Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, we are ready to go. Thank you. We'll call the July 28th Planning Commission meeting to order. And before we begin, I'd like to read this. I want to remind everybody that the Planning Commission is principally an advisory board for the Pierce County Council. Action taken by the Planning Commission on almost every agenda item will be forwarded to the Council as a recommendation for its consideration and final action. So if we could call the roll, please.

Chair O'Leary?

Here.

Commissioner Sonsmo? Here. Commissioner Lewis said she may be running late today. Commissioner Starr said she would be absent today. Commissioner Burke?

Here.

Commissioner Anderson had indicated she would also be absent today. Commissioner Carnes?

Here.

And Commissioner Wenner.

Here.

OK. We have a quorum.

Thank you. I entertain approval of the minutes. A motion to approve. So vote. I second it. First and second. Any comments? All in favor of approval of the minutes, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? OK. Minutes from the previous meeting is approved. So any staff updates? Please.

Good morning, Commissioners. I'm the site planning manager. Appreciate the opportunity to give you a few updates. Start with things that you have previously heard about in this body that have since advanced to Council. We have the battery energy storage system package that you previously heard was continued. The last time it was heard at Council, it is up for discussion again on August the 4th. There's considerable discussion around both the safety of the battery energy storage systems as well as How restrictive some of the measures that were put in particular 100 foot buffer around sensitive uses particular school are so tension between the safety of the battery energy storage systems and allowing them to happen because we'd like them for green energy transition, but that'll be at Council three o'clock on August the fourth next week. Your August meeting is going to be very, very busy here. We're expecting the Office of the County Engineer to present on the annual transportation improvement program, the six-year transportation improvement program that they come to you annually. You'll also hear again from our utilities. They'll bring back the sewer plan. They were here last month with a briefing and they're coming for a hearing with you on that. You'll hear today on the multifamily tax exemption program as a briefing, and that'll be carried over to a hearing next month. And then two additional briefings next time around, one on the items we've received by way of comprehensive plan amendments in the cycle. The application window closes this Friday, I believe. We don't have too many applications so far, but expecting a few more to come in under the wire at the very, very end. So you'll hear about what came in at that point. And then also on the central transit facilities, we have one parcel, one, exactly one, in unincorporated Pierce County that is in the path of the future Tacoma Dome link extension for Sound Transit. And we have to do a little bit of code work in order to be able to permit that so that they can get that project built on time. So August will be very, very busy. Last thing for me, I'd like to talk just for a moment about the membership of this particular commission, which is ever in flux. We really appreciate Commissioner O'Leary stepping up to be chair. Your bylaws for planning commission have it so that elections of officers happens on a two-year basis in January of odd years. So we'll start that whole process in January, this coming January. In the meantime, in the event that the chair is not present, the vice chair steps up and becomes chair. If the vice chair is not present, then the secretary becomes the chair. And while I think Commissioner O'Leary agreed to become secretary, I think it was an unlikely event that he would be called upon to be chair on a permanent basis. Here we are. So because we have so many people moving around, we thought we would not immediately bring this to you today since we have two new members joining today and another new member joining next month. But we'd like to have election of officers for vice chair and secretary to round out the remainder of this calendar year. I think some of you already know that Commissioner Manley stepped down because he moved out of his district. So there is no vacancy in his position. We've requested from Council Member Herrera that he give us three names to interview, and then we will send those up to the executive to send back to Council. So hopefully we'll have somebody to fill that position sooner than later as well. So a lot of change here, but welcome to Commissioner Carnes and to Commissioner Whitman for your first meeting. Appreciate you all being here. Just as you think about in these coming meetings, when we think about officers, it really is the only duties of the vice chair and the secretary are to step up to the role of chair, should the chair not be available. And that is to run the meeting, to call for special meetings if you need them, and to sign the letters that the go on to council. So that's the bulk of the duties. And I do think whether you all choose to do it at your next meeting or a subsequent one, it would probably make sense if you give Chair O'Leary a little backup with the vice chair and secretary. Stop there. Is this something, is this an action item for this meeting? It is not. I think it's probably up to you if you'd like to have it as an action item at your next meeting to pick a vice chair and a secretary.

Is it, would it be appropriate to do it now? That's entirely up to you. How do you guys feel?

It's fine by me. I'm good. Yeah, I have a nomination.

Let's do it now and put folks in place. So we'll entertain a nomination for vice chair first?

Yeah. I think it would be more appropriate to do it at the end of the meeting during other business. So we can follow the agenda right now. This is just staff updates into the remainder of the presentations. Okay. We can make a motion to put it on the agenda as well for the end of the meeting.

I make a motion to put it on the end of the agenda.

Okay. So let's say. I'll second that. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That'll give you time to think of your campaign strategy. Good idea, Sarah. Thank you for keeping us on track. Thank you. Good. Thank you very much. OK, so we'll move on to agenda item number five, multiple unit housing initiative, areas regulations. and we have a staff presentation.

Hello, Chair O'Leary and commissioners. My name is Ben Accord Becker. I'm a senior planner in the Long Range Planning Division of Planning and Public Works. Today, I will be providing a briefing on the Multiple Unit Housing Incentive Areas Ordinance Package. And before I jump in, I want to clarify that you may be familiar with these regulations under a different name currently in code. These regulations are called the Multifamily Tax Exemption. Today, I will start with a quick overview of the scope of the project, and then we'll review the council proposed residential targeted areas, followed by the council staff proposed amendments to Pierce County Code. And then to wrap up the briefing, I'll review the legislative process as well as next steps before addressing any questions that you may have. So the multiple unit housing incentive areas program began in Pierce County in 2012, after state law was updated to allow counties to designate residential targeted areas near higher education campuses. In that same year, Pierce County implemented the Garfield residential targeted area and implemented tax exemption regulations. Both in 2021 and 2025, state regulations were updated, expanding applicability and reporting requirements. In 2025, the state also expanded applicability and location criteria for counties. Pierce County code was updated in 2025 to reorganize the then MFTE program and remove taxation standards from the development regulations section of our code, the 18 series, and moved to Title IV, which is under revenue and finance. This year, Council staff have developed a proposed update to Title IV consistent with the changes made in state law to expand the program. There are two primary guiding documents for the scope of this package. The comprehensive plan has clear policy language to encourage and expand the multifamily tax exemption program in both the land use and housing elements. Additionally, in Resolution 2026-171, this sets requests from Council for PPW to review the materials developed by Council staff and provide comment and recommendations on the Title IV materials, as well as guide the amendments to 18A and 18J with any subsequent revisions through the legislative process. The scope of the changes fall into three categories. The first is council's intent to repeal the existing residential targeted area and establish two new RTAs. The second is substantive and organizational changes to chapter 4.60, which is the multiple unit housing incentive areas. And this would control the applicability application standards and monitoring process for tax exempt development within an RTA. And then finally, the third includes the proposed strikethroughs to 18A and 18J, which remove references to RTAs from the development regulations, as well as remove some exemptions from certain standards that were implemented for the 2012 Garfield RTA. I briefly want to give a sense of the areas that we're talking about and why they were selected. So this is one of the proposed RTAs. This is in the Parkland-Spanaway-Midland community plan area focused around State Route 7. The area highlighted is the proposed area that would be available for the exemption program. And I want to draw your attention to the west side of SR 7 about three quarters of the way up the map. There's a small area that's crosshatched there. That's the existing RTA today, located right next to Pacific Lutheran University. The proposed expanded RTA is based on a half-mile walking distance to a Pierce Transit streamlined bus stop. And the proposed area fully encompasses the existing RTA, which is part of the rationale for removal of the existing RTA as part of the implementation of this new one. From a zoning perspective, the land use designation of this expanded area is compact urban, with zoning as town center, urban corridor, and neighborhood corridor as the implementing zone, all of which allow for multifamily housing development.

Excuse me. Do you want us to hold questions till the end? Yes, please.

OK. Next, the South Hill proposed residential targeted area is smaller in size and is centered around State Route 161. This area has the same zoning designations as the qualities. Thank you so much. The South Hill proposed RTA is smaller in size and is centered around State Route 161. This area has the same zoning designations as Parkland-Spanaway, as well as the same use allowances. So town center, urban corridor, neighborhood corridor, all of which allow for a multifamily residential use. This area is served by fixed route bus service on Pierce Transit's 402 route. And this boundary was also drawn based on a half mile walking distance to fixed route stops. The updates to Chapter 4.60 in Pierce County Code include organizational changes to the chapter, updates to definitions, as well as updates to the applicability and application requirements for projects, as well as adding reporting and compliance provisions consistent with the updates to state law. So these changes align with specifically RCW 8414. in the reporting and compliance standards, as well as institute both the 12 year and 20 year tax exemption program. The proposed changes to 18A and 18J have a very narrow scope in council's package. They remove any reference to the RCW 8414 or to the residential targeted areas, focusing these into chapter 4.60. as well as removing any of the specifically referenced exemptions that were implemented during the 2012 initial implementation that were intended to affect the Garfield RTA. The intent of these changes is to create an even standard for all forms of development in the new proposed RTAs, given the significantly different landscape that would have these regulations applied to them. Quick note on the legislative process. So planning staff will be back for a hearing on this topic at the August regular planning commission meeting to further discuss your feedback today, answer any questions as well as provide the formal staff recommendation. And then staff will submit the legislative package and present to council committee in October. And then the current proposed schedule puts the proposed package before council in November of this year. Thank you so much for your time and attention today. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have or anything that you would like us to bring back during the August committee hearing. And then I would also like to let the commission know that we have a representative of Pierce Transit here today to answer any questions. And I'm going to briefly turn it over to them if they have anything they want to say before questions come up.

I won't say too much at this point, but I'm definitely prepared to answer any questions you have. for us, but Pierce Transit is proposing some changes along the SR 7 corridor, which impacts this. And one of those changes is to add additional stream stops to infill along that corridor so that there is a bus stop placement about every half mile. I also You probably already know this, but the Pierce Transit Board of Commissioners did authorize a measure on the ballot in November, which would fund and expand some local bus service. So if it's approved by voters, that package does include the stream community line service throughout the day at 15-minute intervals and currently at 20-minute intervals. So these areas that you're talking about in the parkland span away. transit service would be increased. That's only if this measure passes. And yeah, I will just leave it at that. And so if you have any questions that I can answer, I'd be happy to.

Okay. Chuck? Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead and then Chuck. I just have a question for Anna. Years ago, I listened to a presentation in front of what LUACs for transportation out there, the Spanaway area. And at that time, they had a number that they gave us for what the cost was per ride, average cost was per ride for the taxpayer. Do you have that information with you?

I don't have it with me, but I can easily get it for you.

You know, off the top of your head, just roughly, under $30,000 a ride.

Per ride? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I'm just curious what it is. I mean, you're asking for an increase here pretty soon. We're aware of that. But I was just curious about what it costs today per taxpayer per ride. I'm sure that information is available. Yeah, it is.

And I can get it to you before the end of this meeting, but I don't want to throw out a number and have it be incorrect.

Okay, I was just curious.

Yeah, I'll definitely, I'll get that for you. It's information that I've looked at in the last couple days. I just don't commit it to memory.

The other question I have is what's a streamlined bus stop? You mentioned streamlined bus stop in your presentation. What's that?

Stream is our high capacity transit. So right now, the only line that is stream is stream follows the same route as the one. And so that it's, the idea is it moves a little bit faster through that corridor. It doesn't stop at every single stop that the one stops at. And it's supposed to be a quicker on and off. It's a way to get people through that corridor more quickly. So somebody who's going a longer distance on the stream.

You're doubling up on service once faster than the other and doesn't stop at all the stops?

Yes, I wouldn't call it doubling up on service where it's additional service. But yes, it doesn't stop at every stop along that corridor. It stops at all of its stops. That makes sense. The one stops at every stop. Yes, the one stops at every stop. But to get from the beginning to the end of the corridor on the 1 would take a passenger longer than it would on the stream. So a passenger who might not choose to ride the 1, who has to go that long distance, might choose to ride the stream because they can more quickly get to their destination.

Is there any cost difference for the stream? Is it like the HOV lane?

I, let me double check on that. I do not believe, you know, once, once it's going, it's to run the bus itself. It doesn't cost more.

No, I get that. Yeah. I'm just curious that a passenger would pay additional. No, no, no, no. Same fee as the one.

Yeah. Yeah. We have the same fee for our whole system.

How do you choose the, how do you choose the stream stop over the one stop?

That is our route planners. And they do a lot of work to determine which stops would qualify for that. And part of it is ridership. So we know... when the bus stops, how many people get on and off the bus. We have that information for each stop. There's counters on the bus and they use that information. And they also look at what that stop might be serving. And we know that certain places are more of a destination than others. Okay, thanks.

Okay. I have two questions on the exemptions you're removing. One, the staff report says the effects of removing the parking exemption were not analyzed because the current residential target area is too small to draw conclusions from. But this proposal expands the residential target area to roughly seven miles of transit corridor, which takes away that reason. Will the materials for the 25th hearing include analysis of these changes under the expanded boundaries? So the commission has something to base its recommendation on?

Thank you for the question, Commissioner. So as stated in the staff report, staff has, up to this point, not done a comparative analysis on the existing regulations in Pierce County Code compared to the proposal with council. As part of the hearing, any staff recommendation will be articulated and provided as part of the conversation as well as the materials provided in advance. So if any proposed change to either 18A or 18J from the package that was delivered by the resolution from Council is made, then those changes will be given to you for review.

But you're dropping this exemption for parking from the new proposal. And you said you couldn't analyze that because it was too small. Now you're expanding the area. So, I mean, it has an effect on vehicle miles driven, right, which is one of the new standards. So you're going to provide more parking. They have to meet the new parking requirements. So are you going to analyze what that effect is?

Yes, as part of the review prior to the hearing.

So you'll have that information for us next meeting? Yes. Okay, great. And the second part is the trees. One part of this package I want to make sure works as intended. Removing the waiver restores the significant tree retention requirement, the first 100 feet of lot depth for mixed-use buildings in the residential target area. I support keeping the tree canopy in these corridors. It stores carbon, cools the streets, and manages storm alerts. but the same corridors have streetscape standards that ask buildings to come up to the sidewalk. When the August material comes back, can staff address how tree retention and the standard will work together on these lines?

Just to make sure I'm understanding your request, Commissioner. The request is that staff provides.

Well, what happens is Tree retention, what happens is you've got two different standards here. The street scape standard and the standard of how many trees are supposed to retain because you've taken the waiver. How are you going to balance those and work those together? Yeah, I can, as part of the August hearing, I can bring... As a room for equivalent canopy options like streets where retaining existing trees to the street can happen. So there's a little conflict in the two standards. So I want to see how those are going to work together. And the important part is the trees. The retention of the trees, I think, is important.

Thank you for the comment, Commissioner. And yes, I can bring materials back as part of the August hearing.

Hello. Hi, Anna. I'm sorry. Is this throughout? Thank you. Hi, Chris Carnes. Anna, you mentioned that there is a plan for increasing the number of stations for stream stations in the Parkland, this portion of the corridor, and then sort of improving the stop distancing to every half mile. Is there a timeframe on when that would be, or are there conditions that need to be met in order for that to occur?

Um, well, the condition is funding and we, we are, we don't spend money. We don't have to pay. So that that's, that's the most important condition. I'm going to double check on the timeframe because I, I fear giving you the wrong answer. So I'll, I'll get that. I'll get back to you on that one.

Thank you. Um, also, um, uh, I would just sort of just generally have a, I think a question mostly for Ben. So the proposed RTA is a one half mile buffer between current stream stations on Pacific Avenue, SR7. And that is, That seems to be different for the for the South Hill of section that that only that actually reflects all all bus stops, as opposed to just the stream stops it did did staff at the Council level. indicate why there's a discrepancy between no. You have stream stations only for SR7, but you include all bus stops. And so there would be greater stop density if we were to consider all stops along Pacific Avenue.

Yeah, thank you for the question, Commissioner. So I can't speak to the rationale of council staff as part of the package. However, the primary difference in transit services, I understand it, between these two areas is that there is not stream service along SR161. And so the applicable route is Route 402 for that area. Whereas in Parkland, I believe the intent was to base off the stream service because it was the fastest and most frequent service provided. But I will pause and see if... Pierce Transit staff have any other comment on that portion of the question?

Yes, the stream is the fastest and most frequent service that we provide. The if, and this is a big if, if, you know, if the proposal on the November ballot passes, money or most, we'll have about a 47% increase in service, which will include most of our, our routes being at 15, 15 minute, we'll have 15 minute interval routes, 20 minute interval routes, and 30 minute interval routes. And we won't, I don't think any of our routes will be at the one hour intervals, which we currently have a lot of them at. So there would be And the 402 is a very popular route. So the 402 is a route that, you know, as funding becomes available, we'll have more service.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate those responses. I have just one more question. I think it's kind of a two-parter. What's the current state of sidewalk infrastructure immediately adjacent SR7? we have, if we're targeting a one half mile buffer outside of each of the stream stations, this will produce an incentive to develop out, one half mile out. But if we don't have the appropriate pedestrian infrastructure. One thing that I'm aware of that can occur is that people won't necessarily be able to access the bus service along SR7, but may have to then rely on potentially paratransit service. Is that correct, Anna, that Pierce Transit is obligated under the Americans with Disabilities Act to provide paratransit service within three quarters of a mile of a fixed route? Correct.

And that's for those who qualify for paratransit service. But yes. Yeah. So if if if there is, you know, if they can't if they can't ride a fixed route bus, be it for, you know, they physically can't get on and off a fixed route bus or because your example, sidewalks or infrastructure isn't there for them to get to the bus, yes, they are eligible. They're eligible for paratransit.

And the cost of paratransit service is higher than that of fixed route. Is that correct?

Yes. And if you want that number, I can get it for you. I did get the number for the fixed route service reporting, which is $13 per boarding. So a passenger pays $2, but it costs us $13. And that was in 2025, $13 per boarding.

Commissioner Karn's kind of spot. What about the sidewalks? I have an idea that South Hill specifically, they're just not there within that quarter mile, half mile. So how would those sidewalks be built in order to help with the capacity of the to stimulate, I guess, transit?

I'll start. This is not going to be the most satisfactory answer in the world, but we are working on it. We had this very conversation with the Transportation Advisory Commission last week on gaps in our active transportation system broadly. We think that there are, I'll get back to sidewalks in one second. We think there's roughly 540 miles, give or take, of bicycle facilities that have no bicycle facilities on them. So we will have to prioritize and as for nice rule of thumb back of the envelope, that's a half a billion dollars worth of bicycle infrastructure that is missing today. Along with, and that connects obviously to transit and one of the recommendations of the Transportation Advisory Commission was that connection to transit is the number one most important thing we should be focusing on both for pedestrians and cyclists. On the sidewalk component, if you look at a map today of where sidewalks exist in the county, you will not be surprised to discover that they predominantly exist where there are homeowner associations and new development. So if you go to Sunrise, you'll discover some wonderfully built sidewalks that are there. New development has been building sidewalks, as you well know, for the last few decades, and that's where we have the best infrastructure in a place like Parkland in particular, west of Pacific State Route 7, there's fairly good sidewalk network. East of it, there is not. And that is clearly a deficit. We are working with the Washington State Department of Transportation right now. They have a large corridor project that's fully funded through construction that's going to come from the Tacoma City limit all the way down to the Roy Y along Pacific. At the moment, the concept is much more of a boulevard concept than WSDOT has put out before. Likely, and this is very, very early sketches, but currently proposed to have seven roundabouts and really thinking about safety improvements all along that corridor. And the reason they're doing this project is because it's one of the locations across the state on state facilities with the highest number of collisions repeatedly. It was also one of the fatalities along State Route 7 is what was the impetus for the county's Vision Zero plan. So they're coming in with that project. Our work with them really is on east-west connections, and we're working with them and Pierce Transit to really understand how the FATE project on that main artery is going to support the stream bus stops now and in the future. And then in turn, how do we pick the best east-west connecting routes to make sure there are sidewalks there so people can get to the bus stops? The same time we're working right now, both in parkland and South hill on Community plan updates and we're intending to use both those plans intention is for them to be complete and early 2028. Both those plans as a blueprint for how we do an active transportation plan for the entirety of the county eventually so we will be focusing heavily on. You know, street by street. Where do we really need the sidewalks to make sure that people can get to transit so unsatisfactory answer because really, you'll have an inventory, though we will have. That's all that counts.

Yeah. Great. That was a good answer. Thank you. She could put in a good answer call. Thanks.

I have a basic question in regards to transportation improvements. Have you looked at any means of pulling together county resources focused in on these RTA zones that would be focused towards pedestrian amenities and also street improvements? seen county resources to these areas.

Has that been looked at? Yes. Short answer is yes, and very timely that you ask. We'll have the county engineer here next month to present on the new Transportation Improvement Program. As part of that, there's a brand new this year prioritization scheme for how projects rise or fall in importance within the Transportation Improvement Program. And part of that includes I think we've dubbed it access to centers, which I appreciate that we planners love to create our own jargon. But what it really means is access to places like what is being discussed for Parkland and South Hill. So if a project supports those things, it scores better than a project that does not. There's many other categories. Safety and preservation are the two highest priorities that the county has. But they'll be speaking to that prioritization scheme when they come back next month.

I have a few questions. Thanks for the presentation. And I'm really glad transit was here. Pierce Transfer was here to help buffer this a little bit because I see those interwoven quite importantly. Regarding the ratios that are called out in the modifications to the code, Was there any research done or is this an RCW carryover as far as the ratios of low-income housing in an overall complex? Did you do any research with local developers or is this a carryover in code?

So the materials that are provided to you today are the council provided package. So I can't speak to council staff's analysis, but I can speak to the question around how the ratios were distributed. Mark Benthien, ECA- brought forward. So those are carry overs from the RC w Mark Benthien, ECA- All the standards for both the 12 and 20 year program are specific ratios that are outlined in state law.

Okay. Thank you for that. And then clarification on density. What is our max density.

as long as we fit this criteria that you're trying to achieve? It's a great question. Off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure the highest in town center is 60, but it may be 80. 80 is the max for the highest intensity zone for these areas. And the height limit? I think it's 85, but it may be 95 with bonuses, but I'm pretty sure it's 85. So we're talking somewhere around 10 to 11 story building. I believe it would be seven or eight.

Seven or eight. Very specifically seven. Okay. So five. Yeah. Okay. Five over two construction because because of the minute that you go over that you need to go to full steel that gets real expensive. Nobody in the right will build you an eight story building. They might build a 12 story one, but

Dave Kuntz, The date stories, you might as well sit the seven so yeah no that was exactly the reason for the question and then also coordination with central Paris and West pierce fire as far as their abilities to manage these types of buildings in the event of emergency or fire. Dave Kuntz, With that extra elevation those are heights that we've never seen in those targeted areas. Um, another issue that I had, and it's a, it's a concern more than anything is on the South field plan, uh, south of 128 running out to 144th. There's areas in that sector that lack in infrastructure beyond just sidewalks, cemetery sewer in that area is non-existent in some cases. We have a big gap on South Hill. It's always been an issue. And it's been prohibitive to developers to come in and make economic sense of extending a sanitary sewer line for miles to accommodate one development. And I just wonder, has the county given any thought to that, any kind of sharing program, any kind of incentives beyond the tax exemption to If we're going to try to get this kind of thing built, we have to be able to provide tools to the developers so it can happen. And I hate to see all this great work collect dust. That's a good question. I'd really look into the infrastructure to support the density. Certainly, I know for a fact in the Southville area, I'm a little rusty on the SR7 corridor as to where the sewer starts and stops, but I'd recommend highly looking into that place.

Thank you. That's my question. Steve Hartwig will be back in August with the unified sewer plan, and he can speak to that. I think in general, I don't think I'm speaking out of turn if I say this on his behalf, that our biggest focus, so the sewer utility is slightly different than the rest of the county and that it also serves cities. Whereas, you know, our land use regulations are for the unincorporated part of the county. So they're a little bit, they function a little bit differently. But the biggest topic for them is on preservation of the existing system. Because unlike our roadways, you can choose to drive around a pothole, but a sewer can't really bust. It's just not a thing. I mean, there's environmental harm that happens. It's a huge inconvenience. There's fines that are levied and sewers campus. So preservation of the system is biggest priority. That does not mean that we are not doing very targeted expansion of the existing system. And Steve can talk about all the details associated with that.

Yeah, I think it's great. I mean, 10,000 foot level, the silo aspect of this kind of thing, well-intended, but I think we have to look at the impacts of the infrastructure. I use sewer because I'm familiar with that, but I would say the same about power. I would say the same about water because you're buffering off of, on the Southfield market, you're buffering off of incorporated PUL up at 120th and going directly into unincorporated areas. And there's maybe some collaboration that could happen that would be beneficial. to getting this kind of thing built for the citizens. If that's the need, we need to provide the tools.

But yeah, water company capacity too. There's new tools up there that may or may not have the capacity to serve.

And especially in that Parkland Spanaway area, you have got a couple small Parkland Light and Water, Bird Grow, Bird, Fruitland? There's a couple of them up there that are very small. Been around a long time.

Most are intertied now, which helps quite a bit. They're intertied with Lakewood, hopefully soon to be with Pierce County. Maybe that's weeks away, but still. Lakewood and City of Tacoma both have not unlimited, but pretty close.

They're intertied. Great deal. And the collaboration with Pierce Transit, just expand on that if you can. Yeah.

Utility pipes are only so big. And then when you add these higher densities and they'll go vertical, we have to consider fire flow too. Fire flow is a huge thing. So we have to have that additional capacity for fire flow as well. That's water. It doesn't suck water, but water has to be present, available.

Go ahead, Chris. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So just hearing from the rest of the commission, a myriad of concerns about potential impacts. Is there a, just a process question, is there an opportunity to potentially provide an alternative to the staff proposal after the public hearing has completed?

So as I understand it, the commission can make a recommendation to council based on the staff proposal that could include a request for an alternative analysis that would be either conducted by PBW or by council staff. So I think that's at the discretion of the commission.

Okay. Thank you. Mm-hmm.

Ben, I have one last question. Is this going to go out to the public at any point or are we past that in the process? And the reason I ask that, I just put this away, but especially, well, in almost every instance, when you get off of the main corridor, off of the state highway, a lot of that obviously is already commercial and high density. But when you get off of that, In some areas, it's a substantial amount, distance wise. You get into primarily single family residents. And the impact of this on the owner of those single family residents, has that been considered? Have you gone out for public comment with this change?

Yeah, so as I understand it, the first opportunity to comment would have been at the hearing of the resolution by council, as that would have been the first time that these materials would have been available to the public for comment. Since then, this would have been the next opportunity to provide comment based on the, or not provide comment, but to hear about this package as all of the planning commission materials are publicly available. The next opportunity for the public to provide specific comment on this would be your August hearing. Um, as the, there's a opportunity for, um, public comment on anything that is up for final action, um, beyond those, um, and then as well, there's public comment throughout the, um, the council legislative process, um, in the same way, but beyond those, the, that was the, uh, extent of the public engagement opportunities up to this point. Um, I, I, I think that, um,

Yeah, I guess that's- So there was, and I'm not trying to beat anybody up here. I'm just saying, so there was no direct public outreach regarding this. It was basically posted and was part of meeting schedules and agendas, but no formal notification that this zoning change may be coming.

That's correct. From a planning and public works standpoint, we have not done any additional outreach since the resolution. Okay, relax. Yeah, and-

Chuck just asked about the LUACs. Have they been contacted? No, we have not.

Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. To answer your question, Chair, the LUACs have not been contacted about the proposed changes up to this point.

Okay.

Just add a couple of things. First, it's not a zoning change. The zoning still has been pointed out at the beginning. It's town center, urban corridor, and neighborhood corridor. So our three most intense urban zones. This does not change that. The other thing to add to it is while... So this has just come to us through a resolution that came from council. So we have not had the chance to do any engagement on it. But considerable engagement was done around this general concept as part of the comprehensive plan. So I feel generally comfortable that while this specifically has not been subject of engagement, these sorts of topics and certainly the height limits and densities were very much part of broad engagement.

Okay. That's a good clarification. Thank you for that. And the extension off of the main highway or that distance, so that zoning, so what we're dealing with here is all within That's correct. Thank you.

That's it for me. Does anybody have any further questions? Go ahead.

I just have an answer to Commissioner Carnes' question regarding timing for the streamed community line improvements for the half mile. It's about within like the next year. Okay. And that is, so yeah, sometime in 2027, probably by the end of 2027. Okay.

Quick one point in regards to the South Hill and Berkland RTA, does that align with the zoning?

So both of the residential targeted areas fall within the compact urban designation and the zones are all high intensity mixed use and or multifamily zones. So they all fall within the compact area. However, the RTAs are, the boundary is drawn based on walking distance to transit stops. Does that answer your question or did I?

I was just thinking it might be helpful to see that overlay.

Okay, sure. Between the two. Yeah, we can bring a map back that shows the zoning overlay with the proposed RTAs.

In the RTAs, This needed area, the outline boundary that the criteria for that was mostly walking distance.

That's correct.

You have been out for just rationale for it is through and we can bring back the resources on this, but that's the distance people are willing to lock into transit service. So rule of thumb is about a half mile to high capacity transit or derail, which the streamline is people will pass that. Some people will walk that. And obviously if they have no other choice, they will walk it, but pass that kind of the choice writers, the people whose behavior you're trying to change, uh, stop thinking that's a reasonable walking shed. And then it's obviously less of, uh, Science on this is evolving in the last few years, but it's obviously less from regular bus service. So to the comment about the number one service being slower than the streamlined service on the same corridor, people won't walk quite as far to get to the number one as there are to the streamlined because there's better service and the overall trip is shorter for them.

Is there any analysis of the extent of pedestrian amenities as it existing within the RTAs?

Not yet, but we'll bring that back. Yeah, we can bring a map of the existing infrastructure.

Any other questions from commissioners? And Sarah, we don't have anybody online, it doesn't appear.

No, we don't have any commissioners online.

Is there any members of the public?

We do have members of the public online, but this is not a public comment.

I understand. I just wanted to know for the next section. Okay, with that, we're going to close this section. Thank you very much for the presentation, both of you, and answering all the questions. Appreciate it. Look forward to seeing you in the next round. Thank you, guys, too, even though you didn't say anything. I thought you were leaving. One moment. Well, Stafford, you're right.

Physical chairs.

It's just quiet. What's that?

I've had negative comments about my vocal.

Okay, with that we'll move on to agenda item number six.

Detention facilities code update and definitions. This will include a presentation, some commission email, and then also a public comment. Excellent.

Hello, commissioners, and a special welcome. Commissioner Carnes, Commissioner Whitman, it's great to see you. Thank you for allowing us to present today. For the record, my name is Justin Patterson, senior planner with Long Range Planning. I am joined by Sydney Smith, associate planner with Long Range Planning. And we are here to present on proposed amendments to Pierce County Code definitions in relation to the ongoing detention facilities project You may recall, or for those that this isn't your first meeting we were here a little while ago discussing the outlines for this project. This is a multi phase long term project review how Pierce county addresses facilities that may involve the involuntary detention of individuals. This is the very first piece of the overall project. And we have a lot to cover today. And I will give it, when my screen works, give it to Sydney.

All right. So I'm going to go over our agenda really quick. We've got our package overview. And then we're going to go over our definitions that we've added, as well as our timeline. And then at the end here, we're going to have time to open up the code and actually review it with you today. you'll have plenty of opportunity to give feedback and directly impact the code.

Excellent. Thank you. There's a lot of text on the slide. Please don't try to read it right now, but we just wanted to put it all together. Basically, this entire package can fit on one slide, and that was kind of the point. I will briefly outline the details here. The amendments will only be to Title 18, specifically Chapter 1825, which is the definitions of Pierce County Code. The definitions to be added and one to be amended are there on the right hand side of the slide. We will cover these in detail momentarily. So again, don't worry about jumping in and reading all of those. The main reason that we are proposing adding definitions is that simply current code doesn't have them and there is in ambiguity in terms Sydney and I in starting this project we met with some community stakeholders advocacy groups just starting the beginnings of a robust public engagement process And one thing that consistently came up was, what are we talking about here? What is the specific term that we are using to delineate different types of facilities? With that feedback, we realized it was going to be very difficult to continue this project and hit all of the different phases as well as public engagement without having at least some common sets of definitions that we can work from. Just as a quick example, the current definition for essential public facilities in Pierce County code does have a reference to state and local correctional facilities. This is actually adopted from the RCW. But in our code, we don't define what a state and local correctional facility is. We don't adopt that definition from the RCW. So it's not clearly defined what we're talking about there. Additionally, detention facility itself is not defined in in pierce county code it does there are references to it in stormwater manuals for a retention slash detention facility so if we're talking about detention facilities that involve involuntary detention how do we disentangle that from stormwater retention and detention, for example. So being very clear with what we're talking about and adding these definitions to Pierce County codes seemed like a very important first step for all of this. With that, Sydney will outline some of the timelines and then we'll jump back into the explicit code review.

So some of you were here last time. I'm just going to go over this in detail because some of you are not. This timeline has not changed in length since we last met with you. It is still 18 months aiming for the end of November in 2027. However, the order has slightly changed. When we brought the timeline to you last time, we didn't include packages for both moratorium renewals. The current moratorium we have lasts for six months, which ends in October, October 4th to be exact. To continue this project, we have to continue to renew the moratorium, which is its own package. So package two and package four were just an oversight last time. They were always going to happen. Now they're listed here. Additionally, another change to the timeline that wasn't this way last time is Package 3 now combines safety net and local enforcement. During this process, we've already done a little bit of engagement, and those two seem to make sense to go together. The final package, major detention, is going to be where a lot of our community feedback comes from, and so trying to streamline and speed up this process by making Package 3 combine safety net and local enforcement, but The timeline hasn't changed. This package is going to continue to take 18 months. We're just trying to outline the moratorium extensions as well. Currently, we're in package one, which is definitions, which you'll look at today. Additionally, we are writing the package two for the renewal of the moratorium. We have to get that through council to become effective before our next moratorium runs out. So we're working on that one as well.

Thank you, Sydney. So with that, we'll jump in. Two things to show. I will bring those up now. First, we have a review. Pardon me one second. Let me make sure I'm sharing the right screen here. Here we are. We wanted to provide a review of exactly what we are proposing to adopt. These are all adopted by reference of the RCWs. We're not changing any of the terms from the RCW definitions. I will speak to the one that we amend. However, For your review, this is what those RCW definitions are. There's a lot of text here. I'm not going to read through them, but I'll just give the general highlights. 23-hour crisis relief center. This is typically a community-based facility that has mental health, substance abuse, treatment, things in that vein for up to 24 hours. So it's less than a whole year. Do you want us to hold questions? Yes, please. Yeah. Thank you. We're almost done too, so we'll get there quickly. Behavioral health hospital, this is very much in a similar vein as a crisis relief or recovery center. However, there's no time limits on this one. Correctional facility, this is what is referenced in the essential public facilities definition. Interestingly, correctional facility, which is also outlined in the RCW definition of essential public facility that's referenced back, is for the housing of adult individuals serving terms not to exceed one year. So that's a very clear line there as well. I will skip down to detention facility just because there's a distinction there. A correctional facility is up to one year. A detention facility does not have that time-bound definition to it. Crisis stabilization and evaluation and treatment facilities are also fairly similar but have some very specific nuances within those. And holding facility again has a time bound piece to it that can only be up to 30 days that an individual can be held in detention gel is just a very general term. Private detention and special detention are very important to call out as well because it disentangles those from other different publicly operated and publicly funded facilities. And then lastly, a state correctional institution, which is a state-run and state-operated institution. So really, those are the main definitions that we'll be adding. I'm going to... Yes, I am going to pull up the actual... I've got lots of things to share. This is the actual exhibit for the code. I have this up in Word because We are asking for any potential feedback you may have. We would be happy to note that down because we are also asking for a recommendation on this proposal today. As you will see here in definitions, I can make this a little bigger. Well, it is basically adopting everything by reference. The things that we discussed, behavioral health hospital, for example, goes to the section of the RCW that is being referenced. The one term that we are amending is community facilities. There has been, there are terms in the broader work of this, of what is a community facility that involves involuntary detention. Pierce County Code has a definition for community facility, and we just wanted to be very clear that that definition is not talking about detention facilities or community-based detention facilities. Additionally, to disentangle the retention detention, retention slash detention from the County Stormwater Manual, for example, we added detention facility shall be defined as the section from the RCW, unless the context otherwise specifies, just so that there's some disentanglement there. And then everything else is just pure adopting by reference. And with that, I would jump back into the presentation, which just has our thank you slide, but I'll leave this up. If anyone has any questions, happy to take those down.

We're going to go online. We're going to go to public comment first. You can have a couple, if you have just a couple questions, that's

Just tell me if one of the things, the definition covering juvenile detention, I don't see that up there. Is there, if not, why not?

There wasn't, the RCWs weren't particularly clear on juvenile detention. And that is something that that we could potentially write our own definition for. But that actually brings up a really great point about this entire process and this proposal. This is to give us something to work off of. It's very difficult to define the delta for what we currently have and what should be changed when we don't have a common set of definitions that we're working with. So while we propose to adopt these now, We also are very aware that they may change and we may end up writing our own and filling in the blanks. For example, in juvenile detention facility was something that the county, more county specific, but this at least gives us a common basis that we can work from.

But the question is, what was the decision not to include juvenile? Why was that decided not to go into it?

Do you remember the RCW on that one?

No, I just know that often the word juvenile is specific enough that by adding it on to any one of these facilities is clear enough that we don't need the extra definition. But yeah, like Justin said, we're trying to establish a baseline of definitions because this code package process is going to be 18 months. We're going to have these conversations throughout, and I think it makes sense to consider something like juvenile detention as an additional definition to add. So we can definitely note that down as something to look into. Thank you. That's great.

Okay. So at this point, we're going to open up for public comment here in the room. Are there any members of the public here that would like to speak? Any members of the public that would like to speak? Seeing none, we'll close the public comment here in the room and we'll go online. Are there any members of the public online that would like to speak to this agenda item?

For any members of the public online on Zoom, please press the raise hand icon or star nine on your telephone keypad. It doesn't look like there's anyone online who would like to provide public comments.

Okay, no one online. So at this point, we will close public comment on this agenda item.

And...

So we'll open it up for the commissioners for any in-depth conversation or comments.

I have the Clarifying question. As far as these list of definitions, which of these fall under essential public facilities?

That's a great question. The only one that would is correctional facility because that's the only one that is specifically explicitly stated in the essential public facilities definition.

I thought we were going to have stormwater detention. I got all excited.

So I have a question. First, does anyone else have any further questions? Okay, so I have a question. On detention facility, you said that there was, if I remember correctly, there was no time bound limit. The others had a year. And I know that we have to follow the RCWs. But my understanding is that's the minimum. Could we put a time-bound limit on that element on a detention facility?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great point and something that we want to look at all of these to see if there's a deviation from the RCW. But because we don't have anything there now, it's hard to make that what should our definition be? So the thought process here is let's get a common basis down first, just simply adopt by reference, not get into the weeds of what those time down limits should be, because we haven't had the time to do any public engagement on that, for example. We are starting those conversations now. We are setting up time with focus groups from different community groups and industry and advocacy organizations. Those are just now starting. So it felt disingenuous to come up with our own definitions without doing that initial engagement.

I'll add, too, that none of these definitions have Pierce County nuance at all. They're all just state definitions. So as we work through this process, we're intending to kind of make sure that each one of these definitions fits Pierce County's goals. So should we think that adding a time bound to one of these definitions makes more sense for Pierce County? We have all the opportunity in the world throughout this process to open up these definitions and add nuance. We just need to have those conversations first.

Yep.

Okay. Any other comments, questions? Do we have examples of existing facilities out there that fall under these definitions?

I did not prepare any. I can think of a handful off the top of my head.

We have a map from last presentation. There is a handful in the county.

Yeah, there are quite a few. We could... As we move forward in this project, you know, the overall project we are doing. That's another piece that we are working on. Not in this phase, just because we're just getting some definitions on the board, but we are looking at the shared doctrine, for example, and trying to understand what already resides in the county, how many facilities of different types. It's actually a very important reason that we have some definition is that currently we don't, Pierce County code doesn't address these types of facilities in any different way. So when they're permitted and staff, for example, we're trying to develop this map of where all the facilities were, there's there's no distinction of what the facility type is um based on the land use permitting so it's actually really difficult to understand what facilities are where um so this again is just kind of the first step to give us a baseline and then we'll go through that work yeah we intend to make a map of the county that shows where all of these different kinds of facilities are based on the definitions yes these definitions right now yes yeah

So you're just asking us for definitions today?

Yeah, it's just the very first step of a much longer process.

Mr. Chair, if I may, I have a motion.

We're all ears.

I move that the Planning Commission recommend approval of the proposed ordinance on detention facilities definitions. Second.

There's been motion and a second. Any discussions? With that, Sarah, would you call the vote, please?

Yes. Okay. Chair O'Leary? Aye. Commissioner Sonsmo? Aye. Commissioner Burke? Aye. Commissioner Carnes?

Aye.

Commissioner Wyndham? Aye. The motion passes.

Thank you, Commissioners. Really appreciate it.

We'll be seeing lots more of us on this. We'll have lots of time.

Many more to come.

Thanks a lot for the presentation.

Thank you. I'll see you. Thank you. I get to stay here.

You're not leaving.

No, give me just a moment to get reset for this.

Chair, if you'd like, we could call for a recess for folks to sit up and eat.

Okay, how about a 10-minute recess? Is that good for everybody? 1054 AM. 1054. Thank you. Great. Thank you. July, Pierce County Planning Commission meeting. And we are on agenda item number seven, agritourism.

Justin. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Good to see you. It's been so long since I've been before this commission. But thank you for having me back. Today is a study session. So Well, actually, I should say, once again, for the record, Justin Patterson, Senior Planner, Long Range Planning, but today, this is a quick presentation, and then we'll dive into a study session of draft code amendments concerning agritourism in Pierce County. Before we get started, just to note the intent of a study session, this is really to provide you a preview of some very rough draft code. This code is being discussed and has been discussed quite thoroughly thus far. And we have even more conversations coming up with the Agricultural Advisory Commission of the county, as well as a special agritourism subcommittee that was set up through that commission. But your feedback today will actually be really helpful in drafting the final language in conjunction and in coordination with that body. With that, I will jump into a quick agenda. Our session today covered the meeting purpose. I wanted to discuss the summary of public engagement that has occurred in relation to this and how this code draft is translating the themes that we were hearing during the public engagement process. Then we'll actually jump into a review of the draft code and discuss timeline and next steps and talk about how we synthesize your feedback. So our purpose for today, we will review, as I mentioned, review themes for engagement, review the actual code. I will take your feedback. This will come back to you. I will talk about timeline later, but you will see this at least two more times. So this is not your final opportunity to provide feedback, but this is just so that we can actually look at the code together before drafts start to go to other departmental reviews. And To discuss engagements and during our break, a couple of commissioners have mentioned that this may be their first engagement with the concept of agritourism. So before I wanted to jump in here, I wanted to give just a really brief update on Agritourism itself. It's really hard to define in a lot of ways. It seems very simple on its surface, but is an exceptionally complex circumstance and land use designation. The reason being is that in particular in the state of Washington, but really in all around the world, farmland preservation is a very, very large topic of concern and something that local and state and even federal governments are working on and have been working on for many, many years. So to preserve farmland, part of that is opening economic opportunity for those farms to be able to maintain their ownership of the land. Agritourism has really blown up, to use a common term there, but really blown up in the last 20-ish years or so as farmers typically, farmers, ranchers, other agricultural operators are seeing that they can increase their revenue quite significantly by inviting individuals to their property. The trick of this comes in is that what is the line between a farm and now a commercial business venture? And how are those things managed and regulated? So that's what we're discussing today is what is the core of agritourism? Why are, how do we allow farms to, develop economic opportunity without losing the core of what agritourism is, which is farmland preservation and maintaining the farmland as a natural resource in the county and abroad. So with that, we did a large public engagement process. This started in earnest, I should say. The county and individuals working for the county have worked with the Agriculture Advisory Commission before I've been with the county discussing agritourism. There was a summit a few years ago. for many farmers and ranchers and other agricultural operators to engage on this topic. However, I'm just sticking to this project and the scope of this project. So what we've done in engagement in that sense. So I took this on starting in 2025. We have six in-person, stand-alone, very targeted, went to granges, went to libraries in rural areas. targeted the marketing to specifically farms, ranches, and agricultural operators. We also did tabling co-led events at other different public engagement opportunities that were a little more broad. Completed an online survey that had over a thousand responses. It was very very popular survey. This has also received a lot of discussion and feedback, as I mentioned, at the Pierce County Agriculture Advisory Commission meetings, quite a few of them over 2025, as you know, Chair O'Leary, we've talked about it quite a bit, and in 2026. As of this year, the Ag Advisory Commission set up a special subcommittee purely to work on draft code, and you're going to see here shortly what that subcommittee came up with. We had two subcommittee sessions totaling about six hours of work. The first one was slated for four. We went about four and a half, and the next one was slated for two, and we went a little over two as well. This draft code has also been shared with the full Agricultural Advisory Commission at the June 24th, July 22nd. And we have another one coming up on a special session on August 12th to review this in full as well. So this has had a lot of eyes on it, but it is also not finished. I will talk about timeline later, but we do intend to have the draft code back to the Agriculture Advisory Commission in September and then back before this body for another briefing and then hearing. So two more meetings later. But again, I'll talk about timeline in a second. So we did a lot of engagement. That's really the takeaway here. What did that engagement say? It really honed in on four main themes. um and these I'll speak briefly on each um supporting small farms now small is a very hard term to define and what is a small farm what is a large farm um but it's something that kept coming up in engagement is we want to support our small farms this is um very clearly a priority of residents Um, to allow opportunities for those five, 10, 15 acres, smaller, smaller operations to have some ability to generate additional revenue on their property. Another major theme that came up was protecting the rural character. This is also something that is throughout the GMA and throughout comprehensive plan documents is that maintaining of the rural character. This is something that was clearly delineated in the engagement summary as well. Limiting infrastructure sprawl. As I mentioned in my general overview of agritourism, this is one of the the centerpiece issues of agritourism is that if you are allowing large businesses to start tilting into more commercial avenues and commercial spaces, they may not have the infrastructure to support that. And that infrastructure is likely not coming, as we discussed earlier, taking sewers and road improvements out to very, very rural areas. So there needs to be a bit of a balance there. Third, dress impacts. So something that came up a lot during engagement, in particular from farmers and ranchers that we talked to, was that the use of agritourism can be described as many different things, a corn maze, a pumpkin patch, something of that nature. But by limiting those specific types of activities, that does not allow as much flexibility for a farm to try something new. So we wanted to get away from being too prescriptive in the code to saying this is a corn maze is X level of agritourism. I'm not trying to do that. We wanted to focus on the impact itself. So what is a corn maze? What is the impact on the neighboring infrastructure and the neighbors themselves? So that is the third piece. And finally, clear and fair regulation. One of the main concerns and the impetus for this project in general is that current Pierce County code is just frankly, not very clear on what agritourism is, what it isn't, who can do it, what's involved in it. So this is really trying to provide just some clear guidelines for farms that want to engage in this type of venture. So how does it show up in the code? I'll talk about it section by section, but I tried to pull these four themes into three, what I'm terming code elements. So a verification of farming is a major code element here. So making sure that farms are the ones that we're talking about when we're discussing agritourism, not allowing for certain businesses to maybe come under the guise of agritourism, but they're not actually farming. That is a issue that we have seen across the county quite a bit. We also wanted to go from a tiered approach. This is talking about allowing opportunity for smaller firms to engage in agritourism. without too many limits or without too much structure in that, and then allowing large farms that want to do more big, broad agritourism activities, like the large corn mazes, the more impactful types of activities, there needs to be a difference between the regulatory guidelines for those types of farms and agricultural operators. And finally, hitting all four themes is trying to focus on the impacts themselves and not trying to be too prescriptive and saying you can do this, you can't do that. It's more you can do this as long as you're addressing the impacts of what you intend to do. There we go. So we'll jump into the code itself in just a second. But I did want to talk about how we've drafted some of the code. There are in that farm verification piece, there are multiple avenues for verification. We wanted to make it easy for farms that are farming and clearly farming to be able to verify themselves as farms. We wanted to keep the bar as low as possible while still having a bar. There was all of last year and into this year, There was a very long-awaited report from the Department of Commerce on agritourism. This we... We were involved in a lot of the study sessions and kind of knew what was coming with the report. The report was recently released. But as I started drafting the code itself, I kind of understood where that report was going to go. So I wanted to make sure that this draft code is in line with Department of Commerce's guidelines and recommendations. um so we're actually quite far ahead of the game when it comes to that due to our involvement with department of commerce focus group sessions uh the code also clearly puts definitions in place that agritourism is an agriculturally based activity um this is again kind of keeping that farm verification at the forefront making sure that we're allowing farms to engage in this activity but trying to mitigate any um bad actors, we might say, or put them. This came up, this was a big point, these last few points, we came up in the Agritourism Subcommittee work. There was a big push for no additional permitting, but potentially having some some sort of check with the county. So the plan that we have is an agritourism site plan required for level three activities. I'll get to that in a moment. There was also a lot of effort to encourage educational activities. So we have a section of code that explicitly says, If you're doing school field trips, things of that nature, that's not what we're trying to limit or regulate here. We want to focus the educational aspects of agriculture and agritourism. So making sure that that's separated out from more of the regulatory nature of the code. And then when I started this project and started looking at this project, There was a lot of discussion on certain non-farm-based activities, we'll call them. For example, wedding venues. And are those agritourism or not? This is something that was discussed at length with the Agriculture Advisory Commission when we got into the subcommittee and the drafting work. it was very clear that the community, in particular the farming community, just does not view some of these non-farm-based activities. If it's not agriculturally based, And it isn't agritourism. So we actually didn't address those in code. And we'll let code, the other regulatory aspects of code that talk about, for example, letting venues, they're already addressed in code. So we're disentangling those from agritourism. That's a big point here. And then finally, we break this out into three separate levels. And really trying to focus on lower impact smaller farms. That's your level one level two is more of your professional farms. This is Your primarily that's where you're making your money is is farming and potentially having a farm stand something along those lines. Level three, those are your more commercial large farms that are doing pretty high impact stuff and they have lots of people come into their farm to visit. So with that, I am going to pull up the actual draft code. But while I'm doing that, are there any questions so far? You have to take your question. I just had one.

um what about like uh wineries that type of thing i know they're not a lot of them on this side of the mountains but there are some up north that um have concert venues and things like that i mean where that might be a separate application but i'm just curious about where they draw the line there's a lot of people have wine tasting rooms they serve food and that kind of thing or they have airbnbs you know i mean that that type of thing how do you differentiate those uses when they're still, you know, everybody's doing something with grapes.

Yes, that is... it's been a very interesting project work on for the last year and a half because that's that's really at the heart of it is at what point does it no longer become a agriculturally based activity of having people come into your farm and enjoying the wine that you're growing or or maybe you and your neighbors are and that's kind of a more regional aspect versus somebody that is um For example, the Gorge in Columbia River Gorge. That started as a vineyard that occasionally had a few concerts. Now it is a 55,000-person concert venue, something like that. It got out of control. It got big. It got very large very fast.

Look at San Michel Winery. There's also local growers that I know that have maybe a few grapes out on the property.

wine as they can. To the heart of your question, we try not to get into the specific activity but really focus on how many people are showing up and what are the other aspects to a vineyard and winery type business. There's no exclusion of winery because that's a very clearly agriculturally based activity. Grow some grapes, make some wine, you can sell the wine. There's a clear line there. We're not banning the winery or anything like that, for an example. However, those other uses, those, you know, setting up concert venues and things of that nature, those would be regulated by other different sections of code, specifically called out, for example, the events code. So if you are a winery, you can open your doors as an agritourism venture, as long as you're maintaining under this code or doing following the guidelines set forth in Pierce County code. And if you want to have concerts, you absolutely could, but you would just be beholden, that activity would be, that use would be beholden to other different code sections, particularly 18A40, which is the events code in that case.

So do you treat these applications as a administrative, like, conditional use permit? They come in for discretion?

That is something that That is a good question and I think a really good point of discussion for today. We have not gone through interagency review, so interdepartmental review team, I have had a few discussions of how would these things be best treated, and there hasn't been a clear answer on that as to should an agritourism venture that is doing a lot of, you know, the level three, as we'll see in a second, is these higher impact activities, should that be beholden to a permit? I want to be very clear that a lot of this code came from engagement with farms, ranchers, farms, farmers, ranchers, agricultural operators, and It is very difficult for farms right now. It is very difficult for farms and farmers. It is not a conducive environment to making a lot of money. And so adding permit fees and permit costs to that was... very hard discussion to have with somebody that is frankly scraping by on selling their agricultural product already. So the solution that we came up with collaboratively was to avoid the permit and use a site plan, which is basically a site plan review. The mechanics of that haven't fully been fleshed out yet as we haven't gone to an interagency review at this point. What exactly does that process look like? I can't speak to that yet until we've got the process down and we have the code itself down.

I would just say that there needs to be some kind of hierarchy of determination for the land use. The staff who may not be well versed in what Yes. Has a difference of opinion. And then where do you go from there? You know, if there's a disagreement, do you go to the hearing examiner? Do you go, I mean, where do you, where do you go? Do you have a director or somebody? I mean, how does that, how does that evolve?

Yeah, I think that's a great question. We tried to address that in this code draft, but as we go through, I think we did a pretty good job of clearing that out. But if you have suggestions, I am all ears.

I don't know. I'm just saying that in almost every discretionary land use, there's an opportunity.

repeal i mean oh yes absolutely there's opportunity for director interpretation it was called explicitly in this um and really any land use um regulation like this could also go through a hearing examiner process and like there there are processes in place for that and these would be beholden to any other land use designation process typically with an sbr we have a customer meeting where we roll out what parameters are going

to be and then we have to go through that formal process just for paperwork I guess you know just for evidence that something was done it was official so I was just curious in this particular aspect if you got an SPR and then let's just say that Justin doesn't think that this shit doesn't fit and where do you go from there?

I think that's the tricky part of where's that line again I think as we walk through it You'll probably see my thought process there. We're trying to outline that while balancing all the different interests there. That said, as far as the specific, you know, who does this go to and what is the process chain? We haven't gone that far yet. So this will come later.

Just a suggestion that maybe the Ag Committee should take a look at it.

Oh, yeah. We've discussed it quite a bit.

We've changed?

Yeah. We have just discussed it quite a bit. And we'll continue to discuss even more. Okay.

I see many comments right at this stage. Is agritourism limited to AgZone property?

For the most part. I do have the use tables up, which I will put a summary of the use tables that I'll show here shortly. Our main agricultural zones, it's a little confusing because we have agricultural resource land and then we have rural farm, but those aren't the only two agriculturally viable zoning designations. You can farm in many, many, many of the zones in the county, pretty much anywhere that's rural for the most part. So anywhere that you can farm and have an agricultural operation, then agritourism would also be allowed. And I explained that in the first section of this code that part of this proposal or part of this code draft, it's not even a proposal yet, is that agritourism is classified as an accessory use to the primary use of agriculture. It's not even its own. Well, it's its own use. It's really wherever you're farming, you can do agritourism.

That will include some updates to the use tables, which I'll show later.

So I'd just like to make a couple quick statements as we go into this. I have chaired the Ag Commission for many years. I've served on it for many years as when it was a committee and then also now as a commission. So just You guys know where I'm coming from as far as my background on this subject. I think Justin did a good job of a general overview. A couple of things that I think are critical that maybe wasn't mentioned that we should keep in mind as we go through this is that these are, for the most part, these are seasonal operations. So when we're looking at code, when we're looking at expenses, when we're looking at improvements, and when we're looking at processes for any kind of authorization or permits, it's time sensitive. The crop comes, the crop goes. We can't be in an appeal process to get through because we lose the seasonality. Secondarily, we have limitations on what we can do as farmers to improve the land to a certain standard to have the public come, not to avoid safety issues, but economically, there are constraints because we're seasonal. We're not a 24-7, 365 operation. So I think that needs to stay in the back of our minds. Secondarily, or next, the zoning of land you brought up, while there are multiple zones where agriculture can occur, in my opinion, A lot of the land's been zoned agricultural resource land, which is virtually limited to agriculture, with a couple exceptions. In that respect, we preserve the land. We have to walk the tightrope, in my opinion, of this code to preserve the farm. But we're going to have foul land. And we have to bring those new farmers on. We're established, our farm. We've been around. Multiple generation farms exist in our county, not many, but some. But that next generation that wants to farm five acres or 10 acres, we can't burden them with regulatory issues that prevent them from wading into the water of farming, or we're going to strangle the life out of it, in my opinion. So those are just things that I wanted to make a comment on as we dive into this code so that we maybe broaden the lens in which we look at this language.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair. With that, we'll just pull up the, again, this is in Word, so I can take some notes and comments, and this is a study session, so please feel free. You'll notice at the top, it's very small, so you may not be able to see it. And, Chair, is this amended as of our last day? I was just about to say, this is version 3. So this has gone through, we had an initial version that came to the subcommittee, something to react to. This has gone through numerous reviews. So that's why you're seeing version three here. And this will then go back to the Agricultural Advisory Commission here soon for a V4 and potentially V5. So with that, so what code are we talking about? This is 18A33260. This primarily will all live in that section of Pierce County Code. This is the Our resource use category description of use categories section. So I only pulled out the draft code. This does not have the other sections or the other subsections that are in here. So you're only looking at the agritourism code that would be proposed. Obviously, once we get to a final draft stage that will be put in a pleading paper format, it will look a little different than this. I wanted to discuss initially the agritourism use type definition. We can walk through that. And then there are five separate sections of code. So what I was planning to do is I'm not going to read, there are eight pages here. I'm not going to read every word, but I just wanted to go section by section and pull out the salient details and the highlights because obviously there's a lot of legalese in here as well. So first off, agritourism use type refers to uses which are agriculturally based operations or activities that bring visitors to an active farm or ranch. Use is associated with an ongoing agricultural use and may involve the sale of locally grown agricultural products. This is keeping that farm verification piece in play. I'm saying this is really an accessory use to agriculture, which is explicitly said in the next sentence, all agritourism uses shall be considered an accessory and incidental use and shall maintain commercial agriculture as the primary use of the property. There's some discussion on exactly the wording of some of these phrases. I would encourage you not to get too hung up on the grammar, but mays and shalls are important. So if you do have suggestions, please let me know. This also calls out specifically because there are RCW There is a lot of state code around what you can do through to Chair O'Leary's point on agricultural resource land. We do call out that there is specific designation of agricultural resource land that actually does put further limits than you would maybe see on rural farm or an R-40 or an R-10 zone, for example. And then we get into the main code itself. So we're discussing commercial agriculture, the verification. Working with farmers and ranchers and other operators, we came up with what we feel like is a pretty solid solution to keep its limited farms and agricultural operators while also making sure that there are numerous different ways that you can verify that you are a commercial agricultural operation. So there are four different selections here. I'll sort of the first two before that page break. The USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture, has a what's called a Schedule F. This is very, very common. Schedule F of the 1040 form. It calculates an active farm as any farm with at least $1,000 of reported farm income annually. This is a Very common definition used in a lot of different other farm verification methods, commercial farm verification methods. So that seemed very straightforward. The IRS, Internal Revenue Service, also has four hobby farms that may not hit the $1,000 limit. They have... What they term the hobby loss rules, which are found in RAC section 183. It's basically a checklist that has nine different factors on there. As long as you're hitting those are considered by the IRS as a farm. So that is a piece of it as well. This was something that was brought up. Um, in subcommittee, um, if you were just starting out to Chair O'Leary's point, if you're just starting out and you don't have any farm revenue and you want to operate a farm stand, for example, um, so a farm stand, just a. roadside stand to sell your veggies and eggs and things of that nature, pretty low impact. But you don't have a schedule F yet or haven't attained all the factors of the hobby loss rules. There should be some avenue for allowing you to have a farm stand. So this is a land use percentage that we came up with. At least 75% of the agriculturally viable land is maintained for agriculture. And then that's also, if you're using that verification method, that would also require that no net loss of agricultural land due to any agritourism would be allowed under that verification method. If you are a commercial farm and you're verifying through you know, income or profit motive, that doesn't necessarily apply. But if you're saying we're going to keep this percentage of our property as commercial agriculture and then start taking that percentage away, that's what we wanted to avoid in this piece here. And then last piece on this, and I'll take your question, Commissioner Burke. An opportunity for a director interpretation, just in case that there, if there's something that we didn't qualify here, I have a kind of a relief valve and an outlet for interpretations invaluable. Yes, commercial.

You spoke about the known that loss only applying to 1 verification method.

Well, can you clarify that it applies to others, but we wanted to have a specific call out here because. There isn't really a great check and balance for some smaller farms. The county's code enforcement operates on a complaint-based model, so we're not actually going out and checking what the land use percentages is. That said, there are... Throughout the rest of the code, there are references to loss of agriculturally viable land within it and different circumstances. We just didn't want, we called it out specifically here that if you're using land use percentage as your verification that you're a commercial farm, you can't start taking away, you know, taking away that percentage to get into agritourism. You need to maintain that 75%.

So in other words, if you expand your operation somehow, you still need to keep that certain amount of percentage of land for it.

The idea would be, and this is a really good point of clarification, and something that we could... we could work around the terminology a little bit too. Yeah, very open feedback here. The idea would be that once you get to the point where you're expanding those agritourism ventures, you're probably verifying through an IRS form or some other verification method. So this is really just to give an outlet for the really small farms that are just getting started. That was the idea.

So the no losses that apply to all those other ones?

It does in certain circumstances. Yeah, yeah. Great. Any thoughts on this? This is kind of the first section of code, just really outlining farm verification, commercial agriculture requirements. Does that make sense?

Great. Is there a clarification? And this isn't your language, but I just want to... On the thousand dollars, is there a clarification gross versus net?

There isn't.

I know we went over that.

Yeah, there isn't. Which works out if you're a firm. Yeah. Yeah, the schedule F is actually fairly simple. It's a pretty, I think it's two pages. Don't change it. I'm trying. Great. This is actually a really great point, Commissioner Burke, to your point and Commissioner O'Leary to that point as well. This is code. This is going into Pierce County Code. This is development regulations. Something that I know personally, and I know you do as well, Chair, is that oftentimes farmers may struggle to really understand the nuances of the legal pieces of land use code, right? So a big piece of this project work will be to develop something similar to the Washington Department of Agriculture's Green Book, but it's a guidebook on how to operate under the regulatory guidelines that are in place. So there are some nuances in here that might be, well, what does this exactly mean? And do I have to have gross or net, which is a really good point. Those The Pierce County Code isn't the best place for those types of comments to live. So the intent is to actually have a guidebook that comes along with this once the code is through the legislative process, whatever it ends up. Just a call out. I actually believe, now that I think about it, I believe the Pierce County Council, when they reviewed this last year, there was a specific request to have a guidebook as well. So I'm sure they'll be expecting that. We plan on doing it. Great. With that, I'll move to the levels. So we have the commercial farm. activity is verified we have you know farm verification methods you're farming again i want to make a point but you don't have to to come and tell us anything yet if you want to start a farm stand you can start a farm stand um if there is a complaint code enforcement case is open that is when that verification would come in and commissioner burke to your point about that land use percentage That's why we want to make sure that that level is maintained so that if a code enforcement case or something along those lines were to come up, we have that clear delineation of that percentage. Levels one and two also do not require any preemptive engagement with the county at that point. These are meant for your smaller really lower impact farming and agritourism operations. So level one, I will walk through just again kind of the highlights here. Level one and level two are very, very similar. Level two has a acreage requirement of two acres minimum for engaging in that. Level one does not. So you could be a fairly small operation. You could have a lot of chickens in your backyard and you could sell those eggs if you would like to under the regulations of agritourism as a level one operator. Additionally, you could bring educational tours. You could have kind of the smaller you pick. And I actually just noticed that we did not remove small you picks. I'm going to pull that out. It's a point of contention from the last agriculture advisory. It was a recommendation. But if somebody wanted to come out and pick blueberries, for example, on a smaller property, there should be an allowance for that. Within this, again, the kind of disentangle from other permits and from other land use regulations, there is a limit of 150 persons at any one time. This is... Trying to set it in accordance with event permitting standards, where that's the limit. If you're having 150 people, you are now subject to the temporary event code, which is under 18A40. So by keeping you under that, you're not getting into the event code requirements. Some call-outs here on having parking maintained and not impeding public rights of way. There are, if there is a call out specifically here and in level two, that if there are major traffic demands, and this is something that we will most surely discuss here in a moment, moving that to us, moving that to be subject to a level three agritourism code, so that we have a site plan, which I'll talk about in a moment as well. Amplified sound is allowed, but under the use of normal residential property. So again, we're trying to pull in other pieces of code to say, look, you can do agritourism on really any size of property as long as you've got the agriculture there. And this is being disentangled from other permits and other sections of code. We also call out if you would like to build a farm stand or another structure, for example, that there are potentially other permits that you would be beholden to for that. However, if you don't want to get into permitting of buildings or get into other permitting, there's a call out here that In Pierce County Code, Title 17C, there is exemption for agricultural buildings already in the code. It is basically a 600 square foot limit. So you can build, in essence, a pole barn or, you know, a really small pole. Okay, not a bullet barn, but a very small shed, for example. That could also apply to farm stands. For example, if you'd like to have a roadside farm stand, great. Make sure that it's under the limits for agricultural building use exception. And that is level one. While we're here, I'll talk to you.

Oh, please. That, if I remember the code correctly, that does not allow any housing component

No, it doesn't.

Yeah, just from a safety standpoint.

It is very much a basic shed for the most part. That is what the code is intended. So if you're building a quick wooden shed for housing of services or supplies, something like that on your property, that is what that is intended to do. We also have references to if you want to do temporary structures, they need to apply to other permitting compliance. That is, again, kind of pointing back to 18A40, which is the temporary event code. So if you do want to get bigger, absolutely can, but you're probably going to be beholden to other different code sections at that point as well. Just because they're so related, I'm going to jump into level two as well. Level two, again, very, very similar. This is looking more at the kind of professional level farms. Not to say that level one can't be a professional farm, but as a distinction here. This was something that came up with a acreage minimum of two acres. This is actually kind of based on old code, which said you can do agritourism as long as you've got a couple of acres. This ties into the use tables as well. I can talk about those in a minute. But there is a call out here that's really the main difference between level one and level two is that level two is intended to be a little bit bigger, a little more a little more higher impact stuff. So potentially a farm store as opposed to a farm stand could be allowed. Yucca tree farms, bigger, more impactful activities need a little bit more size. There's some fairly standard language here about how is a site eligible? Is that two acres? If there's a street that goes through that, that's fairly standard language. Let's say, you know, as long as lots are contiguous, those count as well. And with the director interpretation piece too. And then everything else is pretty much the same there. Yep. Except for overnight accommodations. So for level two, that's the other main difference between level one, level two, and level three. For level two, overnight accommodations are allowed, but they are pursuant to the county regulations on bed and breakfast and short-term vacation rental use types. This is a piece that needs a little further, I'll use a technical term to get this, you know, nailed down from a legalese standpoint. But the intent here is to say that level one, we're talking really low impact. Nobody's coming in and staying on your property. Level two, there are avenues for that. But they are, again, you know, based on a lot of farmer feedback was there's other sections of code. Let those other sections of code be relevant here. So that's what we intended to do with this. And then this was, nurseries is a specific call out. This is actually from current Pierce County code on agritourism. It's really the main chunk of the current code, oddly enough. And some feedback I've received from folks that are running nurseries is that this needs to still be in here so that they're code compliant. There's not an agritourism, a permit or anything like that for these now. So they wanted to make sure that they were still in the level two or below use. But this is actually word for word copied from that section I, subsection I, word for word copied from current code. I'll take a pause there. That's the first two levels. So again, trying to keep it minimal on the requirements of a farm because we're talking lower impact, smaller farms. Level three is when we start talking to the wineries that may wanna have events or the larger uses. Specifically call out, and these are just examples, not in any way in the only thing that you can do, but common activities in level three would be your farm festivals, your small wineries and breweries and more high capacity seasonal events, your large pumpkin patches, things of that nature. And here, this is where we actually do have a precursory check. So again, no permit proposed at this time, but having a a site plan put together. The details of that and how to put that together would be a really big piece of the guidebook that I mentioned earlier. It is not intended to be overly difficult to put together, but it is intended to give the county some sort of Some sort of visual check on what what you're trying to do and for the county to be able to provide guidance and say, well, it looks like you're going to have a lot here. Have you thought about maybe having a little traffic control or things of that nature. For level three, just because these are higher impact activities. This is going to be a minimum of 10 acre. lot size or site size again. Those can be multiple eligible lots, as long as they're contiguous and establish lot lines. The site plan is probably the big piece of this. And again, I just want to be very, very clear. This is very, very draft. So this is coming out of conversations we've had with the committee. There will be plenty of, what was that technical term? I used. We'll get to that later. But the general outline for what a site plan would include is outlined here. So where are you having the activities? What are those activities and where they plan to be on your site? What are the agricultural operation locations? So basically, where's the farming piece and where do you want the agritourism piece to go? Those can be the same. They can be overlaid on each other. For example, a corn maze, you know, you're growing the thing and then people are walking through the thing. So those are, you know, those would be laid on top of each other, but just having some sort of, some sort of notation of where things are occurring. Hours for operation, just generally speaking, so that we can have an understanding of is this a late night? Is this a, gorge show that's running until midnight or is this, you know, an afternoon berry picking activity. Then parking locations. So again, just generally showing where your ingress, egress is. Here's where we intend to have parking. A general capacity calculation. This is something that we've discussed quite a bit. I would like to take this once this goes into interagency review, IDT review. Definitely something that we intend to hash out with the Office of the County Engineer and understand how best to provide that in either the code or in the guidebook itself. The general understanding here is Are you thinking about parking management? And are you thinking about traffic management? And are you thinking about the potential impacts that an activity could have on the infrastructure of the area? That is not to say, that is not to preclude anyone from doing those things, but just to say, where's your ingress? Where's your egress? How are you looking at parking? So general information here. And we do call out encouraged shared transportation options. So it would be lovely for farms and ranches that are doing things like this to encourage carpooling, for example. Something that in an original draft was part of the site plan, but obviously the rural transportation is oftentimes difficult. So it became more of an encouraged element of the code. um impervious surface we call out in the site plan as well to say um uh impervious services are really only permitted under the current zoning of the cockpit so what is your what is the impervious service calculations for the current zoning you're allowed to build up to that um and you can call that out in the code. And then likewise, any structures that may be put in place for agritourism, those need to be designated in the agritourism site plan as well. Are you building a haunted house, big haunted house structure? It would be helpful to know that in the site plan as well. And noise control, this ties into Title 8, which is not necessarily our section of code, but 876, which is just the noise pollution control chapter of code. In that chapter, if you're doing big amplification sound, there are some regulatory checks that go into that. Here it's just provide us a description. And so if staff sees that, oh, you're doing large, you know, large speaker systems, we could potentially give some more input on the noise pollution controls regulations there. That is what the site plan is. So that's the site plan. There's parking, parking, traffic, yes, Commissioner Burt.

I have a question about the site plan. I heard what the chair said about burdening these birds with things with more stuff. But under the site plan, for example, allows developed campgrounds primarily high capacity seasonal events. Now, the site plan really covers impact. Yes. And I don't know if this is appropriate to go into site plan, but what about risks to the attendees? For example, I would consider something like wildfire, extreme heat, or flooding. Two of the projects on engagement events were canceled in December 2025 plus.

You're absolutely right.

So as part of the site plan, is there a potential fire risk or something that we need to do if fire develops. I know on the west side, we're less likely than the east side, but we're seeing what's going on in Spain and France right now. Also, shade and water for large gatherings if we have a heat event. And then also flood hazard locations with evacuation routing. I mean, when we look at the site plan, should we include things like that? Is there any wildfire risk? Is there any risk for heat events? Is there any risk for flooding? And I don't want to really burden them with that, but is it something we should consider? That's a question I have.

That's an excellent point, Commissioner. Thank you. Sorry, I'm thinking of that question in two separate parts. Should the site plan include a risk assessment of some portion? And then within that, should you include TAB, Mark McIntyre:" Actually three parts, now that I say this out loud second part being within that should you include like any mitigation for those risks within the site plan.

TAB, Mark McIntyre:" or like. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" A case of a flood.

TAB, Mark McIntyre:" Right what's your escape route yeah exactly. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" that's a really great point something that did come up briefly in in subcommittee discussions. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" That is. TAB, Mark McIntyre:" um. It is something that it's towing the line of what's important in a site plan and what's burdensome to a farm owner to put together. But I personally think it's a really great call out and something that we could potentially include in the site plan. We could bring that back to the Agricultural Commission too and see their thoughts on it as well. It came up in the subcommittee, but it hasn't been discussed fully in the commission yet. I personally think it's a worthwhile discussion for that. The other piece of that, the third piece that I was thinking of is liability. That's something that we've discussed quite thoroughly.

Right. I mean, the insurance that covers the event, they ask those same questions given the climate acts we're seeing around the world right now.

Liability is... exceptionally tricky in the agritourism space because inviting people to a farm, a working farm in particular, just assumes a lot of risk. There are You know, a lot of heavy machinery on a lot of these farms and the state has some some guidance on liability part of that Washington Department of Commerce report actually discusses it at length. And does provide some recommendations. In talking with stakeholders and with some advisory bodies and Department of Commerce, it did not seem that the county was the right avenue for liability discussions and kind of managing that. But I... agree that there should be some level of that in the guidebook. Like, here's how you manage liability. I don't think it necessarily lives in the code. That said, I do think there's avenue for risk management and emergency management within the site plan. I think that's a worthwhile addition. It's an excellent call out.

Thank you. As far as the liability goes, I would strongly agree with you. falls upon the individual landowner and operator to assess their own liability. I think engaging the county to make some kind of a requirement or limitation, I just think there's too many variables there.

It's a very difficult, tricky conversation.

Justin, what about odor? There was just an I lived in a place in Rural Coast County where across the street there was a 300-acre dairy. And on our title report, there is a cloud that went over our property that said that this area is susceptible to odor from a sprayed manure. We looked at the pastures and things like that. So I was just curious if there's anything in this document that covers odor because an acre and a half, you could have almost unlimited amount of animals. And some of these properties are R10, for example, is located in areas that have, you know, there's one that I know of has commercial development all around it. And having a pig farm or something like that there might be something that would be challenging. An agritourism business where, you know, people come out of the restaurant and kind of pet a pig or something, you know.

Yeah. Did not get into that, but I'll give you the readout. discussed, but do not want to address it for a couple of reasons. That would typically just be with the agricultural use of the property. So agritourism, allowing somebody out there, if you're going to a pig farm or a petting zoo, there is going to be smells at a petting zoo. I don't mean to laugh, but you know. And getting into regulatory of the odor of that is not the avenue of agritourism. That would be more in just the agricultural zoning of the property, which we're not addressing. The other piece of that, the interesting part of your comment there, for me, I should say, is that That's an issue we've seen from non-farm agritourism operators, and I'm carefully choosing my words there, but we have heard many complaints from farmers, actual farmers that are farming, that somebody will come in, buy up some agricultural property, start a wedding venue, for example. This is an example. and then go complain to the farm that their farm smells. And so that's why we wanted to be very clear that there's a distinction that agritourism is agriculturally based. So if you were engaging in an agritourism venture, you're going to smell agriculture. And so we didn't want to address that explicitly in that.

part of our code and that element, which we have also looked at briefly and maybe need to revisit.

Yeah, that's a great point, Chair. Right to farm is codified state law. You have the right to farm, and if you are farming, you have the right to all the things that come along with the farm within the general scope of farming. that is not something that we're addressing in this scope.

So let me understand this a little bit better. You have, let's say, a 10-day-per-field. You hay that every year, and you add some economic value from the hay, maybe $1,000 or $2,000. And then you also had a few trees on the perimeter of the property. You decided that, hey, it's wintertime. Let's sell some Christmas trees. So you bring a bunch. Was that agritourism? Sure. Even though you don't grow the Christmas trees, you still...

are marketing Christmas trees.

I mean, if they're on your property and, and actually that's a good point of clarification.

So you're bringing trees, Christmas trees on my property. You're bringing in a bunch of 300 trees.

Got you. Um, it is agriculturally based. Um, we do have call outs in here that they should be, the product sold should be regional. Um, So that is the the piece there that if you're maybe if you're talking to your neighbor. Joe Larry, for example, if you haven't. We have a price list. That's what I was.

selling them in general patients.

Yeah. You could as long as the idea is, as long as it's a regional agricultural product. Sure, um, The hope is that that's not really intent of agritourism. And we don't see that happening. And I haven't seen that in any use cases that I've looked at. But technically, yeah, it could happen. Usually, where you see added products and regional products like that, it's the example I use frequently is if you're a cattle rancher and you're selling beef, you're producing beef, and you want to sell a hamburger from your beef. Well, are you buying, are you making the buns? Are you growing the lettuce? Are you growing the tomato? Are you doing the cheese? Like, no, you're buying these things as well. So we wanted to keep it as a regional scale as possible, but obviously there are some exceptions to the rule. Is that a yes? Yes. Okay, good. Yep.

So would there be any limitations on these regional products that are sold? Say you have a nursery and all the products are brought, are grown elsewhere, but they could be brought to the site and then they could establish a commercial nursery?

No, if it's... If they were not doing, because the agricultural use has to be the primary use of the property. So if they're just using it as a storing, as a selling place, selling location, then now your use on that property is now a commercial use. It's not an agricultural use. So in the example that Commissioner Sonsmo provided, yes, that would work because you're paying it, you're doing... Like the primary use of that property is agriculture, but in the example where you're not using that.

Mostly focusing on the products that are being sold. So say the primary use of the property is ag, racing livestock or whatever, but also they would like to set up a commercial nursery. Seems like that falls into it. whole different category. I can see where, yes, the products are grown on site and maybe there's a percentage of those that are brought in to supplement the products that are being sold. Seems like there should be some limitation on that.

That is an interesting call out. I am looking, I'm sorry, let me find the specific language because I know we call it out in here.

You just want to take those trees and plant them. Leave them in the pots but just put them in the ground.

You're growing them? This is for level one and level two. Excuse me. Level one and level two. Agricultural products that are produced primarily on-site are allowed, and then value-added products related to the agricultural production are also permitted. There's 2E or 3G, both of those, call that out. And that's, to your point, I think that's... That's as far down that rabbit hole as we've intended to go with this code draft to just say, if you're selling ag products, they should be related to the ag products that you're producing on site. So if you're doing animal husbandry and then you want to buy a bunch of Christmas trees, there should be some sort of nexus between the product that you're selling and the agricultural production that you're producing. So no, it wouldn't be to your example.

I'm just wondering if there's examples out there where there has been concerns by surrounding neighbors.

Yes.

That all of a sudden it become a commercial retail site. That has been an issue that we have that the county has heard numerous times and I know of numerous complaints.

Can we put some focus on that? How we can best address that? Yes, that is a good call. Another concern that I had was focusing on the accommodations, mostly the camping. It wasn't like there was any limitations on that. So throughout the county campgrounds, go through somewhat of a rigorous review process. Yes. But here they're just allowed outright because it's SAG?

No. For level one, none is allowed. For level two, well, unless they were allowed under the residential use, depending on your zone. But for level two, it's only... Any overnight accommodations would be pursuant to the bed and breakfast and short-term vacation rental code. Level 3 developed campgrounds are indeed allowed. And I'm getting to that. To the site plan review. Yes. So this section is up now for any built accommodations. Those will follow the lodging use type. Any built accommodations would be qualified as a lodging use, or qualified subject to lodging use. And then developed campgrounds would also be subject to impervious surface calculations, all the other pieces that go into developed campgrounds. for level three primitive campaign so if you're just throwing a tent up um that is not beholden to any other uh extraneous regulation at that point it is something that has been discussed a lot i i would be happy to yeah i'm concerned that there's no limitations clearly you know that it's it's an administrator review um public notice may not be remarked

the public won't have an opportunity to be involved with that concern that they may have with the outside public camping there and defining, again, you know, what is a campground, preparation of a campsite, use of a campsite.

I think that's a great point.

Throughout the rest of the county, it seems that there's quite a bit of concern about campgrounds being developed in the It requires a very rigorous review process, so I've got a concern with that.

That's a great call. Thank you. I appreciate it. This one's a tricky one because a lot of firms use IPCAMP and things of that nature as just a quick, come and set up a tent.

Without any review.

Without any review or anything like that. So we wanted to call that out in the code and put that in. So maybe think about some limitations. I think that's great feedback. Thank you, Commissioner.

I think the limitations on time, how long can they be set up and limitations that, for example, I mean, is it just for this event or is it during the whole season? And the danger is that We see homelessness is still here. That could be easily a gateway to people who don't have places to stay or residence.

That's a great point, Commissioner, as well. Yeah, this is a tricky one. This is a tricky one.

Within these levels does not require on-site, the resident to be on-site. Is that correct? So the owner of the property doesn't necessarily have to be there if there's a campground? No. So there's no oversight potentially?

No, potentially no. Yeah. I think this is a worthwhile point.

Yeah. The question of oversight is, I think, critical here.

Yeah. Yeah. That is really great.

You're talking about a barn door that could potentially be abused. Yeah.

This is a really great point.

People could call the ag police. Put them in permanent prison.

Thank you. I appreciate that. That's a good discussion. With that, I just want to point out that's Level three, the last piece here, the fifth section that I called out earlier is just the call out to educational field trips. I'm saying that's encouraged, that's not beholden to other stuff here. If you're doing a school field trip, great, please, more of that. That is the call out there specifically. So anyway, I would be happy to take other comments. If you have other sections of code you'd like to jump around, happy to do that. This is your time.

One thing I just want to reiterate is that the Ag Commission is heavily engaged in this. We do have a special session on August 12th. If anybody wants to attend that, that's certainly something, an option together with our regular Ag meeting the end of August. This is a livelihood issue for the farmers in Pierce County. together with a necessity to get this right. So there's going to be additional modifications to this for the Planning Commission to look at. And I think I would encourage everybody's engagement at whatever level you have time.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Chair. I will jump back to the presentation really briefly. Before I do that, thank you all very much. appreciate the discussion and the thoughts. A couple of these things I think are in particular the developed campgrounds, the risk and emergency management I think are good fixes that I'm glad that we heard about today because we'll get to bring this back to you and you can give us further review on that. And to Chair O'Leary's point, frankly this is really hard because it's a balancing of managing what can be pretty disastrous impacts on other neighbors and infrastructure and things of that nature with the fact that the county and the county agricultural community does need support. And it's very hard to be a farmer, frankly, right now. So it's a bit of a balancing act. So I really do genuinely appreciate the feedback here. It's very helpful. Very briefly, because I think we can almost get a word. You've got 20 minutes before we're good. This is the next steps timeline. So this went to the Agritourism Subcommittee in June, well, in May, June, and July. Today is the study session for Planning Commission for this body. We hope is to incorporate your feedback as well as feedback from the Ag Commission into a V4 and begin the interagency, the interdepartmental review process in August, like may not finish in August, maybe early September, but we hope to have that review done as well as a legal review. We'd like to do a final round of engagement, just a couple of events. Again, I'm very highly focused on farmers to say, okay, we've talked about this a lot. Here's what we came up with just as the last engagement there. Then it will come back to the, it is planned at least at this point, to come back to the Agriculture Advisory Commission shortly before it comes back to this body. So the Planning Commission briefing is planned for September 1st. And by October, when the hearing is tentatively scheduled, should also hopefully have a recommendation from the Agricultural Advisory Commission and any other notes from that meeting. So there will be plenty of opportunity to review. And then the game plan right now is to get this up to legislative process with county council by the end of the year, so November. That's the game plan. With that, thank you very much. I generally appreciate it. If you have any other comments, I'll take them now. Otherwise. Thank you very much, Justin.

Thank you. So with that, we will close the agritourism section. We're going to move on to other business. We will have the election as part of this. But prior to that, is there any other business that any of the commissioners have that they want to bring up? Good. Okay, so let's move on to the election. We'll start with Vice Chair. I believe you had a nominee.

I would like to nominate Chris Carnes for Vice Chair. I accept the nomination.

Any other nominations for Vice Chair? Okay, with that, Chris, you accept the nomination. All right, well, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Congratulations. Thank you. And now we'll open nominations for secretary. Nominations for secretary. Bob Wyman, secretary.

This is my first day. Welcome. I accept.

Any other nominations?

All in favor of Bob Wyman for secretary, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Congratulations. Thanks, Bob. We are now officially restocked. And thank you for being willing to take on the responsibility. Appreciate that. No other good in the order? Other business, I should say?

I just want to remind members that our next meeting in August will have quite a few items, so please come prepared for that.

And you'll be getting as many of those out to us ahead of time so we can do our homework?

Yes. Usually we provide these materials about a week ahead of time. Anything earlier than that we can try because, again, there are a lot of agenda items, but it's also staff is working very hard to finalize those for you. So we'll see what we can.

Appreciate that, Sarah. Thank you. With that, thanks, everybody. We are adjourned.

Good job. Thank you.