Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening. This is the Puyallup planning meeting for November 12th, 2025. It's now called to order. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Commissioner Seeley. Excused. Commissioner DeGroote. Commissioner Martin.

Here.

Commissioner Landon.

Here.

Commissioner Taylor.

Here.

Vice Chair Kilsgard. Excused. Chair Jones-Full. Here. Thank you. With four, you have a quorum.

Thank you. Next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda. I'll entertain a motion to approve.

Motion.

And seconded?

Second.

All those in favor? Aye. That motion passes. We're just going to pause just for a second. Okay, the next item on the agenda is the approval of minutes. And these are the approval of the October 22nd, 2025 minutes. I will entertain a motion to approve.

Motion to approve.

And the second?

Second.

All those in favor?

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Can you oppose? Okay, that motion passes. Next item on the agenda is citizens comments. I'll start by calling the names of those who have provided their names in advance. And then I will call for other folks who if they would like to come up and speak for the record. For the record, if you could state your name, address, or city council district, and then As you're speaking, you're each allowed three minutes. When 30 seconds is approaching on your time to end, the clerk will notify you of the 30 seconds remaining. And this portion of the meeting is for the planning commission to hear your thoughts from the community and it's not a time to engage in bait. So anyone who would like to come up to the podium is now welcome. We're going to start up with Mr. Aldridge. Call it up, Steve.

Is the microphone on on the podium?

It is now. Thank you. All right. My name is Steve Aldridge. I live in UGA, properties like that to the city limits. Worst place to buy a piece of property, by the way. The Planning Commission is being asked to approve and recommend this plan to the City Council tonight. You're being used. They have a deadline date that they are driving towards into this year. This is an incomplete plan, and there are not really any changes except for the graphics from the last time they pitched it to you.

It's still a pig. Now it's a pig with lipstick on it.

These planners are the same ones that did the comp plan, and they totally disregard anything anyone in the UGA area had to say about that. Now they think that they can overstep their limits and dictate what's happening in the UGA and are still thumbing their noses at the people in the UGA. They need to stay in their lane and out of our business. A few questions. Why change this to the setbacks? Because Fish and Wildlife requested it. Two, there is no state law that states the city must abide by fish and wildlife wishes. Where do fish and wildlife get their technical data that states all water courses must have a minimum of 200 foot setback? There is none. They made it up. What's wrong with the current setbacks? The plan was approved a few years ago and the plan was good. Everybody liked it. So why are we going back and changing stuff that was already approved? What's wrong with the current setbacks? Do they not work? And if so, planning needs to provide data. Planning states they need minimal 100-foot setbacks or pollution control removal. Let's see examples. The maps from July to November are basically the same. This is page one of the two. If you were to look at and compare them, you've got copies of it. The only difference is the graphics and the colors.

No changes on any of that stuff.

These definitions on streams and wetlands and ditches have not all been verified by staff. The state is up to the property owner to dispute it. Planning wants the city to make their plan code and pass a burden of proof to the property owners. How do you dispute it? You pay fees to the city, hire a specialist, and dispute it with the same department that created this plan.

30 seconds.

We get odds for property owners. Option A, B, and C tonight do not describe the differences in setbacks. Now I want to read this. It's very hard to read. It's on their deal. At the bottom of the pages, every page except for one, it states, this is not a survey. All map features are approximate. The city of Puyallup cannot accept responsibility for any errors, emissions, or positional accuracy, and therefore there are no warranties which accompany this project.

Users of this information- Madam Chair, the speaker has reached three limits.

The primary data and information sources does ascertain the usability of the information. What data and where? There's nobody behind me wanting to speak. Can you give me one more minute? Because I find it very offensive, but you guys are going to do a 40-year plan and give me three minutes to speak. Are you going to speak? Can I have your three minutes? He'll give me his three minutes.

Madam Chair, your microphone is off, sorry.

We only have one, I wanted to consult with the clerk to make sure that I had the understanding correct. We have one citizen comment out in the comments today, and they would like to extend their time. We can vote to suspend the rules of the meeting to allow that to happen by a simple majority vote from the dais. So I will entertain a motion.

So motion to extend time.

Did you want to put a timeline on that?

Three additional minutes.

Thank you.

Do I have a second?

I'll second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? That motion passes by majority. Thank you.

I appreciate that very much. Now I got to figure out where I left off at. property owners. Okay. All right. Planning Commission needs to read the chapter the 2106-1040. This is the part that basically describes that the planning department is supreme and basically is screaming, it's totally the property owners responsibility to prove them wrong at the property owners expense. In closing, these planners are setting the city up for a legal battle. They're taking people's property without compensation, making many lots unbuildable. People have invested under one set of rules, now being told not so. We have paid taxes on lots under the old rules, and in many cases, for longer than these planners have been alive. Now they want to change. Here's what should take place tonight. Should instruct the plan to keep the current setbacks as they are. They were good enough for years past. They should be good enough for now. They work. There is no state law or GMA that mandates that they must be changed, just that the city has to have a critical area in the comp plan. And they have one today. They need to instruct planning to remove everything outside the city limits from the maps they have been publishing. They are city planners, not county planners. They need to stay in their own land. Thank you.

That takes us to the end of the citizen comments that have put their names in advance. If there are any other comments in the audience, they are welcome to come up to the podium to speak now. Seeing no further comments, I'm going to go ahead and move to the next portion of our agenda, and that is the work section topics. And today's work session topic, number 7A,

on the critical areas ordinance update um kendall is going to give this presentation today good evening kendall walls with the planning division i have a short powerpoint to go over the new information and kind of give an overview of where we've been where we're going um let me get I can see. Okay. Sorry. So also, I wanted to mention that tonight online, we also have Claire Hoffman with parametrics if we need some assistance with answering questions, but I'll be giving just the overview presentation. Um, So we held a public hearing on this project on August 13. That's where we gave the overview of critical areas, the proposed amendments, stream buffer updates, and the analysis and recommendation. At that point in time, Planning Commission asked for us to address the remaining comments from Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, as well as take another look at some specific code sections that were discussed at the hearing and prepare an FAQ regarding the stream buffer changes. So we brought that back to you at the September 24th meeting. At that point in time, we were asked to revise the stream buffer maps, reevaluate the stream buffers in general, and prepare alternative options if possible, and also consider a public open house. Tonight, I'll walk through what those options are that we provided in your agenda packet, as well as the revised maps. And we are requesting a recommendation from the Planning Commission tonight on the critical areas ordinance draft as a whole. I did also want to mention that we just due to where we Excuse me, where we are in the process we are planning to pulled hold a public open house, following the planning Commission recommendation and before we go to city council, so that we can. Let the public know what the planning Commission recommendation is as part of that process. So as far as updates that occurred to the maps, we did some work to remove portions of buffers for culverted or piped portions of streams. We also did some modification of buffers when crossing public streets to try and help depict those functionally disconnected buffers. In both cases, it's not perfect. We have the data that we have, but we tried to depict that as best we could to kind of give a better picture of how those buffers would be applied. We also added building footprints. I also apologize that the map didn't make it into your packet, but we did send that out to you earlier today and posted on the website. That was just an error that the building footprints weren't included on that set. We also found just some other minor errors that were cleaned up in that process to further clarify the buffers. And just a reminder that these maps are intended to provide a general high-level depiction of these proposed buffer widths and also to kind of see how they would work with existing development. It's not a survey. It's just giving you a general idea of what that would look like. How those would be applied site specific analysis is required and that's standard practice. So to walk through the different stream buffer options that were provided in the memo in your packet, the first option, option A, is what was presented at the public hearing. So there's no changes there. And just for a general overview, 150 feet is the standard buffer proposed for stream buffer. Shoreline areas, except for specific portions of Clark's Creek and Puyallup River. Those have an averaged buffer based on the site potential tree height, the riparian management zones that WDFW recommends. For type F streams, it's 100 feet except for some specific segments of streams. That also has an averaged expanded buffer based on the riparian management zones. 100 feet for non-fish-bearing streams. And then city, park, and open space properties, we would apply the riparian management zones. So that varies by site and stream. For option B, it's kind of a mid-tier option, making modifications to that option A. It would have 150 feet for shoreline areas except for those two same stream segments. But we also went to a more standardized buffer width, so a 200 feet instead of 225 and 202. For type F streams fish bearing streams, it would also have 100 feet, except for Clark's Creek, there's a portion, the southern portion of Clark's Creek. Previously, it was stated that it would have an expanded buffer south of maplewood springs to the stream headwaters that's been adjusted in option b to end at 23rd avenue and i'll show this on a map too to kind of walk through um so that would also have a more rounded number of 200 feet for that buffer width for that portion similarly with woodland creek it was at 182 is proposed to be at 180. And then also for Wildwood Creek, it would go to a 200 foot. And in this option, we did not propose an expanded buffer for that portion of Meeker Creek that was previously in option A. And for type N and city park and open space, it's the same. For option C, It essentially wouldn't have those expanded buffers you'd have 150 foot buffer for type s shorelines streams. you'd have 100 foot buffer for type F fish bearing stream and 100 feet for type n non fishing stream and same as the other options regarding city park and open space properties. So I have some clips of the maps to kind of show where the maps differ, where the options differ. So this first one shows both Clark's Creek and Woodland Creek. So first just wanted to look at Clark's Creek. I'm sorry I couldn't make this more zoomed in and more focused, but we'll work through that. So option A, Is shown here at this like larger and at 225 option B is in between there at 200 and then option C is going to be this darker. color here at 150. And then for woodland creek similarly. It's a little bit harder when you're off by two feet to really show that difference. But you can see the difference more clearly between option C and option A and B here. This next one is for Puyallup River. And this is still proposed to be east of 512. Option A is that 202. Option B would be reducing it to 200. And then option C would be the 150. This next map is continuation of the Puyallup River where you can see the light blue is showing that difference. This one is for Clark's Creek. So this is the portion of Clark's Creek that's the type F stream, a fish bearing stream. So option A, this is where it had the expanded buffer going essentially from here south. And I think this shows that it would kind of cut off here for the option B scenario. and it would be slightly reduced for this portion so you'd have option a at 231 option b at 200 and then option c at 150 and then south of 23rd which is right here option a would have that larger expanded buffer here Option B would follow the same as option C 150 feet for the stream on this portion. And then maker creek. The original option a had an expanded buffer both option B and C would have just 100 foot buffer, which is shown in the darker color here. And then wildwood creek this portion here showing the expanded buffer with option A or B option eight to 18 and option B at 200 feet. and That's all I have for our presentation tonight. Here to help answer questions and I can scroll back through maps if that's helpful.

Thank you. My question is whether the the area surrounding the river the buffer is 150 feet by by law or is is that a recommendation.

Well. We the shoreline has different standards on shoreline master program has under the shoreline regulations it's a 200 feet area for the critical area regulations it's proposed at 150 feet.

So. That's our option.

The option is 150 feet or you could do one of the options for an expanded buffer that was proposed.

What I'm asking is, is the 150 foot option not an option? Is that a requirement? Is that a state law requirement? That's my question.

Can I conjecture? So your existing buffer on the Puyallup River, I assume you're talking about the Puyallup River, is 150 feet in your current critical areas code.

Okay. And I'm talking about Clark's Creek, sorry.

Oh.

Which is also a shoreline of the state.

It's also a shoreline. So the shorelines in the city of Puyallup in your current code, anything that's shoreline in your critical areas code is 150 feet right now.

they're actually not proposing for that one option and increase okay thank you thank you kendall um this will pro this will be more than i usually speak so uh bear with me if you will if i have a correct The GMA requires us to review this and we are looking at the Department of Fish and Wildlife requirements because that's best available science, correct?

That's correct. So GMA requires us to update our critical area regulations to be consistent with best available science. And the report that we shared out to you during the work sessions earlier in the process are the best available science that we have for applying stream buffers.

Okay. So in a quick statement, then Claire, I'll have a question for you. best available science would be rooted in academic research. And I've spent the last three months reviewing 50 years of different reports from different agencies, universities, and researchers. And going back, what we see is an inconsistent requirement for research. buffer depth but what we do see is that is consistent is quality of that buffer which brings me to Claire why do we think that an increased buffer zone is going to do anything more than what we have and I would also follow that up with Is there any other state that uses the fish and wildlife requirements, similar buffer depths?

So is that a question for me? Yeah. OK. Yeah, so Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife's recommendations, of course, are for Washington. Oregon has similar regulations, but I can't really speak to other regulations. California generally has stronger regulations than most of the country, but the ecology is quite different in California. So I can't really speak to the different states situation because Washington is unique in its own ecology. But there is, and I really appreciate that you looked at past research, there is... the compilation, I'm not sure if you came across the two summary reports that WDFW published in one was in 2000. And I think the other one was 2002 volume one and volume two about riparian management areas. And they, there is the first 100 feet is the most important area for protection. And so that is where you kind of get the most bang for your buck, so to speak, because that first 100 feet does the most. So the they've shown that. The first a hundred feet is the most effective for removing, um, any kind of nutrients. So nitrates or pesticides and, you know, all of those other kinds of chemicals, that sort of thing. Um, additionally, that's kind of where the most important habitat features. you know, addition of leaf litter or other wood and all that kind of stuff. So that first a hundred feet is the most important. And that's why we have the minimum for the type and streams recommended increasing the buffers to a hundred feet. But to your point, the, it is important what is in those buffer. So if it's lawn grass, it doesn't function as well as if it's forested. So you're absolutely right in that way that, it's important to have functional buffers, trees or shrubs or whatever would more naturally be there. So the, but if you go smaller than a hundred feet, it's kind of an exponential curve and function. And so a small buffer of, you know, less than 50 feet just really doesn't do a lot. It's for protecting in different, I'm only speaking mostly about water quality because there's habitat features, which bigger buffers are better for wildlife, but we're not going to, I don't want to go down that one right there, but the WDFW does recommend larger buffers, which, but overall that 100 feet is their minimum kind of viable buffer.

Thank you, Claire. Yeah. A follow-up to that. If we know that the first 100 feet are that important, And would it make more sense to focus on the quality of that first hundred feet instead of expanding those buffer zones?

Sure. It's just definitely a good option. I think, I guess the struggle that is presented is that then if a landowner wants to so wants to or exist has an existing lawn grass there um without a you know a development trigger the city can make recommendations and i think we actually did add this to your code can people can voluntarily improve their buffer and there's you know recommendations for hunting street trees and keeping pets away from the stream all these things are really great for the stream But it's, if you're, from a code perspective, it's best to stay as far away from the stream as possible. And that's why, you know, the type that kind of the minimum for a type N is a hundred feet. And the recommendation for type F, the minimum is type F is a hundred feet. And that's the same as existing. and the type S is 150, which is also same as existing. So I hear what you're saying. If there is a way that you could get landowners to plant more trees and not have long grass up to the stream, that would be great.

Thank you, Claire. And to the planners, I, I appreciate all the work that you've put into this. Um, but with as deeply unpopular as this is, perhaps we do need to take the time to rethink our strategy on this. Um, I believe that if we were to go forward with these buffer zones, um, and there was a definite benefit, we could be justified in doing that. But the research doesn't say it's there. Um, the best I can tell is expanding those buffer zones is kind of a shot in the dark. We know that extra extra depth is better, but it doesn't really functionally get us what we're looking for. And that's healthy streams and rivers and wetlands through the future. I think that option C is likely the least worst option. But I also believe that we may be moving too fast on this and blindly following fish and wildlife is not the right thing to do here.

Additional comments. Commissioner DeGroote.

Well, I think like everything, it's a balancing act. Obviously, Fish and Wildlife is looking at maximizing what they can. Property owners are saying, I want to protect my property, my way of life, my investment. And so one of the things I'm concerned about is where we have so-called streams. These are the non-fish bearing seasonal. So NS. And where the so-called streams are only swales or occasional stormwater runoff channels, for instance, and still have buffers applied to them that will stop the full use of the property and so on and so forth. So I'm concerned when we talk about quality of the science or quality of the buffer, part of the quality should be accurately assessing what constitutes a stream in reality and making sure that we are correctly identifying that. There are particular places that concern me because of the number of residences impacted, Clark's Creek North of DeCourcy Pond, Silver Creek North of 31st Avenue Southwest, Wildwood Creek North of Wildwood Park, And what I'm calling, it's unlabeled, but what I'm calling the west branch of Deer Creek, south of 23rd Avenue Southeast. So all of those are places where these buffers have a definite impact on a fairly large number of homes. And... I think we should be very careful, consider about what we want to do in those places, even if we want to say would 60 feet suit us? Because of course, the property owners are not being instructed to plant more trees or shrubs or other kinds of wild plants. If they have a lawn, their lawn stays there. If they have a patio, their patio stays there. So the question is, is expanding the buffer on that property, achieving anything in particular in terms of making it more effective if it's already a mowed lawn or if it's already paved surface. Thank you.

So I've been dealing with this with Pierce County quite a bit in my line of work and One thing that I know they do that we don't, they have a biologist on staff that actually does go out and check on sites when we do like a pre-screening. They actually go and check. I know it's not on our city staff now. I feel like it's a really strongly missing element. Is the budget not there? Are we not set up for it? Is it a personnel issue of not being able to get anybody in? I mean, I think we talked about this last time. I feel like using 10-year-old science and mapping of what the streams are is completely inadequate. Whereas I also feel like we all do want to protect our streams to the best of our ability. I don't think anybody out there is just throwing crap at our streams. You know, people want to do the right thing, but not at the cost of losing half their property or more. And so if we don't have a biologist on staff, What would the process be to get one so that we could actually do this properly?

Katie Baker from Planning Division. We are very much a medium-sized city that has a medium-sized staff and not a lot of specialization. Critical areas is one of those areas where we've talked about it would be wonderful to have a biologist on staff or just a planner with some additional certifications and specialization in that area. There are things like transportation planners, housing planners, you know, there are many different areas of specialization that would be extremely valuable to a lot of the issues that we're dealing with. And that really is a budgetary decision by the city manager and the city council. We historically have had a very difficult time adding staff. In our department i've certainly made general requests about you know more specialized staff i've not proposed this specifically in recent years, but there's. You know, first of all, just kind of practically the city council is I believe still in the process halfway through the process of adopting the budget. So this wouldn't be something that would even be considered for at least another year, but I my kind of anecdotal comment would be it would not there would be no budget for a position like this, unfortunately.

yeah.

so i mean i haven't been on the commission that long what maybe february the only meeting we've had with more than two or three commenters was on this and so clearly our community feels like this is a really important issue and i feel that our city's budget should be steered by our community and not that you know everything else isn't important as well but from a planning standpoint This is the hot topic right now. People are concerned about added middle housing and what that means for short-term rentals and all of that. Frankly, we're not really a city that's a tourist attraction, so I'm not overly concerned about that. And we didn't have that many people here for those meetings either. We had a packed house for buffers. And so I feel like this is premature. To put massive buffers on streams, we don't even really know what they are. And so maybe hiring a consultant for this element to help us actually track what's out there would be a good idea. Probably the budget's not there, but I think it should be a priority moving forward.

I'll just say in terms of the schedule and the course of this work item, we are at the end. The Planning Commission has held a public hearing. We are asking for a recommendation from you. That could be a recommendation to not move this forward but something will get presented to council we are at the end of our scope of work we are at the end of our dollars for consultants and we have nothing more to bring to this we have brought the commission the best information that we have and the resources that we have and unfortunately there is nothing further that we are able to do with the resources that we have currently I appreciate the conversation and the questions and they've been great and you guys have really dug in and I do appreciate that. But unfortunately, we do have limitations and time and money are two severe limitations that we are under right now. So regardless of... what action you take tonight. We do request that you take some kind of action, and we will be bringing that to our city manager, and we'll, depending on kind of what the vote is and the direction is tonight, would probably present something to the city council for their decision.

Question mark.

Katie. So a hypothetical. GMA requires us to review according to best available science, and we did. We've met that requirement. Can the vote be no change? We have option A, B, and C. And a fourth, keep what we have. And my understanding is Fish and Wildlife is a recommendation but not a requirement. And so if there was a vote to not change anything, that would be just as valid as the other three options.

That's certainly the prerogative of the Planning Commission. If you had a majority vote that would say keep the code as is, no changes, that is the Planning Commission recommendation that we would present to the City Council. We would most likely give them additional information so they understood what the existing best available science is, but that's certainly an option. You are correct. It is a fourth option for your vote tonight.

Thank you, Katie.

Could I also just add that when we're talking about options, that this is one piece of the entire code. And so it would be good to clarify what you're putting forward if you're not making any changes to the entire code or not moving forward changes to stream buffers.

So I had to flip between the maps with the changes in this. And if I remember correctly, back to some older discussion at prior meetings, that the majority of our commenters were in fact in areas where the stream buffer was not changing. So I get that they don't like the buffers, but we're not reducing any buffers here. So those are where they are. Um, to me, if you are in favor of maybe the status quo, I think option C gets you pretty much that, um, it's not necessarily my preferred one. Um, but that's my understanding. So if you're in favor of that, I think, you know, a discussion and moving forward with C would be the productive way to move something forward to the council. Um, I think I had a comment specifically looking at Clark's Creek. I think as it leaves the park, would option C then create sort of a disconnect of when they were on the city property and not on it? So that would be, it looks like map page 9 on the key legend, the map legend. There's like a sliver. I don't know what page number is the staple covering it.

I believe that he's speaking of page eight.

Yeah, I think that's it.

Page 18 commissioners.

Yeah. So if you look at the city on property zone, it's dark. Marine is a dark marine. Does anybody want to correct me on that?

Are you speaking about the line?

Yeah, we got a sliver right there where it says the city properties RMZ buffer. So if we went with C, there'd be either disconnect or some map changes to fix it.

It is kind of a weird situation where if we were to apply the RMZs, they would... essentially apply on that property, but we could further clarify that in the code that it wouldn't expand beyond the buffer. If on for city property, if it was cut off, separated, then we wouldn't apply it in that case.

All right. So that's just a map fix.

We would need some language from the planning commission in a motion to make that change to the code as far as further clarifying how those kind of buffers would be applied to city owned properties. But that is something that we could add.

OK, and can I get some clarity on how these stream buffers apply to the UGA or not?

so we as a city plan for our uga but in practice if you know somebody lived in the uga we wouldn't apply our stream buffers until those properties were annexed into the city it's just to give a depiction of you know if somebody were to be annexed into the city they can have an idea of what the stream that would be you want to area all right so just to give you a full picture all right and are there current plans to

revisit annexations as we are now, or is that not being discussed?

Not at this time. Um, typically they are brought forward by, um, property owners petitioning to annex. We're, we're not actively going to annex.

So for the time being though, this is just like what it would be if they were in. Correct. Okay. That's, that's what I thought. Um, And then, so given that maybe DFW or another state agency could take exception to our not using the best available science, is that a possible scenario if we push this forward? I mean, we are a larger city in the state, that's for sure. I mean, we might still count ourself as medium, but we'd be on their radar. And when the code or what we're being asked to incorporate from the state legislator is the best available science. And it could be under one of these departments opinions and being stewards of the environment to then contest our interpretation. Is that true or does that happen or.

it is possible yeah or you know it is a risk and there also could be environmental groups you know private groups that could challenge it as well okay and then you know just to our commenter here about the map um

That's just common map language that they put in there for the accuracy of homes, properties, and things like that. I don't think it's directly a comment on the streams themselves, but it certainly applies to some extent, yeah. And then I guess one last one, I guess, just to consider. So when we apply perhaps the larger buffers on city properties, could that adversely affect park improvements, whether they're courts or playgrounds, and limit that. Because I would hate to then with a growing city and wanting to expand our park services or our amenities in these parks or a restroom, and then forbid that our restroom was now within a buffer and we can't expand it and we're stuck with this or that and what that might mean.

It could impact future improvements to city parks. We did share this information with our parks director and offhand there was one project that wasn't specifically planned, but kind of a desired future project for, I believe it was some kind of sport court, some sort of sport field that might be impacted, but it wasn't anything that was currently being planned that would be, you know, prohibiting to move forward.

May I add something, Kendall?

Yes.

Yeah, so I just also wanted to remind the Planning Commission about buffer reduction and buffer averaging, which we added in for streams as well. So in certain situations, provided that a landowner or the city did things like planted trees or other things like that, there is an opportunity to reduce a buffer up to, I think it's 25%, up to 25%. Um, don't quote me on that number, but, um, if, if improvements such as the one council member discuss, and then, so you, so it doesn't, it's not a outright prohibition from work within the buffer. There's a fairly large section about things are permitted in such as trails is something that's permitted within, um, within the buffer.

Um, yeah, that's all for my comments for now.

I should go.

I'd like to take us to. There are 2 paragraphs, one on page 88, one on page 106. This is. Yes, ma'am.

Large numbers.

Yes, large numbers. Thank you.

88.

Yes, 88 and 106, this would be 21.06 parentheses five and 21.06.10505. So these paragraphs are where a legally established and constructed building exceeding 200 square feet intersects a wetland or the other one is a stream buffer, the director may approve modification of the standard buffer width to the edge of the building, street or alley. If the isolated part of the buffer does not provide additional protection of the wetland and that would apply to the stream and provides insignificant biological, geological or hydrological buffer functions. So in this case, we are giving the property owner some out. In terms of if I understand this correctly and ask staff to say is that correct or is that not correct. In other words, that the the buildings themselves have sort of a shadow behind which development can occur.

So this is what we walked through in the presentation at your last meeting, where we had some figures to show kind of how this generally could be applied to properties. I can provide some examples if that's helpful, but it's further clarifying the language of functionally disconnected buffers. It's not necessarily giving an out, but it's further clarifying that if a structure is on the lot, it could essentially break the buffer, the buffer function. And so it wouldn't go beyond the structure. It may wrap around the structure, but the buffer would not be continued to apply across the top of the structure, if that makes sense and and beyond kind of breaks that function. And that's what we were trying to depict on the maps to have, you know, where buffers cross public roads, that's a functionally disconnected buffer. And so it wouldn't extend across to another home on the other side, because it broke from the impact of that roadway.

Okay. And in here it says the director may approve. So this means the landowner would have to go to the director and make a request that could be approved or not approved. So it's not by right.

It would be evaluated just the same as we would get a critical area report from a biologist. They would look at it and they would give us information on that. And then it's approved through the standard process administratively. I don't know, Claire, if you have anything to add on that.

I think that was an excellent explanation. I just, I guess, wanted to add that this is as a biologist and a kind of practitioner, this has been standard practice in all the cities in Washington for quite some time, but most cities have don't have a codified. And so it's always been a little bit unclear. But as you can think about it, the paved area and the house doesn't do anything for the stream. And so that's why the buffer basically stops there. So it's yeah. Part of the process of, the critical areas report and evaluation of the site. The shadow was also, you know, a very good analogy. That's exactly correct.

And that extends to the back of the property line, the shadow.

It would be where, so if you have a stream that in a house stream in the backyard of a house, for example, And then the buffer would stop at the house, basically. It wouldn't wrap around to the front yard because, you know, so that it basically, the house, anything that's going on in the front of the house doesn't improve, do anything, benefit the stream in any way because it has, so you just kind of like clips, cuts it off and the buffer would be whatever the end of the backyard.

All right, thank you.

Mm-hmm.

These are some of the graphics that we provided previously, if that helps.

Do we have additional comments at this time? I'm going to motion for a five minute break. Can I have a second on that? All those in favor?

Aye.

We're going to just take a short recess.

For staff, there was one more paragraph that I found and couldn't find again.

Are you asking staff a question? Yes. Are you motioning?

No, asking staff a question.

Oh, yeah, we should reopen. And then you can ask your question. Is that okay?

Sure.

Okay. Are we all good to keep going? Okay, so it is 729. So we're going to take back up the discussion. You can go ahead.

Thank you. So for staff, I found a paragraph and then I'm sorry on rereading, I could not find the paragraph again, but there is one other issue that involves added improvements or that my reading was that they could be added Within the buffer zone, if the house, let's say, was already in the buffer zone, these improvements could be added as long as they did not extend forward into the buffer zone any further than the building to which they were attached. I found it once. I could not find it twice. But I'd like to find out if you can confirm that for me.

Yes, there's a section about minor modifications or minor.

Yeah.

One second. I believe it's in section 2106.440, which is exception for minor new developments in buffers. Okay. And it looks like it's on...

Page is confusing. It's 50 something I'm guessing.

I think it might be 38 of the document. 54? 64. 64 of the dark? Of the dark numbers.

Dark numbers.

Oh, the reasonable use exception.

Well, that's a little bit different.

Minor development. Yeah, there we are at the bottom. So remodels in additions to an existing legally established structure or impervious area that currently encroaches on a wetland buffer, fish and wildlife habitat or landslide erosion hazard area buffer shall be allowed as conditioned by all of the following criteria. And then there are five criteria listed after this. Consistency with existing use, and so on and so forth. And the affected area is located at least 25 feet from the critical area boundary. So anyway, that is another issue that stands in favor of the property owner, I would guess.

Yes, if that's a question. It allows for minor development within the buffers to existing structures.

Thank you.

Any other comments? I have a question for you, Kendall. And it has to do with some clarification that's been put here you on the type of stream buffers, you guys are talking about city parks and open space properties. And I feel like I've asked this before, but are you including all city owned properties in that or?

The intent was city parks and open space.

I know that I made this comment before, but I know that these Some of the increased buffers are hard on some of the residents and their properties. I still stand by the statement that if the city is proposing that we follow these things, that the city should always follow the larger riparian management zones on their own owned properties. Just a comment. Any other comments from Dias?

I think Lane, sorry.

Wow. We'll vote Commissioner Taylor first. Yes, please.

Just a question for the city at large. If this is codified, whichever option we choose, and then it's shown on one property, that the stream is classified incorrectly. Would the city then be able to look at the properties sort of surrounding that and reclassify that stream for lesser buffers potentially, if we have a client that pays for, you know, for the studies and everything else? I mean, once these are codified, is that set in stone that this is this type of stream or are those things flexible as studies and science becomes available?

the data can continue to be updated this is just to give you a depiction but the data that we have now and we do intend to further investigate and look at improvements to the data following the update i was thinking about the city on parks and

kind of playing off of my earlier comment and the chair's comments. I think that personally, I'm landing somewhere around option B of the option that I'm in favor of. And I think if we are taking that more fixed value approach, it makes sense to just be consistent and also apply that to parks and other spaces. instead of just having that jump there. I think where I see these buffers being applied is already kind of wooded open space, very productive environment as it is. And I don't think, you know, we it's, it seems more consistent and perhaps won't limit us from future improvements that would, almost certainly maintain the forested environment in the first place. So, um, but yeah, that's, I just want to add that as a potential idea and to state that I'm leaning towards being here personally.

Okay.

I would lean towards C, which would be no change. And the reason is, I think some areas still would not pass muster as streams. So that my inclination would be to say we do not make further changes until we've settled this issue of our things being correctly classified. And that would be my position on that. That that would be the incentive, I hope, for the city to do what it should do and not put the comment was made just a couple of minutes ago about this being a medium sized city, which doesn't have a lot of resources, but a medium sized city has a lot more resources than one homeowner. And I think, uh, I would like to put the monkey on the city's back since the city is making, uh, these, uh, the stream buffer regulations that it should be able to demonstrate whether something is a stream or not, or whether it's a swale or an occasional surface runoff type of conveyor. So anyway, that's my position.

additional comments?

I mean, it seems to me that a lot of the buffers that are expanding are features that are more creek like and known to be as such. I mean, we have the ambiguous ones that you've mentioned that may resemble more of a a grade break in a lawn or an overgrown area than a stream, but those areas are already not changing. It looks like I'm trying to cross play between the options and the changes maps here, but I'm just not sure there's a whole lot of areas that are ambiguous in terms of stream typing and growing in Buffer.

I would like to move that we accept option C. I'll second C. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. All those opposed?

Nay.

Nay. Do you want to do a division or are you good with that? Did you get them all down?

We can do a roll call vote just to ensure. Go ahead. Commissioner DeGroote?

Yay.

Commissioner Martin?

Yay.

Commissioner Landon?

Nay.

Commissioner Taylor?

Aye.

Chair Jones-Lowell? May. With 3-2, the motion would pass.

Okay, thank you. The next item on our agenda is 7B, which is, oh, I'm sorry.

Can I clarify?

The vote was for option C. Was that also for the entirety of the rest of the code?

update. That's what I understood the vote to be. Did everyone on the guys understand that to be the vote?

That Yes, we're talking specifically about the streams and the buffer areas around the streams.

Okay, so when you put that motion in, you only wanted to approve the option for the stream buffers, not for the critical area code?

Well, no, no, I'm sorry. And critical areas. In other words, I didn't know where you were going with that. If you're going beyond this or not. So yeah, critical areas and streams. Thank you for helping me.

We just voted on the critical or area ordinance modifications being sent and on option C of the stream buffer comparison table being sent with that. Is that, can I get head nods? Okay. Okay.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome. Claire, thank you for being with us. I'm sorry. I almost let you go without saying thanks. We appreciate your time and all of the information that you have delivered with us since these, I mean, what has it been four or five months at this point. So thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Have a good evening.

You too. The next item on our agenda is Work Session Topic 7B, which is Title 19, which has to do with plaques and subdivisions. And we are going over code updates. And Chris is nice enough to join us this time.

How are you guys?

Good. How are you?

Fantastic.

Okay, so hello, my name is Chris Beale. I work in the planning department. You guys last saw me in July, where we were talking about one aspect of our Title 19 update, but we paused that. That was probably a good thing because I think the meeting in August item would have been canceled anyway, due to I think the last item that we just talked about. So I do have a presentation. If I slide show this from the web view I can still screen share it or do I need to screen share it. Okay. I need to go back to zoom. Because it's 2025 and I know how to use it. Like that. There we go. Okay. All right, so Title 19, just as an overview. So Title 19 is our PLATS and subdivisions code. We kind of have three main codes that we use in planning. It's Title 19, Title 20, which is zoning, Title 21, which is our environment, floodplain, SEPA, critical areas code, a couple other things, impact fees, that type of thing. So Title 19 is our PLATS and subdivisions code. So the purpose of this update, obviously, is part of our comprehensive plan and our housing action plan update. There's been a bunch of changes with state-mandated legislation, including unit lot subdivisions and a few others. So part of this is to also align our current local regulations with those recent state-mandated updates. As with everything that we're working on, we're trying to streamline and simplify our procedures with also reducing some redundancies and improving clarity and readability of this code section, shorten overall processing times for approval, with some efficiencies with the way that we're processing things. And then other targeted improvements and cleanups, we've always got cleanups with code as we administer it. So we've got some of those mixed in there as well. So Title 18 in its current form likely existed before that, but in its current form was adopted just prior to the year 2000 in 1999. It's gone through a few minor amendments, some more major ones in 2016 and then in 2023. Chapters in Title 19. So this isn't just our subdivisions, it's also boundary land revisions and lot combinations. Those are pretty minor code sections. Binding site plans, which generally deals with subdivisions on commercial and industrial lands, although there's some state law changes that affect that now too. short plats and major plats, as well as a couple other things like general provisions, how we administer the code, definitions, and then we have design standards that govern developments like plats subdivisions. So hopefully, yeah, this turned out okay. So this is just a table that kind of describes where we're at under the existing regulations. Again, boundary line revisions and lot combinations, those are pretty minor adjustments either to changes in the boundary between two properties or combining lots, so they're one. Short plats right now under our code, the existing subdivision code is four lots or fewer. Under that code, you can record short plats with no improvements required. That is a director level approval. So it's administrative. Major plats, preliminary major plats, existing is five lots or more. Preliminary plats under current existing code, go to the hearing examiner. And then when a final plat comes in, so a final plat is essentially after The improvements have been installed. The construction permits have been approved. We've reviewed those construction permits. They've gone through with the contractor. Once all of that is done, the final plot process is just to accept the improvements that were installed and to accept those improvements on a final drawing. So might be some minor adjustments when they actually do the construction work. But the main function of that is just to accept generally public roads and storm ponds and public utilities. So our city council currently serves as that function right now. Under our current code binding site plans, it's land division for commercial and industrial developments only. There's really no number of lot minimum or maximum under, well, I guess there would be two as a minimum, but there's no maximum number for binding site plans. Binding site plans go to the hearing examiner. We used to have a, we're kind of getting rid of some old vestige parts of our code too on binding site plans. We used to have kind of a specialized internal committee of like department directors that would hold a public hearing. It was very strange. We tried to expunge that out of the code in 2016 and we missed a couple of references to the binding site plan committee. So if you have questions about what that was, it was a very weird committee and didn't meet very often. So this is just kind of an overview of where the proposed updates would go on most of these things. Boundary line adjustments, lock combinations, there's just some minor adjustments in those two code sections. Under short plats, we would propose to move up to nine lots, which is the maximum. So state law basically says the minimum for short plats is four, the maximum is nine. We baselined other cities. I'll go through that on, I think on the very next slide here, but we would propose to move up to nine. That proposed update would require a preliminary and a final approval process. So basically the same process we use for preliminary major plats, we would move to that same process with short plats. And short plats would remain as a director level or administrative approval for both. So if short plats move to nine, obviously major plots would move up as well. Those would be bumped from five lots up to 10. And we would propose to move from hearing examiner and city council for preliminary and final under the existing. And we would retain the hearing examiner for any kind of preliminary major plat and then move to director for final Again, it kind of makes a lot of sense for the public works director to accept the public infrastructure that we're going to maintain. Oftentimes these things are fairly perfunctory in front of council because again they're fairly limited in scope, and it makes some sense. The state actually changed the state law on that a few years ago to allow this. For binding site plans, the only real change, well, there's two changes here. One, we need to add multifamily or mixed-use developments. That was actually a state legislative change. Among many state legislative changes, there was a minor adjustment to require cities that binding site plans could also affect multifamily complexes or mixed-use developments, which makes some sense because we do process these occasionally for commercial developments. the new Safeway complex at Pioneer and Shaw that was actually done under a binding site plan approval. They're fairly similar. It's usually when the developer wants to out parcel lots to sell off smaller retail buildings and maybe they have an anchor tenant. And like the Safeway complex is a really good example where they do have a number of retail buildings around the perimeter of that site and the anchor tenant, they wanted to subdivide those off to sell those lots. So this would also extend that allowance as a requirement under state law to multifamily and mixed use. And then we don't, you know, we don't process many binding site plans, maybe one every two or three years. So they're very rare. We can't recall any time in the past that we've even had the public show up to most of them. So we would recommend moving that to a director level instead of hearing examiner at this point. We did baseline 10 other jurisdictions around us. Some of these are edge cities in King County, but most of them are in Pierce. So we just baseline where other jurisdictions are at. And as you can see, it's a little bit of a mix. The majority of our surrounding cities, though, have moved to nine lots. Edgewood's in there at a weird number six. And then other cities that I've talked to are intending to move up to nine. They just haven't gone through that process yet, mostly because they're smaller cities like Milton and Enumclaw. Some of those cities are just, they've got like one person doing everything, like code review and inspections and account plan updates. So the one interesting thing that we found is only Sumner is the only other jurisdiction that allows short plots to be finalized with no improvements. So they don't require... frontage improvements like curb gutter sidewalk. They don't require access or utilities. They essentially allow those lots to be, like us, allow those lots to be recorded on paper. And then the future buyer or future developer of those lots has to put in all of the improvements. The main thing with that that we have seen is we spend a lot of time reviewing these preliminary short plots or just short plots in general. And we have probably four of them that have sat vacant for a very long time. Like, I've been here at the city for 18 years. There is one short plot that's like three lots that has never been built, and it's probably 25 years old. And then some more recent examples that are four to six years old that somebody may have tried to run the numbers, but they just weren't the person that was going to build it. And then, of course, inflation goes up and the lots sit vacant. So it kind of weeds some of those projects out. It allows those lots to go back to their original state if they're not built out, which does allow for future people to subdivide it again when maybe it makes sense, or maybe they've looked at the numbers a little bit better and have a different proposal. So it seems to us that most of the jurisdictions around us, obviously nine out of the 10 that we baselined, all have a preliminary and a final short plot process, and we would recommend that here. And then the final major plot approval process, again, it's kind of a mixed bag. One jurisdiction has to go back to a public hearing for a final, which seems to be kind of far on one side. And then it seems to be kind of split down the middle of 50-50 on whether it's the legislative body or whether it's the director. Most of the folks, other planners in our jurisdictions that we've talked to have planned on moving most of these to director. Again, the state changed the law to allow administrative approval of final plats. That's maybe closer to 10 years ago now. That's not part of this most recent set of changes from the state legislature, but there's definitely a mix there, obviously, as you can see. Again, so I kind of just explained this, but again, we don't require those improvements prior to the recording of a short plat. So what we would propose in this two-step short plat process would be the preliminary approval. Somebody comes in for a short plat, we review that for adequacy of the utilities, frontage improvements, a preliminary stormwater plan. All the way down to, well, you've got floodplain on the land. Are you going to provide compensatory storage, critical areas review? So that process stays the same. We do that preliminary process. That approval process, similar to a preliminary major plat, so anything right now that's above five lots goes through the same process. That process is valid. The approval is valid for five years. And then the developer needs to put in the improvements to serve the lots, to basically make the lots buildable within that five-year period, or basically have submitted a permit by that time because we do do time extensions up to a total of seven years. There are options to post financial surety in lieu of the physical improvements, but usually they have to put a minimum level of improvements in, and then we do defer some of those in specific instances. And then the final short plot under this process would be recorded, similar to the preliminary major plot after those minimum level of improvements are installed. Yes.

I have a question on that.

When you say that the extensions are available, are they extending from five years to seven years or are they adding seven years on to?

Oh, no, it's one year increment. So they get to the fifth year, they get a one year extension to six. And then the criteria is a little bit like five to six years is kind of like, are you working on it? Yeah. Yeah. Can you tell me you've been working on it? And then six to seven is like, you got to have applications in and you need to prove that you're working in good faith towards finalizing it to get the seventh year.

So it's a seven year.

Caps.

Caps. Okay.

Okay. The other two, one that we've talked about was you guys were briefed in March and then we had a more in-depth dive in July on unit lot subdivisions. And then the other one that's brand new that was part of the legislative updates from this year is residential lot splits. So these are pretty different. They have a kind of a similar acronym, but they're pretty different. Unit lot subdivisions, again, just as a refresher, they create unit lots. So they're similar to condos, but they do include the land. They create unit lots from the parent parcel for middle housing or attached or detached dwelling units. Anything that's permitted by the underlying zone doesn't allow any new density. So like you can't create a unit lot and then reset the density calculation for that lot. It's always tied back to the parent parcel. Those things are basically similar to condos, but they include the land. The legislature put this in place to essentially allow for easier homeownership with smaller lots that have less requirements to subdivide and sell off. But it does not create anything new. You can't use unit lots to create any land use that's not permitted by the underlying zone. You can't use it to increase the density. You can't even use it to... go over the lot coverage amount or the floor area ratio calculations, like some of the more minor things are always calculated as a whole. So you've got to think of the unit lot as always, it's almost like tethered to that main lot, even though somebody could buy it. your development envelope and what you can do with your unit lot is always tied to the units as a whole. And that ensures that you lots aren't somehow like a side door into more density. It just, it doesn't work that way. So it's a little confusing to understand because it almost seems like this new subdivision type, but you got to think of it more in the, in the lines of like a condominium and actually the department of commerce is fact sheet that I think we've shared with you guys in the past has a table that shows you like what a condo is and what a unit lot is. Cause they're very similar. But there's some, differing things with the way condos work. But anyway... So yeah, the standards are always applied to that parent parcel. Residential lot splits, these are fairly limited in scope. And the legislature put this in place to allow for really easy lot splits where the lot could just be split in two and then isn't large enough to be split into four. But let's say you had like an RS-8 lot and it was 16,000 square feet or just above that. And it had enough buildable area to just split it down the middle and I want to put two homes on it. The city essentially is mandated by the state law to allow folks to do that and it's administrative. It's a two lot plat only. We have to also accept building permits. We don't have to require building permits, but somebody could basically come into the front counter. Well, no one submits things to the front counter. They could go through the portal account and submit a residential lot split application with two residential homes at the same time. And we have to create process to process both of those things at the same time. That's essentially what residential lot splits are. And the legislature put it in place essentially to try to speed up the construction of housing where there's some low-hanging fruit essentially. Like lots, it could be two instead of one. They don't require building permits, but they do require the city accommodate for the building permit and the subdivision at the exact same time.

Sure, Taylor.

Sure.

So just for a little clarification, with a unit lot subdivision, the setbacks are dictated by the parent lot. But if we did a residential lot split, each created lot would be dictated by setbacks.

Yeah, because on residential lot splits, they're just standalone fee simple lots. You purchase them. You're never tied back to your neighbor. With unit lot subdivisions, you're always tied back to your neighbor. The setbacks are tied to the parent lot. Yeah, so I think you got it right.

Commissioner Martin.

Hey, Chris. I'm a little weak on plats, and when I say a little, I mean a lot. What's the benefit of changing short to nine and the major to ten?

The benefit?

Yeah.

The benefit essentially would be the efficiency of processing those permits to get more housing built. Yeah.

So instead of four units, you would have nine units in the same area?

Yep. And it's mostly a process change. I mean, it depends on the lot. It obviously has to be large enough to subdivide into that number of lots. The main change here is moving away in the scenario of five lots to nine lots. So we're talking about the difference of four lots. moving to more of an administrative process for a short plat. But trying to align that short plat process closer to the way major plats work now, where you, okay, you've gotten a nine lot short plat, that's fine, but you got to put the road in, you got to put the utilities in, you've got to make it viable so a builder can come in and actually build the lots. Sort of making it a lot more parallel, but trying again for the sake of efficiency, allowing those processes to be administrative. And I have another slide too. The other thing is about public notifications, is right now with short plots, we don't require public notifications for short plots. We would change that to basically allow or require the city to send out public comment periods, which improves transparency on the processing. Any kind of short plot all the way down to a two lot short plot up to a nine lot. And so there's probably going to be the benefit of improving transparency, allowing people to comment on those things so they know what the impacts are to them when they're neighboring a new development. Whereas right now, The policy choice in the past had been short plots are smaller, so we're just going to exempt them from notice of application requirements. But in this landscape, we think that it's appropriate to probably start improving people's ability to know what's going on around the world.

So we have an improvement to transparency. Other efficiencies, easier for builders, easier for property owners, cheaper somewhere in there.

cheaper maybe the application is a little bit cheaper but we're we're talking a couple hundred dollars probably a difference in application fee yeah thank you yep do you have another comment or do you want me to keep going yeah if i could jump in so with the residential lot split it's just uh

this changes would just be a way to streamline and make it easier to create two legal ones, but they're still subject to all the same zoning requirements and everything else. There's no, okay.

It's essentially just a, it's kind of like this off-ramp process for two lot short plots. I think we would suspect that most people, if you have a two lot short plot, will just pick this option for the ease of implementing it essentially.

So given that a lot of these neighborhoods already constructed pretty close to lot size minimums, unless we're going through those zoning changes, but you know, given that a lot of the lots are close to the minimum, this scope and application of this is probably pretty narrow still.

It's probably pretty limited. The thing about the state law too is that, I think I said this in the beginning, you can't use residential lot splits if the resultant lots, either lot one or lot two, could be further subdivided again. So it's pretty limited, like how often we're going to see this. you'd have to have something really close to the minimum lot size to allow for a two lot. There'd probably be a range, you know, it doesn't have to be 8,000 square feet, 8,000. It could be, you know, 10 and 10, but you see the math, there's a range in there. So it's going to be fairly limited. I mean, we don't have like a number as to how many lots are eligible for something like this in the city, but we're required to adopt it. So yeah.

No, I think it just helps with maybe streamlining our decision. Thank you.

So I wanted to follow up. This was in the packet that the item got pulled out of the packet, but I just wanted to follow up on a couple of the comments from July about unit lots. One question I think Commissioner Seeley had was about provisions to require a full site plan for each ULS proposal and how that would be implemented if somebody wanted to make changes and it was recorded on a document. which was a good comment. We've gone back and looked at some of the other cities that Department of Commerce provided in their fact sheet. Pretty much none of the other cities require this. So we've kind of pulled back on that, mainly because it does create a complication that seems to undercut the ULS process of like, we showed a footprint of like an ADU on a ULS lot and we want to change it now. It's like, well, now you got to go back through like a ULS plat amendment before you get to a building permit. So it kind of complicates it. Anyway, yeah. So the other one is we had a provision in the first draft about one dwelling unit per lot. And I think this was Commissioner Seeley also brought this up of if somebody wanted to build the second ADU unit that they're allowed to build, doesn't that force somebody into another unit lot subdivision that they may not want? Like if you wanted to build that second ADU unit, and your first ADU was on a unit lot and the requirement was there's only one dwelling unit per unit lot, you've now gone from like a voluntary process where somebody can place it on a unit lot to sell it to now we're requiring another unit lot proposal because of this provision. There definitely is sort of a twilight zone factor there that I think we're going to try to avoid, and we would also propose to pull back from that requirement. And then Commissioner DeGroote brought up a request to include a maintenance responsibility requirement under the maintenance and CCRs code section. So we talked to our code enforcement officer and came up with some language about requiring that there be provisions in those CCRs around that. essentially making sure that spaces are in a neat and orderly manner as to prevent nuisance complaints and concerns. So we added that as well. One thing that was added to the state law that is an optional process, and this is not something that we're necessarily proposing, but we are including on big bold letters 173, On my PDF, it's page 33, but 173, we included an option here. This is an option under the state law for preliminary major plats that essentially allows for administrative review of a preliminary major plat. So that would basically say instead of a hearing, a public hearing, you could review this at the director level. unless, and this is what the optional language in the state law says, unless somebody who was contacted replies to that notice of application and says, no, I want a public hearing. So this I think was put in place by the state legislature to perhaps streamline and allow larger projects where maybe it's less controversial. Although in practice, I will say that as a practitioner, we always get public comments and a lot of concerns about larger subdivision proposals. So how applicable this might be, might be fairly limited. I think the considerations here, we wanted to include it just as a discussion item for the commission, since it is an option. I think the considerations here is it leaves the process a little undefined upfront for development review. So if we're doing a pre-application meeting, we don't exactly know what to tell the developer other than the fate of the review of your permit is in the neighbor's hands, which most developers aren't going to like, but they could appreciate that this could be an option. It does require the interested party, not just respond to the notice, but also have enough understanding that they have to make a formal request, which would be obviously well outlined in the notice, but it does require that folks that receive the notice understand what that means, because this is a fairly unique process. So that's a consideration that may add to some complication. We may require additional notice of applications if the optional hearing is triggered, meaning if we sent out the first notice and they said there was no hearing in the future, one person responded and said i'd like a hearing we probably would send out another notification to let people know that there will be a future public hearing and then there would be another notice for the hearing itself we try to avoid two three four public notices because people get notice fatigue and they don't they get confused about why they're receiving so many notices and Folks only have so much time in the day to understand what all that means. But on the positive side, again, it could result for certain projects where maybe perhaps it's an easier project or the neighbors aren't as concerned because you're in a larger area like West Hills where larger parcels abut a development site where it's not going to be as much of an impact. It could reduce, obviously significantly reduce if you're talking the difference between a public hearing. for those less complex projects. But we would probably want to consider capping this for the number of lots eligible if it's enacted. In baselining the other 10 cities in Pierce County, I haven't seen anybody else adopt this yet. This is definitely kind of a newer process. Again, I think there's lots of pros and cons here. But I think... Maybe the Planning Commission doesn't need to decide on this tonight, because obviously we're not doing a public hearing, but we'd like to hear some feedback on whether you'd like to include this as an option for public feedback at a public hearing. If you'd not like to include it, if you have any other thoughts, we'd appreciate that now.

Sure.

Chris, I think one of the benefits you said was... was transparency and if we use that was optional public hearings is probably a better better practice, I think that I would. I would support that, and I think that I think the fellow residents would also.

Any other comments?

Well, let's chew on that. Let's think about it at least. So we'll keep going. OK, so there's quite a bit going on in some of the other sections. One of the global things you'll see in this chapter or in this title is we are trying, the name of our department has shifted numerous times over the years. We're trying to simplify. You'll see red lines in pretty much every chapter. redlining out the term community development. Sometimes I think our department was called Department of Community Affairs at one point. When I started at the city, it was Development Services. Now it's Development and Permitting Services. We're trying to simplify that so it's just department or director. So we don't have to clean that up every time our department name changes. So you'll see that. We have updates to our definition section. That's largely trying to get our definitions with yards the same as what they are in Title 20, so we don't have two different definitions. It happens. We've got a couple other terms like double frontage lots and reverse frontage lots that are in our code that are undefined. There's a few things in there that we're just making sure to clean up our definition section so things are well defined in our code. Again, minor cleanups to boundary line adjustment and lock combo sections. One thing that you will see is there are a lot of green line sections in, if you have a color copy of the printout, I hope, in the preliminary major plat code section. Green in the Microsoft Word world is moving sections. So when we open up the titles of the subsections in the short plat chapter and the major plat chapter, they're essentially the same titles, but they're not in the same order. For some reason, I don't know if they were written at the same time or if they weren't. But the sections basically are just completely disorganized and they don't read the same, like they don't have the same pattern and titles, even though they are the same pattern and title. So we moved a lot. I tried to include, you'll see on the sidebar, anytime we moved one of those sections, you'll see, you know, we moved it to 1913 or we moved it to 1902 or we moved it to that section. Just for my own sanity, because I did move all of it and then I had to go back and market. Hopefully that makes sense. But let me know if there's any questions. Most of that is just reorganization. It's not substantive changes. um there are two new or there is a new chapters two new chapters um one of the new chapters is plat alterations and vacations so we have traditionally relied on the rcw for any kind of alterations of plats or vacating of a plat i don't know that i in the time i've worked here i've seen a plat vacation what essentially that means is like somebody's recorded like a short plat where they haven't built it and they want to come in and say, I just, I don't want this anymore. I want to vacate it. You can do that in a couple of different ways. You can do a lot combination to just dissolve the lots, but in cases where there's public streets, you do actually have to vacate it to basically allow that to go revert back to the property owner. Most cases with short plats right now, we don't have public roads involved. They're usually private, so they can be recombined with the parent lot. but we essentially need to have these two code sections because with plot alterations it has come up in the past and there's the rcw is fine it's just not local code and it doesn't work very well when we're trying to interpret something that's not in our code and we've had to have attorneys involved and the recommendation from our attorneys offices, you guys need to have like a code section so we don't have to interpret some of the state law. So we've gone through baseline a couple other cities and looked at the state law and really lined this up based on the recommendations from our attorneys. Binding site plans again, I think I mentioned this before, including the multifamily consistent with the RCW, and then potentially removing the hearing examiner and allowing the administrative review. 1912 is our design standards chapter. So this is basically the chapter that for most purposes regulates what we do in major plat subdivisions, how utilities are designed, how the roadway network and the lots are laid out, how pedestrian rights of way and improvements are made. some of our vegetative buffers, unique natural features or common features. This is our kind of our design chapter for subdivisions. So overall, I won't go into every single section, but open to questions if you'd like. The one area where we really are trying to streamline things are the utilities and then some of the transportation and street design. We do have a duplication, like a repeating of regulations that are in other code sections. that just doesn't need to be duplicated. We can refer back to a utility chapter better than just repeating what's in the utility chapter in the plot chapter. The likely decision, and I'm going to guess that 19 was written by a consultant in 1999. There was likely some thought process of we probably should include some of this in the plat code, and it was probably put together by a consultant. And decent policy decision, but it does duplicate regulations. And what we found over the years is most of our civil engineers don't look at this section. They look at the section that they always use, and they look at the public works design standards. So it makes a lot more sense to... basically streamline some of those regulations and delete them out of this and rely on the things that actually govern and that we're using. Transportation and street design, we're clarifying a few different things. Clarifying the interconnectivity of roads is required, but we are not obviously trying to channel significant amounts of volume into neighborhoods. But we do have obviously issues just with our roadway network in general here in the city, right? We have a lot of neighborhoods that were developed with dead end roads, cul-de-sacs that feed onto collectors, that feed onto arterials. And the effect of that is we don't have an interconnected grid in large portions of the city. We have had a requirement to stub roads to the edges of a new development if it makes sense to stub it, meaning there's a larger parcel on the other side, or we can see a logical connection to another public road. We have had that in code for quite some time, probably 15 years. It clarifies a few things. It also adds a provision that would allow us to proactively address concerns about speeding, allow us to proactively potentially, if there was a hearing examiner condition, add traffic calming features to those roads to address concerns. It's definitely something that we hear from neighborhoods when those go in that there's concerns that roads will connect through and that they'll see speeding in existing neighborhoods. we've needed a little bit of code language to basically allow us to assign conditions to that and to implement those.

Hi. Where was that added at? I am currently following what you're talking about. We are near page 61 and 62 of page 67. Yep, on the big bold letters, 201, 202. 201, 202.

Yep. So...

I see that that roadway connections and abutting is letter J. Where were you just talking about that?

So letter C on page 201.

Okay.

Talks about establishing the street grid traffic calling measures and street designs intended to slow the travel of speed vehicles may be required to implement implemented preemptively when new street connections occur.

Okay, I think I just went past a little bit too fast. Thank you.

The other minor adjustments that we're making again as you're kind of walking through that we have had issues with pedestrian rights-of-way and pedestrian easements Sometimes we have connections to schools or connections between a neighborhood to another neighborhood that would facilitate folks moving from a neighborhood to a commercial area or to a public park or to a trail and and oftentimes those important pedestrian improvements are placed into easements that are then owned by hoas we have had a lot of issues with easements so we think it's important in these cases obviously we require these things for connectivities to particularly to schools and commercial areas and parks If those are important, we likely should be taking those on as public rights of way as opposed to easements because we just have a really long track record of conflicts over these things and they can get kind of ugly. So we're trying to, we have a mix of language in the code where it says or, in some sections it says easements, in some sections it says rights of way. We've moved away from easements a few years ago and we're going to try to simplify that process here in the code and require the dedications of pedestrian rights of way as opposed to those easements. Lot design and layout and vegetative buffers are a couple other minor adjustments there. The new section, one of the sections that we moved is the final plat language. So the final plat language in 1908, which is for preliminary major plats, we've moved that to a new standalone chapter, 19.13, which is at the end. That's essentially in reflection of the fact that we would be moving to a preliminary and a final plat process for both short plats and major plats. So it needs to move out of the major plat section and move into its own standalone so that it can apply to both short plats and major plots. So it borrows almost all of the language and moves it to a single chapter. So it applies to both. I feel like I may have moved too fast. So let me know.

Commissioner DeGroote.

Thank you. If I could back up to the traffic issue, could you talk a little bit more about the grid system and the connectivity, because you mentioned you don't want to you're worried about through traffic on local streets. But on the other hand, if there are enough street connections, you don't get a lot of through traffic on any one street. So When you talk about a grid, are you talking about a specific interval for that grid? For instance, if you have, let's say, every half mile, there is a through street, a minor arterial, let's say. I'm looking to see how that might be defined.

So on page 205, Commissioner, our block and lot layout standards, we do have a block length requirement. So again, 205.

Yeah, for the pedestrian issue.

Yeah, no, that's for that's for the actual blocks. So a block is essentially between intersecting local or major roads. So a block is essentially the pattern in which the homes will be placed between roads. Okay, so our standard for subdivisions is the block length on like, assuming it's a local road from a new subdivision along an arterial major collector shall be not less than 1000 feet, so a little under a quarter mile, and then blocks on local roads can't be any any longer than 1000 feet, and they cannot be any less than 300 feet. So we don't have a master plan of what the grid would look like. We have talked internally about that. It'd be a bit of an undertaking to try to define that. It starts getting into like planning roads that we're probably not planning on building, providing the flexibility over time as new developments come in to figure out where that grid makes sense for concerning topography, drainage issues, maybe the neighboring property developed between when the city may have come up with a grid plan and that next development comes in. So some of that stuff is just done iteratively during the review process. to try to provide where the road stubs would go to provide future connectivity.

And it doesn't always work. Yeah, hopefully have more than one point of ingress and egress in a development. Yeah.

There's fire code requirements for certain number of units. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Chris, on page 61, while discouraging significant through traffic on local streets, traffic calming measures and street designs intended to slow the traffic speed of vehicles may be required. What would that look like and what's the may that would trigger it? Why wouldn't that be a shall?

Well, I will say this, the May is already kind of pushing our policy probably in a direction that is a little more liberal than it is right now. So right now, our traffic calming policy is reactive. So we have to not only have complaints about speeding, and this is not, we're not unique. You got to have like crash data and crash history and injuries in order for the city to look at proactively implementing traffic calming. In some cases, we have had hearing examiner attach a provision to a new plat where, hey, this neighborhood has a lot of concerns. There were like eight people that came to a hearing. They're concerned about the road coming from this neighborhood to this road that obviously was already stubbed to provide the connection, but they're obviously concerned about just people speeding through there. That's a common, common concern. That's almost every development we deal with. Sometimes it's difficult for it to be implemented without code that specifically requires that, because if it specifically requires it upfront, then we address it upfront and try to come up with a strategy. If it's an open-ended condition, oftentimes we revert back to policy and say, well, You know, the code doesn't necessarily say we have to actually do it until there's a problem. So we've been caught in a little bit of a catch-22 in the past where our traffic engineers have had some difficulty in knowing how to apply that without definite code that says that that's what we do. This would allow us to basically say up front, like, hey, if the neighborhood comes unglued about this road connection, which could be possible. We need to proactively come up with what that looks like. And that's going to be based on the context of the situation, whether it's topography, stop signs, controlled intersections, collector roads. I mean, some of the major roads we don't typically do speed humps on. I know we have one on 7th Avenue by DeCoursey. Those are pretty rare. So it depends on the road type. It depends on the context of the situation. We wouldn't want to dictate exactly what that looks like, but we do want to say like, If this is going to be a problem and we document it and there's enough neighborhood concern about that, we want to have code language that says we'll preemptively address it.

So this allows you to get in front of the problem before Memphis. Okay. Then jumping ahead a little bit to sidewalks. Does this make it easier to install sidewalks, expand sidewalks?

Sidewalk policy won't change as a part of this. It's more... the form in which the underlying land is dedicated to require it. And these connections that I'm talking about oftentimes are like a trail connection between a neighborhood or a trail connection between the end of a street to a park or an open space. And sidewalks are almost always, with any development, dedicated public right of way. We don't have a problem with that. That policy is not changing. It's usually like safe routes to school connection or a trail connection or something that's just a non-traditional, like I can think of two or three examples where we've stubbed out like a tract from a neighborhood that went right next to a middle school. And it's like, well, that tract right there is going to provide all the kids that live in this neighborhood the ability to walk on that. And, you know, there's going to be a required pathway there and it goes right to the school. Well, it's fine until, you know, the HOA gets worked up about people not using the drop-off zone at the school, and then they go to the cul-de-sac on a public street and may be parking legally, but are using this HOA-owned tract to allow their kids to walk to school. And then they block it off. And then it becomes like, is the city going to sue the HOA over this? I mean, we could. Do we want to take people to court over stuff like that? Not really. We just would appreciate people still doing what was required when we subdivided it. But it has come to that in a lot of cases. And so It doesn't, to answer your question, it doesn't change our sidewalk policy. Sidewalks on public streets are always going to be in public right-of-way, but it will change or I would say solidify our current practice, which is we want this stuff as right-of-way, not on easements because we don't want conflict with HOAs in the future.

Commissioner Taylor.

So just a question about like speed humps, because I know in Manor where they have them all along the main drag, Is that an HOA decision or is that a city decision or is it a combination?

Well, on public roads, if it's adaptively added at a later date, it's definitely like the city engineer and the traffic engineer that decide that. The general thing about speed humps, as I understand it, on more major roads is it's usually ambulances. Particularly if there's any kind of grade with the road and a speed hump, you will end up with bottoming out. You'll end up with the ambulance, particularly the backside of the ambulance as it comes up over it, it can scrape. And that's why we have roadway standards about grade on roadways can't exceed 10%. And yeah, it becomes more of an issue on the main roads. Yeah.

That's an issue also with circles, right? And we only have, what, two of them in the area that I can think of? Maybe one on 9th? But those are also a huge issue for fire trucks and things like that. So I'm hoping we're not going to that.

Well, that's not part of this code.

Thank goodness.

I know that traffic circles like WSDOT really likes traffic circles. They are a benefit for side collision and T-bone intersections where we have high collision rates. But it requires a lot of right-of-way to do them correctly. Yeah. Okay, the last section, we are changing a few things related to another piece of state legislation, which is House Bill 5290. Every government employee knows about 5290. So 5290 is our review timelines standards. It amended RCW 3670B. It basically requires maximum processing timelines. We've always had maximum processing timelines, But this has gotten a little more stringent. There are reporting requirements for accountability with cities. So the knob's been turned up a little bit on our procedural and our processing timelines, which we do appreciate. But we do need to change our code just to be consistent with those RCWs. So there are some changes here, both in Title 19, but it largely goes into two sections in Title 20, which is 20.11, which is our applications processing chapter. It's kind of a more administrative chapter. And then our public hearings chapter, which is 20.12. So essentially, this is kind of the framework that we operate under. If an application requires no notice of application, which is pretty limited, most land use and subdivision proposals, including the changes that we're proposing here, would require an NOA for most things. So it's fairly limited. Those require 65 calendar days total. Applications that require notice of application, but no public hearing, are allowed 100 calendar days and then applications that have an NOA and a public hearing attached to them are 170 calendar days. This is not the amount of time that we process permits when you submit them. We break them down into smaller chunks because we're only allowed three reviews. So we have to basically do math problem and figure out review timelines that make sense with our noticing requirements. So it's not like when you submit a land use permit, you won't hear from us for 170 days. You'd hear from us in like 30 days or 40 days. And so there's other processing issues around how many review cycles and how we're coordinating with the applicant. There's major improvements, like things that actually allow us to work more closely with development. And I think that that's good. And then this is our updates to our noticing requirements. I'm pretty sure I've already explained all of this, but just to recap. So short plots under existing requirements for four lots and fewer, there is no public notice requirement under the proposed. We would require them for all short plots and appeals would be allowed. Major Platts, it's basically the same thing, appeals, notice of application in the public comment period for the hearing. Under unit lot subdivisions, we don't have it in code, so there's no existing rules on that. It's new, as well as residential lot splits under both of those proposals. There's actually a requirement under unit lot subdivisions that we notify neighbors. which I will say is a little bit weird because it essentially is kind of a property transference tool. And it's not like it's brand new development. It's any development that goes on to unit lots already allowed by zoning. So it's a little funky, but there was an amendment to the unit lot subdivision law this year that requires notice of application. And so we will do the same thing for residential lot splits because it makes a lot, to notice things that are two lots or more and not differentiate those things. Oh, and the last thing I'll say is the residential lot splits, there is actually a prohibition on appeals in the state law. And I think that was under the intent of allowing these things to be very easy and to move quickly. And because there are only two lots, the legislature essentially set forth that there should be no appeals allowed under residential lot splits.

Oh, I'm sorry.

And it just seems odd that we need to do a public notice and comments period for the residential lot splits. But there's no appeal allowed. So the comments are just kind of pointless.

Well, they're not completely pointless. I mean, we do get comments that improve developments because of things that we don't know about. And that's when we try to channel people on like how to be effective with public commenting, understand that policy stuff, the stuff that we do here and with the council is probably the area where people have the most ability to influence public policy. When we get to an application type that's already been developed in the policy and the codes have been developed, we're kind of limiting it down to like localized issues that we can solve with a SEPA requirement or a condition on a permit, things that are just outside of our code. So there's still benefit to allowing it. We also just think it's weird that we would we would require a unit lot subdivision to do a comment period, but a two lot subdivision, which arguably could be bigger than that would receive none. So it's makes a lot of sense to just make sure that all of these get notices.

Commissioner, sorry.

Thank you. I always try to wait until you're done with one topic before asking a question and then you move on to the next one. So I'm going to back us up again a little bit. Page 208, big 208. I have a question, which is, this is regarding the tree planting issue. And It's number two in parentheses there. And my question is, who decides the right-of-way, the distance? In other words, the distance, let's say, between the sidewalk and the street, is that the developer or does the city have any standards for that?

The city does have standards for that, depending upon the roadway classification.

Okay. Because it says you should plant trees. Well, where I live, we have a planting strip of two feet. And of course they plant trees in a two foot planting strip and the sidewalks all get lifted and damaged and then have to be replaced. And so I'm wondering if the city sets the distance and if the city requires trees to be planted, perhaps the city should have you know, an appropriate space between the street and the sidewalk.

The two-foot planters went away a long time ago. We don't do two-foots anymore. In fact, in areas where we have pre-existing planters that are less than 4 1⁄2 feet, we don't allow tree. Like if you came in and said, I want to put a tree in, it's just not allowed. Okay. I mean, you can do other landscaping maybe, but we don't allow anything under 4 1⁄2, and really it's more like 5 or 6. And most of our standards are 6 up to 10. And in fact, we've tried to go further than that. But 10 would be great. If we could just get 10 everywhere, we probably wouldn't have sidewalk damage. But yeah.

All right. Thank you. Yep.

Okay, that's it. That was long.

Did I miss any questions? Anyone else have any other questions?

Okay, I think that's it. I know we have a couple commissioners that are not here. I didn't hear significant feedback. So I don't know what our next steps are at this point. Do you believe you're ready for us to prepare a public hearing to gather community input and then make a decision after that? Or what would you like to do? I don't want to rehash all of this at another meeting and talk about the same things, but I didn't hear a lot of things that we necessarily need to follow up on that are hanging out questions. You could gather public input and decide a meeting after that. You could do that.

back for commissioners.

I think a lot of a lot of what's in here is pretty much given to us by the state. We're doing some tweaks, but my feeling is that we could do something pretty straightforward.

I mean, I don't think that we need to go back and forth from that manner either. Anyone else have any other comments on that? Okay, okay.

So next time. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Chris. Next item on the agenda is the staff report. Katie, do you have anything for us?

Do

There we go. So we will have a meeting in December, just one meeting. We have a couple of things we're tossing around for agenda items. Of course, they're all code related for the most part. And then Chris and I will talk about kind of the next steps for the title 19 amendments and getting a public hearing scheduled for that. So next meeting will be your last meeting of the year. We'll make sure to get you guys in the calendar and everything for meetings next year. And this applies to at least one of you who is here tonight, but board and commission openings are The process is open right now. So if your term is coming up in March and you'd like to reapply, please do so. If you are interested in also serving on another boarding commission, you are welcome to do that as well. If you have enough time on your hands. Otherwise, we just hope you'll stay continuing to show up here to the planning commission. I think that's all I had. Did I forget anything?

Okay.

That's it.

Thank you, Katie. Um, last item of the agenda is commissioner comments. Uh, we're going to start off with commissioner.

Uh, nothing this week. Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner.

Nothing for me. Thank you.

Okay. Thanks. Um, commissioner Landon.

Nothing for me. Thanks.

Commissioner Taylor.

I also have nothing. Um,

All that leaves me I guess I would say that if you guys are planning to travel early for the holidays, could you please let us know ahead of time on our next meeting, we only have one more left of the year, it would be nice to establish whether or not we'll have a quorum at that meeting or not so that the city staff can plan accordingly. That also goes for if you are sort of traveling near that date. We have, we're missing one commissioner tonight just because of things that are happening with planes and they just couldn't make it back. So just be aware that, you know, sometimes, especially this holiday season, the travel schedule might be a little bit wonkier than it normally would be if you're traveling around that date. So let us know. I think that that's really all that I have. Time now is 841 and I'm going to go ahead and adjourn. Thank you.