Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. We'll call the August meeting of the Pierce County Planning Commission to order. And before we get started, I just wanted to read a disclaimer. It says that I would like to remind everybody that the Planning Commission is principally an advisory board to the Pierce County Council. Actions taken by the Planning Commission are almost all agenda items that will be forwarded to the County Council as a recommendation for its consideration and final action. With that, Sarah, would you please call the roll?

Yes. Chair O'Leary?

Here.

Commissioner Sanzima?

Yeah.

Commissioner Lewis? It's not online yet. Commissioner Starr? Oh, she is in the audience. Let me bring her over to . One moment. Commissioner Starr?

Here.

Thank you. Commissioner Burke? Here. Commissioner Anderson? Here. Vice Chair Carnes?

Here.

And Secretary Wedeman?

Here.

Thank you. You have a quorum.

Great. Thank you, Sarah. With that, I'll entertain a motion to approve the minutes from our last meeting. So moved.

I second.

It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll approve the minutes. Thank you very much.

We need to do a vote.

Oh, I'm sorry. I apologize. All in favor of improvement in the minutes? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstained? Thank you. Staff updates, Sarah?

Good morning. We have the opportunity to spend a few minutes with you before your very, very busy meeting today. We'll get to hear about the Transportation Improvement Program, Transportation Improvement Program, sewer plan, as well as multi-unit housing and essential transit facilities. So I will keep my comments very brief today. Actually moving on to the real part of the agenda. One update, battery energy storage systems that was with this body now months ago back in the early spring is going to be back with Council Committee on August 31st, so next Monday. A lot of work has been done to clean that package up and a lot more work has been done on engagement, working with environmental groups, industry, as well as safety and fire folks, just to make sure that we've got that all buttoned up. So they'll be back at committee next Monday. I think that's the last outstanding thing that has come out of this body and moved its way to council. We also will have a packed agenda coming for you in September. There's a lot going on. So in addition to things you're hearing about now, we'll also bring back agritourism next time around a year ago or so. We did some definitions for agritourism and now comes the hard part of thinking about what goes where. So Justin Patterson will be back next month to talk with you about that topic. And then last thing for me, we are working very hard to figure out a better room for you all to have this meeting in. I think for those of you physically in the room, five is about as many of you as we can fit right here. So we're trying to find a place where eventually all nine of you could fit comfortably. That is proving to be a little bit difficult. So we have a little bit of exploring to do both in terms of Tacoma facilities and University of Washington Tacoma facilities. But we're trying to get an update as we might be more convivial than this.

Thank you. Any questions? You could just do a two-tier system. You could put a scout there and we could sit in front. That'd work. Being the short guy. Not a thought of it. I'd go down.

But I'll let you carry on with your agenda. Thank you. Thank you very much. With that, we'll move on to agenda item five, which is the transportation improvement program and the 14 year ferry program.

Good morning, Planning Commission. I don't know that this is on. I don't think it's on. I don't think it's on. I don't like to come from a seated spot. You better stand by my feet.

Perfect, good.

OK. We'll adapt and overcome.

Good morning.

Leticia Neal, County Engineer for Pierce County, and I'm pleased to present to you today our draft Transportation Improvement Program for the years 2027 through 2032. Clint Ritter, the Transportation Improvement Manager, is with me today as well to help answer any questions that you may have, but let's go ahead and get right into the presentation. If our agenda today we have a. It looks just a little while to get through with some background on the program itself has patient from the program. It's a little bit of time on a new prioritization scheme.

I don't think that's working. And it's mainly for the people online that I'm concerned.

Let me turn it back up because the static feedback is what's the problem.

Oh, this will be resolved by your station.

Thanks for being with us, Sarah.

If need be, I'm not going to be saying anything. Just welcome to this.

I think that's just an issue with the feedback cables. The audio tends to be an issue. They're working now, but there's a little bit of feedback. So if that gets too noisy, we'll have to adjust.

All right. We'll try again. Here we go. Okay. Agenda items program back. I'm on the new prioritization scheme that we have developed starting for this year. and then updates to the program itself, which I'm sure you'll be very interested in. So first and foremost is the background. As you may be aware, the Investigation Improvement Program is required by state law and it has to be updated on an annual basis. A lot of the requirements in the state law are very programmatic in nature, talking about annual programs, expenditures, revenues, balanced budget, those types of things. But in general, we are trying to cover all the different county road projects, capital improvement programs that we might anticipate doing in the next six years with realistic limits put on it in terms of resources and staffing. And so our transportation program can include signalization projects, bridge projects, environmental projects, safety projects, anything that affects our roadway transportation network within the county. Also note that the state law does require this from the fourth planning commission each year for review and recommendation to the full council. So our transportation improvement program or TIP as we refer to it has a lot of different elements to it and there's a lot of outside resources that we pull from to compile all this information. So we're looking at input from our maintenance and operations crew, the individuals who are out there on the streets every day doing work, keeping our roadways safe and open to the public. We're also looking at plans we've developed internally by staff, our Vision Zero Action Plan, the comprehensive plan. Our bridge inspectors go out and review and inspect all of the county's 160 bridges, and we rely on that bridge report. determine what type of bridge projects we need to do. So there's a lot of different elements that we pulled from in putting together the annual transportation improvement program. There's also executive strategic priorities to be kept in mind when we're putting together the program. Obviously, there are many, many, many more needs in the county than we can actually do in any given year. So we really try to earmark those projects that really represent the true needs of the county and the true priorities of the county. And that's to a large extent determined by the executive and his documented strategic priorities right now include reliable, safe, and accessible infrastructure as one of the top priorities, livable communities, and clean and sustainable environment. There are also priorities regarding accountability and good governance, which this is definitely part of. tribal partnerships and regional leadership. So all of those have been taken into account as well as we shuffle through the many, many demands and needs of . It's always a good opportunity to remind everybody that we have a huge amount of need with a very finite pool of funding and staffing resources available. So the graphic that you see on the screen is an accounting from the last six years. of the budget that's allocated in the TIP, the actual amount of funds that we utilize or amount of work that we've delivered, and our FTEs, our number of employees. So we have a very stable workforce with a certain number of people that has not really changed in 10 years. And so to a large extent, you can see that those blue bars, the amount of work that you deliver on each year stays pretty stable as well. There are only so many hours in a day, and there's only so much that a staff of a certain number of people can deliver. So to speak to the actual projects in the group itself, this will be very confusing to... Yes, sir?

Just would you prefer that we hold questions till the end or do you want us to go through it?

It's up to you entirely.

I know it's a big one, so go ahead. Okay. Go ahead.

Can we go back to the last question? So are these year of expenditure numbers or are these fixed year?

These are budget numbers. So the green is the budget numbers each year and the blue is the amount of expenditures. each year, specific to the projects identified in the TIP. Thank you.

So, Leticia, I have a question regarding that. Why would you say that relative to the FTEs, which is at a higher level than the total delivered bar chart showing, why are we short? If this is accurate, The way I'm seeing this, and correct me if I'm wrong, we had adequate budget to do more. We had FTE line here that indicates we could have possibly done more. Why is the delivery short by the bar?

The line for the FTEs is not relevant to the budget or total delivered. We're just trying to present two pieces of data on one graphic. So the red line is just simply showing you a stable number of people. It's not relative to the other numbers. So on the right-hand side, you can see FTEs, and we're right around 138 FTEs in our division that is delivering projects, just showing that there is a stable workforce that hasn't really fluctuated. We haven't been allocated a lot more staff, but also we haven't lost a lot of staff either. So it's really not relative to that there's a gap. It's not representing a gap at all. The green and the blue bars, those should be compared to each other because that reflects the fact that we often have more funding allocated than we're actually able to expend with the number of staff that we have. But I'm sorry if there's a little confusion there. It's not that we have a gap between staffing levels. and the other information shown. We're just trying to show .

And I appreciate the explanation, but I'm still a little confused if that's accurate. What that tells me when I look at this is that we have adequate funding to do more, we're delivering less, and we have a stable workforce that maybe needs to be increased because we have adequate funding to potentially bring on more FTEs, which would probably equate to a higher level of delivery.

Yes. Yes, sir. That is correct. Keep in mind that it's not a simplistic one-to-one ratio in any form of the imagination. You also have to recognize that the regulatory climate has become much more complicated. Environmental permitting takes a lot longer and is a lot more costly than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Also, as I like to tell staff all the time, there are no simple projects anymore. All projects are going to take extensive amounts of utility coordination, probably negotiation of property owners for property rights. And all of that makes projects more and more expensive each year. So it's not a direct ratio, but yes, your conclusion is accurate. We have more funding than we can spend with the staff we have, so we could do more projects if we had more staff.

And again, I don't want to take a lot of our time here, but this is really important and I think a core issue. If there are going to be recommendations made in relationship to this, might you consider a recommendation of adding additional staff to increase delivery relative to the budget?

Of course.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you for that last several paragraphs before. That's reality. It is reality. Yeah. Critical areas have become more difficult just last year.

Yes. Yes. Every year it seems that there are more barriers put in front of us to overcome to actually see a conclusion.

So happy to hear you acknowledge that.

All right. So looking at the projects in the Transportation Improvement Program, It's a lot of information presented for each project, so I want to walk you through the best way to read this information, be able to get what you need to know out of the printed materials. So each project has a block graphic shown. The gray bar across the top is going to give you the name of the project and the CRP number. CRP stands for Kennedy Road Project, and that's how we track all of our data. Staff will quite often refer to CRP whatever. And we just know what those numbers represent. It'll also indicate to you where you can find the location of this project in the maps that are included in the TIP book. In this particular case, this project is also being identified as the Vision Zero or Safety Project. In the block of information directly below the gray bar is a lot of the logistical data about the project. which district it's in, whether it's fully funded or not, what work elements are included, and most importantly to you and to many individuals who look at this document is the scope listed over on the right-hand side. This is a very short, very small area, so it's not like we can get into a lot of details, but it gives you a broad idea of what it is we're intending to do at this project. At 45th Avenue East or 203th Street, that is. We will be constructing a single lane roundabout with the associated sidewalk elimination and storm drainage improvements. Sounds pretty easy, right? There's a lot of other things that are involved in the scope, but that's a very simplistic view of what this project includes. Then in the table below is really into the funding details, the nitty gritty details of how we're paying for this project. So the phase column on the left-hand side indicates preliminary engineering or PE, final engineering or FE, Right-of-way, abbreviated with ROW, that's actually acquisitions of temporary or permanent property rights that we may need for the project. And construction is abbreviated with CON. The source column tells you where the money is coming from. In this particular case, we have a mixture of federal and local funds. We are very, very successful each year in obtaining state and federal grants to supplement county road funds. on these types of projects. In this particular case, we were successful in obtaining a federal grant for both preliminary engineering and construction. You can see it listed in both rows. The other columns are telling you what we've previously spent and what we're planning to spend on a per year basis in which phase and where the money is coming from. So for example, looking ahead to the year 2028, We anticipate that we'll be doing final engineering at that time and acquiring the property rights that we need. The final engineering will be paid for with the federal grant we've received in the amount of $300,000 or $700,000. And the property rights that we'll need will be using local funds, traffic impact fees to acquire in the anticipated amount of $1.2 million. And so in 2028, we're anticipating spending and a combination of local and federal funds, a little over $1.5 million. And of course, over on the far right-hand side is the six-year total. We are required by state law to be presenting to you a six-year plan.

Okay? So... The question, if these are projects that are relatively current, are the engineering drawings, are the civil drawings online,

If we have drawings online, yes. Yes. In this particular case, as you can see, we have prior expenditures that may be to a point where we have some very draft drawings. We'll put them online as soon as we feel that there are, you know, something relevant there for the public to look at. But you have to keep in mind where we're at in the project. If we just started a project, there would be nothing online except, hey, we're starting a project.

Sure, sure. Sure, yeah. I was I was just to some but that you have the construction documents and you're ready for for action will be available prior to moving dirt.

Yes, thanks for things up on our page since we're having available public records environmental studies all those types of things we get on the website as soon as we can.

So a quick question you made a comment about scheduling with other agencies and and how we interface or need to interface. And I've experienced that through my private sector career, that that seems to be a real challenge in many ways, not necessarily for the county, but just from my outside perspective looking in. How does that work when you're putting your master schedule together, when you're trying to coordinate with other agencies, their funding schedule, their priorities. How do you prioritize so that the taxpayers' money gets spent in the most efficient way so we're not putting in an improvement and coming back and tearing it up with another agency, well, 24 months later?

Absolutely. That's a great question. And it's certainly something that we are constantly working on because you're right, that's not a good use of taxpayer dollars at all. So the coordination effort starts very early in the design process and it continues throughout the design. We coordinate with utility companies, we coordinate with our neighboring jurisdictions, we coordinate with regulatory agencies, and quite often there is competing needs and demands. So we do our best to... successfully coordinate and make sure that we are not interacting negatively with each other. It doesn't make any sense for us to do a big improvement right now on Highway 7 if we know Walsh is going to do it there. So we will coordinate and we'll be flexible as much as we can. We also have to keep in mind where the money is coming from. If we have grant funding, quite often that comes with timing requirements. You must spend by, you must move on to the next phase by. So we have to keep that in mind as well. There's a lot of coordination and communication that's necessary for a successful project.

That's part of what the team does. Is there a recommendation that can be made going forward that can improve that? And you don't have to answer it right now, but if there's something that your department could think about as far as a recommendation to try to make it better, try to make it more efficient and more cohesive, especially with the agencies or the departments within Pierce County that we have a little bit more control over.

Absolutely. That's a great question. We'll certainly put some time and thought into that. I can tell you that we have a departmental effort underway right now to do a lot more of that coordination and map some of our projects in our different divisions together so we can really see what different work is being proposed at different times in the county that we're in control of. We're such a large organization that sometimes we run awry even of each other. much less outside agencies. So that's a departmental priority that we're working on right now. But I think that's a really interesting idea. And we'll get back to you if we can come up with some thoughts on a recommendation for you.

Thank you.

A couple of times we do have a page for all of our projects. We also have a web page for the tip itself. And the draft can be found there. If you want to look at it online and it will be reposted as adopted. Discussions and have been adopted, which doesn't do occur by me. So now moving on to tip prioritization. This has been a huge effort this year that we've undertaken. just to really go through and reassess and rework our prioritization scheme for the projects. We have literally hundreds, if not thousands of projects throughout the county and they can't all be accomplished even in a six year program. So how do you evaluate which ones should be prioritized and which ones should be funded first? It's always a dilemma and always an ongoing argument. So we've put together a new prioritization scheme, which includes these different metrics. Again, we're trying to reflect accurately the priorities that have been adopted by our county council and have been communicated by our executive. And we put together a scoring and rationale for that scoring to try to sort through all the different demands that are out there. Very simplistically, we have a score of 100, and higher-scored projects are a higher priority to be funded and completed. All projects that are currently already going forward with construction next year, they were exempt from this prioritization effort. We're too far down that path, and a lot of cases have a lot of other outside priorities. Funding involved in those projects, and it didn't make sense to go through this effort with projects that are already at that construction point. But all projects that are under design went through this particular scoring methodology. So the criteria for scoring, as there are eight of them, safety is one of the highest priorities of the county. It always has been and always will be, in my opinion. This particular criteria is speaking specifically to the high-income, high-risk locations identified in our adopted Vision Zero Action Plan and those projects that are specifically identified in our Save Outs to School Plan. Preservation is all about making sure that we're adequately maintaining and preserving our existing infrastructure, our existing assets. It doesn't make any sense to invest in new if we're allowing the old to deteriorate past the point of no return. We also want to recognize the designated centers throughout the county, and that's about strengthening connections between those centers and is in alignment with our comprehensive plan. Active transportation is always a high demand of our citizens. They want to have more ways to get around the county. They want to have more ways to walk, bike, and roll onto transit. So active transportation is one of our scoring criteria. The environment becomes much more important every year with the number of regulations that are imposed on our projects. We want to make sure that we are adequately protecting and restoring those environmentally sensitive areas in the county. Community impact is all about equity and making sure that we're not investing more resources in other otherwise Maybe versus how this is that we invest resources in a way that acknowledges areas of the county that have historically received very low amounts of resources and improvements. Concurrency is a current state law that dictates that when a major arterial or railway system. gets above a maximum capacity. They're required to address that in some way, shape, or form. So that's one of our criteria. And then finally, funding and partnerships. The reality of the matter is if I can find somebody else who will give me money to build a project, that project's going to get a higher priority because I'm not having to utilize county road funds, which are a very limited resource. So Funding is really important, and partnerships with Canadian agencies and with our tribal partners is obviously a really important criteria to keep in mind.

Question? Yes. Where do we find the rubric for the Community Impact Index?

The Community Impact Index is online on the county's web page. I can certainly provide you with a link to that.

OK, good. Thank you. Absolutely. Awesome. One more question. Yes. Go ahead. Thank you. So in response to the concurrency criterion, state law allows for that to be defined from a multimodal perspective. Is that correct? Okay. I think one of the important things that I'm concerned about with this prioritization matrix is essentially because it's the first year that we're anticipating this. is that it remains in consistency with the comprehensive plan as much as possible. I hope that's also your goal as well. And looking at things from a strictly sort of general purpose vehicle capacity perspective on the county roads can result in increases in BMT and GHG, which are identified in a couple of the policies in the comprehensive plan to reduce. So it looks like we might be sort of at cross paths with that particular criterion if we don't incorporate vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emission reductions into these criteria at some point. that looks like we have some daylight. And I also bring this up because it's important from a Puget Sound Regional Council perspective as well, if the county wants to remain competitive for regional mobility grants. If we are not able to document that our prioritization matrix demonstrates that each of the projects, you know, meets the appropriate criteria from a PSRC policy perspective, then we may, you know, we may lose out, we may leave money on the table that we could potentially leverage. So those are my comments.

Thank you. You're absolutely on target. Like several paragraphs of stuff, I don't have to say now.

Okay. I just had a question about, you know, quantifying the, The active transportation. I'm not sure how you go about doing that when, how do you know how many people are riding bikes, the transit, how many you can use the bus numbers you can get and traffic counts are easy to, you know, you could put up to traffic counts on roads, but we really don't know how many people are using public transportation and the amount of resources that we're applying to that may be disproportionate to the number of people, unless you've already determined that. I don't know how you do that.

We look at it from a little different perspective, one of which is if you're in an urban area, the expectation of people living in an urban area is that there will be some of these amenities, much like in an incorporated city. But we also do have ways to look at whether there's a walking nexus in the area of a project, something that would attract walking, biking, rolling individuals to access. So for example, if you have a large neighborhood community that is within a block or something reasonable of a shopping center or a transit stop within a block of a medical facility, you can make some of those connections. Part of it isn't necessarily who is doing it, but who could be utilizing if they were built. So you're, you're in a way anticipating what's going to be happening in the future. If you provide these amenities, but you're right. We don't have absolute numbers of how many people out there are walking on every single block, every single street in the County. So we do have to make some assumptions and make some reasonable assumptions. And we based a lot of those on nexus of, of, of, activities that would draw those people, as well as priorities that are listed in the comp plan through PSRC, those types of things.

So is there an economic nexus? Is there a connection between how much the county is going to spend resources towards that compared to just what they might desire?

I'm not sure I understand.

Well, like I said, if it costs, you know, $30 to ride a bus or something like that. People just aren't doing it. They have alternative transportations, that kind of thing. I mean, we see empty buses all the time outside the urban growth boundary in particular. So it's just odd to me that there wouldn't be some kind of an economic analysis to find out if the number of of roads that we put bike lanes in, the number of buses we buy, the number of bus drivers we hire, those types of things, and the number of sidewalks that we put in to accommodate walkers, which you don't see many of either. But if we're spending way too much money for something that doesn't get used by the common folks,

That's always a concern. One of the reasons why we look so carefully at locations before we start investing in those types of active transportation. For example, you will see in the tip a significant number of safe rest of school projects. And those have been designed specifically in coordination with the school districts for their walking routes that school children are using and are recommended to utilize. So we know the need is there. We know the walkers are there and it's not a safe location. for them to walk right now. So we are correcting that deficiency. In addition, you might also see in the Transition Improvement Program a number of projects centered around the Pacific Lutheran University area. Obviously a huge area for walking as students go into and from different activities and dorms and things. Again, you can easily, just on any given day, go out there and just watch and see the number of people who are walking and biking and rolling in areas that do not have these types of amenities. So that is one of the aspects of prioritizing projects is identifying areas where the need is there. And there would be even greater usage if we actually provided amenities that made it safe for people to use that. But there isn't a really clear economic connection. That's one of the reasons why we have to prioritize and make some difficult decisions.

It's just, to me, it's like the handicap ramps. We spent millions of dollars everywhere. You could buy a wheelchair that's got four-wheel drive, you know. Someone's handicapped. I know it's a state deal.

It's actually federal law. I know.

I get that. It's the law.

It doesn't matter whether it makes sense. It's the federal law.

Right. I got it. So before we go on, I just wanted to commend the work here. I think it's really important to have some kind of a scoring metrics that you guys can work from. And I heard a couple of different comments and I want to ask a couple of clarifying questions. Pierce Transit is not controlled by or owned by Pierce County, correct? And there is a large amount of the Pierce County area, the unincorporated Pierce County area specifically, that has no alternative transit means or methods. So when we talk about things that may be contrary to your concurrency evaluation or some of the active transportation evaluation that you have in these elements. When you get into certain parts of our county based on the infrastructure and the alternatives that are there, we are the citizens, the taxpayer who paid for these initial improvements are extremely limited. And so maintenance of this Basically, the taxpayer has entrusted the county with maintaining the asset that they paid for so that they have safety, as you mentioned. So I wouldn't want your job trying to balance all this, but I'm just saying I think it's really important. that when any presentation is made, that the limitations of what the citizen has and the county can control needs to be part of a presentation so that people understand that while it may be aspirational to say we want more people on buses, we want this, we want that, it's out of the control, regardless of budget, of Pierce County directly. Am I correct in saying that?

I think you're, look, It's your opinion. You certainly have a right to that. But I happen to agree with your opinion as well. It's a challenge. We're a very large county. We're a very unusual county with so much rural versus urban areas, unincorporated urban areas. So it's like we have a county with very different personalities depending on where you are and different needs in the different areas. But that's one of the reasons why our top two priorities remain safety and preservation, speaking exactly to what you just mentioned. We want to make sure that we are putting the majority of our resources toward these two areas, making sure that our assets are maintained and kept in good working order. So definitely appreciating all the investments that have been made in the past. And also keeping an eye to safety issues. And that's a continual process. We're always receiving new information, traffic, collision events, as things happen in the county that factors into where we might focus our safety projects on.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

One question there. What's your priorities? One of the things I noticed is that the not-motorized investment falls off after 2028. Over the six years, you have $31.4 million, of which nearly 80% is spent for student. I'm just wondering why it drops off.

It's not the case of just active transportation, but in a lot of different areas. Remember that this is a planning document. And so our first year, which is 2027 in this case, pretty close. we'll come pretty close to doing everything that you show in there and spending the money. As you get further out, the crystal ball gets a little cloudier in terms of where the priorities might be, might be an emerging issue that comes up that we haven't anticipated. So it gets a little more difficult to really broadcast and plan that far out. In addition, remember that we do rely heavily on outside grant funding. And the grant funding doesn't come available in that long of a distance. So as we get closer to those dates, next year's TIF, you'll see a lot of that information fill in with more funding because we receive more of the grant funding. Each year we're receiving grant funding for that two, three, or four years out. And so the numbers change and the number of projects and the amount of funding we can allocate to those projects increases. So in a lot of different areas in those outer years, you're going to see a much lower amount of money appropriated for those things. It doesn't mean they're less important. It doesn't mean they're a priority. It just means it's too far out to really know where the money is going to come from yet. And as we get closer to that particular date, we'll be filling in the blanks.

So what you're saying is that essentially that you can't predict to that time threshold. You remove the grant money from the expectations. That's correct. Place that when debt becomes available.

The grant money that is shown in the Education Improvement Program is 100% secured. we have no speculative grant money reflected.

So that money actually will be hired, and hopefully through grants?

Yes.

OK, thank you.

Absolutely. All right. So with this new prioritization, we have basically shuffled it out quite a bit with the projects that we're showing from what was adopted this year and what we're proposing for next year. These are our top 10 projects. When you go through the prioritization scheme, you can see there are a variety of intersection projects, as well as segment of projects. A lot of money is being allocated to those because they are our top priorities. So they are being allocated increased funding from others on the list. And looking forward, we are trying to make sure that we are making a more realistic leadership. If you recall in that earlier chart, the funding sometimes is quite extreme, much above what we could actually deliver. And we recognize that that often means that we don't meet expectations. We've been given all this money. Why aren't you delivering the project? So we're trying really hard to bring the transportation improvement program in over the next couple of years so where what we are funding is more in line with what we can actually deliver. Now, if additional staffing is allocated, fabulous we'll increase the funding because we can increase what we can deliver but we're trying really hard to narrow in our prioritization to those projects that are really key at the moment the funding for those projects and to not over inflate the tip with a lot of additional projects and money that we won't be able to expend and deliver on we just don't have the resources to do the work so looking forward we're anticipating in two years time we will get to that sweet spot And then, as we just discussed previously, the amounts in those outer years are very much going to change. It is a dependence that we have on state and federal funds. So those years should definitely be viewed with a little bit of an eye to things can change. If something can change in the future, it will.

All right. So, Leticia, just another quick question. As it relates to your projection on the budget, my understanding that we are in a budget deficit in the county, that the projections that I've heard been pulled basically by members of the staff was that we are approaching a very challenging time financially. How does that relate to the probability of you maintaining your budget allocations?

I can't say to the county as a whole. I really want to focus on my division, Office of the County Engineer, which uses county road funds for budgeting purposes. Those are continuing to decrease, but they have been for a very, very long time as electric vehicles become more prevalent and property taxes decrease. fluctuate, but they don't change dramatically from year to year. Long term, we're always projecting what our revenues are going to look like over the next six or ten years, and we incorporate that into all of our planning documents. I think the real uncertainty for us in these county road projects and in my division for the Office of the County Engineer is really that grant flexibility. State and federal grant funding is always uncertainty-driven. The legislature in one year can allocate $200 million for a program, and in the next year they decide, no, they're going to spend on something else. Those are things that are outside of our control. We just hope that a lot of those grant programs that we have historically been successful with continue to be offered into the future.

So you're operating on a surplus right now in your department?

I'm not a speech there plus the speaker we're operating within our means of that graph to show that I'm good.

Yeah, fully funded.

Yes. So now moving on to the actual program updates within the transportation program. First thing I'd like to offer is our very projects. So the very systemic fields and included as part of our regular now. The only transportation method on or off Kedron Island and Anderson Islands. And so we do have a significant amount of funding and projects allocated to our query system. Do remember that our system is partially funded by the county road funds, appropriately so. And our ferry operates 20 hours per day, 365 days per year, and has over 400,000 rides per year on it. So it is heavily utilized. by a relatively small percentage of the population of the county, but very, very important to those residents of these two islands. We have nine projects identified between those three locations. We have landings at Steilacoom, Catron Island, and Anderson Island. Ferry funding is always a challenge. We have a significant amount of county road funds that are invested into keeping our ferry system operational. These are showing revenue and expenses from 2025. As you can see on the revenue side of things, that nice orange block is county road funds. 17% is going toward the ferry system, along with tax revenues, fares, and dock leases. And then we also, again, are successful with obtaining grants for our ferry system as well. But this is a very expensive system to operate. And a question that we quite often get is, how long can we keep doing this? How long can we keep maintaining a ferry system? It is one of the most expensive systems that we operate right now. So one of the things that we're embarking on is a sustainability study for the ferry system. Costs continue to grow as our vessels and our terminals age. Just like any other piece of infrastructure asset in the county, our boats are getting older. Our landings are getting older. These are very expensive things to maintain or replace as needed. And our existing funding sources won't be able to keep up this pace forever. So we're going to be looking at what are our options out there. There must be some other funding solutions, or there may be some other funding solutions that we haven't looked at. There might be some other choices we can make on the very system. We'll definitely need to work with the islanders themselves and make sure that we are completely understanding and incorporating their needs as we look at long-term changes to the very system that we're offering. This is a study that we just started, well, worked on in the last few months. And we're hoping to have a clear set of choices and a recommendation for a long-term sustainable ferry system within the next two to three months in time for the next budget cycle. We're preparing budget next year for the 2028 and we would like to have a plan at that point. So that is one of the new changes to the ferry program.

On the budget, who pays the dock leases?

We have a lease with Department of Natural Resources, as well as Corrections uses some of the dock. Okay, so they... You see there is fares.

The majority of it's fares. It's not broken. Okay. All right. So there is a small income generation, though, it appeared from dock leases.

It's not... Yeah, it's not significant, but you have to lump it in somewhat.

And do the folks that actually live on the islands, do they pay any kind of a special assessment?

They pay property taxes and they pay their fares.

Thank you.

One of the things mentioned was, are you still studying the possibility of electric fairies?

That would be one of the options that is looked at, yes.

I live in Silicon Valley and I know, for example, still has its own utility, and I've heard it express interest in working with that. That would be something that the county wanted to do.

We'll definitely be looking at that.

So that's a tough call, because like 29% of the The ticket is your budget is in your budget. So there's a huge percentage that's paid by folks that don't use the fairies basically or small percentage of contributions to property tax and that kind of thing. So, yeah, you got a problem there. Yeah, I'm with him. I don't want your job. I don't want your job either.

Thanks.

One of the biggest costs is fuel. And if we could reduce that, for example, that would be a significant benefit.

But what's the cost of the vessel?

Well, they're going to have to replace the vessels anyway. So what you replace them with is... So the cost of the vessels is inherent already. It's just, what do we use as a fuel source for the vessel? And if there's a differential in the cost, we can look at that. But towns like Stilicum, who will produce their own electricity, could partner with you on that.

Yes.

That's a good battery, man.

Multiple batteries, I think.

Yeah. I don't know any cruise ships or any large ships that don't run on, they run on electricity, but they have diesel generation that runs electricity. I don't know, maybe cars run up and do it, but I don't know. That's a lot of iron to be pushing through the water with a battery.

Yes, it is. And 20 hours a day is a long time for it to be running.

Yeah, 20 hours. You'd have to have, you know, two or three of them running the same route just to charge them up. It's like, you know.

What if you had the charging charge right at the dock when you went in there and you charged every time? You could exchange vehicles with, you know, before that.

It's one of the reasons why we're taking a really close look at this.

You should work the math on that for you.

Good. I'm glad somebody asked. Okay, moving on from our ferry system to the more traditional roadway network. You can see on this map the variety of locations that are identified for projects throughout the county. These are all projects currently shown from the draft of the 7032 program. There is a new page in the TIP this year, and that is to report out on our traffic impact fees. It's a one-pager. It's very simple. It's on the screen. I know it's very small, but you'll be able to see the materials. So state law does require that any traffic impact fees that we accept, we need to utilize or encumber for a project within 10 years. And we need to be reporting out on that and making sure that we're in compliance with that. So at the request of our Finance Department, we've added this page to our TIP, and we'll be updating this in future years to show where we're getting traffic impact fees from, where we're expending them, and to verify that we are, in fact, utilizing those revenues within the 10-year time period that we're allowed.

And this includes the private sector as well?

The private sector is the one that provides the traffic impact fee.

But you don't get it from any other source?

Yeah. Now, on any of those, how much are you using? Are you using 100%? We are using 100%. Every time? Okay.

Yes. We don't have any traffic impact fees currently at risk for not being legalized in this period. Just a reminder, as you start looking at all the projects in the TIP, we have 780 lane miles of arterials, almost 2,000 lane miles of local access roads. There are also 161 bridges within the county, 155 traffic signals, 33 miles of guardrail, 35,600 signs. This is a lot of different elements to keep track of, maintain, much less improve within the county. So again, this is part of that balancing act. of prioritizing projects, making sure that we are maintaining our assets first and foremost before we are adding to it with new assets and infrastructure.

That's a very sensitive matter. Will you be adding roundabouts to that calculation at some point?

You know, now that we're getting beyond what I can count on one hand, we probably will start to do this.

One more question with respect to traffic lights. How are those... existing county-owned properties that you're adding lights to for safety, is that you make a determination based on some kind of criteria and then install those lights?

Correct, yes. This does not include the signals that we maintain for other jurisdictions. This is just the ones that are owned and operated by Pierce County.

Okay. I know the utilities have some kind of programs like Tacoma. has a program for that.

Oh, you're talking about the lights, not the signals. I'm sorry.

Oh, okay. That's what you're talking about, streetlights?

I was talking about the traffic signals.

No, traffic signals were good.

Okay.

Streetlights is what I'm concerned about. You've got 2,800 streetlights.

Those are sometimes on other poles, other utilities poles. Okay. Yes, they are not all on Pierce County at the but they are street lights that we are responsible for and are maintained.

And then are those included in that numbers as new intersection construction part of that and then upgrading intersection construction part of that number? Okay. I was just curious if there was some list of places that need additional street lighting?

We always have more locations that need additional street lighting.

Yes.

And one of the things that you'll see in the Transition Improvement Program is a street lighting program to be adding to that. There are areas that are dark. And I think that might be viewed as areas of concern for people who are trying to walk or bike as well as drivers who may be able to see anybody that may be out there.

Is that an item that could be covered in the traffic impact fee for development? It's an improvement, I mean, to the intercept, to the safety improvement.

I would say not as a standalone environment, but we certainly do that all the time.

Yeah, as part of it. Yeah, okay, I was just curious.

Absolutely.

Is your Street lighting part of the active transportation improvements. Is that a plan?

Certainly an element of active transportation projects. Yes.

Thank you.

So now looking at what's actually included in the TIP itself, because that slide was about an inventory. But now what we have in the draft TIP for the next six years is on the left-hand side. And those projects that are scheduled to go to construction next year are on the right-hand side. You can see that we're adding significant numbers to that inventory just in the next year. We'll be adding 102 crosswalks, adding multiple hundreds of curb ramps, 43,000 plus feet of sidewalk, 3.8 miles of bike lanes, and 22 miles of paved shoulder in construction projects next year alone. And the numbers are even higher for what's planned in the six-year time period.

Just as a consideration, might you consider adding that street lighting as a line item for the presentation?

Certainly could. There's a lot of information.

I know there is. I'm just saying, to me, that looks like it's a complete package then. When you're putting more pedestrians on the street, it just may feel better for someone reading the report.

Thanks for the suggestion. We'll see about doing that. So some of the really important programs that are included and heavily funded in the TIP are, of course, Vision Zero. Safety is first and foremost a high priority of the county and shown on this slide is a map of projects with a Vision Zero or safety focus. There are also five projects that are specifically identified in our Vision Zero action plan that we are investing funding in and those are listed here. One at the intersection of 74th and 160th. One at the intersection of B Street and 168th. The intersection of Holton Div and 104th. The intersection of Woodland and 112th. and then a portion of 112th Street East. This is a segment, a very long segment, identified in the Vision Zero Action Plan. I just want to be very clear that the project identified in our Transportation Improvement Program is a portion of that. It's not the entire segment. So even when we complete Canyon Road Project 5686, 112th Street East will still be shown as a Vision Zero project need because we haven't done the entire segment. Another important element of our tip is our continued partnership with Blue Zones. This is all about pedestrian improvements and a more active and natural lifestyle for residents within Pierce County. The Blue Zones area is identified in the Pacific Lutheran University general geographic area. And we have a number of projects identified there and recently completed a demonstration project for a semi-permanent rubber pedestrian refuge island at the intersection of C Street and Wheeler. This is the first time that we've tried this particular implementation, something that is a very non-permanent thing to see how well it's going to hold up over time, for one. It was much less expensive than installing something that's permanent and completely incorporated into the roadway system. And also, we'll be able to track how much it's utilized, too. The selection was chosen in cooperation with Blue Zones because of its relative proximity to PLU as a nexus point and some of the student housing and student activity centers that are in specific areas. So it was already identified as a high crossing point for walkers, bicyclists, and rollers, but we'll see if those numbers increase with the addition of this refuge island. The photo, unfortunately, is an under construction photo will not have a good photo. So it was. Rainy months, but please, if you're so inclined, go out to see street dealer and you can see it finished in action. Another program that I talked about already for safe for us to school program again, this is in cooperation with school districts themselves. I want to make sure that you understand that the projects in our safe rest of school plan are not identified and created by staff. They're 100% identified by the school districts as their priorities, where they need improvements for the safety of the children walking to and from school. And they prioritize those projects as well. We have eight projects included in our draft tip at this time. The two of them marked in blue are scheduled to go to construction next year. The others are all in various stages of design. There's a lot of interest and attention being given to those Safe Routes to School projects.

Are they using the same criteria as the state does for widths of pedestrian paths?

The widths are meeting county standards. They identify locations, but everything that is designed and built is being designed and built by the county and to county standards.

So shoulders, for example, what's the number there? Is it three feet or five feet?

It depends on the type of roadway and it meets county standards. Okay.

Material might be wider than local.

Depends on the location and the type of roadway we're talking about, but it's... They identify the location and the need, but it has to be designed and built to county road standards, just like every other project. Another program is our ADA program. We do have an ADA transition plan that council has adopted for and it identifies many, many, many locations throughout the county that have need for retrofitting of ADA ramps and correction of issues with facilities that do not need ADA currently. So we have combined the next two years project into one, 2027-2028 project. So we can include a much larger number of locations and have some efficiencies. And those general locations are identified here on this map for you.

Is there a time limit on that? These are federal mandates. Is there a time limit on completion?

The federal mandate is simply to continue making progress. Okay. There isn't a hard and fast, you must have all this completed by, but it's definitely worded that you need to continue to make progress and continue to show work toward compliance.

I see. Was this Were these areas targeted in conjunction with that connectivity concept that you talked about earlier?

These areas are through a completely different prioritization process in our ADA transition plan. If the Planning Commission is interested in digging further into that, I can certainly have a staff member make a presentation to you and walk you through how those locations are prioritized and identified for projects like this.

Did the Transportation Commission chime in on this at all?

We presented to the Transportation Advisory Commission and the Accessible Citizens Advisory Committee. We just presented this entire package a couple of weeks ago.

Okay. Thank you.

So wrapping up, We are at this point in our timeline. We're looking to an October date potentially to present the tip to EIDC and then adoption by the full council, probably in November. So pretty much on target. This is the same time every year where we come in front of you and give you the rundown on our draft tip. And as always, we're hoping to receive any feedback and if you would like to give us a recommendation, be transmitted to the full council or to the adoption.

Question. Please. I want to put feedbacks on the record. First, the House Bill 1181 requires this county to adopt a climate. One part reduces greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled. Another addresses hazards. made worse by changing climate, sea level, rise, landslide, flooding, heat, and wildfire. We must adopt it and update our transportation element by 2029. So we're not out of compliance today, but I want to be clear about this. But this program spends money through 2032. Projects entering preliminary engineering next year will be under construction after that element exists. Second, we have adopted Sustainability 2030. It targets a 45% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 2025 level by 2030. And it names transportation as our second largest source of emissions. Third, the county has published a climate vulnerability analysis of its own infrastructure. Its findings bear directly on this program. At two feet of sea level rise, the county's own mid-level planning threshold identifies 25 road segments totaling about seven miles, three bridges, 188 culverts, and eight county boat ramps as affected. The peninsula at Browns Point and Anderson Island. It finds that 12 to 24 inch increase in mean tide level will affect ferry operations and that all three ferry landings are expected to be quite replaced by 2040. It identifies more than 46 county roads that flood frequently and are at higher risk as storms grow longer and more intense. And it finds wildfire danger rising in areas previously considered safe. I read the program. The word climate appears once in 98 pages in the document. I couldn't find any reference to the county vulnerability analysis in the document. So my question is this. The analysis exists. in the county's own work. It appears not to have been consulted in assembling this program. I'd like to understand the rationale for that and whether it's a pass the crosswalk, the two before the next cycle.

What you're referring to is relatively new regulations and things that have come about. Please keep in mind that everything that's in front of you has been in preparation for a length of time now. And Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, we get to go through and do this every single year. So next year, there will be modifications, I am sure, to our prioritization scheme. As the planning department starts working on multimodal level of service, for example, those improvements and methodologies will be incorporated into our prioritization scheme when they are finalized and adopted. As regulations change, they are incorporated, but it all takes time to be implemented. So a project that you see in design today with a potential for construction in 2029 may not actually be constructed in 2029. It's all going to depend on funding and permitting and those types of things. But there are also the opportunities along the way for a change in prioritization. And the scope of that project may change very dramatically from what we think it's going to be as we start design today to what we actually end up building whenever that time is. So I think what you're seeing is a lag between something being adopted and incorporated into our own planning documents. But that will come over time. This is a constantly changing process. It's a living document. It's updated every single year. And again, it is a planning document. Everything beyond next year starts to get a little sketchy further out that you go. We can't anticipate what other types of regulatory changes are going to occur out there. We can't anticipate if there's a large catastrophe in the county and our resources need to be funneled there. Instead, things change from year to year. So please don't rely on this as being written in stone for 2029, 2032, because it's not. Things will change dramatically just between this year and next year. People are very surprised at the differences and the different elements that we incorporate into next year's TIP.

I guess what I'm saying is that we have the climate vulnerability study. I would have been interested to see it referred to in some of the documentation that we're doing now. That exists already.

Correct. Yes. It will certainly be looked at and assessed in future versions of this TIP. Yes.

I appreciate that. Thank you.

When was that risk assessment done? When was that risk assessment done?

When was the climate probability study done?

Last year.

Last year, I think. I don't remember the specific date. Do you remember? Yeah.

My just general comment is we know that we are dealing with climate change. Yes. And the decisions in the planning is not, I'm sure, driven only by regularity, but by risk assessment. And at this point, I also am surprised that climate is really not discussed in changes in sea level and changes in intensity and storm. et cetera.

It is incorporated in ways that aren't specifically stated in here. It's incorporated in the recently adopted Pierce County stormwater management manual. It is incorporated in our zero rise regulations. That's something we have to look at for every single project, zero rise regulations. It's incorporated in various ways. It's just not explicitly outlined in here. And it may end up being a specific element of our prioritization process in future years. But don't think for a moment that it isn't being incorporated in various different ways behind the scenes, because it is. It is. The climate change elements, the zero rise, stormwater requirements, all of those are definitely being taken into account on each and every project.

Okay. It'd be nice to see that really spelled out so that it's easy to know to the reader.

That's it.

Yeah, it took much longer than I thought.

But you're not done yet. So at this point, we're going to open this up for public comment. And we'll start with anyone in the room. There's anyone here that wants to give public comment, please come forward, state your name and your address and you would have three minutes to speak.

This person. Also,

Okay, is there anyone in the room? Seeing none, we'll move to online. Is there anyone online that would wish to speak? And Sarah, if you'd give them the protocol for that.

For anyone online who would like to provide public comment, please press the raise hand icon on Zoom or star nine on your telephone keypad. It doesn't look like anyone online would like to provide comment either.

Okay. With no one online and no one in the room, we're going to close public comment and bring it back to the Commission. And at this point, is there any further discussion or questions? Robert and Kimber, want to make sure you're able to engage here?

Mic's off.

You're muted, Robert.

I've actually been paying attention. I'm very impressed with the work that the Public Works Transportation Improvement Program has put together here. And I'm glad to see the focus on criteria to help explain this, not only to the public, but on how our tax dollars are being used. And it's always been a quandary to me exactly how that all breaks down, especially when we're talking about property taxes allocated to the road program and how that's divided up between maintenance and transportation improvement projects. Leticia, I was wondering if you had some diagram or that information available right now that talks about the overall total budget and how those funds are allocated across across the program, you know, we were talking about the distinction between the total budget and the projects that are executed on an annual basis. Do you have that information where those funds actually go? How much to staffing? How much to various programs?

Some of the information that you're asking for actually in the draft of itself. There are a couple of pages right before you get into the projects that are bar charts that show you revenues and expenditures and where the money is going. But the focus, honestly, is more on how much money is going toward construction versus how much design and how much of the grant money is going toward construction versus grant money toward design. It doesn't get into the details of how much is going toward the staffing specifically and those types of things. That's something we may be able to repair in the future for you.

How about the distinction between maintenance and transportation improvement projects? As far as the collected property tax dollars, what percent goes to maintenance versus maybe what percent goes to transportation improvement projects?

I don't have that information at my fingertips, but I can provide that to you. We do have a very large maintenance and operations division that is responsible for doing all of the street sweeping and ditch cleaning and putting up signs when roads are flooded and responding to trees over the road. They're the ones who go out and respond to all the C-click fix requests that come in. And there is a... vast amount of work that is done by that division. And we certainly have those numbers as part of our budget, but I did not bring that information with me today. So can I provide that to you as a follow-up?

I'd like to see that. Yes. Thank you. In regards to bike lanes, and how those are chosen and prioritized. Is that typically folded into the overlay program? Is that how those decisions are made?

No, the overlay program is 100% about preserving asphalt pavement. But additional area for bike lanes is considered an improvement, not a preservation. And the bike lanes are very much driven by active transportation determinations and priorities for overall active transportation and the work that's been done in the past on bike mapping of Pierce County. And I believe there's a new version of our bike map that's in the works and will hopefully be completed and circulated next year. Going out on a limb here, Alon, when are you supposed to have a new bike map?

Next year. Next year.

So it's about trying to make sure that we have bike lanes in the areas that are identified in our bike map and making the connections and gaps in the bike lanes that are currently out there so that we have a longer circuit of consumers' bike lanes available.

You had mentioned the multimodal level of service work that the planning division is going to be working on. Is that the planning division out of your section or your department?

No, that's the planning division that Alon is the manager of.

Okay. So we can anticipate a public participation program built into that, I'm hoping. Because... Yeah, there's a lot of, as I know, there's a lot of interested parties in making those improvements. And that's my hope, that there'll be more interaction with the public on developing that.

The short answer to that, sorry, Cole Kopka, Monorange Planning Supervisor. The short answer to that question is yes. There will be extensive public engagement. We are just now starting on a transportation code package that works on several different things, one of which probably the largest component is multimodal service. So you can look for that kind of over the coming year, year and a half probably.

All right. Thank you. That's it. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Robert. Kimber, do you have anything you'd like to add?

No, I think the line of questions that we've had have been excellent, so I have no further questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, at this time, I'd entertain a motion.

I'd like to make a motion. Mr. Chair, I move that the Planning Commission recommend that the County Council approve the 2027 to 2032 Transportation Improvement Plan and the 2027 to 2040 14-Year Ferry Program.

I'll second. Okay, there's been a motion and a second. Is there any discussion?

Just a question of procedure in terms of the recommendation letter. Would it be appropriate for the chair and vice chair or some subcommittee to review that for it? it goes out, because I think that there are a number of substantive discussion points that we did have as a body.

Yeah, and that's a great point. And I do sign those, by the way, or approve them before an electronic signature is applied. So if I'm understanding you're point, it would be to have the letter incorporate some of the recommendations made by the Planning Commission for consideration of the Council. Yes, that's correct. Okay. And I have just a point of clarification on your motion. And I believe you were saying that you want the letter to read that you want the Council to approve this. Right. And I wonder if that's appropriate, or should we just say that we approve this for the council to review?

Usually it would be a recommendation to council for them to approve.

Okay. All right. So it's a do pass kind of thing. Okay. So that was right. Yeah.

You're spot on. I just wanted to make sure we were using the right word. Absolutely. Is there any other discussion? I just have one thing to say. This is a... This transportation improvement program is a moving target, and it changes with every regulation that comes down that's mandated from the state, federal government, that type of thing. So there's a lot of flexibility in it moving forward. It's not, as Letitia said, in stone. And so we have to really rely on our directors, our county engineer in this case, to make sure that this implementation is as close as possible to what they're presenting And Letitia has the expertise and certainly the experience here in Pierce County to know what those things are. So I would say that we just have to rely primarily on the people who are making these things happen, that they're qualified and competent. And I think that we have that here. So thanks for that. Thanks for the presentation. Any other comments?

Okay. At this point, Sarah, would you call the roll for a vote, please?

Yes. Okay, so the motion on the floor is to amend County Council approve the TIP and FAIR program as presented by staff. Is that correct?

Yes.

With, excuse me. Yes. With our noted comments.

Oh, yes, yes. In the letter, we will include those suggestions. Okay. All right. I will begin with Chair O'Leary. Aye.

Mm-hmm.

Commissioner Saldana?

Aye.

Commissioner Starr? Aye. Commissioner Burke?

Aye.

Commissioner Anderson? Aye. Aye. Secretary Farnes? Aye. And Secretary Winner?

Aye.

The motion passes. Thank you.

Thank you very much, and thanks to your whole department.

Thank you. We'll take a short break.

Yeah, and this time I'd like to request a 10-minute recess.

Yes, you can call for a recess. 10-minute recess, beginning at 10.54, we'll reconvene at 11.01.

Thank you.

So, okay.

All right, we're going to reconvene and get started with our next agenda item, which is a unified sewer plan update and we'll turn it over to staff. Thank you.

Good morning, commissioners. Partly the utilities manager for Pierce County and responsible for the sewer utility. This is the second meeting we've had with people. This is really going to be a quick presentation, kind of refresher on what we talked about the last time we were here about two months ago. There's one of several kind of talk about the status of where we're at with the various processes, all informing the council ultimately on their determination to approve or modify or not the Unified Sewer Plan.

So quick agenda. I'm just going to touch really quickly on this.

I'm not sure we're hearing y'all online. Thank you.

Can you hear us now?

Yes, we can now.

OK. The darn mute button. So here's the system. You've seen this map before. The sort of salmon pink is the service area component that goes to the Chambers Creek Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant. So all of that area from DuPont, almost out to Tahali, or almost out to Orting, down to Graham, and then along the Tacoma boundary, is all wastewater that flows to the Chambers Creek Regional Plant. The orangish color is the Toholly plant community and that all flows to the Cascadia treatment plant. And the green, you can kind of see it's up on that northerly edge there, it's all of Milton, a little bit of Fife, a little bit of Edgewood, and then the points communities. Those are our service area, but we have an agreement with Tacoma and that wastewater flows to the Tacoma central plant. And you can see there's, we have I think the number is actually higher than the number of miles of pipeline. I think we're up to about 780 miles, which from here, those would be from like here to Monterey Bay. So it's a long ways, a lot of pipeline, a big system. We have close to 110 pump stations and three more under construction right now. We serve population a little over 300,000 and we have 73,000 plus connections or bills, customers. So just a quick refresh on the Chambers Creek Regional Plant, which is the large plant. It's advanced secondary treatment. It was originally built in right around 1980 at 12 million gallons a day capacity. And then the expansion started in 2010. And currently the plant is just a little over 45 million gallons a day capacity. And we have nutrient reduction and other aspects of the current plant that were not done in the 80s. Cascadia treatment plant, which is quite a bit newer. It was planned, it was 1999, but it didn't come online until 2018, 2019. The county took it over from the developer who was constructing it. And it right now is a 1 million gallon a day plant. It's also sort of a newer technology membrane bioreactor plant, which produces water quality for effluent. And we're in the design process and actually just reached another positive milestone. And we have some approval by Ecology on the plan for the expansion that takes us up to almost 3 million gallons a day. So it's a good step in the process to keep that moving. So as I mentioned in the previous presentation, plethora of permits that help guide the operation of the sewer utility. As far as state permits, we actually have two different types of permits. One for Cascadia is the state waste discharge permit. Chambers Creek is under an MPDS or National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit. We also have a biosolids permit and reclaimed water permit. Then we have local permits for the operation of the facilities conditional use permit with university place the chambers creek plant is located in the city limits of the university place it land use requirements stormwater permits and and other various other preference and then. With this commission's charge to make sure we're in compliance with the county's comprehensive plan only covers a portion of our service area. We actually serve a number of cities in their entirety and then also portions of some other cities. So we have to be aware of and stay current with what every other agency's comprehensive plan is that we serve to make sure we're meeting the areas that they plan for their growth, their land use requirements, and all of the other components that we have to rely on in order to determine where new service may be added or where additional capacity may be needed within the collection and conveyance system. Let's see. So about the plan, it includes two major components, which is the general sewer plan, which is required by state statute. That has to be approved. Ecology has to review and give its blessing for that part of the plan. And then we have our recovered resource plan, which is dealing with the three byproducts of the wastewater treatment process. I've got to cover that just a little bit more in a minute or two. The initial plan for the initial USP was done back in the 90s. then it was updated in a one and then the most recent one completed was started in 2010 and adopted in 2012. as you know there's been a lot of changes to things since then so the reasons why we need to do this now is significant regulatory changes significant legislative changes that have required different a different approach to some areas we're looking at having to evaluate the system where the different agencies including the county are increasing density so we have to look at whether the current systems that were designed for the previous zonings are still adequate to deal with the proposed densities or if we're going to have to add additional infrastructure in order to support that so those are some pretty key reasons that we needed to update the plan and also regulations have changed pretty significantly in that period of time one of the couple of the things that we're having to keep a close eye on that aren't in regulation yet for wastewater but pfas or per and polyfluoroalkyl substances forever chemicals So those are a a component that we're having to keep a close eye on. And in fact, legislation was passed, I believe, year before last that required that we start testing and monitoring for the levels of PFAS in both the liquid and solid byproducts when we're done with the wastewater treatment process. So we're having to keep track of those constituents. And that typically leads to some kind of regulatory levels that would be required to comply with. So the plan is trying to anticipate not only what we're doing now, but some things that we might have to off-ramp to in case the requirements are such that we can't meet them with our current processes. There's a few other components out there that are being watched, 6PPDQ, plasticizers, phthalates. There are a number of things that we know are on the horizon that we're also keeping close eye on. So in the Unified Sewer Plan itself, the overarching discussion of It's the strategic plan. It includes the goals and policies for the county, meeting the executive and council's priorities. We also looked at our organizational and financial models and looked at the planning for that in the future, knowing that the sewer utility is really only about 40% built out. So we have a long way to go before we're going to reach the full build out of that. And the two main components that we are focusing on are the general sewer plan, which again outlines what we do with the existing infrastructure and how we plan for future, how we're planning to preserve what we already have, and how we're doing treatment and meeting the current regulatory requirements and also potentially future regulatory. Yes.

Do you want us to ask questions as we get to sections or hold our questions to the end? mind if you want to do it that way well thank you for recognizing that limitation um on the general sewer plan uh regulatory requirements we've had presentations here about areas that are proposed for higher densities uh specifically along the pacific avenue corridor the meridian corridor And those are in areas where there may be sewer that exists, but I'm not sure the size of the lines they're in together with gaps in sewer opportunities, for instance, along the Meridian corridor, where there's a substantial area where people are still on commercial ventures or still on septic. Have you had any communications with folks, how to accommodate or provide for that kind of thing, not only physically, but in your budget and so forth.

Yeah, that's what I was mentioning, that we look at the county's comprehensive plan and where those densities have been proposed, and we're building into our modeling of the system those newer densities, which then drive what we think would be required from an infrastructure standpoint. And so we are evaluating right now where there may need to be additional pipelines, upsizing of pipelines, maybe additional pump stations to be able to move the new demand. But we also are already incorporating into some of our preservation projects the ability to expand. Some of the Parkland Brookdale phased sections of pipeline, it was originally a 48. Well, we're upsizing it to a 72 because we know that the demand is going to be needed or that the capacities can be needed for the demand that is being generated by these higher densities in certain areas so where we're where we're doing work we're also evaluating whether it would be a if it's a rehab or replacement type project whether it can stay the size it is or whether it needs to be uh upsized in order to meet the future demand based on the current plan comprehensive plan we're doing that we do have that built into our sip where we've got projects that are combinations of preservation and capacity for growth. So a lot of our, that's why the SIP is usually not one individual funding source per project, because it kind of touches on a couple of different requirements. So we have our O&M funding, which helps operational efficiencies. We have capacity and growth. We have preservation, so rehab and replacement. So a lot of the projects touch several of those requirements. So we do plan for that. In fact, we just made an organizational change to split our engineering team to where one team is going to concentrate mainly on delivering of the capital projects. The other one's doing even more of the planning, condition assessment of the assets and those aspects. So we're trying to expand our resources within our team to be able to keep up with all of the changes that are happening. And they just seem to keep happening faster and faster each time. So, yeah, we are trying to incorporate all of those things into the plan. And we've tried to allow some flexibility in the plan rather than saying, we're going to do this for the next however many years. We say, this is the plan currently, but we have some alternatives if the regulations change, if somehow the expected growth areas change, we have some ability to adjust without having to necessarily come back for a full-blown redo of the plan. So we tried to make it flexible so that it's actually usable and not one that just puts on the shelf and becomes obsolete fairly quickly.

Thank you.

So then the other component of this is the recovered resource plan. And there are the three main byproducts of the wastewater treatment process are the biosolids, which right now a significant amount of the biosolids, not all, but a significant amount go to Sound Grow. So it's utilized as fertilizer. We have several large corporate customers that come and get large quantities of it. We also make it available to the public. We also have... Reclaimed water, it's the plant treats to the level that can meet reclaimed, but we don't actually have it certified yet to do reclaimed. But the plan is to use that on the park and the golf course. And then we've had some interested parties wondering if it would make sense in the future to maybe develop a distribution system from the plant that might go other places with a purple pipe system to send reclaimed to other locations. The plant generates about 20 million gallons a day of liquid effluent. So it's quite a bit of water that not for domestic purposes, but for other purposes that are not potable, it could be utilized for other things, manufacturing or processing, concrete batching, other processes that use a fairly significant amount of water. So those are some of the areas that we're going to continue to even research and see if there are other like industrial needs and that that could be utilized. The problem with chambers is not really close to a lot of those areas, so we're going to have to look at the realities of where it's located physically compared to where the demand might be. And then the third component is biogas, and we kind of have a two-phased approach that's already included in the sewer improvement plan. That is to start with an initial gas scrubbing that would allow us to use more of it within the plant, Right now, we had tried using it in virtually everything that uses natural gas at the plant. Some of those were the boilers that do heating of the buildings, but also does the heating to keep the digesters happy. We have to keep our solids digesters the same temperature as our body because it's basically the same bacteria that's doing kind of the same work it does in our digestive system. The high corrosivity of our plants, Biogas basically dissolved our boilers and we had to go get all new boilers. And so unfortunately right now we're having to run those on natural gas. So we're purchasing natural gas. So in the plan and in the strategy, I think next year we're going to be starting to work with an ESCO or an energy services company to do that first stage, which is to get it clean enough to use within boilers and other things within the plant. We still do use some right now within the fertilizer manufacturing facility or the FMF that we call it that creates the sound growth. That burns at such a high temperature that the corrosivity isn't a problem. So we do use a fair amount of the gas in that, but not a high enough percentage to use the bulk of it. So we want to use the rest of it that we can within the plant. And then the second stage, which is a little farther out because it's going to take quite a bit more planning and strategy on how to get it into a Puget Sound energy system, would be to go to full RNG and be able to put that into the pipeline, making it available for PSE customers and customers the reality is we would expect it to be kind of we would plan for it to be vehicle fuel, which then has some other RINS credits and other benefits to the operation. So it's, again, a two-step process, working with the ESCO to make sure that what we do in the first stage isn't precluded or throwaway when we go to the second stage, because you need to do this level of scrubbing first and then the higher level to put it into the PSE pipeline. And they're pretty particular about the quality of the gas that goes into their pipeline. We want to make sure that we don't take a wrong turn somewhere on the biogas and are able to get it into the system.

Do you have any numbers on the amount of energy that's used to produce the gas, the scrubbing, et cetera, versus the amount of energy that's produced by the gas?

I don't. I think we had a very rough overview look from one of the ESCOs that was just giving us some information and also our consultant that helped on the USP, but I don't have that with me. And I don't know that we got into the full details of how much energy it takes to fully convert all of the biogas. But that is definitely something that we plan on doing, again, as part of this two-step process.

is evaluating that.

Yes. So those are the three recoverable resource components that we're working on. Again, all of that is built into the plan and also most of it, as far as we know, timing is built into the sewer improvement program. So this was the development process of the USP. It started back in the pandemic time, so it definitely got a slow start. But once we got it rolling and got the technical memos put together and we're able to start having as much input from stakeholders as possible, we actually went out two or three times to stakeholders, whether they be just the general public with some surveys and input that we received from all of the cities that we provide service to. And we even reached out to adjacent agencies, other cities that we don't necessarily provide service to, but that we have an interaction with or could in the future. So we want to make sure that they were all familiar with what we were doing within our plan. And so that outreach has been done. We're now kind of at the final box over on the right where we're getting the final reviews. That'll be then forwarded on for council and their discussions and deliberation and determination on the USP.

So, excuse me, regarding some of the other jurisdictions that may have their own sewage treatment systems and so forth, do you ever foresee a time when we could incorporate and work collectively for collection of and processing of sewage coming from a county element into an incorporated area? I'm thinking specifically, let's say Sumner or something of that nature. Is there any consideration for collaboration to where we would have better use of funding, stretch the dollar of the taxpayer, if you will?

Yeah, there's a couple of aspects of what some of the work that's already been done just because there was a possibility that this could occur. We have a pipeline that's extended basically almost up to the borders of Puyallup, a very large pipe that can bring that to chambers. The concern from Puyallup's standpoint is that they're under a federal permit as opposed to the rest of us that are under state discharge permits. And it started on tribal land. And so there's always been concerns that if they were not able to either continue to discharge there or if they were no longer able to provide the service we had already kind of planned for at least the Puyallup area. Sumner's a little more challenging. You'd have to get across the river in order to do that. But as far as a coordination with Sumner, as you know, Sumner is a plant that supports both Sumner and Bonnie Lake. Bonnie Lake has a service area that reaches virtually out to the Toholy planned community, but it's not looking like it's not going to be incorporated into their city limits. So there's some discussions and we've been trying to coordinate again for the most efficient way to provide service. There may be some ability for us to expand the Cascadia plant and either enter an agreement or take over a service area from Bonnie Lake as some of that land develops. and then be able to incorporate the wastewater treatment into the Cascadia plant, as opposed to, again, properties moving forward with septic systems and things like that, or even small, local, large onsites.

Even Orting, for instance, Orting has it, and they've had their challenges, but I'm just saying some of these plants are, I'm sure, extraordinarily expensive to build, rather than just to expand and connect to if there's ability to collaborate in cross jurisdiction?

Yeah, we absolutely are trying to keep that in mind as we've done current or already existing infrastructure that's been placed. And then again, looking toward the future of where there might be changes. Some of the agencies may or may not be able to keep up with the regulatory requirements. Right now, the inland purveyors or providers of service are not required to do nutrient reduction. Well, we know that Ecology started with those that discharge directly to the sound, but they're kind of planning on moving upriver, and eventually everyone's going to be tasked with trying to do better at removing nutrients in the wastewater stream before it gets discharged. That provides nutrients into the water, which then tends to spur algae growth, which then takes away dissolved oxygen, which is bad for marine life. So I think we might have had slides on that last time when we talked about the impacts of that. So those are all things that we're trying to keep in mind and do oftentimes provide our input if those agencies ask us for any advice, but then also plans to connect. We aren't planning to take over any agency's program, but we are trying to make sure that we are capable of serving the full county if that were to come to fruition. So yeah, we are trying to make sure that we're being as foresightful as we can be on what may occur. The other challenge with the whole industry is that fewer and fewer people are going into wastewater operation and wastewater industry. And you have to have certified operators at certain levels, depending on your plant. So you can't You can't do without people that have met the certification requirements and that number is dropping. We actually keep track of that trend because we're also concerned for ourselves. We have to have a certain number of operators on at any given time with our plants in order to make sure that we're in compliance. So that just lack of resources for people to continue to operate plants, it's really putting pressure, I think, on even the smaller agencies. Some of the towns have their own systems, but being able to find someone that's certified or they've been operating with someone who's now getting more in that retirement range, and they're not sure how they're going to manage from there forward. So it is a concern. We're trying to do our part to do the best we can to kind of help support the entire county. Thank you. So again, the review process, which the commission is a part of, our general sewer plan review committee completed their review and they have provided their recommendation for approval to council. They similarly provided some of the questions or comments that they had and the staff's responses were incorporated into that letter that was forwarded to the council. Ecology has, like I think I've mentioned, or maybe I haven't, Ecology was reviewing, I think when we were here before the commission before, they've completed the review, but they can't issue their official approval or not until the legislative body has adopted the plan and then they can take action on it. So they have indicated to us verbally that they are good with the plan as currently written. If it gets changed by any decent amount, we would have to run it back by them and then that timing starts all over again. But they so far have been very comfortable with the plan. And then this would be the Planning Commission's opportunity for public hearing and deliberations and comments and questions and then hopefully a recommendation. And so that's the next steps we're kind of in the early and summer timelines of getting all of the review committees getting their comments back and We've adjusted or provided answers to the comments that have come up with the review committee and with Ecology. And then we'll be looking forward to getting into the full discussions with Council and their hearings and finalizing the plan. With that, I'm Take any questions or and then I'll stand by for the public, the public hearing.

Yes, this plan guides us to 2050 and carries an environmental impact statement meant to be relied on to 25 years. Are we sizing the system for rainfall and tide levels we have had or for ones we are expecting?

Well, I can answer that. For the most part, we have a sealed system. So impact of water elevation, for the most part, is not in a problem area. We do have one service area that we have, Day Island, which we're actually actively working on a project right now because of the potential or the anticipation of sea rise and climate change. So there is a project that we're already doing because of that and taking that into account. The rest of the system, for the most part, a lot of our systems underwater and groundwater most of the time. So it's a sealed system. Now, as far as potential, and I think you talked a little bit about it with roadways, we do have manholes in the roadways and there can be I and I are inflow and infiltration caused by storms or flooded streets. Those areas where it's been identified or where it's anticipated that it may grow in the future, we take extra steps like sealing the mantle lids and things like that to prevent the potential for that extra water to cause impact to the plant. So we're always working on trying to reduce our I&I wherever we have areas that may be subject to additional non-wastewater getting into the system and causing an impact to the downstream treatment. So we are taking that into account, yes. I don't know if I answered everything. I have a question.

Go ahead. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Yeah, this is in regards to a consideration of, I guess, existing supply of water resources versus the demand and what level of coordination there's been with our local water districts and their analysis of their demand. current supply of resources and more specifically in regards to impacts to those resources, the drawdown of our aquifers and how that's being addressed by the plan. Could you maybe address some of that?

Well, um, We talked with a couple of different groups about their thinking that it would be best to just directly recharge from the treated wastewater. Unfortunately, the treatment process doesn't take it to be clean enough that you'd want to put it into the aquifers. There are some areas where we can do infiltration basins that over time it goes through the earth and you get additional treatment from that. Although ecology lately has not counted the earth part of the treatment much as an improvement to it before it hits the aquifer. So we're having to deal with that challenge as well. I think the biggest... opportunity for the wastewater industry to help with the water demands or water shortages is to work on the reclaimed and figure out places where water that's currently potable water that's currently being used for non-potable purposes can be replaced with reclaimed water. So again, industry processing, irrigation for a lot of areas, Watering plants takes a lot of water, and so the ability to provide that in lieu of drinking water then helps the supply available for the various purveyors to be able to continue to deal with the growth. So, yeah, Reclaimed is kind of our strategy for how to support that.

Yeah, I definitely support that. I think that's quite important. I can think of different strategies that might help to make that come together. I mean, ultimately it might require some coordination and participation by the private sector to help make that happen. Commercial properties that have extensive landscaping as well as our parks and how to get that water to those sites is the question and how you prioritize your efforts accordingly, you know, as far as some of the planned capacity improvements, maybe that the sewer plan is anticipating, maybe there's an opportunity to install those distribution lines with your transmission lines out to some of these areas, especially where it can make a difference. Ultimately, yeah, treatment is, is the question with something that ecology would deem to be sufficient for water quality. And ultimately, you know, water infiltrated into our aquifers. And I can see those efforts being mostly targeted, at least to those areas where the sole source aquifer covers the parkland span aways Lakewood,

area uh maybe university place possibly some of that area um frederickson especially absolutely uh one other aspect i forgot to mention i know i covered it in the the previous um presentation commission is that the alternatives that we have the recommended one from from staff keeps for the most part centralized treatment. But the second alternative, the preferred one that we are providing is the potential to look at a couple of key locations that might have what I called sub-regional wastewater treatment. So probably a membrane bioreactor type facility that could be expanded because they're fairly modular. And one of the locations that we were anticipating doing a significant amount of research and study on is that Fredrickson industrial area where there's a lot of water use for industrial processing. So if that's the target area for It helps us with the amount of flow that's going all the way to chambers and also deals with some high strength industrial waste that's also causing some problems to the condition of some of the system. But it also would put the reclaimed water much closer to sources that would likely be able to use it. So that's part of the plan as well. The other location that we're at least going to do some feasibility study on is kind of in the Tide Flats port area. there there's a where we currently the point where we connect with Tacoma we may consider a facility out in that area that would do the same thing and there's a lot of industrial and a lot of processing and there's even a concrete batching facility that uses a pretty significant amount of water and you don't necessarily have to have potable water to make concrete so those are the kind of things that we're trying to look at in the plan again coordinating with with all of our parties because that would possibly impact Tacoma and they're supplying potable water to certain entities. But we want to coordinate with everybody and be transparent about board that we know that there could be some concerns about available potable water in the future in Pierce County. We want to at least be poised to be able to help with that if possible.

Is there a cost? I mean, have you done analysis of the cost that takes it from gray to clear water, from gray to clear? So it could be... When you say gray... Well, gray water, you're talking about water that's not potable. taking that to make potable water.

Yeah, just if you talk about reclaimed to drinking, you would have to, yeah, you have to, we haven't done, I don't think a full cost analysis, but suffice it to say that it would require reverse osmosis, which is massively energy consumptive. It's like data center. You wouldn't want to try and do that just to try and treat it to be clean enough to use, unless that's kind of your last resort. The cost of energy is just incredible. And not only that, once you run it through reverse osmosis, it is pure H2O, which is very aggressive. You couldn't drink it in that form. You couldn't use it for potable sources. The bottled water industry actually does run the water through reverse osmosis, but then they have to add a mineral recipe back in to make it drinkable. You have to have some mineral in there or it is too aggressive. It's like a solvent. It would cause harm to try and use it for drinking.

Would you be able to introduce it into the existing water system in the county then?

I don't know if you would want to do it at that point again without bringing it back to what the constituency of the aquifer is as well. So just the cost of trying to get it cleaned up is astronomical. The rates would be through the roof if we tried to do that.

I had another question. Does the plan set any goals as far as reclaimed water and what your hope is as far as percentage of the treated water to go to a reclaimed system?

We haven't set a specific goal because, as you mentioned, trying to get it anywhere beyond the local proximity of the plant at Chambers. is challenging. So we want to do, I think what we included in there was the ability to look at feasibility and where there might be high demand for reclaimed that might warrant a distribution system. Right now, the plan as a goal is to take the park and the golf course off of well water, which is what's irrigating it now and moving that over to reclaimed. So that's what we're pursuing is getting that. It's a pretty significant amount of area that is grass, covered in grass that we want to try and move toward the reclaimed. And then at Cascadia, Fortunately, there was enough foresight that most of the open space and roadway landscape and all of that has been put in with a purple pipe system. So the pipes when you dig them up are actually they're kind of a hot pink but purple pipe system, which is for reclaimed so that is planned to be reclaimed. Once the build-out, enough of the build-out at Tahalee produces enough summertime flow that we can have enough water to irrigate the plants. We should be expanding the plant. The construction will probably be starting late 2028. And then we anticipate, based on the developers' projected growth rates, that around 2029, 2030, we probably will have enough flow at Cascadia to where we can provide all of that landscape will be irrigated with reclaimed water. So a lot of the roads that you drive on out there, all the landscape you see right now, it's being irrigated with TPU potable water, but that connection will be severed and then we'll be tying it into the reclaimed system once we have enough flow in the summertime.

Is there a nutrient benefit to that, to the gray over the over potable water they're using now?

Probably not much different. I mean, you wouldn't, it is disinfected because reclaimed water in order to meet the requirements still has to be disinfected. So it's probably not because we, again, the treatment process is removing most of the nutrient that you would consider taking out nitrogen and phosphorus and things like that. That's what ends up being in our sound grow. So it, I don't, not really one, not really a plus or minus either way. I don't believe it's just that it takes the burden off of the drinking water supply in order to irrigate and keep the plants alive.

In terms of sort of long range thinking, is there any virtue at looking at separating gray water from sewer water at the source and then having separate treatment avenues for those? Because I would imagine that the gray water needs a lot less treatment and could be returned.

It would still need about the same level of treatment. The other thing that would cause a... disruption, if you will, to the, to the whole system and the way it's been designed is you wouldn't have enough flow to move it through the pipes. You need the, you need the actual water volume to keep it moving. The whole system has been designed to have certain reach, certain velocities to keep the pipes cleaned out so that we're doing less with manual crews going out and having to clean pipes. So you would lose that flow pretty significant amount of it. And we would have solids built up in the pipelines and we wouldn't, it wouldn't,

You'd end up putting water back in to make sure you got things moving.

We'd probably have to dump water back in it in order to keep it moving, yeah.

Thank you.

Okay, any other questions?

Go ahead. In terms of line upgrades, is there, just speaking in relation to our previous agenda item, is there a coordination with the Transportation Improvement Program to not have to think of streets.

Absolutely. In fact, since I've been at the county, we've been trying to, I've been trying to get that and make sure my team is working with the other projects within county control, but also development projects. And we've been actually very successful. There's a couple of projects going on now in the Elk Plain area that have coordinated development and capital and road or sewer capital and sewer or in road capital projects, kind of all into a, planned strategy to make sure that the right thing happens before the next thing so that we don't have that do the thing you should do last and then go in and tear it up and replace it. So that's definitely a strategy we're working on. Internally, we have a team that's looking at even more ways to try and coordinate that with other efforts. We do want to keep up with, there's transit and WSDOT and anybody else who, some of the water purveyors out in Perpetua County that that also are doing things in those areas. So we are definitely trying to make sure there's more coordination so that it, again, is the most efficient. I know you all talked about the efficiency for the people paying the bill, which is either super rate payers, property tax, or sales tax taxpayers. So anybody who's paying for that, we're trying to minimize the negative impact and not doing it as efficiently as possible. And we've actually had some projects where we've incorporated a little bit more, say road work at the end of our sewer project so that it doesn't make it an inefficient little piece of project that they have to come back and do later. That is by economy of scale is not a better cost since we had to pave where we already ripped up and replaced the sewer line. We go a little bit farther in coordination with, with, uh, OCE, the county engineer, then we can button these things up for the betterment of the community. So we've been trying to do that a lot more.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And I've been very impressed by the presentation.

So I didn't, um, that's a real serious interest, uh, on my part as well, um, for all departments, not just yours and for all projects. I didn't see that notation identified anywhere. Is there, uh, is there a consideration of, of incorporating that, that that would be, um, a goal or not a requirement, but something just so that it's in it's part of the proposal. Um,

As far as the plan, I thought we did have coordination, but it might have been more general, just, you know, improving coordination.

If it was just maybe a goal, maybe just unawareness, you know, if a statement like that could be added that in an effort to maximize the expenditures, minimize the impact that... I think we do have that in our... Work hard to... coordinate not just with internal departments, but with other jurisdictions and municipalities.

Yeah, I do believe we have in there that, you know, again, making the most efficient use of the sewer repair money and kind of generalized it. But yeah, it's definitely, it's our internal goal. So yeah, putting it in here as a goal wouldn't.

It just creates good optics and it's nice to have it someday when we're not all here. If it's still written in there, people will know what the idea was.

I think for us, it was forest for the trees because we're kind of already doing that. pushing to make sure we're trying to be collaborative on projects where it makes sense. Okay, thanks. Thank you for that.

Kimber, did you have anything you wanted to ask before I go to public comment?

I think Sarah said she had to.

Yeah, she dropped out. Okay. So that would be a no. And with that, we're going to open it up for public comment here in the room first. Is there anyone in the room that would like to make a comment? on this agenda item. Okay, seeing none, we're going to go online.

And Sarah, if you'd like to... For those online who would like to provide public comment on this agenda item, please press the raise hand icon on Zoom or star nine on your telephone Okay, it doesn't look like we have anyone online who would like to provide comment either.

Okay, seeing no one online or in the room, we're going to close public comment at this time, bring it back to the commission. And are there any further questions or comments?

Go ahead. I just was reading the sewage general plan review committee. They read like who's who in engineering, been around for a long time. They probably know what they're doing. they gave a recommendation for approval to the County Council and so I'll be recommending approval as well.

Okay, thank you for that any other comments. Okay, seeing none I entertain a motion on this agenda item.

It's fair I move to recommends the unified sewer plan to the second.

For approval. There's been a motion and a second any discussion. Okay, seeing none Sarah would you call the roll for the work.

There are very high.

Mission or something like that. Commissioner Burke all right. Commissioner Anderson I I share crimes by. And everyone. Thank you for most passes.

Thank you Steve appreciate the presentation. Thank you. So with that we're going to move on to agenda item 7 multiple unit housing incentive areas regulations.

Morning. All right. 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, and today I'll be providing an update of the Multiple Unit Housing Incentive Areas Ordinance Package. Today I'll start with a brief history of the program in Pierce County, followed by providing an overview of the guiding documents and process that staff followed for conducting this review. Then I'll discuss staff recommendations for Council's implementation of the program and end with the proposed changes to the development and design regulations. Then I'll briefly walk through where we are in the legislative process and before addressing any questions or comments that you may have. So a bit of background, the Multiple Unit Housing Incentive Areas program began in Pierce County in 2012. Their state law was updated to allow counties to designate residential targeted areas near higher education campuses. And later that year, Pierce County implemented the Garfield residential part of the area and implemented its tax exemption regulations for that area as well. In 2021 and 2025, state regulations were updated, expanding applicability and reporting requirements. And in 2025, the state also expanded applicability and location criteria for counties. Also in 2025 Pierce County code was updated to reorganize where in the code, the tax exemption program regulations were located and remove tax taxation standards from the development regulations portion of code. This year, council staff developed a proposal to update Title IV, consistent with the changes made to state law and expand the program as outlined in resolution 2026.71. So a quick note on the name change for the program just for clarity. So the multifamily tax exemption program is what it has been called in the county historically from 2012 to the present code. And Part of the reasoning for adjusting the name from, to use two different acronyms in one sentence, MFTE to MUHIA. So to transition to the multiple unit housing incentive areas is to have some specificity on what the applicability requirements are. So as part of the comprehensive plan update, Pierce County changed its development regulations for single family housing to include up to five units within a single attached structure. And the applicability of the multiple unit housing incentive area tax regulations can be applied to any building with four or more units. which means that technically some single family use developments could apply for this program. And having the program be named multifamily tax exemption and applied to a single family use has some dissonance there from a regulatory perspective. Also in state law, this program is called the Multiple Unit Housing Incentive Area. So we are just aligning with the state definition for this program, as well as removing this narrow but technically misrepresented title. With all that said, there are two primary guiding documents for the scope of this package. The comprehensive plan has clear policy guidance to encourage and expand the multiple unit housing incentive area tax exemption program, and councils adopted Resolution 2026-171 which sets for us from council for PPW to review the materials in that that were exhibits to that resolution and provide comment and recommendation on the materials prior to council's final action in this this fall. Since the July briefing where the commission heard from staff mostly focused on an overview of the contents of the exhibits of the resolution, staff have performed a jurisdictional scan of other programs. This review focused on determining standard as well as preferred practices for implementing these programs and to understand the local regulatory landscape for other similar jurisdictions. Additionally, staff met with Human Services, who currently administer the existing program, with the Assessor Treasurer's Office, who would have a role in administering the tax exemption portions of it, with Pierce Transit and the Executive's Office to ensure both policy alignment and identify any upcoming administrative or review changes that would be needed if the code is implemented. So the scope of the changes fall really into three categories, separated into four items. These are all outlined in the resolution from council. The first is council's intent to adopt or to repeal the existing RTA and establish two residential targeted areas and establish two new ones. The second is both substantive and organizational changes to chapter 460, which is where the actual administrative regulations for the tax exemption program will live. And then the third includes the proposed changes to both 18A and 18J, which are our development and design regulations associated with residential cost.

Okay.

To briefly go over the two proposed residential targeted areas. This map may look familiar, but it has a slight modification. So I'm going to talk through the distinction between these different proposed boundaries. So the area highlighted in yellow is the proposed area by council and the resolution that they intend to adopt. And just as a reminder, if you look on the west side of State Route 7, about two-thirds to three-quarters of the way up, you'll see a hashed in area. That is the existing Parkland RTA.

Could you, excuse me, Ben, could you please give us the north and south boundaries for where we're at? Yes. So for that, do you mean for the map as a whole?

For the shaded area as a whole, not the hash area. So the northern boundary of this map, I believe, is 96th Street. It's the street that divides Tacoma from unincorporated Pierce County in the Parkland area. I believe the southernmost boundary is 96th Street. Don't know off the top of my head. Like 176. I think you're correct.

Yeah. It'd be south of 176. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

I have a question about that. Are part of plan already mapped to counties most peak vulnerable, low canopy neighborhoods, Parkland, Spanaway, Midland? No. Are any of the incentive areas

Just to make sure I understand the question.

Well, our parks plan mapped the county's most heat vulnerable areas. Are any of these areas overlap?

We didn't specifically analyze compared to the urban heat island, but this is the same area that is our compact urban area. And so it would be, there would likely be overlap along these areas.

No canopy or shading standards? Are we not setting any standards?

We have existing canopy and shading standards that are applied to all residential development and I will actually come back to that later in the presentation. Thank you for that. Let me just make one note real quick.

I'll just jump in. Ben, do you have a rough sense of how much land area we're talking about that would be applicable for this new designation? In terms of acreage?

Yeah, or in terms of square miles? I don't in terms of square miles. What I can say is this is based on a half-mile walkshed of Esther 7, and it's a significant portion of that. So we're talking about like you kind of inferred. I think we're talking about square miles as opposed to acres.

Okay. In terms of neighboring jurisdictions, like the city of Tacoma, is there a comparison of how much particular land area has this kind of designation? I'm just thinking of... the sort of the growing transit communities framework at the PSRC that's wanting to, I think, support higher concentrations of density around our transit corridors and our centers. I just am wondering if there are, if we have like a ballpark comparison between, between jurisdictions. And I think that that kind of information would be useful for the county council moving forward.

Thank you for the feedback, first and foremost. In terms of the jurisdictions that we reviewed, so we looked at Seattle, Tacoma, Bellingham, and Wenatchee, as well as several jurisdictions within Pierce County, like Sumner and Puyallup and some smaller jurisdictions. In terms of comparison, we didn't do a spatial analysis of total acreage or square miles, like I said, but from a To speak in generalities, I think that Tacoma had a similar amount of total area in terms of available project area. And Seattle obviously had a larger total area just based on the size of the jurisdiction. And then we saw kind of some variance in total area between some of those other jurisdictions I referenced based on total population. But the actual administration of the programs are pretty different as well as far as income thresholds, proportion of units, these kinds of things, which I think also further affect the likely impact of a program like this on implementation over time. But thank you.

Yeah, appreciate it.

So to return to the two different colors here, just to make sure that this is clear, the yellow area is the proposed Parkland RTA from the resolution adopted by Council. The green area is an expanded proposed RTA that is based on Pierce Transit streamlined stops that are planned for implementation beginning next year. So the existing area in yellow is based on existing Pierce Transit streamlined stops and a half mile walk shed. The green area is based on the stops that are going to begin to be implemented starting next year. So we are applying the same methodology, just requesting that council also look at the planned stops in the kind of short term from a planning perspective.

And since the county doesn't directly control Pierce Transit, what kind of confirmation do you have that these kind of expansions are going to happen? And what's the timeline relative to this change?

Yeah, thank you for the question, Chair O'Leary. So we discussed with Pierce Transit these stops in particular are already in their planning horizon so these are plans to be implemented like i said in the short term so these haven't been permitted yet but this is not contingent on adjustments to funding or upcoming votes these are already in the pipeline from pierce transit thank you

36 wedding anniversary today. My wife's waiting in the parking lot.

Nobody else can leave. I just want to let you know, we have four people in the room now. So, um, We need you online for a fifth. So if you happen to drop off or if you need to leave, please let me know as soon as possible. Thank you.

And please lock the door.

Moving on to the South Hill proposed residential targeted area, this slide is retained mostly for reference. Staff have proposed no changes to Council's proposal, but just wanted to reference this since we also briefed you on this area in July. Are there any follow-ups here?

Yeah, again, if you could give us the North and South, I can't read those, and I just think it's good for everybody to know the boundaries. Absolutely. If there's anyone online that can't read what's there.

So the southern boundary is 144th and the northern boundary is 120th. Thank you.

Which is the city line? I believe so. Very close, if not the city line.

So now I want to get into PPW staff recommendations regarding these two kind of sets of regulatory changes. The section focused on 4.60 in Pierce County Code, which is the administrative regulations for the taxation program. These are not... being forwarded through the legislative process by Planning and Public Works. This will ultimately be a Council action, but they have requested in the resolution that we provide a written recommendation back to Council staff prior to implementation. And so I just want to speak briefly on these recommendations for the Commission's input if they desire.

Yeah, and before you go there, I just want to make sure we're clearly understanding how these three columns line up and the purpose of them. Yeah, so Council made the initial proposal.

Correct.

Staff recommendations may or may not directly correspond with that. It may actually be in conflict with that in some of these And then there's reasoning for the change. So as we evaluate this, which column are we evaluating as it relates to what potentially could be submitted? Is it staff recommendations or is it council proposal?

It would be the staff recommendations. So the council proposal is a summary of the action that council and council staff took in the resolution and the exhibits to the resolution. So that's an overview of what the actual regulatory proposed change was by council. The middle column in blue staff recommendation is any modification to the council's proposal that staff recommend. And then the reason for change is just a justification, a brief justification for any difference between council proposal and staff recommendation. Thank you.

Yes.

So the We already referenced the first one, but the first recommendation is a slight change to the mapping of the Parkland residential targeted area based on the upcoming stream line stops for Pierce Transit. The second is a slight change to the regulatory language of the affordable unit distribution regulations in 460, which adds a clause requiring the units to be distributed throughout the development. And this is to ensure that income restricted units are not isolated on a single floor or in a particular area. basically separated from the rest of the market development or concentrated to a single area. Yes.

Question. In that capacity, is there any allowance for tiny homes?

Is there any allowance for tiny homes? Can you clarify that?

So it says here that they need to be of similar size, which I imagine would be two and three bedroom, two bathroom kind of minimum. Is there any allowance for a home that's smaller than that, a tiny home?

So if the development as a whole is constructed, let's say in a cottage cluster or a group of tiny homes around something, and that was the total distribution of units, and there was a subset of those units that were income restricted and pursuing this program, then yes, that would be appropriate. What these regulations do is basically say that You can't build exclusively studio units for the income restricted units and two and three bedroom for the market rate units. It says that if you're building a range of units from studio to two to three bedrooms, the income restricted units need to follow a similar ratio of that distribution of units.

Got it. And Ben, a question about that. Was there any consultation gained from the private sector as to the functionality of this kind of a requirement?

So we didn't discuss with private sector developers on this. However, this was a very common regulation throughout the 11 jurisdictions that we reviewed their existing regulations. administrative regulations. So this is common practice throughout the state in terms of how these regulations are written.

Thank you.

The second recommendation by staff is to add the optional provisions from state law that create a process to bring buildings back into compliance in the event of a reporting or income qualification error. And this process just ensures that the residents of these units are charged fairly and that the income-restricted units can be preserved for the duration of the tax exemption benefit rather than canceling a tax exemption in the event of an error in the reporting process. So to provide, I guess, a brief example to hopefully make this clear, the existing uh, regular or the proposed regulations state that if during the reporting process, any error is found that is, um, substantive in terms of income reporting or charges to new tax exemption, the program would be canceled. The income restricted units would no longer qualify for income restriction and the building would, the property owner would owe the taxes for the tax exemption back. And basically the units are removed from income restriction. This allows for, in the case of what's referred to in state law as minor noncompliance. In the event of those, this institutes an additional reporting requirement and for the developer or the property owner to demonstrate a return to compliance in order to keep the units at an income restriction. So the goal here is to create an environment where we can preserve the income restricted units for minor errors while also making sure that the money is served. appropriately allocated to the need to. And then lastly, the third recommendation would add a standard to the residential targeted areas to implement a ground floor commercial or mixed use requirement specific to arterial corridors of State Route 7 and 161. The intent here is to ensure that amenities and walkable communities are available to residents and support the walkability of the major corridors.

And my concern on this is, I think we voiced this earlier, but that there be some kind of an incentive base to this. as opposed to just more regulatory issues. I've seen other jurisdictions do this where the standard of construction was to be such that it would allow for commercial use when the demand came, but the flexibility of having that occupied for residential use eliminated the possibility of an entire vacant level that has to be subsidized by the rent attained by the levels above it to make any kind of economic sense of the development, which in fact could prohibit the development from happening. So if we're after a portable housing and higher density housing first concept, I think the more incentives and more flexibility that we can allow, the better. So rather than making it a hard code, if we could incorporate that flexibility, I think that should be looked at.

Thank you for the comment. And we are, it's timely because I'm going to transition us to development regulations.

And just a source for you, you might want to check Sumner's code for their Main Street corridor and some of their multifamily development there.

Thank you. So to transition to the development regulations that Planning and Public Works will finalize and ultimately take to Council after the recommendation from Planning Commission. The proposed changes have a very narrow scope. They remove any reference to the revised Code of Washington, as well as to the residential targeted areas. And it amends the regulations to align them with other existing affordable housing standards. So the intent of these changes is to preserve the parking and recreation incentives associated with mixed use tax exempt development. So this retains the existing incentives in code for a mixed use development. while removing the reference to non-development regulations that were currently in our code as they are today. So additionally during review, staff reviewed the comprehensive plan and sustainability 2030 policies for tree retention and canopy and found that the the existing tree conservation exemption for mixed-use development was not in alignment with the policy priorities. So that incentive has been proposed for removal, which would mean that all developments that fall under this tax exemption would still have the tree retention requirements and standards that are present for any other residential development. Thank you.

Could we go back to the parking place? Sure. Because I'm not understanding the verbiage. Sure. So council proposal removes parking reduction and increased siting flexibility for mixed use development. So was the council proposing that the parking requirement actually be increased?

Yes. So to clarify, because I recognize there are some double and triple negatives associated with this. So council's proposal struck existing incentives in code. Their rationale for striking those incentives was that the... was not actually about the substantive aspect of those exemptions. It was about a reference to the Revised Code of Washington and tying it to the tax exemption regulations that are outside of 18A and 18J. So their primary concern was that by having a reference to regulations that are outside of the development regulations, it unnecessarily ties an administrative regulation to something that is reviewed under a whole separate set of requirements. So their intent with the removal of these incentives is actually not about what the incentive was or wasn't doing in terms of incentivizing particular market action. They were focused on ensuring that the actual administrative regulations for the tax exemption can be agile and don't need to fall under taxation. referencing multiple titles of code unnecessarily. Does that clarification make sense in terms of?

It does, but I want to take it one step further, please, where staff recommendation says retain current coding for mixed use development. So in doing that, I haven't gone back and read the codes, but can these higher density multifamily applications developments be built with little or no parking requirements? I guess that's my question.

Yeah, absolutely. And this is perfect. You are walking through the process that staff took. Staff reviewed the existing incentive and what would happen if it was removed as if we were following council's initial proposal in the resolution. And the effect is essentially a 20% increase to the parking requirement associated with a mixed use development. that falls under the exact same criteria. So staff's recommendation is to keep the existing 20% reduction incentive in the code while removing the administrative references and rewording the regulations, basically to keep the incentive the same, but also achieve council's priority of separating out these two separate processes.

So is a developer required to have more parking or less parking under staff's recommendation? Less.

Well, the same as it is right now.

But they're not capped. They can have more parking if they choose. They're not limited.

We're talking about a minimum.

This is all minimum. Okay. Thank you.

And just for clarity, the exact same thing is the case with the recreational area. We are preserving what is existing in code today in terms of the incentive. We are just separating out. These are two different regulatory processes. Speaking of process, a quick note on the legislative process and where we are. So planning commission with the, hearing immediately after this, where I will take questions and respond to any comments and hear the recommendation to the Pierce County Council. And after the recommendation is rendered, staff will finalize and submit the development and design regulations package for legislative review and present it to council committee in October. And we'll submit ultimately the recommendations for the administrative standards associated with the tax exemption program separately to Council on staff. And then the current schedule as the proposed package before the Council body in November this year. Thank you so much for your time and attention. Questions. I'm happy to continue to discuss any questions that you may have.

And we're going to have public comment as well. So is there any questions at this point from any of the Commission? I'll retain my questions until after. Okay. Robert, is there anything specific you want to ask right now? Or do you wait until after public comment?

I do have one question. As far as The practicality of all this coming together has there been any analysis of market demand for constructing these units and as far as the county's efforts under the buildable lands program. What is the infill potential.

Great question. Thank you, Commissioner. Specific market analysis for the housing incentive areas was not conducted by staff. Based on the timeline associated with this process, the resolution was adopted in July. Here we are in August moving the regulations through. And so from an economic development standpoint, I think that that is worthless. going to be underway this fall and winter in terms of determining potential effects and further amendments to the development and regulations in the future.

One other question is, has there been any discussion of focused public investment directed to these areas? that will help implement this as a, I guess, a planned community somewhat.

Thank you for the question, Commissioner. I can't speak to the intents of But I can say that these areas do align with our regional growth strategy and the policies that are outlined in the comprehensive plan for these two areas. These are our most urban areas with the highest densities and the most access to transit, if that gets to the heart of your question.

Yeah, so far I just have not seen any real focus in master planning or any type of focused public investments that would ensure all this comes together. I just apologize if those efforts have already been underway and maybe there's been some discussion on that, but How do we get to that point where it comes together as somewhat of a coordinated area of development?

Great question. I'm just a planning manager, just coming to help and remind him of his own very work that he is looking at right now. We have a number of things going on along both of these corridors, both in South Hill and in Parkland. Both South Hill and Pippin are seeing brand new community plan updates. Both of those will have a focus on housing. And one of the great parts of getting to look at things in a community plan scale as opposed to countywide is that countywide we use a broad brush to look at what zoning is and should be. When we're at the community scale level, we can go street by street and see where it really makes sense. So there will be more nuance added there. In addition, specifically to parkland because the transit is already there. They're to a lesser extent in South Hill. We're working on a SEPA planned action for the entirety of the parkland community. So we expect that that to add additional incentive to development. So these things will work nicely in concert with each other. Some of the work that Ben is doing, and I'll let him speak to it, with Enterprise has been to look at the middle housing zone in particular and to find the most suitable parcels available there. So to incentivize development for middle housing in these communities. So likely outside much of this boundary. So those things will work in concert with each other. And then lastly, there are other programs in the county that we're hoping that kind of stack incentives on top of each other. So last year there were updates to our transfer of development rights program and Parkland is a receiving area. This historically has been the planner's favorite tool that doesn't get used, but we're hoping that that changes when the incentives are slightly better as they are at the moment here. So the intent is for Parkland specifically, but down the corridor eventually into Spanaway, And there's plenty of capacity within the comprehensive plan and the buildable lands analysis. The plan is to stack all these incentives together.

Okay. Well, thank you.

And last question I have before we go to public comment. In your prior presentation, I brought up the issue of communication with Central Pierce Fire and the facilities they may be able to provide if we're going to be talking to 6 or 7 story building has there been any communication with them together with the water purveyors that are so fractured throughout Eastern Pierce County and also with the existing utilities for sewer primarily sanitary sewer not so much along the Pacific Avenue corridor as the notable break in service along the meridian corridor between about 128th and 144th. Have you followed up on any of that?

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for bringing that up. So that was several points. I'm going to start from the first, and please remind me if I miss any of those sections that you brought up. So first of all, coordinated with our fire marshal here at the county as well as was able to reach out to the group of fire chiefs throughout Pierce County and really heard a couple of different aspects that I think are important contacts. So when looking at development at any scale, the the permit review from a fire perspective is going to be focused on the International Fire Code and the National Fire Protection Association regulations. So regardless of height or intensity, right, of a two-story versus a seven-story building, those are the standards that are going to be reviewed from a permit standpoint in terms of the standards and fire mitigation infrastructure that's going to be on site in terms of serving that facility in the event of an emergency ladder height available to a particular fire station or a particular service area is not a precluding factor for the height of a building. And so I spoke with The fire chief from West pierce on this, particularly just in order to. Understand. And I won't specifically quote but. ladder or regardless of the. infrastructure that the actual fire department responding to a given emergency has, there are policies and procedures that they implement in order to effectively provide emergency services. So in the event that there isn't a ladder truck that reaches the height that they want, there are other interventions that they will pursue based on the current circumstances. To return to the water purveyor side of this, So in order before development occurs, and as part of your development application, you need a notice of water availability from the water purveyor that verifies and ensures that there is, um, access to sufficient water flow in the event of an emergency. So in cases where there wouldn't be fire flow access from say a hydrant or other, um, um, infrastructure hookups, there are alternatives that are implemented, but those are identified during the development permit review phase, not after the development of the actual use.

In terms of, let's see, I think I'm missing, what was the? The other was the sanitary sewer and a notable gap on Meridian.

Yes, so the existing regulations for how... development is supposed to connect to sewer is not changed by any of these regulations. So the existing threshold is basically if you're within 300 feet of existing sanitary sewer access, you're required to hook up to it. If not, then you get an exemption from the minimum density because you're required to build on-site septic or other alternatives in order to develop that parcel. In terms of capacity and availability as far as looking forward in the long term. In discussing with Sue who was here earlier this morning, they base their future improvement priority list based on the comprehensive plan. And the comprehensive plan identifies specifically Parkland, Spanaway, as well as the South Hill Corridor, SR 161, as the two highest densities and areas where we anticipate the most growth. And so that from a... future capacity standpoint, those are the two areas we anticipate seeing the most investment in the future to manage capacity and ensure that there is sufficient sewer access for new development.

I'd just like to note that these are huge expense items and coordination of the various water jurisdictions together with this extension of sanitary sewer to put that on the private sector and still try to gain affordable housing is a concern and in my opinion reduces probability and my My optimistic goal and vision is that something like this come together. My concern is that we've missed pieces of the puzzle to make it probable because the private sector can only bear so much. And then it ultimately gets passed on to the consumer in this case. people looking hopefully for affordable housing of sorts, right? Because it's going to have that element in it. So to whatever degree there can be interdepartmental communication and coordination, as I've said multiple times, I just think it's such a priority if we're going to get something like this off the ground for the benefit of the citizens in the county. So I'd just like to go on record saying that.

Thank you.

Well that you're going to say something you had a very very important look on your face, OK is there any other comments at this point. I don't see anyone in the room, but I'm going to make a call out for anyone in the room for public comment. They seem that we're going to go online is there anyone online that would like to make public comment. Please state your name your address and you'd have 3 minutes.

So for anyone online like right on these press the raise hand icon on zoom or start on. You don't have anyone online. It's about time to be there.

Okay, seeing none we're going to close public comment bring it back to the commission are there any final comments or questions. I think that okay go ahead.

Thanks, Ben, for the presentation. So one question. I did make a request, I think the last time that we discussed this, to have some mapping of sidewalk infrastructure. And I'm not seeing that in this packet. I think we do a lot of assuming that we do have sidewalk infrastructure in order attain this one half mile radius for transit access. And so we talked a lot about concurrency during the Transportation Improvement Program, but from a non-motorized perspective, I'm still seeing that as kind of as a gap. And I wanna draw that as a connection between what this is proposing and the Transportation Improvement Program because In terms of sustainability of the ferry system, for example, that is about transporting people from place to place who live on an island, right? And so the concept of potentially incentivizing development that may not have direct pedestrian access to Pacific Avenue to access the enhanced bus stops for the stream system is also the same concept of sort of creating concentrations of density that are essentially an island. And it's very similar, actually, the cost per boarding, if you do the math. If you look at it from a ferry perspective, for the Pierce County system, it's about $68 a ride for the ferry system. And for a shuttle paratransit service, that's $76 per boarding. So if we do create this incentive structure to potentially create additional affordable housing that could be placed some distance away from bus stops, that is an externality that then could potentially be borne by Pierce Transit and make them potentially less financially sustainable. So that's kind of the... I think the biggest concern that I have. The other recommendations that the staff have proposed in terms of I concur with all of them. I think that the big sticking point for me is really just that we are talking about, I think about, I just was doing the rough math. It looks like eight square miles of of land area for the Spanaway corridor. And it just seems like a pretty large area. And I think also to the chair's point, if we then put the requirement that the private sector potentially pay for those connections in the non-motorized network, we start to get into an area where we have an area, we have the map, but then the ability to actually deliver on affordable housing projects, it becomes more dicey or it becomes an accounting exercise that you really have to think about to make the projects pencil. So I guess that's where I am landing on this. I think we can still potentially proceed, but I just want us to have our eyes wide open about really what the infrastructure requirements are to sort of make this work. And I'm sure that you're looking at that from the community plan perspective as well. So those are my comments.

I just add a brief response that Yes, we absolutely are looking at it. We are very keenly aware of deficiencies. They are not spread evenly across the entirety of the corridor. So for example, on the sub-southwestern part of the corridor, west of State Route 7, you run into a golf course. You run into Joint Base Lewis-McChord. So we need less sidewalks there. So it's like an entire stretch. particularly in the most southern portion coming up from the Roy Y up into Spanaway and particularly along B Street, the most logical parallel facility where we have three schools in Bethel School District. The connections going east-west are tough, exactly as you're indicating. Some of them are tough not because of lack of sidewalks, but just because of speeds on them. So we are, all of this is, we're going, everything is connected. Leticia was here this morning on the Transportation Improvement Program. We will, through these two community plans in Parkland and in Southville, be identifying the most relevant routes. I'll say that there are some good examples today of what this could look like, what success looks like. So there is a Either the ribbon cutting happened last weekend or it's about to happen for the Parkland Community Trail, a joint project between the Parks Department and the Office of the County Engineer. It's almost a couple of miles that goes north from Sprinker all the way, just a couple of miles north, and it's a fantastic facility. So we have examples of what it could look like. Leticia earlier today pointed to the work that is coming on C Street, and that's in preliminary design today. So Those things are starting. What we want to identify in the very short run are the things that are very cost effective and cheap. So we're spending time thinking through both in the transportation code package that we'll bring to you just as a briefing very soon. It's still in the early days. We are particularly struggling with what a greenway looks like in the context of a county as opposed to a city. And how that should be applied on county roads. But to be clear, what we're talking about is places where we don't have the ability to put in the sidewalks. Because sidewalk has some costs, but of course doing the... The storm water and all the other things that come with it raises the expense. So are there things that we could do, for example, like speed bumps. That would not go against, you know, other safety or design considerations maintenance considerations for the county engineer, but on low volume facilities that allow us to create some more pedestrian friendly bicycle friendly role friendly environments. So we're going to figure that out with the code package. We'll know which facilities to prioritize the most. Conveniently knowing where these stream bus stops are gives us very clear places that we need to connect. So we're well aware of what we're working on.

Thank you. I'd just like to make another comment specifically about Parkland. With the exception of this new multifamily higher density potential development, that area is relatively built out. So the open ditches that you're referencing for stormwater and things of that nature, there's not going to be an abundant amount of new construction where impact fees could be passed on to the private sector. So these improvements are going to fall on the back of the county. from a budgetary standpoint, whether it come from internal funding or grants or whatever. I mean, that's your world. But I could just see further delays in this vision. And I question, and maybe it's the right thing, to get this in place first. Is this the, in your opinion, is this the right approach as to first steps Or is it a build it and they will come theory where you would put in the sidewalks to take care of the storm sewer, those sort of things, and then put this in place?

I think this is a right first step in that it's an allowable incentive. Nobody is required to use it. And I don't believe that people will use it if they don't believe that it's a product that they could sell or rent. Sure. I think our existing area has been very small for the last few decades. It's got one building in it in the heart of Parkland. I think that was a very successful project, but we need to expand the area to allow for additional ones. Just my own personal opinion is land use affects transportation more than transportation affects land use. And we are a little bit out of balance in the moment in that Pierce Transit has already built a nice new facility down in Spanaway. They've already put in the infrastructure for the stream bus line. So they are making the nod to say the transit is coming. Mike SanClements, And so I think we have to make some brought further progress beyond the zoning to help the land use catch up to the transportation and then following up on Commissioner Burke's comment earlier on multimodal level of service. Part of our intention with that work is to think of, and the planning jargon for this is transect, but we're calling it place types, and to think of the right thing in the right place. And so if you are in a place like Parkland, our expectation is going to be that people could potentially use the bus and could potentially walk to get around the neighborhood, not all trips, but some of their trips. And because of that, our expectation then for the level of service is going to be that we're going to expect much higher reliance on walking, bicycling, transit, and are willing to accept a lower level of service, not saying failing level of service, but a lower level of service for car travel, as opposed to other places where if you're on a rural facility, outside of Eatonville, my expectation is going to be that we need excellent car facilities. Of course, there are people who are transit dependent no matter where you go, but that is going to be a place where we're much more heavily concerned about better car level of service. So with those, we're kind of moving all the policy pieces at the same time. So I think it's appropriate to get this part going. If we should be so lucky to see development happen quickly, and I truly hope that we are, I think we will have As Leticia said, the TIP changes quickly and dynamically. We will have clear reprioritization to focus on those . Thank you.

One question is, is there any virtue in looking at e-bikes and e-scooters, the rental, to sort of plug the gap between the transit system and just short trips and people who may not have cars but need to carry groceries?

So on the short answer, yes. That's the short answer. The more nuanced answer is that I think people from the same realm as people on traditional bikes, we want protected facilities to make everybody feel safe.

Excuse me, I lost the audio again. I'm not sure if we went mute. Test, test, test. There we go.

OK. So we're looking at level of traffic stress. This is part of where the greenways come in So sadly we don't have anywhere in Pierce County not to incorporate in part. There is another I hope eventually vendors that are us. But the personally owned one. Constraints and facilities back to work that we're trying to do.

Okay with that I would entertain a motion.

I'd like to make a motion that we recommend to the County Council to approve the multi-unit housing incentive area regulations.

As proposed?

As proposed.

Is there a second? Second. Okay. We have a motion to second. Any discussion?

I think that, so, I mean, first of all, I'd like to let the maker of the motion speak to the motion if that's- Oh, sure.

Do you want to speak to the motion? Do you have anything specific as far as an endorsement?

No, do you have an addition you'd like to make? Yes, I just think that there are quite a few caveats that we've identified in terms of infrastructure and just other pieces of the puzzle that might need to be identified or highlighted in the comment letter. Would you like to highlight those first? I think that, well, I would identify non-motorized connections, and I would also second the Chair's identification of sewer systems, extensions of sewer, or upgrades to sewer. But I would also want to reflect that this is one piece of the puzzle in dealing with the community plans. So I don't know how I would phrase that in terms of the motion, but I would just request that we recognize those concerns in the letter.

So what if we did an amendment to the proposal that said something to the effect that we are proposing a recommendation of approval of the multi-unit housing incentive with the following consideration of these recommendations, of these issues. Yeah, I would support that. And then make those issues be clearly identified, Sarah, that would be What would what was the terminology use for sidewalks at a non motorized access non motorized access and connectivity. Sanitary sewer extensions. So do you want those individually should make an amendment to the current machine with findings of yeah, so do you want me for the amendment you want me to list or us to list the elements that we want consideration given to.

Yes, so that would be so the main motion right now is the recommending approval of County Council as proposed. If you want to make the amendment.

We're going to take as proposed out.

Okay.

Well, you're going to make an amendment to amend that.

Yeah, so we can just... Yeah, a motion to amend. And yeah, make a motion to amend. And then... So you'd say to recommend approval to County Council and then now you can specify once you...

The approval of the multi-unit housing incentive areas with the following considerations. How's that? Is that okay? Do you guys like that?

We can move to amend the motion. Yeah, so you're making the motion to amend or...

Go ahead and make it. So I move to amend the motion to include approval of the multi-unit housing incentive areas. Considering the following issues, non-motorized access and connectivity and sanitary sewer connections.

I would say it's strong.

And strong water. Okay. Okay. So just to repeat that back. So the amendment is to, so it's still recommend approval of the proposal with considerations of non-motorized access, connectivity and sanitary sewer. and stormwater is that that's okay. So we need a second that.

And I'll second that. I will call the vote on the hour voting on the amend the amendment.

Yes.

Sorry. Chair O'Leary.

Aye.

Commissioner Burke. Aye. Commissioner Anderson. Aye. Vice Chair Carnes. Aye. And Secretary Weinman. Aye. The amendment passes.

So now. Sure. Go ahead, sir. Sure. Yeah, I just want to, we, we voted on the amendment. Now we have to vote on the, um, the motion as amended. Okay. And I'll just take a quick minute. So now, um, we're voting. I'd like, we're going to call a vote for the motion as amended.

Sorry, Sarah.

Okay. Okay. So this is for the motion as amended. So, Chair O'Leary? Aye. Commissioner Burke? Aye. Commissioner Anderson? Aye. Vice Chair Carnes? Aye. And Secretary Wenzel?

Aye.

Okay, thank you. A motion passes.

And I'd like to take a five-minute recess, please.

Okay. It almost ran out of thoughts.

I know it has been terrible.

It is currently 1252. We will reconvene at 1257. The current time is 1259 PM. So Chair, if we could get someone to make the motion to continue the August 25, 126 planning commission meeting. past 1 p.m. to proceed with the remaining agenda items 8 through 10. We could get a motion.

Mr. Chair, I move to extend the Planning Commission meeting of August 25th, 2026. August 24th. Sorry. It's the 25th. August 25th, 2026 to

Passed 1.

Passed 1 p.m. to finish the remaining items on our encumbrance.

Seconded. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Okay. Passes unanimously. We will continue. Thank you. So with this, we're going to move on to our next agenda item eight, which is essential light rail transit facilities.

All right. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Chair O'Leary and missioners. It's good to be with you today. My name is Tanner Fuller. I'm a senior planner in the Long Range Planning Division of Planning and Public Works. And I've been with the county since April. So it's my pleasure to speak before this body for the first time with the county as well. I'll start by reminding you that my agenda item today is a briefing only, not requesting any action from the commission today. I'd also like to acknowledge that we have some Sound Transit staff members who are present online and have agreed to be available in case there's any questions on this topic that would be better addressed by them than by me. So I'd like to acknowledge and thank them for their assistance and support as well. So for this agenda item today, I'll start by introducing and reviewing the topic, providing an overview of the relevant issues, and then describing the proposed code changes and their compatibility with our comprehensive plan, as well as the anticipated timing of the legislative process for this item. So by way of introduction in general, this is related to Sound Transit's Tacoma Dome Link Extension Project. which you may or may not be aware was one of the projects identified in the voter-approved Sound Transit 3 ballot measure, which was approved by voters in 2016. This particular project would connect Tacoma and Pierce County more largely to the regional light rail network by extending what is currently the Federal Way downtown station one line and through South Better Way and 5 to Tacoma, ending at the Tacoma Dome station where the existing streetcar line currently starts. Light rail is defined in the Growth Management Act. You'll see the revised Code of Washington reference there in the third bullet. It's defined as an essential public facility. On the right side of the screen, I'll just highlight that what you're seeing there is taken from Sound Transit's website regarding their timeline for this project, which you'll see identifies that they intend to issue a final environmental impact statement next year and then begin the permitting process thereafter. They're still in the design phase and the planning phase of the Tacoma Dome Link extension. And on that basis, they released, Sound Transit released their draft environmental impact statement on this overall light rail project in 2024. The county's planning and public works department submitted a comment letter on that environmental impact statement in 2025. And then later in 2025, the Sound Transit Board also identified their preferred alternative for the route. And so the particular portion of this project that we're concerned with that would impact parcels that are unincorporated is the section between the proposed South Federal Way station and the proposed Fife station. The preferred alternative, you'll see a map included in the staff report from Sound Transit showing that preferred alternative, which would go along Highway 99 between Milton and Fife before ultimately going to the Fife Station. So I've included some maps produced by our GIS specialist here where you'll see the exact parcels that we're talking about when it comes to the reason for this code package and the purpose and to provide some greater context for the interaction between the preferred alignment and the unincorporated areas. So the areas in gray on this map are part of incorporated cities. You'll see Fife on the left or the west side of the map, and then Milton on the right or the east side of the map. And you'll see that there's a couple of parcels The preferred alignment is shown on this map in kind of a green color. That red parcel is currently owned by the Washington State Department of Transportation as part of their SR 167 Puget Sound Gateway Extension project. And then there's a neighborhood Mike SanClements, Up to the north and east that you'll see, and it has a partial surrounding it, which is owned in common by the homeowners of that neighborhood and it consists of essentially an open space or. Mike SanClements, critical area buffer for some slopes that are that are within that area as well. I'd also like to highlight here, this next slide includes the satellite imagery, which of course is rapidly becoming out of date with the ongoing construction of the SR-167 project. It kind of gives you a sense of the area that we're talking about. You can see the new roundabout that was constructed by WSDOT in this area. And you also see High Lobos Creek. This map shows the shoreline environments from the county's shoreline master program. Um, which in this area include high intensity in the red and shoreline residential in the orange. Um, and I will note while we're on this slide that the proposal. That I'm bringing before you. does not propose any changes to the county shoreline permitting, does not add any exemptions for light rail to shoreline permitting. The Sound Transit would be subject to the same shoreline permitting requirements as others who are seeking to develop in this type of an environment. So the purpose of why we're bringing a code package forward today is to facilitate Pierce County's review process for the Tacoma Dome Link Extension project to thereby avoid unnecessary delay on account of the county while ensuring that impacts can still be mitigated. There were some alternative solutions explored, including having the City of Milton R5 simply annex these parcels. given that it's such a limited impact on the unincorporated portions of the county. There's no stations proposed. Of course, it's a couple of parcels over which the light rail facility would run that are unincorporated. However, it was deemed that annexation wouldn't be feasible within the necessary timelines, nor did it necessarily make sense for the cities that they weren't interested in considering it at this time. In addition to, as I'll speak to in a little bit, the requirements of the Growth Management Act for essential public facilities both create the requirement for a County ordinance, a limited scope County ordinance to address this issue and make sure that we can properly permit this project when it comes through. So I'd like to review a couple of the issues here for you. And this, this calls out the three code sections, which are all found, um, in titles 18 and 18 a of the county code, um, for which we're trying to solve some issues here. So first, uh, there's a lack of definition for the light rail facilities proposed for construction, uh, under this project, the county does have an existing use category for transportation. Um, the closest category, however, is transportation level two. which talks about it includes passenger rail stations, parking facilities, school bus yards, bus barns, way stations, bus stations, transfer centers, and ferry docks. So it doesn't address the actual rail infrastructure itself. It focuses on stations and stops. And so it doesn't adequately capture, again, the limited impact of the light rail project on the unincorporated areas. nor does it again acknowledge the essential public facility aspect under state law. And then second, if we're adding this definition in to clarify, then that definition needs to be added to the appropriate use table to ensure that the facility is allowed in the appropriate zoning districts. And then the final section would be amended to add consistency with the proposed definition by adding it as a subcategory of our essential public facility category, which is already defined in the code. And I'll get to the, I'll have a later slide that will detail exactly what that code language is that's proposed. which is this slide here. So this is actually, this slide actually contains the entirety of the language that's proposed to be added under this code amendment. So the first point there you'll see is the definition of essential light rail transit facilities, which would define the use. to mean structures, rail track, equipment, utilities, or other improvements necessary. And then it references a few state laws. So the definition in state law for a rail fixed guideway public transportation system, which by its nature excludes the sounder train and applies only to the link light rail, because that state law definition specifically excludes any rail that's also on tracks regulated by the Federal Railroad Administration. Because the Sounder train shares its tracks with freight traffic, it's not included in that state law section. And then the other state law section references a regional transit authority formed under Chapter 81.112 of the revised Code of Washington, of which Sound Transit is currently the only entity that's created under that section of state law. And then a sentence there at the end to specify that the definition does not include stations, maintenance facilities, or parking facilities. Again, acknowledging the limited scope of what we're trying to do here and the fact that the county would probably want to take a closer look should there be a proposal for one of those types of facilities in an area in the future. And then the second section, is an amendment to one of our use tables, which is the Pierce County outside of community plan areas use table, which would allow this new use as an outright permitted use in three zones, the mixed use development, suburban residential and residential resource zones. And this would encompass all zones that could potentially see any impacts from this light rail project under any of the studied alternatives. Again, the board has identified their preferred alternative. But until they adopt their final environmental impact statement, all of their alternatives technically remain on the board. And so this allows us to avoid having to go back and adjust should the Sound Transit Board change their alignment down the line.

So Tanner, I have a question for you. Do you prefer we hold our questions to the end or can we ask as we go along? Please, go ahead. Are we putting ourselves in a box potentially by saying that the use is allowed just in the MUD, SR, and RR. And I'm trying to think down the road a long ways. You know, if this actually gets expanded into other areas where it is basically a public benefit and meets some of the new transit requirements and goals and aspirations everybody has. Is there a way that we could say that this is allowed in all zones? So that we're not limited. As we get zoning changes, as we try to expand this, we don't have to go back to the drawing board.

We could. Yes, absolutely. The county could choose to simply allow this newly defined use in every zone outright. This provides us a framework. The proposed language right now narrowly applies to the Tacoma Dome Link Extension project and the extent of its impact on unincorporated areas. It does create a framework whereby we would have a definition that the county, at any point in the future, again, there's currently no voter-approved initiatives to extend light rail anywhere else in incorporated Pierce County. But should that occur at some point in the future, the framework would be established whereby we have a definition. We can add it to whatever use. Whatever zoning districts are necessary down the line. So, are you proposing simply wish to allow it outright anywhere? We could, but again, our goal is to tailor it to to this particular issue at this time.

So. Would that be something to consider and take a look at. as far as eliminating a future step, potentially, if 10 years, 20 years from now, somebody was looking at this and said, we we would need a spur to go here or there. You know, I'm envisioning some of these higher density areas that we just talked about in our previous session. Why wouldn't we talk about giving the greatest latitude to the potential future infrastructure today rather than limit it?

Sure. I think the short answer, yeah, it's absolutely something that we could consider. There's no reason it couldn't be considered.

Would it inhibit the probability of this moving forward in the short term?

I would say it introduces more unknowns, I suppose, as to we don't know what any future projects might be, where they might be located, given that nothing's been proposed by Sound Transit yet beyond Sound Transit 3. So it could open up additional questions. This was also written to acknowledge that there's no stations proposed in unincorporated areas under the Tacoma Dome Link extension. And staff felt that the county would likely want to play a more active role in working with Sound Transit if there were a station proposed in unincorporated areas. For example, the stations proposed in Fife and in Tacoma Those cities have had a very active relationship with Sound Transit in planning for those station areas, creating sub-area plans around the future stations. Whereas that's simply not applicable under this project for Pierce County in our unincorporated areas. So it leaves flexibility, but yeah, there's no reason that the county couldn't simply allow the use outright anywhere if it chose to do so.

Please consider that. Absolutely.

I'll make a note here. And then the final code section proposed to insert some new language. Sorry, let me back up for one second. There's also a note added in the use table under the proposal, which you'll see there as a sub-bullet. It says application of development regulations. Is subject to all exemptions provided by state law, so this acknowledges. SSB 6309, which was adopted by the legislature. In the most recent legislative session, which. In short permits, sound transit to apply for permits before they've acquired property. So, long as they notify the owner that they are doing so. And that they are intending to purchase that property, whether throughout they have eminent domain authority. My understanding is the legislature intended to allow Sound Transit to get the process moving while the property transaction is also going through which can be its own likely process so that they can work on more than one thing at the same time in order to streamline the overall project. So that acknowledges that state law that was passed also allowing the flexibility should the the legislature adopt any future exemptions that apply to sound transit. Um, just make sure that that's being noted in our code as well. And then the final section again, we have an essential public facilities category that's listed right now that currently doesn't have any subcategories. Um, and so this just states that that new definition does fall as a subcategory under essential public facilities. The final aspect that we're looking at here is comprehensive plan compatibility analysis. So the Growth Management Act in Section 3678-200 has a requirement that each county or city's comprehensive plan shall include a process for identifying and siting essential public facilities and that no local comprehensive plan or development regulation may preclude the siting of essential public facilities by imposing conditions or costs that are not reasonably necessary. Now, don't ask me if I know all the case law and what reasonably necessary means, but that's the language we have in the state law there. So pursuant to that, our comprehensive plan, Chapter 8, is our essential public facilities element. You'll see I've included a map from the comprehensive plan on this slide where we have already depicted the Tacoma Dome Link Extension project. and acknowledge that it is a public facility. That chapter has three goals and associated policies to be followed when evaluating essential public facilities, which just for context, in addition to light rail, other things identified as essential public facilities would include like solid waste facilities, certain state correctional facilities, Um, state highways, things of that nature are also identified in state law under this same umbrella of an essential public facility. And so the staff report goes into detail, um, regarding each of those policies in the comprehensive plan. Um, but I'll just summarize by saying that one, it talks about public engagement and support, um, which we find, of course, the initial concept of this route was approved by the voters through sound transit three. Uh, the ballot measure and sound transit as an agency continues to conduct extensive public engagement on the project as a whole. Um, in addition to us meeting our own public notice and engagement requirements on this code package, um, by discussing it in a public hearing, including public notice, et cetera. Um, some transit has also again conducted and continues to conduct environmental analysis. through their environmental impact statement of the proposed project. And then Pierce County, again, has participated in the alignment and the planning for this project, both at the staff level through our interactions with Sound Transit staff, our submitting of a letter to their draft environmental impact statement, as well as at the elected official level. Of course, Pierce County's executive sits on the Sound Transit board as well. So happy to detail any particular policies if you want. Again, they are listed individually in the staff report and in the proposed findings of the ordinance. So the last thing I'll state is as far as a timeline, again, we're trying here to stay ahead of Sound Transit so that we don't become a barrier for them in permitting and completing this project. Of course, trying to be a good partner that way. Um, and so given their timeline, uh, an adoption goal for the county to try to get this ordinance through, um, and have the county council consider it for final action, uh, by early 2027 is appropriate. So that's why we're bringing it to you today for a briefing. Uh, we'd anticipate then holding a hearing at next month's meeting, um, and then moving into the county council's legislative process thereafter. Um, With that, I'll say thank you for your time. And again, not requesting action today, but happy to address any questions you may have at this time. Thank you, Tanner.

Any questions from our commission?

And Robert, do you have any questions for Tanner?

Okay, we'll come back to him. At this point, we'll open it up for public comment. We don't need public comment because there's no action. Okay. Thank you very much, Tanner. Appreciate the presentation.

Thank you.

Okay. So now we're on to item nine, other business. I can see some of the folks are packing a ton of other business. Robert, if you're online, We'll ask if you have any comments. We see nothing there.

Any other business. OK.

So at this point, then I'd entertain a motion to adjourn.

I move to adjourn.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? You guys, thanks for a great long day. We're adjourned.

Thank you for your patience. Thank you, everybody.

Thanks a lot. Oh, wait a minute.