff's decision.

Agreed. Thank you for clarifying. I appreciate it.

I think that's it. I will make a comment about bringing stuff earlier to planning commission. I think it's incredibly important because over my, the last eight years, many, many times we've run into things that are rushed because it's, we've got to have a decision today because it's going to, you know, community development committee in two weeks. And so we've got to be able to draft our stuff and, you know, We typically have questions, comments or opinions or whatever it might be about the topic at hand. And I think the sooner that we can have that stuff and we can get our questions answered. answered and comments put forth. I just think it's so important. Also, with public engagement, depending on what the topic is, I think it's really important. Anything that affects property owners needs to have a more comprehensive approach. public engagement period than just a website or whatever it might be because websites don't reach everybody.

In fact, if you just want to give us the topic, we'll go ahead and write it for you.

Thank you. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is the 2029 Shoreline Master Program Periodic Review. Turn that over to staff for presentation.

It's a little quicker. Good morning, Commissioners. I'm Nicholas Ribel, Senior Planner with Long Range Planning. Thank you for the opportunity to brief you on Pierce County's 2029 Shoreline Master Program Periodic Review. The intent of today's update on this work is, one, to provide a base understanding of the State Shoreline Management Act, Two, to inform you of the process that we're going through for this periodic review. And three, to your point, Chair Djokovic, to generate discussion that will give us areas of interest to bring in our next discussions. And so to know the topics that are, you know, key or pertinent for this particular group. If you want to get into some details, I can understand a little bit more of what those are and put those into topic areas for future presentations as well. So to take a quick look at the agenda, as I mentioned, I'll first give some context for this work through a breakdown of the State Short-Line Management Act. Following that, we'll cover project objectives, our engagement strategy, which is pretty substantial for this type of work. We'll take a detailed look at the timeline and the scope of the work and how the public has informed that so far. And then we'll open up for discussion with this Commission. So firstly, to look at the Shoreline Management Act, just some three basic questions we're asking about what it is, who's responsible for it, and who does it affect. So firstly, shorelines of the state are spaces that are clearly determined by a set of criteria found in state law. These locations are essentially the edges of recognized water bodies and their adjacent uplands. Those adjacent uplands have a particular term that you'll see in readings that I bring forward to you in the next few years, and those uplands are called shorelands. All of this is defined by the Revised Code of Washington. If you're ever interested in reading through any of that, I can always point out Section 9058 as a starting point. As far as what those spaces are, it's all marine waters, which we have about 180 plus miles of that here within Pierce County. Lakes over 20 acres in size. Rivers and streams with minimum flow. This is a mean annual flow, so I think kind of close to the average throughout the year of 20 cubic feet per second. So there's going to be some areas that maybe you're not realizing, even though it gets dried up during the years. Think of Clover Creek out in July. If you run Parkland area, you might not see Clover Creek. That's still within the shoreline jurisdiction because throughout the year, it does hit that 20 cubic feet per second minimum. A good example of what 20 cubic feet per second looks like is Chambers Creek. I'd say Chambers Creek, probably close to the Chambers Bay area, right around the month of July or August when it's not running real strong, that gets to about 20 cubic feet per second. Shorelands also extend beyond 200 feet from the edge of the water. So usually stop right there, but they can extend a little bit further if they're attached to a wetland. So if a wetland area is right at that 200 feet and it still goes back up, then all that area, whatever that wetland is, also is included in shoreline jurisdiction. And then lastly, floodplains can extend shoreline jurisdiction, but that's usually about 200 feet from the floodway. Bloodway is that area of the river, I think the Puyallup, where things are moving quickly when it floods. The flood fringe is an area outside of that where the water is usually pretty still and just rises during a flood. So this is more like the danger area that we measure shoreline jurisdiction with flood. Additionally, there's another designation which is called statewide significance, shorelines of statewide significance. These are certain really large water bodies that we just have a really particular interest in We tend to have more public access demand there. And also when we have transportation facilities, think of our ferries, we have to have particular uses on those really big shorelines. So those have a different cutoff. It's not the 20 cubic feet per second that you think of. It's more like a thousand cubic feet per second. So this is a scale of magnitude much larger when we talk about these shorelines of statewide significance. An example of that, if you think of a typical, let's say, spring on the Puyallup, if we're not in a flood stage, it's usually around 3,000 cubic feet per second at that lower end where we're close to the town of Puyallup. That's about three times the size of what the cutoff is for this event. A lake that meets this qualification, which is about 1,000 acres, is American Lake. That's probably the cutoff right there for the lake size. So this would include lake taps as well. And then all marine areas are always included within Shoreline's statewide significance.

Who has interest in these areas? Do you want us to wait until your presentation is over and ask our questions or ask as we go along?

Not necessarily. If there's something that comes up and there's a lot to unpack, please feel free to just raise a hand or speak up and I can stop. So, yeah.

I have a quick question. Years ago, the county purchased areas along, for instance, the Puyallup River to be used as setback levees. And for various reasons, certain things changed. Some things have happened, lots of things haven't happened with those lands. How are those lands classified?

Those lands, if they're within, think of the edge of the levee where the water just comes up along the edge. If they're within that 200 feet, they're part of that shoreline jurisdiction, even though it's a different use within them. That's what I was going to say.

They don't have a separate classification.

No. One thing to note, and we'll look at maps that go into this in a little bit, is in these shoreline jurisdiction areas, we do have something that's akin to zoning, but it's really, really minimized. So when you think of how we zone like our dense urban areas we have quite a few different zoning designations and densities and levels and stuff the zoning types that we talk about in the shoreline are called shoreline designations and these designations there's usually about five of them state law requires you have at least four And they are based on the intensity of land use. So if there's a ferry terminal, we call that a high intensity designation. It's usually just the terminal and then the area around it and maybe a highway that leads up to it within the 200 feet. That's one designation. We also have another one called conservancy. That's lands that haven't been developed yet. So real, real natural resources. Another one's going to be residential land. If you think along the edges of Fox Island, the house is pretty close together. You've got maybe 100 foot width lots. And lots out there tend to look like piano keys, right? Goes that width all the way up to the road. And then in between that more natural designation and the residential one is one called conservancy. And that's when you've got lots that are not quite that piano keyed out. They're not as thin. It might be triple the width, maybe 300 feet. Those are lots that tend to be around two acres or so. Those are the four main categories that they give. And so along the Puyallup, they have that diking. They'll have a land use designation that allows for a diking type of activity. You'll have any time a roadway comes into the shoreline, that roadway in the area around it will have a designation that looks like a zone on a map, like an overlay. That'll allow that type of use. So it's a good question there. Different designations to make sure the important uses that we need can be done there.

Thank you. What's the purpose of having a 200-foot buffer around an area that has a dike? I mean, it seems to me like there's You take a look at the cow forever again city already mean there's a definite slope. There there's there's a lot of times to it's the water doesn't even reach the bottom the toe of the slope of the dike because there's meanders you know it changes every year, it seems like so what what's the purpose, then, of making that particular. facility that died the the stop line for the 200 foot and then why 200 feet, I mean when you have that kind of protection.

There's a little rhyme, right, to this reason. So the 200 feet is the minimum that the state's thinking about when we did the critical areas ordinance update. They talked about, they used this term riparian areas, and I'll get into this a little bit in the presentation, but within that 200 feet, The habitat, the type of plants that grow there, holds about 75% of all the species in the landscape in that area. They all utilize that area. Even though there's a dike there, there's still the type of habitat behind that dike that's only based on that soil type. And like I said, historically, rivers flood. So some of the soil types and plants that grow behind that dike are going to be so specific that the state just has called out, this is important public lands because it holds such a carrying capacity for a biodiversity of species that they designate the 200. Why not 300 or 100? I think 200 is usually what they look at for the filtering of pollutants.

I know it's 200. It seems to me that most of the material that's brought in for those dikes is all import. It's not native material. The native species that were there are long gone because otherwise they'd be buried. It doesn't seem to me anything to do with science. It seems to me more just a general thing. rule, a broad sweeping rule that somebody came up with somehow and then tried to justify it on the backside after making it. So I just wonder where the science is on that. I mean, you could say that there's species there, but the reality is it's all import.

Yeah, the fill that you put next to the river right there, you know, the trail on top, that's absolutely all important. But also within that 200 feet, it's not just the species use, it's also public access, which is an important part of this. So our trail systems that run through there, we make sure that when we have 200 feet of a regulatory area, we can prioritize not just the protection of species but the types of uses that come in there so the dike is a use but also the fact that we make sure that we have trail access or marinas next to the water they're just calling out a certain area that they have to be able to do these uses within anything further outside of that they're saying hey You know, this is the uplands.

Yeah, no, I get that. I've used the trails before. You know, the top of the dike, it's great, good material, all that type of stuff. But beyond that, it seems like it's not best available science with respect to the setback from that particular facility, whether it be a trail or whatever. I mean, there's a lot of time to pay to go over, so, you know.

When you're referring to the 200 feet, you're referring to the the shoreline jurisdiction, right? Because you have your shoreline residential 75 foot, that's the actual buffer conservancy is 100. But the 200 is really kind of the entire

area that's under jurisdiction yeah and what that means is those are the areas where you need a shoreline permit to do the work right but the buffers that you speak of those change from the edge of the water back based on the designation so that the examples you gave are accurate the buffers are smaller for really high intense areas where there's going to be a ferry terminal the buffer is going to be minimal almost to nothing uh natural area is much larger so just out of curiosity yeah if

uh, with wetlands, with those buffers, a lot of times the buffer ends at the edge of whatever the development is, even though the buffer could be bigger. Why is that not the same in a shoreline?

Are you, I want to make sure I state this correctly, are you identifying that the buffers in shoreline jurisdiction are more restrictive than some of the other criteria for wetland buffers?

Yes. Because we have a lot of shorelines that have been I mean, really developed. But yet, if something needs to happen, we're still looking at that 75 feet or 100 feet, whatever it might be. But the development, because that development has been there for decades, is within the shoreline buffer, which if somebody wants to do something additional with their property, it kind of hinders development. in some respects, what they can do because they're already, you know, maybe they already exceed 33% of impervious surface or, you know, the house is well within, you know, the 75 foot buffer. It just, they just seem kind of opposite of each other. but they want to have the same types of protections.

Sure. I just want to say that this presentation initially is to give some really good foundational understanding for the entire Planning Commission as to what this means. You're jumping into the weeds and I like where you're going. Yeah, I know. You clearly understand... My last ditch effort. Yeah. You clearly understand where some of the conflicts are because there are existing uses that have predated the Short-Line Management Act, which began in 1972, right? A lot of the stuff along the water was developed out. However, I do want to point out that there is an allowance of expansion. It's minimized to a certain percent and it's based on the type of zoning or designation that those areas have. And also, Outside of that, if you look at impervious surface that you give, what Chair Yerkovich is talking about is if you look at from a bird's eye view, the outline of a roof line, where the driveway is, all these hard surfaces, that's almost used like a credit system. So when I was a shoreline planner for Island County, we worked with... you know, any developer or property owner to talk about how much impervious surface do you have and what is it you want to develop in your existing non-conforming property. Well, maybe we can take some of that surface away. You didn't really need that hardscape patio behind the house and you're not using it much, but you want to extend the house out a little bit to put an extra room on. we can cut that part out and you're going to end up with the same amount of impervious surface, but you're going to get a better use. So it does allow definitely for some types of development expansion, even if you're in the don't touch the zone, it's actually fairly flexible.

Negotiation. It is.

Yeah.

Yeah. I just want my fellow commission members to, cause I'm not going to be here through this, but to just kind of understand that there are some things with the shoreline that and code that now if we're going to start looking at making amendments to it, there are things to consider, I think.

Yeah. Well, I just appreciate Nicholas letting us tap his expertise and experience in this because it's an issue that we have a lot of shoreline in Pierce County. I mean, tons of it, depression, salt, both. And so there's a lot of questions the public would have regarding the use of their property, what they think is their property, especially those who have title lands that go well into the sea. So I was just curious about who's, is this Pierce County sole jurisdiction now? So if someone were to want to amend one of those boundaries, or get a variance or that type of thing? Would it just be Pierce County? Would it be Department of Ecology, the state, or who does that?

Yeah. So all of this is under, not under Commerce, which is when we usually talk about the Growth Management Act. This is all under the Department of Ecology for the Shoreline Management Act. uh any project that they call a substantial development next to the shoreline um substantial development i'm going to go back to a marina or ferry terminal that's substantial that's the kind of stuff that they want to review they do allow for a variance or conditional uses that maybe are not typical uses that something new In that process, we review it first. We're the first authority to review it. And then for any of those substantial developments, the Department of Ecology also reviews that work. So they look at like your findings goes to the council. They look at our findings and they say whether they feel like it's consistent with the SMA. And we're usually on the same page. So that's the process. Some projects, if they're in the water, will also be looked at by the Army Corps of Engineers. And Fish and Wildlife will usually provide comment, but those comments are not a requirement to follow.

And the tribes too, correct?

Absolutely, any project. Now, historically, we've had these projects that are exempt from review from Ecology. It doesn't meet the threshold from a substantial development. Ecology also recognizes when those are done poorly, it's death by a thousand cuts to some types of shoreline functions. There's going to be changes in the state's requirements in the future. They'll be adopted by the state in 2027. One thing that they're asking jurisdictions to look at is those projects that we didn't review because they were exempt. They want us to submit those to them in the future so they can review should they have the time. I would usually submit somewhere around... 160 to 180 of those types of permits to Ecology just for a small jurisdiction like Island County. So they don't have the staff to review all of those. It's something where they would probably pull out a section and look at a sample size to see how a jurisdiction is doing. That's a requirement that's going to come up in the future about this type of question about how is it reviewed that currently doesn't exist.

So where do you find the definition for substantial? Is it is it in our county code?

I believe we have a definition completely. It's a word for word consistent with what the state has. Okay. And those are usually pretty easily spelled out the exemptions. Most consultants and developers know very, very well. And so do staff. And so it's pretty quick to go through that. A dike, substantial. Anything that's going to block or reroute water. Things smaller like a single family residence, shoreline armoring to protect a single family residence, a trail system, things like that. Should I go? Okay. It's fairly regulated. As I mentioned, the Shoreline Management Act came about in 1972. It was actually initiated through a public initiative in 1970 called the Shoreline Protection Act, and it called for coordination between jurisdictions to manage these sensitive areas in ways that protect shoreline natural resources, one, ensure public access, two, and three, support water-dependent uses. ferry terminals, that's marine areas, that's aquaculture, things that need to be next to the water to function. So this management is an extension of a legal principle called the public trust doctrine. This ensures cultural and natural resources such as navigable waters, wildlife, and land that maintains certain critical ecological functions that we all benefit from are held in trust by government to preserve the public use. It's frequently applied to water bodies such as lakes and streams. The protection of these areas is also required under federal government treaties associated with tribes and their cultural resources. The shorelands next to lakes, rivers, and streams and marine waters, as I mentioned, house about 75% of all species in the landscape, making these habitat areas very critical to many different types of plants and animals. So due to their limited supply and outsized impact on culture, economy, recreation, natural resources, and the services our ecosystems provide, really everyone has a skin in the game. Everyone has a very strong interest. And you'll see as we go through this periodic review. Everyone shows up. We will have comments. We will have engagement with pretty much everyone in this process.

Just one quick question here. We've gone through shorelines substantial. Yeah. development permits and, I mean, not permits, but probably codes. And a couple of them, I remember one of them was even appealed at the state level because they didn't like, the state didn't like what we were doing. But how different is, what are we, how different has, what's the difference between what we have right now and what's being proposed by the state? That's what this is trying to figure this out.

Yeah, actually, in my next slide, I'll go through some of those if you don't mind holding on.

I was just curious. I mean, every time we do this, it's such a huge amount of work. It takes a lot of time, a lot of public interaction. I just wonder, what's the difference? I mean, are we talking about a couple of sentences here? I mean, it seems like the code is pretty... Pretty complex right now.

Typically, it's about a difference of about two years' worth of work. A lot of it process, a lot of it engagement. And you'll see that this time it's about three times as much that. I'm going to go over the reasons why it's so much more because I've reviewed the state's draft language so I can give you a sneak peek of what's coming up.

Yeah, I was just curious about how – I mean, it's pretty – Owners right now, how much more could it be? It's going to get stricter. Really strict.

To protect these diverse and unique landscapes, the state requires each jurisdiction to have its own set of policies and regulations that implement the Shoreline Management Act. This allows jurisdictions to have some flexibility in how they meet the state requirements. However, even though we may do it all a little differently, ultimately our programs must address certain key topics. Those are public access and recreation, the need for infrastructure, the types of uses we allow, economic development, critical areas protections, and conservation and restoration. So Pierce County meets these requirements through two different titles, two different code titles that we have in Pierce County Code. The first one, Title 18S, which is called our Shoreline Master Program. It houses overall our policies and our regulations. And here's where it gets a little bit more complex. Title 18E, which is our critical areas ordinance, uh this is under the authority of commerce not ecology however we keep our critical critical areas protections that are within those 200 feet we keep those in that same code section since they're critical areas as well even though they're in shoreline jurisdiction we just kind of house them all together and what we've done historically as a county is at the top of our code section We put a little note and it says, if you're in shoreline jurisdiction and you're doing development near a critical area, go over to Section 18E and check that out because that's where we hold the regulations for that. And then when you get into 18E, you'll see here's a list of exemptions or exceptions and how you can develop within a critical area, except if it's in shoreline jurisdiction, you don't have as many of those. Uh, state doesn't really like that organization much, but sometimes it makes life easier. And sometimes it makes it more difficult and having it housed in two different sections. However, currently that's what Pierce County has. We have our regulations in two separate sections, even though they both apply to the shoreline area.

Uh, would you recommend that be a housekeeping modification? for that to be either duplicative so that it lives in the same sections or have it be moved?

The question, actually, Chair would probably recall in 2024, I came to and we proposed just that we did draw up those regulations. Unfortunately, the council did not adopt the changes. Since then, the state has looked at that practice and said they aren't going to allow that anymore. That's one of the large changes that will be required in 2027. We will now have to remove all regulations associated with the shoreline jurisdiction, take them out of AT&E and put them in ATS. The good thing is we did the work already.

And when that was proposed to the council, was that a single item or was it a package to where maybe there were elements they liked and elements they didn't? It was a single item. Okay. Thank you. Yeah.

So this process of updating, which Commissioner Sudsmo brought up, it used to be every seven years. State has now adopted a 10-year cycle. So every 10 years, we're required to update the policies and regulations in these two code sections to ensure they're consistent with newly adopted state law and also guided by the newest and most accurate science available at that time. This is just a little map that Ecology has on their website. It shows who the jurisdictions are that have shoreline within their areas and the schedule that they're on for this update. So as you can see, we are going first. Going first, just as with our comprehensive plan update, means some things. One of the things it means is we're the test. And oftentimes, we're even a little bit ahead of the state When the work is large, we have to start these processes early. Sometimes the state drags behind a little bit because they're trying to write the regulations and figuring out how to explain them to us through guidance. So currently we've been interacting with the Department of Ecology based on what we've seen that they'd like to have included in the 2027 regulations update, what they're doing. We've already started this work and we're speaking with them about what type of guidance we need for them to help us move through the process.

So just another question. On your engagement, I don't see anything about industry. And we've got a lot of industry here in our area, our state, our county. Will that be in subsection? I see public comment, but I think reaching out to the industries, the aqua farmers and so forth, I think it's real important.

Yeah, I can actually speak to that. Now, out of turn on some of the slides. So for industry, we recognize the commercial activity in the Purdy area. We've already reached out to each individual business there. We've spoken with them about not the data that we've started to collect on sea level rise, but more so about The long term planning process going through and we tend to have a sub area plan that's specific to that particular area, because we do want to protect economic interest also we have advisory groups as part of our engagement.

Our Community advisory.

group includes a member of the staff of a local aquaculture group, Tiddler Shellfish. So the industry definitely has a voice in this, is following it very closely.

Thank you. Question. You were saying you're trying to stay head of the state right now. Are you doing it as far as HB 1181's adoption?

So HB 1181 did two things that affect us. One, it updated our overall policies and our environment element for the comprehensive plan, which we meet some of those overarching goals, but we get into the detail in the weeds that you pointed out. A bit more. Secondly, it provided funding through the Climate Commitment Act, and I'd say a significant portion of our funding from the CCA, the Climate Commitment Act funds, is funding required studies that we're doing on this. So there is a nexus with 1181.

So I think it's coming out in 2027, it's supposed to be finalized or?

2027 is when the Department of Ecology will complete their changes to the Washington Administrative Code that tells us how to do what we're already doing.

And you're going to Try to have those in there beforehand, anticipate it and try to.

Yes, we've been meeting with them for the last year and we should have all this supporting science ready in 2027 when they give us a checklist of things to do. So we'll already have all the things we need to be able to do that.

I'll ask you some more questions about that.

Sure.

One last question on this. How does the port activities interact with this and where is the City of Tacoma on this and the Port of Tacoma?

Yeah, we have one staff member on our team of three that's been representing Pierce County in the commencement bay restoration efforts. And so the City of Tacoma is working with the Port specifically on that. I don't have insight into where they're at in their process in detail, but I do know that we've been associated with that project for about six months now. So I do know that the port has a voice and they're addressing sea level rise related hazards that the port needs to prepare for and plan for.

I just think from an efficiency standpoint, it'd be wonderful if government wouldn't be siloed and we could cross-reference data and not duplicate reports and efforts and man hours.

I agree. I agree. So part of the Department of Ecology's recommendations, and I wouldn't say it's so strong to be a requirement, is closer collaboration as we move through this process. One of the things that's happening in this update is a whole lot of stuff around sea level rise. And that's all really data driven and the approach to how to protect our homes and our resources from that. It needs to be collected because it's not going to stop at a county line. So we've been working with the 23 cities and towns within our jurisdiction through the uh gmcc which is the growth management coordinating committee that's part of the pierce county regional council so this is a sub body within the pierce county regional council so far we've met with them three times we've presented to them on our project and where we're at because we know we're ahead of many of these cities and towns except for probably tacoma And we're using that body as our coordinating group. This summer, we've hired a consultant to do three workshops with us in the Department of Ecology to walk that group, those 23 cities and towns, through these proposed changes we're about to talk about, because they may have not had it planned. enough staff to read through what these are and we want to make sure they're able to comment on the changes that the state's going to make before they make them so we're prepared to make comments but we want them to get on the same page in the areas where we can so we're going to do those three workshops and at the end we'll have a findings paper which is a consensus document on the things that we agree on that we'd like to recommend to ecology And then starting in 2027, we'll use this as a launch pad for continued coordination with the 23 cities and towns. So if they are lacking data on sea level rise or any other areas that the county has data on, exactly to your point, we'll be able to support that with them. And also if they're a small jurisdiction, they just might need some help on strategy or how to approach this. And we've had a really good shot at it. So we're going to be able to support in that manner.

Thank you.

Yeah. As to this SMA rulemaking process, this is the Department of Ecology's Washington Administrative Code Update. I'm just going to run you through some of the things that they have here that are expected. The first one that you should be aware of is the state is requiring us to plan for the impacts of sea level rise hazards. That has been mentioned in previous Shoreline Master Program updates that the state has brought the topic up but never had strong requirements around it. For the first time, these requirements are substantial, and every jurisdiction that has Shoreline Master Program will have to have a subsection within their SMP, the Shoreline Master Program, that specifically talks about how the county or the city is going to adapt to these impacts. We have to look at landscape resilience. We'll have to analyze risk. There's a lot of science and study that goes behind that. The types of risks I'm talking about are erosion that you see in the marine areas, coastal flooding, and that can get substantial outside of just thinking of how high water can rise when you add the tidal influence, so king tides. And then if you have a windstorm, like we did back in 2021 at the same time as a king tide, and you can get substantial flooding. in areas that communities have not experienced it before. We also lose key habitat during some of these events, which, you know, our shellfish developers will point out. And also we suffer saltwater intrusion into freshwater, which for many is drinking water. So these are the types of hazards that we're having to develop a strategy around and a little bit more in detail later about what those can look like. There are additional changes besides this sea level rise subsection, which is the majority of the work. We've been called out for more meaningful public engagement in this work, better collaboration with local governments, more complete tracking of shoreline development, which gets to this idea of looking at the exemptions, I believe. clear requirements for shoreline stabilization, and then the reorganization of critical areas requirements. That's what I referenced as to taking those code sections out of our critical areas ordinance and moving them over to our shoreline master program. As I mentioned, about two years is the typical periodic review process. This one is more like a four-year workload, depending on your resources available, resources being staff, access to consultants, access to scientific data, and money or grants in that manner. Thanks for sitting through this foundational part. I'm now going to walk you through our path to how we are Dealing with this update and where we're at in our process. First, I'm just going to cover a few key areas. We're going to go with it.

Are you guys funded now? Yes. To what degree? Enough for four years or will you have to go out for more rounds of funding?

We're really close to having coverage for the entire project, which is... probably a little over $800,000. We've been fortunate enough to receive some big grants and the state still has grant money coming our way. Previously for a project of this size, I mean a periodic review, not a periodic review of this size, the state has funded us about $80,000 for the work, which doesn't get us there, but it's nice to have. My insight is it's going to be reduced, not expanded because the lack of funding on the state level will probably get more like 60,000 for this. So we are right on the edge, but we're in good state due to, as I said, grant writing and foresight of our management. So we'll go over the overlap between the Shoreline Management Act and Pierce County's own goals, our project resources, which I think we've done a good job of extending, our engagement strategy, our timeline for adoption, and then a detailed breakdown of the project deliverables, which might give you some insight into areas that you'd like to hear more about in the future. The Shoreline Management Act draft rulemaking is clearly a big lift. This is no small feat. We were a little shocked when we first saw how much was in their draft language that could be required. But we also saw this is an opportunity for us to further our own goals as a county and implement policies that we just updated a couple years ago in our comprehensive plan. There's three key areas that I believe we're being able to address and meet our own goals, and that's building climate resilience, improving salmon habitat, and really implementing community engagement at the depth that we expect in order to have good feedback and participation from our communities. So my experience from going through our comprehensive plan update was I saw all the adjacent policies to this, but I think most importantly about that process is, as you pointed out, we broke silos not outside the jurisdiction, but also within. We started to work with emergency management. We started to have discussions with... surface water management, our development services staff that were much deeper I think than in the past. And that's prepared us really well for this work because we're getting a really good idea of where the overlap is. And we're also aware of projects that they've worked on previously and how a lot of the work that we're doing helps further those things. For example, our Sustainability Plan and our Flood Hazard Management Plan both focus on building up landscape resilience in the face of climate change through a couple of different ways. One, habitat protections. Two, land conservation. And thirdly, in restoration of ecological functions. We're able to achieve those three goals just by implementing the Shoreline Management Act. So even though there's a big mandate for what we're needing to do, this is also fulfilling some of our goals as well. Additionally, the update to the Washington Administrative Code will call for us to work with frontline communities, those that are impacted first and most, on sea level rise adaptation planning. That fits very closely with our strategies in our emergency management plan. and also in our equity and environmental justice policies that were updated in our comprehensive plan process. So we see ourselves just implementing policies the county has written in two other plans. And then lastly, under salmon habitat goals, we received $115,000 from Commerce to improve salmon recovery efforts and that works really well with the salmon recovery operational plan that the county is currently putting together so we've been working with their team to make sure that there's clear alignment doubling up of work we can show how we're essentially improving on-site mitigation and i can explain what that is anytime you're doing development in the shoreline and it's allowed that you're building into a buffer area You have to compensate for whatever impact to the habitat there. In the past, we knew that couldn't really follow up very well to say if somebody was required to plant 600 square feet of native species, that those things actually got planted and lived. It was part of its staffing, part of it's how our code is written. Internally, we looked at where can we improve? And that was one area we knew really clearly. Back in 2024, we wrote a grant to this and the state recognized, yeah, that's a part where we'd love to see you improve and we'll pay for that. So we know for this improvement of salmon habitat, we've got a lot of key areas within that 200 feet and we can get the county to that goal by just doing the work that we're supposed to do anyways.

Does that fall under 18e or 18s with respect to habitat restoration or mitigation?

Yeah, that's 18s for the mitigation. It's the vegetation mitigation, like the plantings you do, and also conservation efforts for existing vegetation. Try to not get rid of as much that's already there, and when you do, just do a better job of replanting you'll be happy to know that that grant that we wrote has its own engagement process within it and we're asking industry landscapers homeowners to play a role on the advisory group and the survey and study we do for this to say why isn't it working you know everybody wants these things to work out well sometimes it's dear sometimes it's a lack of knowledge And so we're going to be able to go through this with the community to figure out where the holes are so that we can improve the process.

Go ahead. You know, as you do that, this is just an issue that I see a real consistent foundation of. And I would just ask that This entire presentation so far has been regulatory-based. And I haven't heard anything about any kind of incentive-based element being incorporated. And I would just ask that as you go through, as you develop, keep in mind some kind of an incentive mindset as you evaluate these opportunities. I think at the end, everybody wants the same thing. But as we do boat launches or as we do bulkheads or housing development or whatever it may be, the incorporation of some incentive-based elements goes a long way to get to the end goal. And the end goal for everybody, not just the builder, not just the conservation or environmental aspect.

so i would just ask that you do that i see you wrote it down so thanks yeah yeah absolutely anything that the commissioners bring up today i'll make sure i take notes of this and that way if i see existing parts of our code that get close to this or we come across ideas for i could bring those back to you appreciate you very much yeah the incentive is you don't go to permanent prisons

So, Nicholas, I just had a question. When we were going through our comp plan amendments and everything, the state has played a very, as I say, heavily handed role in there used to be guidelines. And now we probably are, the ATE is probably 90% state guideline. I mean, it's our... autonomy and sovereignty is gone, and this is what we're doing, period. This is what the state says, this is what we're doing. Same thing with our stormwater manual, that kind of thing. The state issues the stormwater manual. We look at it and kind of maybe tweak it a little bit, but not much. We can make it more restrictive, but not anymore. So what I'm trying to figure out is why are the states even allowing the counties and the other jurisdictions within the state to even do this? Why aren't they just putting forth the edict? They have the power. This is what you're going to do. Just do it. And, you know, rubber stamp this thing and get her done. I mean, how much of our planning is the state now? All these house bills, I mean, all the missing middle, all that stuff, they gave us a chance about three years ago to do it. We didn't do it. Now they're ramming it down our throats. So I'm just saying probably I would say a good 80% of our planning code now is all from the state of Washington. So why are we doing this? Why isn't the state of Washington just saying, okay, this is what all the states are going to do that have have waters of the state.

Yeah. I think that's a good question. Why do they leave that flexibility if they're going to be unhappy sometimes?

Why are they torturing you? I mean, why are they doing this? Yeah.

It's a lot to do with those local landscapes are unique and the industries within them as well. Giving that flexibility, I think, is important for us. All of us in this room to have these discussions, because if we do this well, we should be able to do a better job than the state can. for our local landscapes as to how this applies to make sure the economy functions well, homeowner's rights or protections are protected, access is increased. And when they use a formal code that's, let's say, mandated and said, this is the model code, you should follow this, they're going to have what every council member fears, which is unintended consequences. Well, I always ask you, what are the unintended consequences that I should look out for? So that's what we're up to, right? we have the local knowledge to be able to call out those unintended consequences because how it's applied in Kittitas is going to be different versus Pierce County, and that's why this needs such good engagement. So our first step in this process was engagement with the public on scoping. We didn't come in and say, hey, we have NOAA's data on where sea level rise is going to happen, and we know when the winds come from the west during a keen tide. It's going to go over here. We actually went out and mapped this with people ahead of time. We asked them to point out where they saw things happening that they thought were significant erosion. Where is the flooding happening? So when they gave us that information, we took that. We gave it to our consultants and said, yeah, we understand that you do this work all the time and you're going to get the same data. but our constituents already said this is the way they see this happening. So if your data doesn't reflect any of this, then we probably need to come back and look at it. So I think there is a process for us having that local knowledge that has a real impact and it should translate into the regulations afterwards. Right. It's a layer cake and we're on our way up.

I just want to make sure that, I mean, we did this once before and the state appealed.

Yeah.

And I mean, we did exactly what you're talking about. We looked at an individual. OK, so it's every seven years, every seven years. But, you know, it seemed like it was a lot less than that because the lawsuit would go on for three or four years. And then the state would come back and say, well, this is what you're going to do because we got the power. You don't. And so that we always compromise. But I'm wondering, I mean, so I wonder, we all get dressed up. We spend a lot of money, spend a lot of time and a lot of our life energy doing something that the state, if the state doesn't like it, we end up in the same spot. Why don't they just mandate this stuff, get over, save us all some money and we can all spend money. a lot more leisure time at the shorelines that we can't get very close to.

I come to this from a landscape democracy perspective. I used to work in some large projects that focus specifically on civic processes in planning. Like that's how the sausage is made, right? We make a big mess. And in the end, we end up hopefully with a really nice dessert or whatever meal that we're working on together, but we're going to get our hands dirty and yeah. regardless of where we go with this, we have a really strong chance of it getting appealed. So we document our processes real well. We make sure we have our science looked at multiple times along the way. And that way, when we get through the appeal, we have a much better chance of getting the outcome we intended. But whoever appealed us, they have a voice in this as well. They're an interested party, and that should be part of the process if we can't all get to consensus the easy way, which is having the state tell us what to do and then doing it, and we do it the hard way, but I think we get a better version is all.

I thought so too until it got appealed by the state.

I know, and it lasted a really long time. A long time. Yeah. It was painful. It was brutal. We're going to rely on that kind of insight from you guys as we go through this process, because I wasn't here at that time to hear about some of those issues.

I'm just saying that it's really, really frustrating, and it's really, really challenging, not just in this particular piece, but in all pieces, is that we want to have some kind of sovereignty. We want to have some kind of autonomy. And then what happens is because the state is controlled the way they're controlled in that way, and they have this huge power block, they just mandate it. Boom. We ended up having to live with it, having to do it. We can tweak it a little bit, but not much.

I think with this one, you'll have a lot more flexibility in how we, and I think you should focus on this, how we develop our sea level rise adaptation strategy. This is a first. The state hasn't gone through it. We're ahead of them on much of this. And the adaptation strategies are really localized and unique. And we have the ability to develop the strategies a little differently in different parts of the county based on the risks that they have and they might be experiencing different things. So that's part of our engagement. And I think that'll be key for this process is making sure when we talk about sea level rise, how it affects Purdy is going to be different than Anderson Island or Fox Island, even how it affects industries might be a little different than how it affects recreation or, you know, residential development too.

Yeah. A lot of it has to do with slope and that type of thing, but also the high water mark is going to change that, that, that boundary is gonna move back. So we keep losing, I mean, property owners keep losing property or rights to property use as that occurs.

Nature is squeezing all of us, right? It's also shifting habitat further back as well. And we're trying to find ways to make sure that has places to go. We want to ensure that we don't lose our geoduck beds, right? We don't want to lose our eelgrass as well for salmon habitat. All that stuff gets deeper and less light, so less of the plant can grow. We're dealing with a lot of really difficult variables that come into this. And so, I mean, having that... Information from all the different stakeholders, which are tied to one area more than another, is really helpful to getting a collective outcome that gets to the best thing. I really think it's better than the state telling us, this is the standard, just follow this.

It's all nice, theoretically, and then Mount St. Helens blows. Good luck with that.

Manage that I'm going to follow through with just these last 3 slides so we can move on to our next presentations as well. So, as far as creating resources, we've worked with partnerships and grants partnerships, both inside and outside of our community. to make sure that we have support for this work. We've been working with community-based organizations on the Key Peninsula, Cape Harbor, and even in the Parkland area where we also have shoreline jurisdiction. These relationships help us understand the local landscape and help us also network and pass out information and disseminate. The current requirements for engagement through the Shoreline Management Act are related to having a very strict and thought-out public participation plan, which we have completed, participating in significant tribal engagement, which we began in 2025, and also giving opportunities for the public to comment on the scope of policy and regulatory changes, which we began last summer. There's also a public hearing and comment period requirement, which we will be doing with this Planning Commission. Future requirements for engagement will include more concerning engagement with tribes and overburdened communities and highly vulnerable populations. As far as the more formal groups that we work with, we have a technical advisory committee, which is made up of technical experts from the federal, state, and regional level. Also tribal staff are on our technical advisory committee. Their job is to give feedback on the technical documents and give recommendations on the most current science, as we are not scientists ourselves and we work through this work. Additionally, we have a community advisory work group. This is a group of community experts. Our community advisory work group is 12 members. They represent the four different watersheds within the county. We have localized populations that are able to speak to those areas. And they work on a consensus-based model, which means deep engagement, communication with this group. to bring to you recommendations for you to consider before making a recommendation to the Council itself. This group, the Community Advisory Work Group, really focuses on the values, establishing vision and sounding in on policies and plans, but less so on technical expertise on any regulations. Working with this group is part of our mission, which for the county is Forward Together, and that's grounding our engagement in the same mindset that showed up in early 2025 engagements. We've been, as I mentioned, doing community mapping to get experiences of the community through in-person meetings and online surveys, specifically around sea level rise and shoreline public access. This year we're returning to the community with data based on our sea level rise vulnerability and risk assessment to let them understand the areas of concern for the near-term impacts in their landscape and also discuss potential strategies for adapting to sea level rise. Our project timeline focused on mitigating risks as much as possible. New science equals big risks because of the data's availability. Sometimes it's hard to get your hands on. So we parsed things out so the timing of studies would flow well into our actual draft amendments period. We started in 2025 on developing contracts and scoping with the few consultants that can actually do this work so that we would have access to them. This year, 2026, is to focus on the technical analysis, so they're completing the Mostly the vulnerability and risk assessment for sea level rise and also any other technical studies that support this plan. And then in 2027, we intend to draft our amendments. We left this green area as a buffer between local legislation and drafting amendments because we realize some things can go wrong. And in 2029, we also left a gap between final adoption in case Council makes any last-minute amendments that fall outside the scope of this work. We'll have to reissue some of our public noticings. We leave that space in there in case we should come across any unfortunate timing barriers. Lastly, this is a build-out of our timeline for the project. We've talked a little bit about public engagement, and as you can see, that lasts throughout the lifetime of the project, all the way into 2028. And the legislative process really doesn't get started until after we've written everything in 2027. The two areas that I think are a good focus for you are the county scope items and the state requirements. Just very quickly, the county scope items include a shoreline public access plan. That plan is to determine where access currently is available and where there is need for more shoreline public access in the future. The county has not produced one of those before. This will be the first shoreline public access plan we have available. Additionally, we have the Salmon Recovery Grant that I mentioned, which will improve our mitigation processes. Yes, sir.

On the shoreline public access, how deep are you going to go into that as I go back to these setback levies and those areas that were purchased with taxpayer dollars and are not being utilized? Many of the access points along the Carbon River, the Puyallup River, are gated barbed wire fence. And people that want to recreate along those shorelines or river lines are having to crawl over fences, crawl over locked gates. There's no sand cans, no garbage cans. And it creates a real problem not only for the citizen that wants to recreate there, but also for any of the landowners in and around that area because people don't have facilities to either dispose of garbage or utilize the bathroom or whatever. How far are you going to go with that as far as your recommendations and that sort of thing?

Yeah. So there is a plan that looks at public access for recreation across the county as a whole. Our proposed plan, which Parks, I believe, has probably taken to you recently. We're working with the Parks Department to talk about their understanding of where there's further need. As far as the opportunities, that's where I think this really gets into the details. So we've gone as far back as looking at every historic plat within shoreline jurisdiction to see if there were areas that were dedicated to the county that the county just didn't utilize in the past. If those dedications are still there and those plats are still there, we know that those are opportunities to create more access Of course, we'll work with those communities, those HOAs beforehand, because this would be an area that hadn't been accessed before. We'll work with the Parks Department to talk about need and the type of facilities that would be there. So this is a plan. It's one, to identify all the opportunities we have. And then two, to call out where there's further need, because I believe the PROS plan does look into areas where we already understand there to be neat. We've done some surveys with communities. We're trying to set almost a level of service standard to understand based on population how many public access sites have available to the public to try and meet that and then it's going to be an appendix that gives us a prioritization list of what areas to prioritize and talk about possible funding sources it doesn't solve a problem of not enough public access but it does tell us how to get there i'd appreciate it if you'd also incorporate in that review lands owned by the county

that are not currently utilized. Yes, we do. Okay, thank you. You're welcome.

Nicholas, I just have a real quick question based on, you know, you talk a lot about this sea level rise and that type of thing. Is there any kind of vesting that goes on with that? Let's say you live in Orting, you live in a subdivision. All of a sudden, you know, you built your fence on that $200 the 200-foot mark, and now all of a sudden you have sea level rise, which moves that buffer past the front of your dwelling, let's just say. So you want to put in an accessory of some type, that type of thing, expand it. Are you subject to the Shorelines Management Act then if you're within a subdivision that's already been established and vested?

The vesting comes from the development of a project that's been applied. The shoreline jurisdiction is allowed to shift and has shifted over time. And not just associated with sea level rise, but natural erosion at whatever rates. So yes, sea level rise can meet you and go behind you and be extended. And I think it's really important to note that as we get into this future look at sea level rise and where it's happening, the county will likely have to put an overlay in its system to understand where sea level rise impacts will happen all the way up until 75 years from now to make sure that we don't place new development in areas that would be subject to flooding that we knew about ahead of time. So that alone would create an awareness, maybe a notice on title, but also probably other regulations for how to regulate those areas. So it's not just about existing development, but also lots of land that people own that were outside shoreline jurisdiction previously, but based on new information, we understand that.

We do that with roads now, you know, future development roads. We're having to not build in those areas yet. Yeah.

It's just an attempt to get ahead of the game, right?

Yeah, I was just curious.

Well, it's just like when buffers change. The shoreline buffer used to be 50 feet for a residential. Now it's 75 feet. So even though the house is still there, they want to do additional development of some sort. The 75-foot buffer now kicks in.

No, I get it. I just, I was just curious if there was any kind of, for some innovations that are established, any kind of vesting here there are for that, that's where stormwater vests. I mean, does the stormwater, you know, it's, it's a natural thing. It doesn't really care, you know, whether it's vested or not. I'm just saying that I was just curious though, if we put rules on those particular entities that would give them, um, I mean, you're still within 200 feet. I mean, if you're 150 feet away, it's not gonna make much difference, but you know, it is what it is.

Under the county scope items, I just want to point out there's three research areas that we're looking into. We're writing decision making papers to understand these subjects better and then determine if there's a path that we should head on these topics. The three topics are submerged aquatic vegetation. So this is plants that flower and grow like a plant above the land, but they exist below water. We're losing habitat for some of those. They're really important habitat for salmon and other species. So we're trying to get a better understanding of what impacts those in the upland development. Are there better ways to protect them? Is what we have enough? Are there other recommendations? Secondly, I have critical areas, expansion, white paper. The floodplains, as I mentioned, especially within marine areas, are devastating. going to be mapped differently because we understand now with sea level rise, tidal influence, and a windstorm, how far up flooding can happen. So those areas will be remapped as part of shoreline jurisdiction, even if they're outside 200 feet. And then lastly, sometimes we have projects that are big, they're important, and they take up the whole lot. And when that happens, we don't have a spot for mitigating the impact it would have on the habitat. So we're looking at ways to be able to address that better. One is an in lieu fee mitigation program where somebody, should it be a state agency or even a private developer, has a use that's allowed. They develop in the shoreline. It impacts the buffer in some way or some type of habitat. They need a method to mitigate for that impact. Money would be the way to mitigate that, which would allow us to then develop better mitigation at a site that's not on their property. Those sites mostly are located very close to where those properties are. In lieu of fee, mitigation is looked at as a very, very good alternative, sometimes better than on-site mitigation. However, we don't have a current program where we can do that in shoreline jurisdiction. So we're studying what that could be.

You're going to... Well, you... We have one in 18E that you could model. Exactly. Wetland banks. You could adopt that very easily.

Just put an S in front of it. Why not off-site mitigation? That's what I'm talking about too. You're saying a fee though. A fee in lieu. Is there not an identified area that the developer, not a bank, but they can do off-site mitigation where I've seen this done in other jurisdictions where you're impacting a wetland, so you're improving a wetland on another piece of property somewhere else. So instead of just being money-based, could it also be offsite mitigation where the developer is improving... a shoreline site.

Exactly. I should phrase this well. The on-site mitigation happens before you develop whatever you're going to build on your site. Off-site mitigation, you're going to develop off-site first and then you get to build your place on. An in-lieu fee program lets you develop on your property first and the off-site mitigation happens later. So in-lieu fee is still off-site mitigation. It just means You don't have to wait for the mitigation to be done to do development on your property because the money is held. And the county has already created a map, a restoration project, and knows exactly where it's going to go. But it might be such a big project that you need money from various sources to be able to complete it.

But why not give the developer an option?

It is optional.

No, I mean an option to either do a fee in lieu or to do the actual mitigation.

Oh, the offsite mitigation itself? Yes. There's some good questions as to why a developer would want to get into the mitigation field.

Well, but I've also seen cases where the jurisdiction has so much time to spend that money and they don't, so then they're having to refund. So rather than put the county in that kind of a situation, why not give the developer an option? Either you give us the money for the mitigation or you can go over here and do this as part of your development for off-site mitigation.

Within this paper, as I said, it's a research paper. This is a topic that we could bring in there as well as to be what are the options available for not mitigating on-site, so off-site mitigation or an in-land program.

That's a good result. So in this same section, when we... Redid the critical area buffer. The intensity of use also entered into this. And I'm speaking in this case specifically about agricultural use. So if you're going to do this, are you planning on putting any kind of a table that reflects intensity of use as far as how this mitigation play out or be required?

This would be all the devil in the details in the process of creating an in-move fee mitigation program. It would be identifying the types of uses that it could be used for. And also most importantly, what is it mitigating for? So it's a loss of some type of process, right? It's not just plants, but maybe the ability of sediment to go into the water, right? So whatever the mitigation is for that, it would have to reproduce the thing that was lost. which is why it's a very complex document that says, here's the different project sites and here's the types of mitigation they would allow. And it's within a certain distance of the site where the development was happening because it has to be within the same watershed and probably sub-basin. It takes about three years to develop that document. And it's quite a bit of money to go through that process. But once it's created, as you pointed out, Commissioner Sonswell, it's a great tool for being able to meet the needs of developers and production.

I think what Mr. Erlich i'm sure larry was speaking about was that in in like title 18e they have an impact in uh analysis high level they have different levels of impact based on the use property use and that's a factor in determining just like habitat score yeah type of thing and so i'm just saying that i can't wait till all this is quantified and adopted into one section because right now it's challenging

Yeah, there would be, I think we're saying, a type of calculator that will determine in that process how much mitigation is needed in order to get to a number or a cost based on the functionality.

And I know we're at wide ends of the spectrum here, but again, specifically for agriculture, the impact of agriculture is far less than the impact of many other uses. And so I would just ask that there be some kind of a quantified table that gave a benefit to tillable land versus pavement and roof structures.

That wraps up this presentation. I want to thank you for the suggestion that we open this process up to discussion as we move along the way. I thought it was helpful. We probably wouldn't remember all those questions or be able to get into them as detailed as much. Are there any other questions?

Oh, sure. Yeah, I have two questions. A couple of things. I want to thank you for your briefing and the work that's gone into this so far. I also have a sort of a draft, some notes I made up I want to give you and some ideas. One small citation item that I want to flag is that the public participation cited WAC 17326020 as a source for the definition of historically marginalized communities, overburdened communities, and vulnerable communities. On my review, that term doesn't even appear in that WAC. You're really looking at RCW70A02010. That's where the definition is. I just want to get the clarification.

Yeah, thank you for that. As part of the update to the WAC, I believe that Ecology is bringing it down. Bringing it in there? Yeah.

Okay, well, I was not aware of that. Okay, what I want to talk more about is my most extensive question is really about what I brought up earlier, HB 1181, and it's a different type of mitigation here. As I understand it, HB 1181 amended the Growth Management Act to require comprehensive plans and development regulations, quoting the statute, adapt to and mitigate the effects of changing climate. Pierce County is one of the 11 counties statutorily required to adopt both the greenhouse gas emission reduction sub-element and the resilience sub-element in the comprehensive plan. As I understand it, The 2024 Comprehensive Plan, which took effect in February 2025, integrates climate change mitigation and resilience strategies across its policy elements, including commitments to protect and restore natural resources that sequester and store carbon. I also understand that ecology is an act of rulemaking under HB 1181 to update the shoreline management guidelines themselves with the final rules estimate to be effective March 2027. Before this shoreline management enters its phase three drafting. Given all that, my question is, what's your impression of how HB 1181 and the new ecology rules will affect the shoreline management update, particularly with respect to mitigation? How is the team thinking about carrying the comprehensive plan mitigation commitments into the shoreline management plan. In other words, and we're talking about climate mitigation, where you're talking about climate adaption and climate mitigation. And I see you, we talk a lot about in your plan so far, climate adaptation, but really not a lot about climate mitigation. So what do you see, how are you going to deal with what they're going to require?

One thing that I see coming to that subject from ecology is related to our floodlands. So not just in marine areas, but further up the watersheds as to whether there's opportunity to better regulate those areas. So this is part of one of our white papers that we're writing. We know that we're able to protect the human habitat, our structures and also environmental areas through the SMA, the Shoreline Management Act, very closely and differently than the GMA, Growth Management Act. One decision-making point we have is, do we want to utilize the rules from the SMA, the protections that it affords, more into our floodplain than that 200 feet? The state allows us to expand three, four, 500 feet if the floodplain carries out that far. If you think back to historically this last year, how we had extensive flooding in the Puyallup River area, it wouldn't mean that the county has to choose to expand to the extent of the entire floodplain, but it can choose specific areas. That would allow us to provide protections for structures or people in ways that the GMA does not. And so that's a decision-making point that we have for, let's say, implementing aspects of that 1181 plan. climate resilience that you're speaking to. Also, our mitigation process. As I mentioned, the salmon recovery funds, we have to improve that onsite mitigation. That's one area that we're going to do a much better job of meeting no net loss requirements, which are really strongly stated in the SMA. And lastly, I think the, the permit review process is part of it. So, on residential development, typically residential development is not in the shoreline jurisdiction is not reviewed by ecology in any way, because they can give comments, but it's exempt from a substantial development permit. So they don't have an authority of that. 1181 is probably leaning on Ecology to review those exemptions and say why is this project exempt? Exempt projects still require mitigation and Ecology is not reviewing that mitigation. Many counties and cities don't do a good job of reviewing that mitigation. It can create a cumulative impact that has a negative effect. I think Ecology's efforts to address that is probably through the ability to now review those exempt permits as well. But I think in those three areas, it gets to meeting the intents of 1181.

Do you see in your sewer line management plan, you addressing more the mitigations? Is that as ecology does their final ruling?

Absolutely. I think we're ahead of ecology on that one.

What about, you know, you talked about under the different kind of plants and stuff to grow there. Sure. That acid... has a carbon reduction component to it.

Yeah, the plants, but also the erosion process, the littoral drift, the amount of sediment that comes into our rivers, but also our marine areas and moves across the drift cells. So every feeder bluff that drops sand into the water, it creates a spit somewhere. In Vaughan Bay, that's a spit that protects hundreds of homes and also a lot of resources for those folks. If that spit erodes away, we are then required to what? build up that spit ourselves with our money constantly. So there's an ecosystem process there that protects a lot of development. It protects a lot of money. We look at this process as making sure that we can understand how much sediment is actually coming into the ground, out of the ground, into the water system, and continuing to hold that spit there. And with our team of scientists from our consultants, we'll also understand the tipping point When that sand doesn't meet the minimum and that spit starts to erode away. So we'll be able to address that in our adaptation plan to be 1181's climate resilience that we're expecting. So we're looking at not just the vegetation, but ecosystem processes.

It's a total ecosystem.

Yeah. And we'll also tie our adaptation strategies. to an economic value for these systems. We'll be able to tell you how much money is the county going to lose or save by being able to address the loss of that ecosystem function. Because there's a certain amount of sand that we would then have to place back ourselves, or there's a certain amount of homes that we would lose if we didn't have that spit there. So we'll actually have economic analysis that talk about the cost-benefit analysis as to losing that function versus saving that function that allows the county to make the right decision for the long term.

I think climate thinking is climate planning increasingly treats adaptation and mitigation as work that needs to happen together. And I think it's key to identify that. Well, thank you very much.

Well, I'm just trying to wrap my head around the calculations because we lose, we have, there's all kinds of siltation that goes into the bay from the mountain, you know, Mount Rainier and other mountains. Also that you're talking about siltation along shorelines. you know, that type of thing, what kind of, I mean, there's displacement there that occurs, you know, so that would have a tendency to make things rise too, you know. And then also, you know, we haven't really had too many here, but I mean, tsunami. I mean, in the Oregon Valley, if you go through, they spent a lot of money on a bridge to so people can cross over the road during the tsunami. And I'm just wondering if that is an element of this at all, is taking a look at potential for rising seas during that. There's people in Japan who think about it.

As it connects to infrastructure, part of this work will come away with guidelines for how much to raise and how to design our bridges. Fox Island Bridge is one that's going to be replaced soon. So the vulnerability and risk work that we're doing now in collecting data will inform a lot of our engineering work in the future too. But the example I gave of looking at sediment and the drift, this is specific to the marine area. It's not in our river system.

Well, the sand that flows down the Gulf River is...

affects the bay you can see that there's a lot we can't dredge it I guess anymore so there you go these are very complex systems and the science is only yeah it's only limited to the areas that we can consistently say we understand this one process right here so it might be localized to a certain bluff in a certain spit not a regulation to the whole jurisdiction yeah just same thing with the Nisqually River and what that does you know to the delta and that type of thing

So there's just a lot of really, really there's billions of pieces here for sure.

Thank you for your presentation. The one thing that I would like to say is that I understand ecological protections. But as you go through this process, and I know you're talking about DOE reviewing shoreline exemptions. I just want to caution you to really kind of evaluate those exemptions and the requirements. You know, just as an example, if I've got a client that has a failing septic system on a shoreline property, if it's within 200 feet of the shoreline, we're having to do a shoreline exemption. And if that timeline gets drug out, they're trying to do the right thing and get that septic system repaired, you know, placed, right? Because it's so it doesn't start leaking into the shoreline waters. It just becomes very difficult to keep those things moving forward and get that stuff done to help save, you know, the ecological benefits of the shoreline. It's a bit of a rub. So I would like to actually see pieces like that be moved into the emergency section of the shoreline. So we're not having to go through those additional reviews in order to get things taken care of and get them repaired. New construction, totally get it.

That's a very good point. And to Commissioner Leary's thoughts as well, maybe some of these topics that you bring up now are where we get into incentives, right? To permit things a little bit faster where we know... Yeah, something that's adjacent shoreline on the water side of the house is being moved behind it or further upload because time is a resource, of course, as well.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Way too many. Can we take a brief recess?

You can call for recess for five minutes. Okay.

Second.

The commission will recess for five minutes. Thank you.

The time is 1115.

Have forums and we can resume the meeting.

Okay, call the meeting back into order. Our next agenda item is a staff presentation on detention, please. More staff. Yes.

Presentation up. There we go. Can double check the clicker. There we go. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair. Hello, Commissioners. Thank you for allowing us to present today on upcoming work to address detention facilities in Pierce County Code. For the record, my name is Justin Patterson, Senior Planner with the Long Range Planning Division. Great to see you all, and I'll pass to my printer.

And I'm Sydney Smith. I'm an Associate Planner with Long Range Planning. So I'm going to go over the agenda to start. We're going to start with an overview of this project, our approach and deliverables, as well as our timeline and our engagement plan. We will then have time at the end to go over some questions. So this code package was initiated by Ordinance O-2026-505, which adopted the moratorium on pivoting the siting, expansion, or establishment of detention facilities involving involuntary confinement. This became effective in April of this year and will last for six months until October and has the opportunity to be renewed after that time. This moratorium was adopted by County Council due to the inefficiencies relating to involuntary detention centers in our code. Currently Pierce County code is not sufficiently descriptive of facility types and does not distinguish between facilities like recovery centers and law enforcement uses. Additionally, there are no code definitions for different types of law enforcement and detention facilities. Permit staff typically look to the closest analogous use to determine proper permitting procedures. However, there is little distinction between even the analogous uses for this map on the right. We reached out to human services to get a sense of where these different facilities are in the county. And because there is such a lack of distinction, it was pretty difficult to determine where these facilities are. So this is our best guess, but there are definitely some facilities missing.

Thank you. And as Sydney outlined, the moratorium really affects any facility that might utilize very much that might utilize involuntary detention of individuals. The moratorium was very broad. Part of the reason it was so broad was because of the lack of distinction in Pierce County code between different types. So we need to split out these types of uses into less broad categories and address them separately to minimize the impacts on certain types of facilities in particular into to avoid muddled topics while we're out doing public engagement on this so to do this we've identified three separate tracks we'll call them the first is safety net facilities safety net facilities refer to Facilities typically used for public health crisis support services. This is something like addiction recovery centers, treatment facilities, things of that nature. Second, the next ordinance that will be a part of this work is local enforcement facilities. These are typically publicly funded, publicly operated, usually refers to local jails, potentially law enforcement operation centers, juvenile detention centers, things of that nature. We're trying to bucket into more of the local enforcement facilities. But then finally, the last ordinance will be focused on major detention facilities. So this is talking about the big ones. Large confinement centers usually have a broad impact, not just on their location, but on the surrounding community and neighborhoods. We're talking major prisons, immigration detention facilities, things of that nature would be in this ordinance.

Can I ask a point of clarification? Sure. Can you explain, because obviously large prisons and immigration detention are either state and federal. So what is the county's role in ordinances that... apply or address facilities that are owned, operated by the state and federal government?

That's a great question. So a lot of times I think a clear distinction is that a lot of large facilities are actually privately operated. Um, in particular, uh, the Northwest detention center in Tacoma, for example, is run by the geo group, um, that was cited and permitted by a private entity. Um, so there is no distinction in county code. So if a developer that wanted to cite a large major detention facility or immigration facility came to the permit counter, um, there's not really a great use for that. Um, And that's why we're trying to address it.

Is that the same for prisons?

It can be. And there's a broad avenue of how prisons and any major detention facilities are cited, permitted, and who is doing that. For example... You know, the Women's Correctional Center is run by the state, and that was permitted and cited by the state. However, the state does work with local jurisdictions to adhere as best as both parties can to development regulations. We just don't have those development regulations. So that's part of it. Okay. Thank you. Of course.

Yeah. No, what you're saying is beyond zoning, where they can locate what regulatory tools, you don't have any other regulatory tools right now.

No, not really. Okay. That's really the part of the problem. The moratorium came in place and said we need to put a pause on detention facilities of all types because we don't distinguish within our code. That's really the root of the problem.

Is that partly due because there was a facility that was proposed out on the Key Peninsula that doesn't seem to have ever materialized into anything, and I don't know if that was... from child services or if it was an actual addiction recovery. I don't remember.

There's one facility that I'm thinking of that was more mental health, behavioral health treatment facility. I believe that it is, it was a public-private partnership. I'm not totally sure on the details, but it was private. privately operated, and I don't believe there's a current operator for it, I think.

It never got constructed, so I'm not sure.

Do you have a sense of what the regular tools you'd like to create are, or what are you looking at?

I was just going to say that our presentation is on the shorter side, so if we want to get through these.

Yeah, we can run through it, and yeah. Thank you, no worries.

I was just trying to understand the context.

Yeah, we just got a couple of slides. It's a great point. So to run through this, we have the three separate ordinances we'll be looking at. I think what's something really important to keep in mind is that we're doing these in parallel and in concert with one another. We're not doing a phased approach. We're going to start them all at the same time and Ordinance 1 will be done sooner, Ordinance 2 will be done after that, and then Ordinance 3 will take the bulk of the work. The reason for that is public engagement process. For Ordinance 3, the major detention facilities will be a very large, robust public engagement process. Thank you. So with that, this is... what we're very generally looking at from a timeline um we are starting already uh to work on all three of these um ordinance packages that will come before you uh the initial moratorium is six months in duration so that took effect in april so we're trying to at least get the safety net facilities out of the way so that we, so if council, if they so choose, wanted to extend the moratorium, they could do so without impacting safety net facilities, which came up during the moratorium process. And then the same thing could happen at 12 months. And then hopefully by the end, we will be done in 18 months. So November of next year, we'll be going to council. Okay.

So I'm going to go over a more detailed breakdown of our timeline. So in May, we uploaded our initial materials to the website and began planning for our public engagement phase. And currently now in spring, we are working on drafting and releasing our initial surveys. We have one live now, and we are scheduling our first round of focus groups and beginning drafting the first ordinance for safety net facilities. In summer, this will be where the bulk of our in-person and online engagement events take place when most people are out and about attending events. Our proposed changes to safety net facilities will be presented to council at this time. And fall of 2026 is where we will conduct our second round of focus groups and conduct data analysis on all of our survey responses. And this will be the time that we begin drafting the local enforcement portion of this code update. In winter of 2026, we will have our initial internal review for our draft code. And in spring, we will begin engagement and co-drafting for the final package of major detention facilities In summer of 2027, we will hold another internal review for our major detention facilities code draft and then we will report back to our community partners and organizations on input that we have received from the public and we will present our proposed changes on local enforcement facilities to council at this time. Finally, in fall, we will present the proposed changes to major detention facilities to council. This is a long timeline for us but it's important that we plan out this far ahead with this issue. It affects many different communities and is a large executive priority. The biggest priority or one of the biggest priorities of this project is conducting robust engagement with the community and we have a focus of educating the public on three main pillars. The first What is Pierce County's jurisdiction and what are our political boundaries? What can the county control and how does federal supremacy work? And what are land use controls and how can they be used as tools? There will be a steering committee developed for major detention facilities ordinance, which we are anticipating having the most time to articulate these topics to our community members. And for the engagement process as a whole, we have proposed several different activities, including surveys, providing options for people to share their stories, focus groups, listening sessions, event tabling, and open houses. We're open to hearing from the commission at this time, what you guys feel is the most effective way to engage with the public, because we're doing a lot of it.

And yes, Sydney put a great bow on it, but today's briefing is really not, just intended to provide an overview of the work plan we really do want to offer an opportunity so I know there's some burning questions and let's go ahead and jump into those because I think the engagement process will include a lot of education about what the county can and cannot control here as well as general concepts around land use in particular in relation to these facilities so we feel that we've thought pretty deeply about this but we wanted to ask you what are we missing what are we not thinking about? So any other considerations would be really helpful. So with that, thanks.

I would say with the community engagement piece, this is going to be a topic that's going to be incredibly important to community members. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't pay attention during this time, which is when they should, because this is their time to speak up. they speak up when the application comes in, they get the public notice. So the more community engagement you can do, and this has always been a topic that I feel like I have harped on for the last eight years. When you have a topic that's this important, that affects people so broadly, that the more you can get out into the community and have open houses and meetings with people, I think that's... Not everybody uses the internet. Yes. You know, not everybody looks at your website. Not everybody is on your listserv to get notifications. So reaching that, you know, reaching everyone, I think to the best of your abilities is incredibly important, especially with a topic like this.

It's a great point.

Commissioner Lewis. Yes. Commissioner Lewis, you've had your hand up.

Thank you. Did we receive, as in we, the commissioners, did we receive any type of written information about this presentation? I know it's short, but I'm just curious.

No, it's just a briefing for us today.

We have not done anything. Okay. Okay. Okay. It's helpful for me to follow along when I have some type of written information. I don't know if that's the case for anyone else, but it's helpful for me to give feedback and have questions when I have written material.

I can jump in there. I'm pretty sure we provided a memo that should be in a packet. I know we sent it, but I don't know.

Maybe I skimmed it and didn't, and I was just more focused on the shoreline management program.

Can you hear me? Okay.

Say, I'm sorry?

The last two pages of the packet.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. And then I do have a question. So if there's going to be community engagement, if If information is sent out to the community, since we are a part of the community, could we also receive that information? Yes, of course. As it correlates to where we live. And I'd also like to request that information to any surveys that are sent out to the community. If surveys are sent out to the community, if commissioners could also receive that information as we're also, I think that's important. The other piece about community engagement, I think it's important just to think about where residents and community members are currently residing and establishing themselves as in recreational areas so that we don't solely have to rely on the Internet. And if we are, then understanding that there's hubs that communities are also frequently using as well. And If we have comment that we'd like to submit after a meeting, how is that to be submitted?

Sarah, would they be sending an email too?

Yes. If you'd like to submit a comment, you can email the admin email that you receive all the meeting materials from.

Okay. And we currently have an active webpage and a survey. We'll be sure to send that to all of you at the end of this meeting.

Okay. I'm thinking, so, you know, when you're thinking about community plans, sometimes they'll talk about or you can read in a community plan where community members are frequently attending or where recreational areas are most used. I think those are good places to reach out to community members depending on how information is, how it correlates to the information being given. Yeah.

Thank you, Commissioner. Yeah.

Okay. Commissioner O'Leary, go ahead.

A couple of questions. This is going to be a hot topic. Yes, it is. So Black Best maybe. But I think it would be beneficial if you have the ability to, when you go to the public, when you assemble any kind of a public body, if you take a roadshow out and about to various communities, that you had some basic design info as to the scale of these projects? That you also had a potential overall picture in Pierce County of total units in need or demand for it? total units in each one of your three categories throughout your county. And then if you had any kind of projection for estimated number of detainees and a description of the crimes, if you will, those detainees may have committed to be in one of the facilities. For better or for worse, I think, to use a word that's thrown around a lot, I think the transparency of that is going to eliminate a lot of questions. It's not going to necessarily eliminate the intensity of the meeting, but I think at least it will forecast, okay, here's what we're talking about for this area or for this zoning or whatever it may be. Because to come at this kind of a situation, with a whiteboard, I think is a real detriment to where you're trying to go.

Yeah. Currently, a lot of what we're thinking about right now is what do we ask the public? And we're trying to establish a baseline of what does the public actually know about these facilities? Does the public know how many we have, where they are? We're just trying to assess kind of the base knowledge of the public on these facilities. So that's something that we want to keep in mind is what do the people actually know about these areas?

But if I'm understanding, okay, so what is the ultimate goal? I mean, you're going to establish a different zone, as I understand it, for these facilities?

Potentially. I don't think we're that far down the road. I think... Just future casting a little bit. Safety net facilities are pretty well allowed. The analogous use there is typically public health safety services, but that doesn't necessarily address detention. So I think there's some clear some clarity that we can provide to the definitions there that just makes that easier. I think when we start talking about enforcement and detention and those to your point are going to be much more hot button issues typically. So we haven't really thought too much about is this going to be setting up new zones or readdressing the use tables you know, in a very substantive manner, or are we just adding definitions or adding them to another type of citing process? I think those are still open questions of how best to address this. To Sydney's point, We want to the first phase of any of this is to get an understanding of. The pulse of the Community to understand what they know what what their main concerns are we also, as mentioned. are going to be very educational in this because I know that map was very small on that on the presentation but. Pretty much all of the major detention, not all of them, but most of them are actually outside of Pierce County land use jurisdiction. Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma being the more continuous of those projects. So I think there's a little give and take there initially with community members to set the baseline. This is what we're talking about. understand their concerns, and then we'll start to chart a path forward.

Okay, and again, I'm not trying to tell you guys your job. I can just share with you that because of the nature of this, you're not talking about building apartments or single-family residence. You're talking about something that people are going to view very negatively as it relates to their children, their activities, their schools, their churches. all this sort of thing. So I would have a clear definition for each one of these three. Because the very first category doesn't appear to me to be necessarily criminal events, crime, danger to the public as number three must be. So I think having a clear definition of those, and I'm sorry to say this, but it, to come to the public and ask a question, what do you think? You know, I really caution against that. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Because I think you know the answer. So that's my concern for you in this process. And then the end goal. I'm still not clear what the end goal is. You know, is it to allow for future growth of these facilities in designated areas because we know there's a need? or is it to prohibit the growth? So I'd really like to have you guys be able to define that.

That's a really great point. I will say that we are, before we're going out to the community, that's why we're asking some of these questions. I think to your point, we're absolutely not intending to go to community events and just say, what do you think we are Patrick Corbett- Really great point and we're not thinking that at all, I think the we have this is our first meeting where we're saying how do you think we should address this, we have another one next Monday with a committee on. community on refugee and immigrant affairs to have a very similar discussion. How should we address these things? How should we talk about them? How should we start defining them within our engagement? Then we will be doing focus groups with other organizations to the exact same thing before we start going down the longer, more public.

And that's what I think the definitions are so critical because you can put soft words with this, but each one of those means something. Right. And going all the way to an ICE facility. I mean, if that's what we're talking about, then we need to clearly define that, I think, for your good in going to the public to get meaningful feedback rather than just frustration, fear, or anger. That's a really great point.

One of, I mean, because this is such an early part of the process, the thing we know for sure that we're doing is doing definitions for everything. The moratorium affects all three of the stages, and we would like to get safety net facilities defined as soon as possible. So should the moratorium be extended, they will be extended from the next moratorium if that is extended.

And again, would you use number one for an example of number one? Is that Western State? No. No. No. There's smaller facilities is what they're talking about. So- Is that an incarceration of sorts? I mean, do you have to go through a legal process to wind up there? Or can you put yourself in one of those? Or both? It's both.

I think it's both. Yeah, I can jump in on that. This is a good answer to that. I think it's both. It's neither. It can be pretty analogous. In particular, our code doesn't define these things. So I think that's the hard part is... How are we talking about them from how we're doing engagement is one avenue. I think how we were talking about them today is how does the code define them, which it just really doesn't.

And I'm sure not trying to pick you guys apart at all. No, no, no. Going through a legal process to wind up in one of those facilities has a different meaning to the citizen. than somebody that walks in and says, I need help.

To just give you an example, any facility that holds somebody, so if somebody does walk into a small, safety net facilities are typically referring to smaller clinics that will have bed holds, for example. So if somebody comes in, they are in for example, active withdrawal and need to be held in confinement for 24 hours as things navigate through their system, like that technically under our code still qualifies as involuntary detention. So providing some sort of level of definition there is our main intent with that. And then we get deeper into more longer holds more involved in voluntary detention, which I think is where you're right.

I think we in the beginning, while we were scanning through what different kinds of facilities exist, the list of different kinds of facilities that fall into these three different categories is like 30 different kinds of facilities. And that's just a cursory initial glance, there is a lot of different kinds of facilities, how they detain people and for how long is very different. So the way that our code is very broad is not sufficient because of the diversity of facilities that we have in the county. So getting the code to a place where we know what everything is so that when we're conversing with the public, we all know what we're talking about is our main goal right now in the beginning.

So is this going to be a separate title, or is it going to be just an essential public service, or what do you have? We don't know yet, I don't think. Talking about you, this is getting really complex now. Right now we have it just embedded in 18A as a public service facility, but now you're talking about... something that's taking on a whole new life, and will it be conditional use in all circumstances? Do you see it as being an outright permitted use somewhere, or is it always going to be public's going to have an opportunity to comment on their facilities within their community?

I think where they go is very much an open question. I think to Commissioner O'Leary's point, One of the first things we did when we started taking on this project was, where the heck is everything? So we talked to our pals at Human Services and said, hey, do you have a list of service providers? Just anybody that might do detention, not even ones that we know that aren't. They said, yeah, we've got a general list. Like, do you have addresses? Not really. And so then we talked to development services and said, hey, do you have addresses? Is there a use type? Because we don't delineate in our code, there's no difference in permitting.

They get lost.

More or less. It's real vague right now. It's very vague. So, yes.

They all require a... community input in their siting. They're not permitted outright.

Depending on the facility. Some of them under health safety, if it's close enough to a health safety use type facility, which is safety net facilities is probably the most clearly analogous use because of the health services. The state that this county has? There is one out there. Yes. I don't know that specific

I'm just wanting to make sure that these are all conditional use permits so the public has an input on where this stuff's going to go. Not that it matters, but I mean, because eventually it's going to be decided. That's a great point.

I don't think we're that far into how we address the permit in any of those. But that's a great point.

Can I make a suggestion if you haven't done it already? Please. Each one of these facilities that you're talking about, have you visited them? No.

I've been to a couple.

Before you go out and start talking to the public about these, I mean, having firsthand knowledge of actually getting in each type of these facilities, I think would be helpful in your ability to communicate with people. That's a great point. Yeah, because it's an experience that Other than because people are going to think, well, you're just sitting behind the desk, you're just writing this code and that. But if you've actually experienced what facilities look like where they're at, you can speak more. Direct. Yeah, exactly. That's a great point. The thing is, is that even an addiction rehab facility, you place that in a residential area. People are even, people are going to be fearful. You know, what happens to these people when they get out? You know, are you releasing drug addicts out into my neighborhood? You know, or whatever kind of a mental health rehab facility. What happens to them after they get released? That sparks fear in people. And all you have to do is get a couple people to start, you know, spinning that fear. And then pretty soon it becomes a bigger thing. And being able to dispel some of that, I think, is helpful. Not that you're going to cure it all, but.

I think that's a really great point.

The public has a good resource in those who visited, who took the field trip, you know, and they can relay kind of or ally some of their fears or they can exacerbate. Right.

You might also find some that you're not too fond of their operation.

Right.

Yeah.

So maybe from a compliance standpoint, there might be some awareness.

I want to agree with that. I think the classification and the education make it really difficult. For example, have you thought about memory care units? Memory care units detain people and hold people. And those can be, these people can go out and wander, they can walk into traffic, they can do anything, but they are being held. And so that would That would have to classify under the safety. And you probably haven't even thought about it.

The list gets longer every time we talk to people about it.

Yeah, this is a big can. It is.

Have you talked to other jurisdictions of how they're dealing with this?

King County?

Yeah, we've started to do some... We aren't the only ones with a moratorium right now.

So I think it's a... or nearby jurisdictions are thinking the same things right now. Everybody's kind of in the beginning of this process.

Yeah. I was involved in a project up in Oak Harbor that was a mental health facility located right in the middle of a residential neighborhood. They were building apartments around it. Very secure facility, very quiet. They were expanding it. So it was conditional use that they had to do, but you know, it, From what I could tell, the initial piece of it was done very well. And it was very, very secure. You didn't have people out wandering around. So that's what I'm saying. Talking to other jurisdictions to how they're doing.

I don't typically lean on my previous before Pierce County employment referrals too much, but I have worked on some facilities and actually done sighting from the private side on some of these facilities. heavily secured facilities. I think there are some good best practices that allay concerns very well. That might be something that we look into as well. I think it's a great call out.

It's always the fear of unknown. And it's change. When you're changing the landscape around someone's residence or school or whatever it is, it just sparks all kinds of Stuff.

Yeah, I think that's a really great call it.

To do any other questions, especially inside the box is getting smaller folks and everybody will be sure to everybody better guys up to date, though this project is going to be evolving quite what's your timeline.

While it'll be at least 18 months, I can give you the general outline, we will be for safety net, we will be hopefully back before you in roughly September, October time of this year. The second round, local and fourth, we may, depending on how things work out, we may tee it up at that point. But that would come back probably March, April. Not beholden to these dates, but that's the general timeline that we're looking at right now. And then major detention would probably be back before you late summer, early fall of next year, 2027, tomorrow.

I don't know if it's in your scope, but to a couple of the earlier comments, when you do, if you do, and I hope you do, tour some of the existing facilities, I think it would be really interesting to hear, are they at capacity? Do they have a waiting list? Is there a need? Because that may help establish the demand and what kind of facilities may be needed going forward Because this moratorium, it's the finger in the dike. It's maybe not going to work forever. So we're not really taking care of our community if we don't provide for that.

It's a great call out. I've had a couple of conversations. We've had a couple of conversations thus far on fair share and the amount of resources that we have versus what we can get done. We'll refrain from speaking on that now, but generally speaking, it seems that we have more than we need. So we'll see how it continues to go. We're going to be busy.

Yes.

We're going to be very busy. Yes. Thank you. Maybe continuing this moratorium until you... We have no idea.

I don't think we've heard anything yet. From my understanding, I'm not incredibly familiar with moratoriums because I think it comes in a different... legislative process. Um, but from my understanding, council initiates if they want. So I think it's up to them if, if they want to extend, I think our, our goal is to have, uh, during the initial moratorium, um, a few council members expressed concerns that public health type facilities would be rolled up into this. It's part of the reason that we're doing this work because it was hard to separate those with any bill of authority. But to your point, that is a concern. So if we define those, pull those out of the moratorium, then that might allow for council to say, yes, let's re-up this.

I think our chances are higher that it will get extended and we can get safety net facilities done.

Right. And then do the same thing potentially with local enforcement and say, okay, now we know how we're addressing the Western state hospitals.

Definitions are going to be critical.

The game plan. So as long as the game plan sounds correct, which it does, I think we have a good plan. Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation.

Thank you.

Do we have any other business? No. All right. Take it slow.

I'll adjourn the meeting. Thank you. Thank you.