Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. Good evening. This is, vice chair Artesi calling to order the Renton Planning Commission for Wednesday, 01/07/2026 at 6PM. Our first order of business will be roll call. Secretary Pool, could you, please make the roll call? Yes.

Commissioner or sorry. Chair vice chair. Sorry. Dumped on the gun. Vice chair. Hard to say. Oh, here. Yep. Commissioner Bayan.

Here.

Okay. Commissioner Fickstalk? Here. Chair Kelly? It's not here. Commissioner Matson?

Here.

Commissioner Plants? Not here. I am here. And commissioner Roche?

Here. Alright. We do have quorum. Okay. We have six commissioners in attendance, and therefore, we have quorum to hold this meeting.

Our next portion is correspondence received. We have had one email received since the last planning commission meeting held on November 19, and this email was received on December 23 from an archaeological field technician from the Duwamish tribe commenting on the park's recreation and open space plan. Next item on the agenda is audience comments. Those attending virtually will be offered an opportunity to speak for to speak after the in person comments are completed. Each speaker will be provided three minutes to address an item, and interested parties may also provide written comments to planning commission at rentonlaw.gov.

Seeing nobody raising hands or volunteering, we can move on to the next item. Is there a motion to approve the meeting minutes from nine 11/19/2025? It's really new we're adding in. So if someone could just motion for that.

Sure. I'll I move that we approve the minutes from our last meeting. Second.

K. Motion is made by commissioner Pool and saying by commissioner to approve the meeting minutes, bring objections to or any discussion. Since chair Kelly isn't here, can we have a a vice chair sign the minutes for approval?

Thank you.

You should get to sign it too.

I know. Is this a new thing? The state law now.

Oh, okay. I'll give it to you. No. You're good. You're good.

Okay. So hearing no discussion, those who are in favor of approving the meeting minutes, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Those who are not in favor, say nay. Motion passes. The meetings are the minutes are approved. Next up is the director's report. So, Matt, if you wouldn't mind.

Hi, commissioners. Thank you so much. Vice chair, Archie, thank you for pinch hitting for us tonight. It's great to see you back. Hope everybody had a great holiday. Time to refresh and spend time with people, you care about most. I'm happy to be back. I hope you're happy to be back, and I hope you're ready for a full slate of exciting planning issues that are gonna be coming forward this year. We've got a full slate of items just to give you a a taste of what we'll be working on this year. I Like I mentioned at the last meeting that, Katie Bukomorales would be kicking off the valley community planning effort, and we actually got that started before the holidays.

So, she'll actually be at the next meeting, and maybe she can, give you some behind the scenes. But we've started some stakeholder interviews on that community plan. So we're really excited about that. It's gonna be a year long effort at least. So give you guys constant updates on what's going on there.

We're gonna be bringing you an item regarding parking state law, regarding, how cities can mandate parking requirements minimums, specifically is gonna be coming forward this year. We've got Angelia Weiss managing that project. She's doing, some community outreach and providing some information to the public, on this item, so we'll be bringing that to you later this year. We are looking at our urban design regulations as well. It's been quite some time since we've, looked at those and opened those up, and we think that they're ready to be refreshed.

We wanna make sure they are also compliant with state law. Recent legislation, requires us to if we're gonna have urban design regulations that they must be objective. They cannot be subjective. So we're gonna do an audit of those regulations and also just, again, just refresh those for the twenty first century. Childcare centers, this is a big issue.

Again, more state legislation is going to go into effect next year, which is going to require local jurisdictions to be more flexible with how we zone child care centers. We're actually gonna be more proactive with that. We're gonna be looking at that this year. It's such an important issue. We wanna make sure that, we reduce any regulatory barriers that there are for, child care facilities within the city.

And then, this is not the last item. It's just, again, it's just a taste of what we'll be looking at, this year, but, we're gonna be looking at some, fee relief or, affordable housing projects within the city. Looking at those fees, if there's a way that we can cut those and and, get some more affordable housing stock within the city. The other item I just wanted to touch on, the schedule for the year. I thought it worked really well last year.

I I would like to do it again this year, hopefully giving the commission a good month off in the middle of the summer and then ending, with a nice long break during the holidays. I thought that worked great. So we're gonna try that again, hopefully, with the schedule. Again, we do have a robust agenda, work program for you that we'll be bringing to the next meeting, but I think we'd be able to do that again for this year. And, I just wanted to note that, you know, we're just so we just wanna be very flexible with the commission and, just obviously appreciate all your volunteer time and, maintaining these hybrid meetings.

It's just really great, I think, for everyone, staff included, to be able to do this. And, just want you to know want the commissioners to know that if if you remote in or if you're on the diocese, it's the same. It's not less than if you remote in, understanding that we all have other lives outside of this. So just want everybody to know that. I mentioned that we have a new commissioner that is gonna be coming on board.

Little birdie told me that maybe Kevin Ptak is actually might be phoning in and observing tonight. Hello, Kevin, if you're there. We are going to send, his appointment to city council on Monday, so he should, be ready to go at the next meeting later this month. And then lastly, I just before I hand it off to our parks and recreation colleagues, I wanted to note that the last meeting, we had the briefing for the pros plan, but you didn't actually have the physical document in your hands. You know, it was it was an overview by the parks department of what that document is was and is and what was inside of it.

So I just wanna make sure that the commissioners, know that it's okay. Even though this is a public hearing, statutory requirement that we do it, we take public comment. But now that you've had time to look at that document, to please also feel free to treat the meeting as a briefing and and have that conversation with Park's staff if there are outstanding questions, or comments, that you would normally do at a briefing. Feel free to do that at the hearing. I had mentioned this to Park's, staff before the for this meeting, so they're ready for it too. So with that, thank you so much. Welcome back.

Thank you, Matt, and looking forward to all our items ahead this year. Okay. Next item is the public hearing for the Parks Recreation and Open Space pros plan. Is there a motion to open a public hearing on this topic?

Move to open the public hearing.

Second. Okay.

Also, I just wanna make a note that, commissioner Plants has joined, so I've updated the attendance. Okay.

Motion made by commissioner Pool. Let's see if the open a public hearing, has been made. We had a vote on this, so we just go for it.

I think

we just

Yeah. I think we do. Right?

Yeah.

Okay.

All those in favor of opening the floor? Aye.

Aye. Aye.

K. Motion passes. Jason, if you mind, for for.

Great. Can we alright? Thank you, commissioners. I'm gonna try to share my screen here real quick, so bear with me. I have a few slides to help guide our conversation. See how this works. K. And that looks like it worked. Okay. Well, good evening, commissioners.

I'm Jason Letter. I'm the park planning manager. Joined tonight by our director, director John Repp, my associate planner, Ty Hair, as well as, Lisa Gruter from Burke, Consulting who's been team's been playing a major role in helping us update this plan. We're we're excited to be back tonight. We briefed you back in November.

We've been doing a lot of legwork since then to get the draft plan together. We were happy to share a copy, of that with you in early December. And, you know, wanted to kinda go through some of the key findings of that plan that you've had, hopefully, had a chance to review and dig into a little bit. So with that, just quickly go through some of the the earlier things we had discussed previously and, wanna leave plenty of time for conversation, and, any questions or comments you might have. But, again, just a reminder, you know, what, you know, what is the pros plan?

Why is it why is it important to us as a city, as a community? It's it's really a physical policy funding guiding document that helps us kinda look into the future and understand how to meet the community needs of today and maybe what we anticipate going forward. It's also a requirement of the state in order to remain eligible for grant funding, so we update this plan every six years or so to ensure we're we're, we're continuing to maintain that requirement. As I mentioned, it's a sub plan to the comprehensive plan, which was updated in 2024 and a companion to many of the other plans that we use as documents to guide our our programs across the city. And, specifically, you know, within the pros within the, the comp plan, there's a there's a park a park element in there, and, PRC PRC, kind of helps kinda broadly talk about access to parks across our community.

You know, one housekeeping item we might take up later this year, and we've had this conversation in house, is that, you know, we're moving away from a traditional level of service model that looks at acreage of of a park across our community and better more how these parks that we have or how these facilities we have are serving our community. So we'll get more into that as we dig into the new document. But really looking at a at a quality based level of service as opposed to sort of just an acreage based level of service. And, again, still maintaining that that access goal that that shows up in in the comp plan. So, really, this this, this slide deck is gonna follow the follow at a high level, follow sort of the way that the pros plan, the draft that we've given you, provided to you is is organized.

But, really, digging into what our community looks like today, you know, how we've gone in and tried to understand the needs of our community both through a qualitative data driven process as well as just community engagement, how that ties into what the future looks like across our our system, and then just strategies for getting there, both through implementation process as well as the capital program process, and then and then wrapping it up from there. I'll fix my screen a second here. We talked about it last time, and rent Renton's we all know Renton's a growing, changing, diversifying community. We see that both in our zoning across the city and how development is occurring as well as just, you know, what our what our community makeup is, whether it's through demographics tied to racial, ethnicities, linguistics, but also socioeconomics and and population health are are a key factor in helping us understand what our community looks like, what those needs might be, where those risks might lie, and where we can hopefully help improve things, you know, through the lens of parks, trails, and open space, along the way. We, we currently look at our systems having about 58 park sites, across the city.

It's about 1,300 acres. And, you know, in 2024, we're closing we we haven't quite closed out 2025, but in 2024, we had 2,600,000 visitors across our our system. And we see that growth year over year, especially post pandemic, but we we see that that growth year over year. So we know that our system continues to be well used, well loved, well visited, and we anticipate that to continue as we move forward. We also know that access across our our community is uneven.

Areas where you see yellow on this map are are areas where there's where there's maybe good access to parks overall, But where we see darker colors tends to align better with where there's where there's less park access. Some of this is tied to to, you know, an an absence of parks overall or absence of accessible parks overall, but also parks that may be aging, incomplete in terms of the facilities you might expect to find in a park of that type. But we know where our higher needs area are based on this this analysis across our system. So, again, we can see those those locations pretty clearly in an access analysis. We also know how our city compares to some of our peers.

We we we look at this carefully. We've got some questions about We try to look at peer communities that were like ours in some ways, whether it's through how they're organized, to either location in the county or the region, their structure overall, maybe through population and and just just facilities. But, you know, when we look at rent in as a as a comparison, we know that, you know, our our staffing levels also tend to be lower in terms of in terms of, you know, what we what well, I'm sorry. Let me let me step back and say, what this what this figure tells us is that our our maintenance FTE, their maintenance staffing, you know, serve more more acres across our system compared to our peers as well. So looking through the lens of of peer communities and and staffing analysis, we know that our that our our our staffing is, is maybe a spot where we can continue to to improve our our reach as well.

And this table shows up in in the in the plan. So we looked at it through the lens of data, but we've also, gone out and talked to our community and tried to reach our community in a variety of ways. Again, we talked about this quite a bit during the briefing, so I'll I'll breeze through this a bit. But I I want to reiterate the fact that we've had substantial community conversations both in person as well as as well as through, surveys and online. And, you know, we wanna make sure that we understand, the nuances that lie across across our communities, and the best way to do that is simply through listening to them where they are.

So we had about thirty thirty in person events across the community, whether it's at pop ups and parks, river days, farmers markets, neighborhood barbecues, and elsewhere. We've collaborated with, CBOs and, schools and faith organizations and nonprofits to reach communities where they are in that way. We provide an interactive website and map, to solicit, responses through surveys, and and really site specific feedback through pins on maps. And then, you know, really trying to engage groups we don't often hear from. And and so we we feel like we were relatively successful in that way, but also learning lessons along the way.

So we we had a pretty strong response, nearly 600 survey responses and then another 600 specific comments on a map. But what what we learned is that, you know, this is representative of population across the city. We we we we feel like we had a pretty good representative response to the to the community that we were looking to reach. That's literally 85% of our respondents use parks weekly. So, again, parks continue to be a popular amenity for for our community.

Specifically, we asked the question, you know, if you had a if you had a $100, where would you wanna spend it? And, really, what we heard was, some of the some of the most, important things to spend money on are are trails and access, investing in parks where they don't currently exist, sport courts, and and playground modernization modernization are are important amenities. But, also, improving desires include, you know, maintenance as a whole, more frequent care across our system. Restrooms continue to be something we hear about quite a bit, and and we know this, and and we qualify that this process, as well as the safety, both through proceed and actual in parks. And so, looking at ways we can improve, meeting meeting that, that desire, that request, that need, through our through our actions going forward is an important thing that came out of our engagement process.

Additionally, just through our our our interactive map, this is this is helpful in looking at the site scale. You know, again, safety issues can tend to be something that, that we hear about, but also access to nature, access to open space, access to shade. This is something that that we learned about through in person conversations as well as just, specific comments. Restroom closures being something that that we continue to hear about, but also emerging trends, whether it's, skate facilities, skateboarding facilities, pickleball, other types of elements. We heard about that across across the, the city, in variety in a in a variety of ways.

And and, again, the append the appendices to the pro's plan, the draft that you have goes in a lot of detail about this. If you really wanna get into the quotes and nitty gritty, it's there for you to to sift through. We identified the the gaps in our system and and sort of qualified that alongside socioeconomic trends and and and zoning densities of of projected as well as actual. And and, again, rolling that up, look at where the overall greatest needs might be across our system based on on those data. And so, again, highlighting areas where, the highest needs are the lighter colors here and maybe I I don't wanna say lowest needs, but different needs are are darker.

And and there's nuance to all of this, but we really wanted to look at where park access was in uneven, parks were incomplete, capacity was constrained, whether that's fields, whether that's off leash areas, whether that's water access, and looking at how that how that is reflected across our city is something that we really want to get a handle on here. So the mapping that that rolls up into this is is also in the plan. So implementation, how do how do we, how do we take these vast diverse needs and and move forward? Well, one way is to look at, you know, site specific needs, but really, broadly, how how do we continue to promote a community that's healthy and and has a sense of well-being? How do we equitably, invest in parks across our system?

How do we continue to support, our natural environment in critical areas while developing our our our parklands and redeveloping our parklands? And how do we steward resources effectively and responsibly across that, whether that's stewarding our our our, our finances, our financial resources, stewarding our staff resources? How do we continue to make those difficult but strategic decisions about where to deploy resources and how? So these end up being the goals in the park plans. So the comp plan has goals and so does the park plan.

Within here, there's a lot of detail below there about objectives and how we how we maybe move the needle across these these big framework principles. I mentioned before that, previously, we've looked at level of service across system both as more of an acreage based or or land land based benchmark. So how many how many acres per per person do we have in the in the community? More and more, we're seeing the trend moving moving in a bit of a different direction to be more quality based. And so this this plan represents a shift from the last plan in terms of how we how we quantify or how we qualify a meeting level of service, and and we're looking more at kind of flipping it to be maintaining, reinvesting, and developing existing properties, existing parklands.

And while acquisition is still a part of that component, we we really are taking a strategic approach to that and and looking at where it makes sense to acquire land based on on where there's an actual physical gap and and land available. So that's that's something that is a is a bit of a shift here from the last plan. That's something we think is important important to do going forward.

Oops.

The plan talks about system wide strategies about, about achieving those goals. So we've we've really broken that down into how do we provide access, how do we invest and respond to growth across our community, and how do we improve the quality of our facilities in the process. The plan's structured in this way now in terms of how we implement things moving forward. Starting with access, well, I I showed where there's access gaps gaps across our community, and the plan clearly shows where those are. Some of that simply, developing undeveloped properties that we currently own.

We as a community, as a city currently own. The plan includes two concepts that, are are are recent. In fact, the Cleveland Park concept to the left on the left side of the screen here. That's that's a, a park master plan that is nearly to the adoption point right now. There's a draft have been available for review we're reviewing right now internally.

But, this is a park a park property that the the city acquired, in the nineties through grant using, state grant dollars. And so while we had that that land on our on our on our inventory, it wasn't accessible to the community. So here, we're providing access by by developing property that we currently own. So stay tuned. There's more to follow on on the Cleveland Richardson Park concept, and that's in South in South Renton in the Talbot planning area. And I believe the chair had a comment about about South Renton last time we were here, and I'm happy to report. We we hear that. We're we're working on that, and, you know, we're actually trying to move the needle on that. So similarly in Northeast Renton, we had a park gap. We have a park gap as well.

In twenty twenty five two years ago now. 2024, we adopted the the Northeast Renton Park master plan. This was an important master plan to complete complete because it helps guide us in in in developing this existing property into a park. The city owned much like Cleveland Richardson, the city owned this park this this land for for for many, many years, for decades, but hadn't really done much with it. The Blue Box, is a parcel, the city acquired in 2023.

And with that acquisition, it really helped, give us give us the land we needed to to to begin making this park development a reality. Over in Orange is a few a future acquisition that, we we would like to make into the future. We have a an option for first rate of refusal in this property. So when the when the landowner there is ready to sell, we are in a position to acquire that. But this is another another parcel another another assembled parcels in the in the city where we are actively moving through through the design phase right now with the goal of of of creating an accessible park in this location, in the near term.

Another concept we talked about was investment respond. How do we add capacity to our existing facilities? How can we use what we have today to meet, to meet additional need? So in this case, just give you an example, of sport courts. We know pickleball is a growing sport. We hear about in the we hear about it everywhere. We hear about it in rent, sure. And so recently, Tabitha Reservoir Park was renovated to support, additional additional usage, where demand exists. So by investing here, we we're able to, increase capacity and and meet more demand in this location. We also look at improving park completeness, you know, improving water fountains, adding shade structures.

Shade is something we hear about all the time. We heard about it loudly during our engagement process, both in person and through our surveys. So adding shade structures and and facilities where the community can gather, that that helps meet a need that that wasn't current wasn't met previously. And it's it's a it's a relatively sort of easy thing to do when you don't have to acquire new land or do major infrastructure development, to to create to to provide to provide facilities that that meet, existing needs. Also, improving quality.

Improving quality can can also, in some cases, expand capacity. If we're able to improve the function of of, say, our athletic athletic fields, they can be used more often, more frequently, and by by by more user groups. So in this case, taking a a field that may be grass or or or missing missing things like like fencing or dugouts, that sort of thing. If we can if we can improve the turf, if we can improve fencing, if we can improve facilities that that that better meet needs, we can we can expand expand their usage, expand their capacity, and and that quality improvement can can also move the needle on meeting meeting needs that are unmet in our existing facilities. So Kiwanis Park be an example.

We were able to, to do a major renovation to this park, and improve completeness, improve function, and and better meet need. And that that shows up in our in our usage statistics that we're able to gather. And down in the bottom here, we see Kwanis Park compared across our entire several parks across our system. We see that that usage increases dramatically in 2024 through through major renovation process. So we know that, quality begets usage, and and we're better we're able to better serve our our community through, through these types of quality improvements, and so we've identified those in our plan as well.

We've also revisioned some of our plans with our community. Alongside our community, we took a look at what we call the Tri Park area downtown. This this is a plan that's been sort of on the books for for over two decades now or a concept, I should say. It was first visited, during the during the '4 05 expansion, planning effort. And now now that's that's underway actively, we revisit this plan with our community to see if it's still if it's still met community needs, if the community still liked what they were seeing.

And so in in large part, the answer was yes, but, we we got to this plan, to honor sort of the vision of the past, but also modernize it to to to to hear to meet what we're hearing from our community today. And so some of these some of these engagement boards are on the left side of the screen, and and we've we've literally taken that engagement and superimposed it, on a plan that that makes sense operationally, but also makes sense from a standpoint of, you know, what we hear from our community. For example, fields are something that we we heard a lot about. The community is is quite passionate about rectangular fields that need multiple uses. And that makes sense because if we have a multiuse field, we can program it in a variety of different ways to to, to be used, depending on what those needs are, what the what those what those programming facilities, sorry, what those needs are and and what those, those recreational needs, are as they as they as, as they vary throughout the year, the season, and into the future.

So this concept plan is also in the draft plan that you have. Just some renderings of what of what that might look like. This is actually a rendering of the recently acquired, parcel adjacent to Cedar River Park. This simply takes what's what's on the, what's on the concept plan that's in your master in the draft master plan that you have and and visualizes what that might look like, from a perspective level. So multiuse fields that meet a a variety of programming needs or or, can be programmed in a variety of different ways.

In this case, relocating, the off leash area to allow for, additional multiuse fields, on what's often referred to as a Nargo property, the Cedarville Natural Area. We heard about unprogrammed space, so we've allowed flexible use areas on the site as well. And then, of course, play structures, restrooms. We're getting away from a centralized maintenance facility model and trying to decentralize that a bit, so that our operations and maintenance teams don't have to log, machinery or equipment across the city. So we identified that here as well just to to make that access, more straightforward.

So this is a vision. This is visionary. This is not a refined design drawing, but, can help guide us as we move in that direction in the future. And we're excited, especially with the acquisition of this new parcel, to carry that forward and and begin, meeting some the unmet needs, on these sites. One more rendering here.

This is what's, we refer to as a miracle field. This is a concept that's been used elsewhere in The United States, but there isn't really a good adaptable use field, anywhere around here. So, we have a really, really excellent adaptive program in our recreation division at the city. And so this this type of miracle field is specially designed to to to to meet the needs of of of those using mobility devices or those other other other perhaps mobility impairment issues that that prevent them from using a traditional more traditional facility, I should say. But, also, envision that alongside meeting the needs that that currently exist and and carrying that forward.

So this plan con contemplates those improvements as well. And really, lastly, how do we get there? How do we fund this? What does it cost? What does it take to actually do this work?

I don't wanna go into the the details of the capital program that's that's that's gonna that's in the pros plan. But, really, we've identified several specific projects, many across across the city, that that given the funding, what would it cost to to do this work? And so, we have a priorities cap priority prioritized capital program that that looks at, the needs analysis we we shared, I shared earlier and shared before, but helps us through helps guide our decision making as we move forward and assigns costs to that over time. Some of this may be phased, but we we like to think we can be aggressive and and and, and begin to implement some of these programs more quickly. Some of that comes down to funding, of course, and other resources.

But we we considered that as as part of this plan as well. And, you know, there's a lot of detail on the wrap into it. But, you know, basically, through a costing analysis, as well as, a model that that forecast that out over time, you know, what this might take to get done. So so that's that's basically a quick run through of the of the of the pros plan. We're really excited about it.

We're we're excited how it turn how it's turning out. We're looking forward to to finalizing this plan alongside you. And so our schedule is such that we're here tonight, meeting with you this public hearing. Following the hearing, we've we've received the comments from from the Duwamish tribe. We've we've had our own comments and minor comments internally.

We look forward to finalizing the plan and bringing it back to you for deliberations and recommendations in a couple weeks and hopefully taking that through council for adoption so that we can really get to work and start putting this plan into action, which is our which is our our main goal here. So the public comment period is open until the fourteenth. We've been navigating our SEPA process, our environmental review process internally at the city, and it's still open for public comment. And but we'd also love to hear anything you have to say. And lastly, I we did also share this plan with the state, a draft of the state to ensure they were happy with it because, ultimately, they they give it the rubber stamp when we adopt it.

And I included a quote a quote from our program manager, Nick Norton, there who because this this is shaping up to be a fantastic plan and something I'd likely be interested in sharing around with other cities if they request examples of what to shoot for. So that's reassuring that what the state is seeing, they're happy with. But this is our community. We wanna make sure that our community feels good about it and that that you all feel good about it. So with that, I'd be happy to take questions or, or any other feedback you might have.

Thank you, Jason. It was great to see. So this will open the floor for questions. If anybody has any questions, feel free to chime in, either online or in person. So I guess I'll start. So took some time to look over to look over the the plan as well on top of this. And I just wanna say we're a huge fan of what you guys have planned for for TriSet, the TriPark sections you're working on. Looks super excited to see what kind of elements that will come with that. I'm really excited to see all the different sort of features and activation of what that park will bring. I did have a question, though.

I was wondering if there were plans to connect the, I guess, the community center section with the skate park area by like, with a grade separated trail, essentially? Because right now, you have to cross over a house or a way to get there. Is there a way to extend is there a plan or a way to extend that trail that falls on the river to pass underneath without having to cross traffic?

Question. Our concept plan doesn't show one right now. We know that that that is an area that's a it's a challenging crossing. The other challenge there is, Cedar River Trail. So we're we're considering some some options, for connectivity alongside King County. But right now, there there isn't a great separated crossing shown at the moment.

Yeah. Just any sort of any sort of improvements that we've done to that trail on your Ruby phenomenal. I know it's it has a lot of potential to be a really nice walk along area, but there's been some, like, more rougher sections to it. So just if there's any way we can incorporate in there as well, I think it would be a good really good way of tying it all together.

Just to jump in there, I I know that in the past, it's the possibility of of closing Hauser Way in that area has been proposed. So that would solve the problem.

But a great whole bunch of new ones.

No one else wants to go. I can I can keep on going? That's okay. So I also saw the comments made by the Duomo's tribe. And I know in the the plan itself, there was that you were looking for potential partnerships with other groups. And the Duomo's team have been fairly interested in a lot of the developments that are coming out of this commission. And I think it'd be really interesting if the if there's a potential to actually partner with them in some ways, whether that's through getting their support or awareness of the tribe through, like, informational signs or potentially, like, Coast Salish artwork. There's a lot of room a lot of opportunity there for potential developments with in working in collaboration with them.

That's that's a fair comment. It's a broad it's a broad topic. We do often consult the tribes through our projects, especially wherever we have, ground disturbance. But I we were talking about Lisa and I were talking about this actually earlier, this week. I know the comp plan to speak a little bit to partnerships with with tribes, but, it's a it's a it's a good comment. I'm about to a note of it here. Yeah. So so it's something to consider.

Thank you. Yeah. Just, we will soon see what will potentially come out of that. So I think that's all I had at this point.

I might be misremembering. I didn't make note. Andy's smart to make notes on your phone. I was just thinking I should have done the same. With the recent flooding, I'm wondering about, what kind

of what kind

of plans you have, for the areas that are nearer to the river to mitigate flooding, to make sure that structures aren't damaged or the great work that you're looking to do aren't gonna be affected by what is possible for future flooding. And it might be in there, and I just don't remember, so I apologize if I missed it.

And it's it's timely. We just had a major flood, historic flood. We do have a flood map in the prose plan. It's buried in there among hundreds of pages. It's something that resilience, is something that we consider across our projects.

And resilience also means, like, ensuring the facilities that we develop and maintain, are resilient in the face of flooding. So there's a lot of a lot of examples we could talk about, but, it's it's something we're considering real time, especially in light of the fact that we did just see a major flood event here, and it's something that we need to take seriously. And all I can say is we're we're actively we're actively considering that right now. John, do wanna add anything at all or effort okay?

Commissioner, thank you for the question. I'd I'd just add a little bit to Jason's comments. Chandra, parks and trails director, city. It's just a key element looking at the flood maps and and figuring out how we intertwine developed parcels and developed properties with the map flood areas, really with that, as Jason said, with that focus on resilience. So it is a key element as the that'll be part of our planning and and, project development process so that we develop facilities that are resilient towards floods and and aren't looking to have to have repeat cost go into repairing things, that might fall within, mapped flood areas.

Any other comments or questions from the board or the panel? Okay. You're, hearing none. We're still on this one. Oh, sorry.

Oh, hello. Let me turn my camera on. Sorry.

I'm thankful for the opportunity to review the plan. I had kind of a comment and a question. So comment first was I saw that the plan calls on an increase in green stormwater infrastructure. I just wanted to identify that I believe there's some funding both at the county and the state that's coming out for green stormwater infrastructure for affordable housing sites. And so just wondering maybe if there's a way to potentially kind of link in and combine, some of that work, to to kinda further expand kind of the the green stormwater infrastructure.

And then the question I had, one of the things, I noticed in the Duwamish tribe letter that I was interested about was the dark sky compliance. And the plan does mention some new lighting features. And so I was just curious, had there been any work yet or maybe potential work in the future to kind of, look in alignment with kind of dark sky?

Thanks for the question. So the answer your question, yes, for green wars green stormwater infrastructure. The Tiffany Cascade example is in the plan considers opportunities to create stormwater parks. We have we have a really good relationship with our service water division in public works here, and so we're looking at opportunities to integrate our actions where we can, where it makes sense across our facilities. So there's there's some really exciting opportunities that exist there and and and we're pursuing.

Separately, yeah, we we we we simply try to infiltrate where we can across our sites where it makes sense. And so there's there's always opportunities to to consider that. And I know that, for example, the Northeastern Park site includes things like fire retention filters and restore wetlands and and those types of facilities. So natural natural or naturally function functioning features that mimic that hydrologic process. And, also, that's, like, a good example of where we we have considered things like lighting and context sensitivity to the fact that you're on the May Creek Green Belt there and ensuring that we're not that we're considering lighting as as a as a component of of of impacts to the natural resource.

So, yes, to answer your question, generally, but it's good good comments. And I think that, you know, we we integrate natural resource management into our sites wherever we can and wherever it makes sense. And so, I appreciate those questions, and I'm happy to say we we we are trying to work in that direction wherever we can. And, hopefully, that's reflected in some of the the concepts and and and the goals that we have in our plan for you. So

K. Actually, I can follow-up to that. I may have missed this, but, was there a discussion of, like because, especially, the Tri Park's area is built basically right on the river or will be about the use of herbicides and pesticides and chemical fertilizers that may produce runoff. Because I I'm I say this because having been on the planning commission for a long time where we've, you know, dealt with things like the shoreline master program where, essentially, we ask residents not to use those types of products on their lawns that that are, you know, on on the lake or on rivers or streams. I'm wondering what the city's goals are in that area.

I don't know that I can speak to the maintenance operations side of things as well. Maybe maybe you could, John.

I I will speak specifically for maintenance as a whole, but I think to to try to answer the question as best as possible right now, the intent would be that we review our maintenance and operations protocols. And but we also wanna be looking at the types of infrastructure and the landscaping and the design of the spaces themselves such that we don't necessarily have vegetation or other things that require application of herbicides or pesticides, etcetera, within proximity to the waterways. So I think it's gonna be part of the design implementation, but also revisiting some of our maintenance procedures pursuant to how that design shakes out.

Yeah. I mean, the I think the usual mitigation is to just produce a larger buffer zone, right, of native vegetation, which is probably what the Duwamish was getting at as well in

that Yep. Right now, in the Tri Park plan, we have a the the it's a concept. It's a visionary concept, but there's a larger buffer between right now. Because we we don't know what that is gonna look like. We haven't engaged with consultants to really work through that in detail. So it's purely a concept, but we do have a a reasonable buffer between the the river and a walkway and then the kind of open multiuse turfed area.

K. Nearing hearing no more comments. Is there a motion to close public hearing at this time?

Motion to close public hearing. Second. Okay.

Those who are in favor of closing public hearing, say aye. Aye. Aye. Those who are not in favor, say nay. And motion passes.

Okay. Next item on the agenda is the election of the twenty twenty six planning commission officers. The nominations are now open for the chair position.

I nominate commissioner Artsy for chair.

Shouldn't have shown up today. I second that nomination.

Yeah. Okay.

You don't have to you don't have to accept. But

You could. You could.

No escape. It's yeah. So motion made by commissioner fix all and second by commissioner pool to I think I might have skipped one. So how that's not actually on here. Do we just accept like, guess we just note? Okay. Yeah. Alright. Those in favor of electing commissioner Artsy as the chair for the planning commission, say aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Those are again, say nay. Okay. The motion carries. Next up would be nomination for the vice chair position. Are there any nominations?

I guess I I would just like to ask if there are any commissioners who are interested in that position and in the secretary position as well. So if you are, raise your virtual hand or your real hand because we definitely don't wanna nominate someone. No.

The lesson. Yeah. We've gotta we won't nominate people who are not here anymore. That's a good tactic,

but fail. Backfired big time.

I see Shannon turned off her camera. I don't know. It's

Have you been in that?

Yes. Do you remember my it was the I'm bad. Ted and I are bad luck.

Yeah.

Here. I already did that one. Okay. Yeah. I've I've been chair.

How about secretary?

I have not been secretary.

Good. Okay.

I nominate for secretary.

Seconded? K. Okay. All ladies in favor of what do even say? No. Nobbing commissioner Roche for secretary, please say aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

All those in against?

Aye. And

the motion passes. Awesome. Alright. One left. Yes. Earning nominations for the vice chair position.

You've been vice chair. Right? Yeah. Mhmm. You know, dorsal has it. I know. Yes. Commissioner Plants.

Commissioner Plants, how do you feel about vice chair?

I mean, if no one else is willing to be tribute, I guess, I would be willing to.

Alright. Nominate commissioner Plants for vice chair. Is there a second? Second. Okay. All those in favor of nominating commissioner Plants as vice chair, please say aye.

Aye. Aye.

All those not in favor, say nay. And motion passes. Alright. Congrats. Congratulations.

Thank you.

And

He rolls up. Makes that much. Hey. I like little TT fam. No.

He's looking pretty handy. I can't dick.

Yeah. That that is. The the script is we didn't have that for

No. Fine either. Next item on the agenda or commissioner comments?

Half of that.

Hearing none, last item is adjournment. It's the last one on our agenda. Can we get a motion to adjourn? Second. Alright. Motion made by commissioner Hussain, second by commission or commissioner Fixtal. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye. Aye.

All those again, say nay. And motion passes. Thank you all for attending.

Thank you. Bye. Bye.