Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. Good evening. Welcome. I'm going to call to order the Salem Planning Commission meeting for September 23rd, 2025. And I will ask that the clerk call the role, please. Commissioner Thought is here, but she ran out to her car. Um, Commissioner Frybeck. Oh, here. Commissioner Heler here. Commissioner Leven here. Commissioner Rhodess is absent. Commissioner Slater here. Commissioner Tev here. Commissioner Vier Bindo here and Commissioner F

here. We have quorum. All right. Thank you all for joining us. Is there anyone who'd like to address the the commission? Oh, thank you. Let's do our oath of office. Okay, raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, Nathan Leven, do solemnly swear or affirm I, Nathan Leven, do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution and laws of the United States of America that I will support the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America

and of the State of Oregon and of the State of Oregon and the city charter and ordinances of the city of Salem of the city charter and the ordinances of the city of Salem ordinances of the city of Salem and that I will to the best of my ability and I will to the best to my ability faithfully and law duties faithfully and lawfully perform the duties of planning commissioner for Salem during my continuence of planning commissioner during during my continuence continue congratulations thank you congratulations and welcome look forward to working with you I was looking for the scotch

right are there any public comments Yes.

Yeah. I u move to approve the minutes of the August 19th, 2025 Salem Planning Commission meetings.

All right. All right. Uh, are there any changes or additions? No. Hearing none. Then Jennifer, if you'd call the role again for us, please. Commissioner F. I. Commissioner Fryback. I. Commissioner Heler. I. Commissioner Levin. Hi. Commissioner Slater. Hi. Commissioner Tev. I Commissioner Vier Bindo.

Hi. All right. Motion passes. I don't believe that we have any resolutions or actions items. Is that correct? Not today. Okay. Uh, no public hearings and then we're off to our special orders of business. All right. Miss Kim, take us away. Good evening. Can you hear me? Uh, I'm Unis Kim, long range planning manager with the city of Salem. I'm here tonight to present an update on the housing code project, which is an ongoing project uh that we're leading in the planning division.

Excuse me. Could you turn is there some way to turn that uh mic up? How about that? better. Would you like me to speak louder? Yes. Great. Thank you.

No problem. So, tonight I'm going to give an overview of the housing code project starting with a background of where this project came from. I'm going to talk a little bit about um the process that we've led to date to engage the community in this project. And then I'm going to walk through some examples of the different code revision ideas that we're considering. you should have received um a handout that went that listed kind of all of the ideas that we're considering um as of now, but if you have um questions on anything that I don't touch on, feel free to bring them up. So, just as a reminder, the housing code project stems from the housing production strategy. That is essentially a requirement that the state has on cities like Salem where we are required to develop an action plan that essentially lists out the specific steps that we are going to take as a city to encourage housing development. Um it's a new mandate. It's the first time the city has adopted a housing production strategy. That adoption happened at the city council in May and right now we are waiting a city or state review and approval. As a reminder, there are many different factors that influence housing development and whether or not development happens. Some of those factors are within the city's control to influence. Some of them are not. So, right, we don't have say over interest rates, cost of labor, cost of construction materials, but there are some things that we can influence. So, the housing production strategy really focuses on those actions. So, there's regulatory actions, which is uh one of them we're talking about tonight, and the permitting process that Robin will talk about later this evening. Um there are financial incentives. Um there are ways that we partner with uh community organizations, the way we buy and dispose of land. So those are the actions that the housing production strategy really focuses on. And tonight we're going to be focused on the regulatory side of things. So this is a list of the 17 actions that we have we as a city have said we are going to accomplish in the next six

years. We broke them up in kind of near to near-term, medium-term, long-term. And you'll see on this um that the housing code project is in the near- term and is something that we kicked off right away. Um the permitting process also is a near-term project. Um so these are two projects that are ongoing. So, the housing code project is really another chance for the city to take a second, third, maybe fourth look at our zoning code to see, are there improvements? Are there revisions that we can make that really make uh housing development of all types more feasible? Are there ways that we can reduce barriers in the code? Are there incentives we can um put into the code to again encourage development? This was very much a city council priority. When we brought the housing production strategy to the council in May, they asked us to essentially expedite this project and bring them a list of ideas to revise the code back to them by the end of the year. So, we kicked off this project in June right after the housing production strategy was implemented and we plan to bring back those ideas um to the council in by the end of the year. I will say though that ultimately there will be a whole code amendment process. We have to draft the code, do the ordinance, the findings that will be next year. there will be public hearings, opportunities for community input. Um, so we're just really trying to develop that initial list of what are the ideas and so that's what we'll be talking about tonight. So we have been engaging the community. Um, we've had specific meetings with the development community. That's architects, engineers, land use consultants, attorneys, anyone who kind of touches the land use process. Um, we had a public open house. We've done a lot of one-on-one interviews with people that are interested in this project, have worked in Salem before, and have ideas for us. Um, we've gone to the disability rights task force to talk about accessibility, which I'll talk about in a little bit, and we've just done other outreach, emails, newsletters, etc. I should say this is while the planning division is leading

this project, we are working with development services, building and safety, the fire department, uh, urban foresters. So we are working across the city uh to make sure that what we're proposing is feasible not just land use code but all of development. So tonight I'm going to touch on a few examples from kind of each of these buckets. The handout that you received I think last week uh breaks things down by the type of housing that the revision would essentially help encourage. So, single family, middle housing, multif family, mixeduse development, and then there's other topics like trees, infrastructure projects or infrastructure requirements. Um, so I'm going to kind of walk through those. So, the first type of housing that we're focused on is single family and middle housing. The revisions that we are um considering right now really look to promote infill. Um, so I'm going to walk through a couple examples and then again if you have questions on other things in the handout, feel free to ask. So the first one is really around flag lots. One of the ways that we've seen infill in Salem for years really is through the partition process. Someone has a larger lot, they want to create some lots behind that lot. So here's a picture of like a partition where there's was an existing house, someone divided their property and now you can have a house behind that. Um, so we have these flag lots and we long we've long had these flag lots. Um, but back in 2005 2006 time frame, the city council adopted a change to the code that would require those back lots, those flag lots to be larger than a single family lot would have to be today. So, a single family lot, the minimum lot size right now is 4,000 square feet. Um, but if you have one of those back lots, you have to be 5,500 square feet and you need to have a larger setback. So, instead of five feet to your property line, it needs to be 10 feet. So through this process, we're proposing to eliminate that. You can just have a 4,000 foot lot and a 5ft setback. We've obviously seen a lot of different types of infill now, right?

People are building duplexes, triplexes. Um, so this concern, I think, that sparked this change is really less relevant today. Um, another change we're looking at is allowing more units on a flag lot. So, if you think about that flag lot access way, right now you can only really access, we only allow that flag lot access way to serve four units. But today, if you have a flag lot of a certain size, you can build a duplex, a triplex, quadplex, etc. Middle housing has been allowed since 2022, I want to say. Um so we are looking at uh allowing more than four units but as part of that we are looking at potentially requiring a wider access way. So today if you have a flag lot access way it's kind of like that long looks like a long driveway and you're serving four units that access way needs to be 25 ft wide. So we're proposing to go to 27 ft that includes a 5-ft sidewalk for pedestrian safety. And so you would still have 22 feet which would allow two-way um travel on that access way and then um a 5 foot sidewalk. So that's kind of what we've been talking about with the development community. I will say that we did present um and have a discussion with the neighborhood association chairs and land use chairs and there was some concern that we should we shouldn't allow a limited amount and so they asked to kind of come up with a cap. So maybe we cap it at 20 units, 15 units, 12 units. So, we haven't come up with what that number could or should be. Um, but that's something that we're now considering having uh talked to the name associations. Uh, the last item you see on this is uh allowing cottage clusters to be attached in addition to detached. So, cottage cluster is um essentially where you have small little units all detached around a common courtyard. So, that's been allowed when we started allowing middle housing um back in 2022. State law has

changed just recently that requires city to allow attached. So it could be four units in a cluster, four units in a cluster still around a common courtyard or maybe it's, you know, two uh buildings that each have eight units, four units. Um so we are proposing to make that change to align with state law. But in addition to that, the development community asked us if we'd be willing to allow an unlimited uh amount of cottage clusters instead of restricting it to 12. So today, if you want to do a cottage cluster, um you have you can only go up to 12 units. We propo we are proposing 16 as an increase. We did hear some concerns again from the neighborhood associations that maybe 16 is too much in the single family zones. So we're considering that input as we look at that number.

And Unice, what's specific about a cottage cluster? Reduce setbacks. These are on individual pieces of land properties. They are all on one lot. So if you have 7,000 square ft today, you can do a cottage cluster. Okay. Thank you. And they're they can only be 900 square foot the footprint. So they have to be small as well. And they have height restrictions that are shorter. So two stories are 25 ft high. So it's a little different than a single family. And you can have a cottage cluster on a flag lot. So you said Okay. Thank you.

So for multifamily um development, we are looking again at promoting infill. So smaller multif family developments and just adding some flexibility. Um one of the issues that we've heard over the years is that um our multif family zones have minimum densities, but if someone has an existing lot and it's a smaller lot and they have an existing home on it, they want to just add one unit and we're like, well, you don't meet minimum density. You actually have to add two units. So they don't add any. And so we're proposing to exempt smaller lots, those less than a quarter acre, from having to meet minimum density. So they they can still add a unit or two as long as they already have an existing house on that lot. And the other idea is just to um basically today in our multif family design standards, we have two tiers of projects. The smaller projects which are 12 and under in terms of units and then larger projects. those larger projects have more requirements in terms of design whether it's articulation, landscaping, more open space um and the smaller projects have less standards. The thinking being right if you're you have a smaller lot it's harder to kind of have that multif family there so we have less um requirements there. So we're proposing to say instead of 12 units having those lesser standards maybe 16. So again more flexibility for a little bit larger smaller projects if that makes sense. So, our mixed use zones, um, we have now we have mixed use one, two, three, mixed use riverfront. We have quite a few mixed use zones. In recent years, we've been establishing and creating and applying citywide more mixeduse zones. And one of our mixed use zones, the mixeduse one zone, which is applied largely along our major corridors, if you think State Street, South Commercial as an example, are really meant to be these kind of walkable mixeduse areas. So when we created that mixeduse one zone, the hope was that we would get mixeduse development where there was

commercial on the ground floor and residential above. But what we've been seeing in that mixeduse one zone is really full residential. And so the standards that we created at the time for the mixeduse zone really were meant for that commercial ground floor. So taller ceilings, more canopies and awnings, um more ground floor windows. But as people have been now doing ground floor residential, it's been more challenging for them. Maybe they don't want as many windows if someone's living on the ground floor. Maybe they want to be set back a little bit further instead of right against the street. Um, so we're proposing to kind of reduce those standards just for ground ground floor residential in the mixeduse one zone. I could I could pull them out. Yeah,

I think there streets that we just don't want want to make that concession. I think that making that concession many places might be good, but maybe there are some streets that we just want to be tougher on. I have another question. Yes, go ahead. Um, for the the greater setback for the ground floor housing, would that only extend to that first floor and we would have So, we would bring the face of the building out to create the street edge or we would bring the entire building back. Yes, the whole thing could go back. Okay. Oh, you're talking about like a canal lever. Mhm. Uh, no, we hadn't considered that. Is that a idea?

I mean, it's just it's just a thought. I was just curious based on the verbiage. Yeah, the idea is ground floor. Yeah, you could be set back if your building has ground floor residential, you could be set back to 15. And we're considering what that space should be used for. Some sort of pedestrian amenity or is it like a outdoor space that's more clearly defined because right now we kind of loosely define what can be in that space. Yeah. So trees um we updated our tree code last in 2022 and at that time we were looking at different tree preservation requirements. One of which was this critical root zone. It's essentially the area around a tree that you don't want to disturb the roots, the branches to to make sure the tree survives. Um, right now you can only encroach into that like wider circle on that graphic by up to 30% if you have an arborist report that basically says if you encroach that 30% you're not going to kill the tree. Um, we've looked at other cities like Portland and Bend and they allow up to 25% of encroachment without the arborist report. So, we're proposing to allow that. Um, we did talk to our urban forester and he said that's not going to kill the tree. 25% is fine. Um, so that's the proposal. We did hear some concerns from the neighborhoods that maybe that maybe it would kill the tree. Um, but we are relying on our urban forester there.

I have a question here as well. Yes. Um, you know, many trees in an urban environment are not encircled by uh a critical root zone that's all just grass or landscape. Sometimes you'll have a root zone that has a sidewalk across half of it. So the root zone, while you could draw the root zone, in fact, the productive root zone may be half of what you're looking at. So when you talk about a quarter, if we've got if we've already lost half to to hard hardcape and then we allow us to cut a quarter into the remaining or a quarter into the whole thing, you could then really lose three quarters. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. Yes. You didn't want to have to draw that.

No, that's a good point because I think we were also proposing to allow um existing structures not to count towards that 25%. That's what Portland does. So if you already are partially in that, you weren't going to that wasn't going to count against your 25%. Um, but I you're basically saying the opposite, right? If it's already Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'll talk to the urban forester on that one. Yeah. I'm shocked you missed that.

Uh, okay. And the last item on this is tree tree removal permits for single family and mineral housing. So, when we did that tree code update in 2022, we allowed for tree removal permits um for essentially all other housing that's not single family middle housing. Um and it was and we so if you are a single family or middle housing today and you have a significant tree and you want to remove it and maybe it's not hazardous, it's not dying, it's really hard to get that tree removal permit. You really have to go through a tree variance. And so we're proposing to allow single family middle housing that same avenue to go through a tree removal permit um to remove that tree. We would come up with replacement or replanting mitigation. Um we haven't worked through those details, but the idea is that it would be an administrative approval um to remove those trees.

And that's in the case you want to develop. That pre- removal permit is in the case that you want to develop that you want to add a unit. Correct. Right. Okay. I have a question on this one. Um, do we actually provide tree removal permits because like how many have we for example provided this year or do we know that? Like how is that a viable option or are we just saying it in our code and then not actually doing it on the ground? No, we we get quite a few tree removal permits. I can give you the numbers for sure. Okay.

Yeah. So like normally for single family if you're doing a subdivision you do a tree tree conservation plan right if you're creating the lots then we're looking at the whole development area and what you're going to preserve. This is more for infill. So it's kind of a gap. We have a tree removal permit for hazardous tree removal permit for non-s single family housing and we were thinking tree conservation plan for other housing but obviously people have lots that were created long before tree conservation plans were a thing and they're just want to infill. either they don't have a house or they want to add a unit. And so that's been kicking everyone to a variance. A variance goes out for notice and is appealable to appealable basically a tree removal permits not. Um the tree removal permits for non-s single family housing. The criteria for development are um grading for fire ADA or or for grading for fire access or ADA access. um meeting minimum density utility installation or a planned street that has to go through which wouldn't be so it would be something similar where we would have out the criteria for for it and obviously the tree is hazardous you can already go through the hazardous process we can get you numbers on permits if you're interested

yeah I had personal experience with a non-answer in that process so

so if people submit for tree removal permits to say that it's hazardous or it's like messing up their foundation ation and we don't think they've provided enough information for us to approve it, we advise them that they could withdraw it and get all their money back versus us issuing a denial. So, a lot of people say, "Oh, yeah, my arborist actually didn't say it's hazardous. You know, I just it drops on my roof. I don't want to clean it or cracked my driveway." Well, driveways are not the foundation of your house or I don't want to get a structural engineer to show that it's actually damaging my house. So then, so we can't say like, "Oh, we've denied 150." We can go through and say, "Well, we had 150 that were withdrawn and they got their money back." Because we feel like that's better customer service than denying the permit for that. So,

Gotcha. Thank you. Um, and then I was trying to follow along, but are some of these just gone now or Oh, no. I'm just walking through examples instead of going through. So, if you have questions on ones that are on here that I'm not talking about. Gotcha. Totally fine. Maybe get at the end.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, thanks. Yeah. Um, and then we have things that didn't fall under those nice buckets. Um, so one of the ideas is really falling in line with new, again, state law changed this year where we need to essentially allow for a density bonus if you're doing accessible housing. So, type A accessibility. Um, if you are two units or three units and you want to do an accessessible, you get an extra unit. If you're four units or townhouse or cottage cluster, you get two extra units. So, we're just going to um apply that, but it only applies to middle housing, the state law. So, we're looking at incentives for single family as well. So, um maybe allowing for more coverage of a lot um like I think today 60% allowing up to 75 understanding that to have an accessible unit perhaps you need uh ground floor, one story turnarounds, things like that um for that type of unit. Um the second one here is bike parking. Today we require one unit per I mean one space per unit in a multif family development. Um that was in line with the state rules that have changed and now the requirement is half a space uh half a space per unit but it has to be covered. So we would make that change in line with state law. We had some concerns from the development community over this because of the covered portion and they wanted the kind of either or one per unit not covered. Um I did go back to state law. It does say it has to be covered. H there's no either or it's have a space covered. Um and the last one on here is pedestrian crossings in parking lots. So, we've required pedestrian connections in large parking lots, you know, from the street to the entrance between buildings um for a few years. Um and one of the challenges is retrofitting existing parking lots that don't meet that. And so today, if you do

a pedestrian connection, um you have to have like a elevation change or speed bumps or a different material to kind of delineate that pedestrian pathway. Um, and it's been a challenge in our existing parking lots, particularly as our fire department doesn't like the speed bumps anymore. So, we've been working with the fire department at to look at a different alternative. And so, we're proposing to allow high visibility paint with a stop sign and then like a stop sign down below um just for existing parking lots. New parking lots wouldn't get that option. So, infrastructure planning. So, again, trying to promote infill middle housing. Um, state law has changed for middle housing. Previously, um, when you did a middle housing land division, so say you have three units, you built it on a lot. Now you can divide that into their own units and into their own lots. Those lots don't need to meet any sort of dimensional standards. Um, so it's a way to promote like home ownership um, with existing middle housing. And previously the state law said, uh, each of those units, if you want to divide it, need to have separate utilities. law now says cities can choose to allow a shared utility. So, we're looking at allowing shared sewer systems. It's something that Portland already does. So, we're going to kind of keep doing research along that line to see if we can do that as well. Um and then the last one on here is um around our boundary street improvements. So, if you do uh developmental housing today um unless you're really just two units, you trigger a boundary street improvement. So, if you're located on a street and it's not fully improved to what the cross-section should be, right? You have to do that half street improvement, um, we are looking at exempting middle housing from that. You would still get the sidewalk if there's a curb there. That's a different requirement, but you wouldn't have to do that half street boundary street improvement. We again heard um some concerns from the community that maybe we shouldn't exempt

all middle housing, maybe just three and four units, cottage clusters, usually larger larger span, maybe those should still trigger boundary street improvements. So we're looking at um maybe making that revision. So, I know uh the city of Los Angeles, much bigger city, has a rule in their planning that requires the say if a development happens on a street and maybe streets 40t wide, TSP says it needs to be 60. They've got several locations around the city where you know along the face of the structure, the street goes from 40 feet all the way to 60 feet and then after the 50 foot wide lot or whatever, it shrinks back down to 40 feet. And is that something that we would require here? Like I know Center Street is in the TSP is a major arterial. It's two lanes wide right now. If development happened on Center Street, would we require them to build out a full I don't know half of what a 60oot rideway is? So, our our TSP has the um table with alternative street standards that I think maybe describes the situation in LA where you have existing constraints, existing conditions and buildings where we've identified those streets, even if they're major arterial, they may have a a smaller cross-section. If the street doesn't fall on that table and there isn't a proposal to amend the TSB to add that street, then yes, that development would trigger the half street full dedication where we'd um we've referred to it sometimes as a box car improvement where you have a jog out and then back in. And so we look at that though and try to avoid that when we look at functionality of the street.

Does that answer your question? Yeah. Thank you. And generally when we do update the TSP, we're going to look at new cross-sections or more cross-sections or alternative cross-sections. Unice. Yes.

Um I had a question on the um infrastructure possible sharing of uh sewer lines. Um, is that assumed to be on a single piece of property or is that considered a possibility where there's a development where you're adding another structure? Are you doing a separate lot and separate ownership? This would be a consideration if you are developing middle housing and then dividing that one lot. So each unit is on its own lot

through a middle housing land division. It's kind of a newer process. Each unit of this redevelopment is on its own lot. Then how do you determine or do you simply mandate that all of the participants of that shared sewer line are then responsible for its maintenance because that's not something that could reasonably move to the city's responsibility. um just as far as uh the possibility of who do you who do you charge for a misuse and and I would suggest that in the event of a shared utility that the part of the code requires a maintenance agreement between all the parties. Okay. so that the city doesn't get burdened with um being responsible for somebody's misuse.

And I think those are the details we would look into as we kind of figure out how how it would be feasible. Um I think Portland's example has a uh you have to have an easement and maintenance agreement, but we would look into that and how they've already kind of established that. Yes. This is kind of unrelated related unrelated. So um one of the things that we're proposing to change is uh who reviews different types of application. Um so back in 20 last year I think council directed staff to essentially eliminate council call-ups for housing related applications. And so council call-ups is where the council has an opportunity if a project that's been approved hasn't been appealed, they can uh take it over essentially and have their own public hearing on it. Um council didn't want to do that with housing related applications and state law has actually changed so that we cannot do that for all limited land use. So all type 2 projects. So this is where you have a development um for example and it goes out to public notice but there's no public hearing requirement. So, it's still an administrative approval. These type limited, they're called limited land use, type two procedures no longer can go through a council callup process. So, we intend to bring that to council next month um and to stop doing that process. Oh, I I missed the first bullet. So, the f first one is around changing the review authority for different types of applications. So today, if there's a zone change application or a conditional use permit that goes to a hearings officer, we're proposing to have that come to the planning commission to you all.

Unless you hate that idea. Yeah, it's a totally staff idea. Right now, only the appeal would come to the planning commission of a conditional use. We do have quite a few conditional use permits. zone changes, not that much, but it's seems to be about like compatibility with the neighborhood. So, it seems to me that it makes more sense to come to the planning commission than the hearings officer, but that's just an idea. I agree. You're looking for a verbal affirmation.

Like that idea. Okay. Um so in terms of accessible housing I kind of talked about the code changes that we are considering but in addition to that um there's different types of accessibility um beyond just for the mobility kind of impairments and so we've been doing research uh long-range planner Beth Freellander has been doing a lot of re uh research around different types of improvements that could be made to a building for people who maybe have vision impairment um neurode divergent um people with intellectual disab disabilities, other different different types of disabilities and kind of putting together um what would eventually be kind of educational material that we could give to builders. Um oftentimes we heard in the development community meetings that they just aren't aware of kind of what is the the layout that's the best, the type of color, the type of technology, things like that that would um help different um people with disabilities. And so we kind of want to start with education to see if we can kind of prompt that a little bit um to see that type of housing built in Salem. voluntarily single single stair buildings. So the state is expected to change or to allow single stair buildings for up to four stories next month. So today if you build more than three stories, you have to have two means of egress, two stairwells. So oftentimes what you see in those buildings is like a either a single corridor connecting them or maybe a a corridor with uh double loaded corridor, right? units on each side. A single stair would allow for different types of more compact kind of buildings around, right? A single stairwell. Um, so it' be more compact. There's other benefits in terms of, you know, maybe ventilation, maybe windows and bedrooms in different locations. And so this is something that the state is going to allow cities to make the choice. Do we want to affirmatively adopt that and

allow that in the city? So planning, we've been working with our fire department and building and safety to see um if it's something that makes sense for Salem, um something that they're comfortable with, you know, considering fire life safety. Um and so those conversations are ongoing and we're kind of looking to see also what other cities are doing, what provisions, if they're, you know, putting extra provisions in and also just waiting for the final language from the state. So to be continued. So that that issue seems like it's very dependent on the actual floor plan and design of the buildings, you know, whether it's going to be safe and and meet other needs. Are you are you looking at what and this seems to be like an opportunity to develop some pre-existing plans that kind of handed out because they can be approved for that reason. So I would I would you know encourage you to consider that if we have you know a set of designs that you can call and say we've already looked at this. This is an approved plan for single staircase. There you go. That would seem like a good way to fit those two together. I'll look to my architect who could maybe or not. Maybe our Yeah.

Is that a useful idea? Not a useful idea. I think that's a useful idea. Um I'm I haven't actually read the language around, you know, in any great depth on this, but I am sure that there will be specific um material and fire resistive qualities that are required as part of the single stair. So, it's it will be a it will be its own set of code related review standards that aren't necessarily tied to a planning or a zoning process.

The Yeah, the draft language that I've seen so far is it would be restricted to four stories, four units per story. I think it's like 4,000 square feet per floor. Like that's and then like Yes. Fire life, etc. Um, you know, we're looking at um like concerns from the fire department around like how big the stairwell is, if there's only one, um how uh a building can be accessed from the exterior, etc. So, we're kind of working through those issues. Oh, sorry.

Yeah, I guess um for me, this this is more of a livability thing for more than anything else. I mean, I've looked around and I've toured some of the larger and I've looked at the floor plans for some of the larger apartments that have gone up. I know Rivenwood's um one that's gone up recently and then I know there's several others. Um I guess for me personally, I find it hard to believe that I'm going to be able to afford a home anytime soon given how expensive things are. Um, that being said, I'd like to be able to, you know, purchase an apartment. And I'm looking around and I'm seeing all these, you know, apartments that have gone up in these walkable mixed use areas. And almost all of them are double loaded corridors. And when you've got a unit in a building with a double- loaded corridor, these units are usually very long and they only have windows on one side. And um like I looked at the ones in the Rivenwood and you walk into this room and I'm sure it's great for somebody um but if I'm trying to raise a family in a you know in an apartment where I can't open the windows or maybe there's only windows on one side or um you know if I want to get a two-bedroom unit um the two-bedroom unit takes up twice as much space is a uh as just a studio or a onebedroom because just because how the building is laid out. you have to make the unit twice as wide and that makes it more expensive. Um, but I guess just my general point is I would like to make it more livable for families to live in these kind of types of structures and in places that are close to the services and and places that they want to work. So,

Commissioner Leven, did you have a question or comment, please? Um, is the conversation about a potential fourstory complex or or or project single sphere? Is is that for new design or is that for potential remodel renovation? The discussion that I've heard is really around new construction.

Okay. Um, do you happen to know at what level or density the residential fire suppression systems are come online? No.

Okay. So, so one of the most important components of this has to do with the um prevention or attenuation and and I've done enough in the way of remodels of residential and commercial that um I was surprised how easy it was to comply with a residential retrofit for adding residential grade fire suppression to an existing unit. Just saying wasn't a bad deal.

Thank you.

Oh, yeah. I just wanted to mention I I I read the appendix or I guess the draft a while back and I believe they did require full NFPA13. I think that was the standard. They had the sprinklers, too. Um, but yeah, they would require full NFPA13, a separate enclosure for the stairwell and some other things and electrical outlets outside of the stairwell. And I don't know if they had any egress path requirements, but that's kind of covered within the maximum floor plate size. So, okay. So next steps, we uh have another meeting scheduled with the development community. So we're going to kind of look at all the input we've received from the community um and others and you know make maybe revisions to this handout and then go back to the development community and then go back to council with the list of ideas and then have a code amendment process next year. So um we would come back here through the public hearing process. Um, but anytime you guys have ideas or comments or questions related to this, we're we're still working on it. So, please let us know. So, with that, that concludes my con my presentation, but happy to take questions.

Q. Any questions? Any additional

from multif family before I realized what was going on. Um, so, so we didn't discuss this one, that's why it's not really kind of a goback. Um so on our packet we had cottage clusters in multifamily zones. Um and it says that um uh we would allow cottage clusters as a special use in RM2 uh and RM3 um to match RM1. Why don't we allow cottage clusters outright in those zones? So they are allowed outright in the zone, but they don't get the benefit of the standards that go with a cottage cluster. So right now they just fall under multifamily and it's difficult to meet the multif family design standards when you're really laid out as a cottage cluster. So we want to allow it also as a cottage cluster to meet those standards, you know, around a courtyard, etc.

Copy. Thank you. Robin, are you up? Oh, I missed one. Sorry. Yeah. Go ahead, Commissioner Frederick.

Um, so for small multif family, um, uh, you would be accepting or I guess allowing these developments to have fewer standards, is this also encompassing like the density maximum? Um, the reason I ask is if you had a single stair structure built in the RM2, um, I wrote down some numbers here. Uh, let's see. 1,97 of our RM2 lots are less than 6,000 square feet. Um, and 6,000 square feet is the minimum lot size you need to have to build a multif family structure. Um, and then, you know, 2,254, so just under 50% of our RM2 lots are too small to actually have a multif family structure on them. And um you know I'm thinking about think you know the reason why we would want to build a single stair structure is so that multif family is more feasible on a smaller lot. And so if we look at our density maximum for our RM2 lot the most units that you can build on that 6,000 foot lot is four right now. And so even if we did get single stair, uh we would really only be able to build a quadplex on that lot that we're trying to make feasible for single stair. Um so I'm not sure how you would make that easier. Maybe it would you change your density maximum for smaller developments.

Yeah, based on the input at the public openhouse, we are considering maybe exempting. So we had talked about exempting um smaller lots from the minimum density in the multif family 2 zone. We are now considering maybe exempting um from the maximum as well um for that purpose. I also think the single stair buildings um fit in terms of the vision for the mixeduse zones which are along our corridors which are really supposed to be those walkable mixed use areas. Um and and they would be fine there. I agree. I just part of me wanted to restate it so everybody else could could hear the the things I've been thinking about for the past few months. So, thank you.

Great. Thank you. I have one more question. Sorry, Robin, to cut you off. Do we think it's worth re-evaluating just our kind of our current mix of residential zones? Are we overzoned in residential? You mean our single family, multif family? uh that whole RM. Yeah. I mean, is that worth kind of taking a more comprehensive look at? Um so through the R Salem project, that's kind of what we did. We tried to reszone single family, which we have much more land that's single family to multifamily. Um we were successful in some areas and less successful in others.

Um I don't anticipate that we would reszone more properties to multifamily at this point. Are there just I guess the the distinction between RM1's, RM2s kind of I had the same thoughts when I was going through this. Um like how many zones do we have and could we consolidate them to fewer so it would be easier for people to understand including developers? Our main multif family zone is really multif family 2. We have very few multif family one zones and like a handful of multif family three. Um, where was their original what was the original purpose of splitting them density? Density. That's really the main difference.

So that was like neighborhoods saying we don't want as much density or Lisa. Oh, go ahead.

Um, so the city used to just have one multif family zone. Um, in the 90s they had to go through just like we did with our Salem. So then the 90s they had to do buildable lands inventory and reszone. And so what they did is all the new land that they picked, they gave the higher density zone when they created that. And then all the existing land, they went to the lower density. So they kind of didn't have to fight with people about that. So they made that split. Over time, we've seen people that have the RM1 ask for zone changes to RM2. And we usually approve it because if they want to do more units, great, do more units. We're happy for that. The RM3 um came about during our Salem, well, it already exists. It was res. It was a high-rise zone and

it was just multif family with no height limit. So that was kind of weird. So we changed that to RM3 and I think it has a higher density. We it didn't have a density. I don't remember. It was only like downtown like right north of the Capitol Mall a few blocks like the Jason Lee and a few other highrises were that high-rise zone. So we did um eliminate quite a few zones through R Salem and consolidate and we reszoned over like 10,000 properties. So the scope of that project is not the scope of this project. That was a four-year massive effort. So So just one follow-up question on that. Would you expect there to be not have you may not be able to answer this um the same kind of blowback if we just said all right everyone's whatever the highest limit is now the most dense like would we took the remaining scattered RM1s and put them in RM3 or something.

You mean if we were to do a city initiated zone change project? Yeah, that's the word. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't think we have the staff capacity for that. That's a lot of outreach and you know has it has different minimum densities. So if somebody already has the development, they don't meet minimum density, then you're making them non-conforming. And so I think that's outside of our capabilities at the moment. Whether there'd be blowback. Yes. I've never done a multifamily zone change to not have I mean we've approved a lot of a lot of them and almost everything we proposed in R Salem was approved to reszone from single family to multif family. A small handful of properties in West Salem the council ultimately decided not to do but everything else we proposed was. Um I don't you know I don't want to subject Unice to the hate mail that she got um for four years telling her she should quit and she should be fired and that you know she should only work on homelessness and why does she have a job and but people signed their names to that weren't embarrassed to send because she was proposing multif family in their neighborhood. So I don't think we want to take on a city initiated program at this time.

Talk about multif family. We talk about single family but we really don't have single family anymore. right? That that doesn't exist. So, I guess we look at something that had in the past been or is still called single family. What what are the limits there? And I guess part of what what my interest is in some of this is how do we increase density in what have traditionally been single family neighborhoods in ways that like fit into a single family neighborhood. So, we look at a forplex really does fit in a single family neighborhood. There's a lot of potential there. So what can people do in a single family zone neighborhood? Like we can't do cottage clusters. You can do cottage clusters if you have 7,000 square feet. You can do fourplexes. Yes. And duplexes and try. So it's Yes. Like

it's 12 right now. 12 units is the max you can do in a cottage cluster in the single family. We're proposing to increase that to 16. And I'm not sure if we'll get some concerns.

Thank you. Sorry, Robin. There we go. Can you hear me? Okay. So, um I guess formal introductions. I'm Robin Dulkkey. Uh I will explain why the title on my name plate has changed in my presentation, but I'm the development services division manager in community planning and development. And I'm here tonight, as Ununice said, to talk to you about permit process improvements, which have a really good connection to this housing production strategy and the housing code amendments that we talked about. Um, they relate to timing for housing permitting and a lot of the feedback that we've received about how Salem process processes permits in in Salem and some of the concerns we've had about how it relates to housing production. So let me start with how we got here. Uh there's quite a few years of background and this started we've had feedback for the 18 years I've been in the city at the development services group about our permit process. that there was a ramp up of feedback back in 2022 post pandemic. Um, and a lot of questions about why people were experiencing what they perceived as permit delays, inconsistent decisions, uh, costly applications. enough feedback that we decided to consult or hire a consultant to take a good look at our process um and make some recommendations of what we could do as a city to improve our process. So Moss Adams was that consultant. they prepared a report in 2023 and the feedback from that I'll go over in a little bit more detail but one of

the main items um that they recommended that at the time I'll say was controversial but I will foreshadowing say it was a great change uh was to merge our departments so the development services division department that I was in um was held within public works for many many many years as many years as development services has been found. And so that recommendation was to merge development services out of public works and into a new newly named what was formerly community development that house planning and building safety um here. I'm going to be tasked with remembering all the there's been a lot of changes and housing authority. So um we renamed the department community planning and development brought development services in and um Kristen Rutherford is the director over this department. We did retain most of or a lot of those public works programs and we still work very closely with public works. But that recommendation to merge our department was or our divisions um made sense because we all over would do the oversaw the same programs related to development permit development approvals. Um and so by bringing us together instead of having the siloed effect of these groups we're hoping to have more of a a community centric customer centric um department. So after the um consultant review uh shortly after we applied to participate in the Harvard Bloomberg initiative program um and were selected for a data track and that program helped us develop some um data and draft recommendations for moving forward both with the Moss Adams consultant request or review and our recommendations out of the Harvard um

Bloomberg program. From there, we are here today uh looking at a housing production strate strategy action plan. And one of those action items of the 17 units mentioned is this permit process. Um there was a motion at council to escalate or provide a update of this process. And I believe you made a motion um to bring this forward to planning commission as well and kind of give an update of what we've been doing in the past few years. I will say we have not done a great job of outreach more in smaller group settings of what program updates we've made. So this is the start of that and I hope to do more of that as we move forward.

Thank you. And I'm just going to make one point of context about that because we had heard from I think it was the the director the president of the building association here um kind of was listing out some generic concerns about the just the process and pointed out that uh building permit delays were a real problem. Um and that had not been my understanding going into um that hearing when I heard that feedback. And so I talked a little bit with um uh you know talked a little bit about that and decided that uh that may not be true. So I'm glad that this project is moving forward.

Yes. Thank you. and we work closely with homebuilders association and um I think having these discussions as part of the development community groups that we've been meeting with for housing production strategy and then these settings as well are really going to help um tell the story and and really dive into what the problems are that we have control over and the ones that maybe we don't. So, I want to start with just a bit deeper dive into the city of Salem efficiency study is what it was named. Um, this is the Moss Adams report, consultant report that came out in 2023. This included 17 observations, consequently the same as the action items in the housing production, um, but they were grouped into different sections. So, I'll just go over a quick summary of what those recommendations were. First, focusing like I mentioned on the organizational structure and culture of our city and um merging us all into this community planning development department. We hoped would eliminate those silos that we were seeing. We needed saw a need or the consultant saw a need for more consultant coordination between the different divisions and um also recommended a new program coordinator role. I think we've heard that a lot. If there could just be one point of contact, how nice would that be to have one person we knew to go to instead of well, you'll need to talk to this division and you need to talk to this. We were trying to look at ways and the recommendation was to look at ways to make it be uh more clear. We are one city, we're one group. Who do who do I go to for my answers? So looking at that program coordinator role, uh we there was a recommendation to really look at staffing and workload. The staffing has been a challenge, a big challenge. Most of our divisions have vacancies um year round. And using our Harvard Bloomberg

data track tools, we're trying to use the data uh to look for trends and see if we can use that data to um manage workload and then look make a case for more resources uh to get these positions filled to meet the better meet the timelines that our development community is expecting or requesting. They looked at customer service and community relations. Uh building a better shared customer service philosophy for the merge department. Each division we found sort of had their own goals and and mission for customer service when we really should be looking at the same goal. Um a customer may not always understand or I wouldn't expect them to understand that they're talking to a different division with a different manager. So that customer service expectation might be different. So we wanted to look at what what can we do to make that more consistent. Um regular meetings with the development community was something that we also like I mentioned was not we're not doing well. So we have um I think we're two years post merger and we still have bimonthly merger meetings. We are fully merged. We definitely are fully merged but we still have those merger meetings because there will continue to be coordination between our divisions that need to needs to be discussed. Also just regular meetings with development community was a point that was made that we hadn't been doing um a very good job of coordinating processes and systems. We had a lot of negative feedback about a switch we had made to the projects project docs software. The recommendation in this efficiency study was to move away from project docs. So, we did that. Um, and we moved back to our pack portal application, which we've made quite a few improvements to and have more to to do. We're also looking at um we made updates to our design standards for public works design standards and uh more updates to our um platting process. We had a lot of feedback about our subdivision partition

plat process. Let's see, we're close here. performance and data tracking was another um subset of that recommendation. We had metrics amongst each division that was being tracked, but they weren't cross connecting very well and they weren't being reported. We understood in the way that maybe the development community was interested in seeing. So, we really looked at our metrics and what we wanted to report and where we were missing or I'm jumping ahead here, but the recommendations that we should be looking at what data do you need to be collecting and what should you be reporting on uh to better answer the questions of the development community about the permit process. So, the study did affirm or confirm what we were hearing from the development community. Uh we took immediate action. We moved forward with the merger very quickly. Um, and then we've continued, we've um just recently adopted the project coordinator role, program coordinator role. U Mariva Macy in our Macy, what's my cat's name? Um, in our building and safety division, has taken that. She has a lot of experience in the building department. So, she also has experience with the other divisions um and has just started off that role. So, we're excited to have her in that in that position and to grow that position into a a place that we feel the development community has been has said is lacking. We also uh have our new data tracking system and our dashboard which I'll spend just a little bit of time going over with you tonight um coming up in this presentation. So, I mentioned the Harvard Bloomberg data track and fellowship. So after the efficiency study, we did very shortly after um the city manager's office put together an application to participate in this program and we were selected in late 2023. So, select staff went through

the program and then we were assigned a personal coach to help our city deep dive into a question, a challenge um and look at how we could use data to better inform our decision-m and prioritize recommendations. So, the challenge that we initially had come up with was how do we accelerate housing production and identify steps to support developers by reducing delays. This is kind of a big big challenge here and one of our big goals was to shift our service delivery approach from being department centric to being more customer centric. What can we do for the customer to make this process more efficient? So, we went through um the program, we learned a lot about the data that we have, the way that we're collecting it, and what we're missing, and the importance of knowing what question you're trying to answer answer before you collect the data. Um, and I'll get a little bit more into those metrics when I show you the dashboard, but we learned a lot. And coming out of that, we were lucky enough to receive award of a Harvard fellow to come join our city for s in summer of 2024. She was here for eight weeks, a couple months during the summer, and she got to interview staff, look through all of our efficiency reports, what we learned in the Harvard data program, and really refine and help us prioritize and then provided some final deliverables for us to work off of. So she did a lot of the work that we did not have staff to do to kind of move us advance uses to that next step with our permit process improvements. She also helped us really focus in on what our goals back to kind of what is our question and what are we trying to do here. The three main goals that we are trying to focus on um like I'd mentioned is to empower all applicants to prepare permit applications. I'll get

into that, but it is really become apparent that an application that's come in that is not either clearly defined to that applicant of what's needed or is coming in in a rush and missing pieces. We're seeing that that really has an impact on the review cycles and the time that that permit is in the system. So, what can we do to better empower those applicants? What can we do um to improve our website, our pack portal? um looking at those outputs that can help meet that goal. The second main goal was to integrate and streamline our workflows for that one voice, moving away from each individual division's voice and um really building on the mergers efforts. And then finally, foster increased transparency and accountability between permit customers and the city. when we can't present publicly information or data or process um that really doesn't foster trans transparency. Um it's also really difficult to look at uh different changes in our system and how they're either working or not working and evaluate. So we've put together a public facing dashboard. We're working on more developer communication and reporting and then um an engagement strategy moving forward and to be continued of how do we continue to engage the development community and continue to look at this because it will it will eb and flow with development trends or development application rates but we want to continue to grow. So with that data we started pulling findings. So data and process mapping helped us prioritize our next step recommendations. There were some really interesting findings in the both the Harvard fellow's review and then staff's review after the fellow left. I would keep you here all night if I went into all the graphs and the findings. I handpicked just a few just to give you a

taste. We have a lot to weed through, but um some interesting findings I guess that we want to focus on for this first um phase of diving really into what the data says is we see that there is increased time spent by developers on project review responses. When with that time, we've been able to track time with the city versus time with the developer or the applicant. And it very clearly correlates with more review cycles. And that's some feedback we've had is why is it taking six, seven rounds of review to get through this plan review? This is ridiculous. And so we really want to try to figure out what what is missing here and why are we going through so many rounds of reviews. Uh we have recently added pre-screening which we thought was one step we could take to give a very quick 24-hour usually turnaround of pre-screen of an application to tell that applicant you're missing these critical items that we need to complete a review. And so instead of waiting um if like for a commercial review it's 20 business days instead of waiting the 20 business days to know what they're missing, they're finding out within a day or two. Um we have had some feedback that that can lead to frustration from the applicant. We also haven't fully implemented that across all permit types. So that's something we're looking at. Um we also have had a lot of feedback about subdivision permit reviews. Um, and there's been statements at council and probably at planning commission, I think, as well, that the subdivision process takes years at the city. Um, so is that true? What are the factors to that? What can we do to improve that process for the needed housing that subdivisions create? And so when we do look at the data, it it's true that the average we're seeing is about a year to go through the permit review. This is, you know, those those factors could be from the idea at the pre-application phase all the way to the

construction and buildable lot creation. That could be span several years if you're looking at all those factors. But we are seeing that it does take at least on average a year to get through the plan review process just to give the permission to break ground. So when we look into that data though, an average of 60% of that time is spent with the development team. So, what can we as a city do to reduce the time we have? And then what can we do to help the development team prepare applications and respond to our comments in a faster fashion to get through this process in less than a year? Here's one very hardto- read example of what we've um developed that we've been lacking that I think would really help someone understand, especially if they're new to this area, of what the residential subdivision. We have timelines for several different examples, but speaking or touching on subdivision, what different stages, critical paths need to be met to get through the residential subdivision process. So, we're really trying to develop these timelines, especially for more complex projects and do um customized timelines to more complex projects to really help them identify where they may face a roadblock that will extend that time. So, for example, if we find that a subdivision has an old right of way that is no longer needed, that is not going to be developed into a street, we know it doesn't need to be there, but it's going to require a right-of-way vacation process to remove that. those process that process is an additional timeline factor that they need to consider that they should know you need to be starting this well into or well before you're expecting to break ground because this can take six to eight months and it needs to go to council and it's a resolution and there's extra fees. So really trying to road map what processes can you do concurrently and scrunch that timeline and which processes need to be done separately and could extend your timeline. So we really are looking at

focusing on preparing um these timelines which have been in our heads but are for visual people a lot nicer to have um in a visual format and then finally into the development application dashboard. So we like I said have been have been collecting data and per um reporting on different metrics but the past few years have helped us fine-tune and figure out what are really the important metrics that council development community the uh we've had feedback from commissioners and surveyors what are or surveys excuse me community surveys what do people want to know and how can we present that and do we have the data so what we have um honed been on for the first phase of our dashboard. Our average review times for different types of permits primarily focused on housing, but we do have other information. Uh what are act active application rates? So, what are we seeing coming in and at what time and how many and then what are approval rates and how many review cycles are we seeing. So before I dive into a quick demonstration of our dashboard, I do want to mention that our Harvard fellow spent a lot of time looking for what other cities have to publicly present about their timelines and it was really difficult to find. She looked nationwide and really didn't find many in the West Coast that reported or could be comparable. But what she did find um that was published, she show created a graph that represented how Salem compares. You can see Salem um this is for commercial building permits. So if we're comparing to Seattle, Washington, we're doing awesome. If we're cons comparing to Virginia Beach, we are maybe taking a little bit longer. But um there are so many factors that this kind of um

comparison can be difficult to do. So I do have um some comparisons to other what I consider closer to peer cities Portland and Bend that fortunately have similar very similar metrics and software that they're using to present permit information. So the example I want to show here is this is city of Salem's snapshot of city of Salem's dashboard which looks at residential average days from application to permit issuance. And when you look at the past 12 months uh the average days for issuance of a new residential dwelling permit is just under 50 days. Um, but what you can see if you can read that legend is that the dark blue are the days with the city, the light blue are the average days with the applicant, and then the green is the average days waiting for fees to be paid. So there are those factors that play into how long it takes for a permit to be issued. And so you can see that Portland has something similar. They have a lot more review bodies that go into reviewing a housing permit. um their average for single family is currently just over 51 days. And then Bend is the city that we very closely mimicked their format, their reporting. They did a great job. They actually have a full-time permit data staff person who has done a great job of representing their data in their years ahead of us. Um, so we've made some connections with Bend, which is really cool. And our um IT group is um working with them to figure out ways that we can um report some of the cool things that they're doing with their permit program. But you can see Bend has a different uh goal and a different uh obviously application rate can play in, but they're looking at

115 days. So about double of what we're looking for permits to be issued. Do you any napkins? Um I saw on the city of Salem the average days with city staff looked like it was trending upward. Um is there a reason for that? Are we just getting more applications?

That's what's cool about the data. It can be hard. There can be some level of assumptions that have to go into this um data review. When I pull up the live dashboard, I can um hover over the different areas and you can see um depending on what month we're in, there's different application. Um so some months I would assume without having my hover feature that June we had more applications um that came in and more that reported that month. So um yeah, you can see trends that change. Um it's harder with permit issue and I'll kind of get into that. Um but we definitely see trends around um construction season. We we do have seasons. Although it doesn't feel like we get slow times. We do have seasons. Right now is the rush. We haven't broke ground. We need to do it before October 15th rush that we normally get at the end of the summer. Um so I'll I'll hover over and show you some examples. But I would also say that this is new and fresh to us. So, we want to start asking those questions and looking for those trends and trying to plan for those um what we're seeing the data is telling us ahead. Okay. So, I'm going to unless there's questions I am going to jump to a brief presentation on the dashboard and then we'll talk about next steps. Okay. So,

so this is um Salem's development application dashboard. We quietly made this public actually on accident. Someone hit go before we were ready and it was a weekend and no one was around to turn it off. Um, so we did quietly make this public in August, early August. Um and we then made some um tweaks to the way we're reviewing the data and reporting. Made some clarifications, met with um a data team and spent some time um with the council asking for their feedback about um a lot of this was council driven um and made a priority by the city manager. So we did ask for some feedback before we did um more broadly or before we more broadly announced it. And I would say that this is one of those more broadly announced that um we've pitched this dashboard to both Statesmen and Salem Reporter. Uh we're working on web presence, more web presence, and then a develop developer bulletin to really more publicly and loudly announce this new feature that we have. Um but this version one, the metrics that we're currently reporting on are residential building permit applications. We're not looking at this time at additions, ADUs, remodels, um, alterations. We're just looking at new dwelling units. Actually, I take that back. I think we are looking at ADUs as considering a dwelling unit. Um, but not the alterations at this point. We're looking at multifamily building permit applications, uh, civil site work, which is our, um, our public formerly public works um, civil plan review for multifamily commercial sites. And then public construction subdivision applications, what is the time frame for those to get through the process? And

then finally, the planning applications, all type ones, twos, and threes. So this main page on the development dashboard allows you to click and follow. Um each section has sort of unique tabs depending on what data we have. And so the residential data we tend to have more. um we enacted review cycles sooner with re residential permitting. Uh we have data is easier to pull on these types of applications. Um so we were pretty quickly able to represent what our applications look like. Um and you can see some pretty obvious trends here that um come March uh people start realizing I need to get a permit pretty quickly if I want to start grading my site before the rain starts. So we see a a peak in applications in that time and then we start to see a decline as you get more into the late summer winter. Uh so that's pretty standard with what we've seen. Um and then similarly we have um permits being issued at a lower rate as you get later into the summer within this residential category. Um there was interest in looking at how long does it take to get through that first review. We do have a published goal of 15 calendar days, 10 business days. And so this is helping us look at how we're doing at meeting those goals. Do we want to modify those goals? Are there impacts from staffing that, you know, you can see in June we had limited staffing. Um we have quite a few vacancies. I can say at least in our division planning has as well. So we had a harder time in June meeting our goals. So this is really helpful for managers when we're looking at how well we're doing. And then this is a familiar chart that I shared earlier. And like I said, when you hover over a specific month, you can see the average times or average days with city staff, how many permits we processed, and then um the total time

to get that permit through. Now, why this is kind of difficult to represent, um this shows average days in a given month. So um if a permit's issu issued in August the totals include in the average days shown includes all review from earlier months leading up to that date. So if we this could be in March we issued 81 permits but those could have come in over a span of two years and they just all decided to be issued in one month. So it gathers the data of the review time of all 81 of those permits and then represents it. So it is kind of hard to say that in May we were extremely busy with 81 permits. That just happens to be the month that we issued those permits. So I think that those are some of the things that we want to look at is how do we um manipulate or or change the data to look for different things. And so maybe we do look as we compare that to applications that came in that month. what was our review time looking like that in that month. So another um interesting but difficult feature uh would be for example like a civil site work we did not start collecting the data in a way that we could um represent what we want to represent until later in the year. So you'll also see um I don't know if this is a good case you'll see gaps in data because I think multif family is better. Let me go there. We don't have as many multifamily building applications as we have residential. We don't have the daily multifamily building permit application like we do for for residential housing. So, there will be times, you can see where we have months that we don't have any applications to report data from. Um, but as we continue collecting this data, we're going to have more data to look back on. And so there's some disclaimers if you read

down here that we didn't start review cycles until August of 2024. So we have limited data to report on here. Um but you can also see this is back to that transparency. We're not always meeting our goal here. And why is that? And what can we do to meet our goal? Um especially for those first reviews to get faster feedback to our development community or to our applicants. Um, public construction is interesting because we have seven years worth of data. This was a manual poll, but we don't have enough subdivisions that it made sense to do programming changes. So, um, this was interesting for staff to see. You definitely can see a trend in 2020 when we had the COVID pandemic where, um, you can see it took a lot more time with the applicant to get to permitsued stage. Obviously a lot of reasons related to financing. Unsure how um things would be looking with the pandemic happening. Uh you can see the trends have have started to go down with the time uh that the applications are with the city. The city's been pretty consistent in the time, but we do have more than I'd like to see number of review cycles. That's been something we talked about on average about five. We talked as a group about wanting to get down to on an average of three. So if you envision the first submitt, there's inherently going to be some comments. Those comments are addressed. Second submitt 90%'s done, but we have maybe one or two more tweaks. And then on third submitt, we can approve the plan. That's our ideal. So we want to figure out why are we getting to five, six, nine sometimes rounds of review. And so this this helps us inform those those changes or decisions. And finally, I'll just show you um plannings tab here, which includes um we've looked at metrics of both the completeness review, how long does it take to get to a

complete application, how long does it take to get to a land use decision for each type, and what are our goals within those? So, uh for example, for type one applications, there's a 20 calendar day goal. you can see except for December and I can't remember what happened in December. I think we had a applicant initiated extension that didn't reflect well in the data. Um which is something we've learned too. How do we enter the data to account for these anomalies? Um but you can see that we're doing a pretty good job meeting our um completeness goals at least for the type one. we go into type two and then type three which is another example of we don't have a lot of type three applications so we don't have a lot of data to report on so this is version one uh we have already a lot of feedback of things that we want to look at for version two other metrics we eventually would like to include all um building permit type applications and continue growing this program that is fairly new to the city of Salem. I think Ben's had this PowerBI software for five years and we just received it this last year. So, we have a lot to learn. Um, and we're excited to continue work in that. I think finally I wanted to just share our next steps. If I can get back to my screen and that's just where our focus will be next. Um STC methodology update was mentioned earlier that is a major action item that's the two to threeyear process that has been um we're starting but we're delaying forming a committee. So, our next focus is really going to be

combining um all of our web resources and making them more user friendly, working on the next iteration of the dashboard, and then finally taking a report back to council in December uh with an update of our permit process improvements. So, with that, as always, I talked more than I plan to, but if you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Commissioner Leven.

Um, one of the issues with regards to developing um, has to do with permit fees, expenses, systems, development charges, etc. Is there any entity, groups, department that is addressing uh system development charges as it relates to um encouraging uh residential development redevelopment?

Absolutely. That's one of the primary factors we're looking at particularly because when the methodology was updated in 2018, middle housing was not a thing. So we're looking at uh what other communities have started to adopt a more of like a tiered approach for housing types. So currently, if you were to build a 900 foot single family dwelling, you would pay the same that you would pay for a 5,000 foot dwelling that had multiple bedrooms and space um or even a duplex. And so we're looking at a tiered approach maybe based on size. That's what our committee will look at and also what our consultant who has experience in this can recommend. Uh we're also looking at some of the imbalances in um different SDC types. So the parks SDC's right now are fairly high. Transportation we know is not keeping up. So how do we balance some of those without impacting the development um in a negative way where it becomes even more cost prohibitive? We know we can't to collect the SEC we need to build all of the infrastructure we need for growth. Um there have been some cities that have seen it would completely cost out development um and be development prohibitive. But we're looking at what balances can we do with our new master plans. We talked about the new transportation plan that's coming in. Can we look at a more refined list of projects we need to build for growth instead of a wish list of every project we'd like across the city, which inherently is going to increase the cost if you look at everything over a 30-year plan. So, those are some really important um scope plans we have for the methodology update. Uh but like I said, it's a two to threeyear process and there may be a way that we can um phase some of those changes, but we are we are definitely looking at that.

Thank you. Other questions? I wanted to go back to just the point that you made. So, what I heard you say is that some cities have looked at their SDC charges and determined that if they wanted to achieve everything in their comprehensive plan or their master plan goals, it would make development prohibitive. Is that right? Yes.

I mean, is another way of saying that um that development right now is not paying its own way. I think that could be said in some areas and I think that's something that came up at some budget committee meetings that the SDC is shared across the city and not area specific in areas that need uh larger infrastructure improvements for growth. So say that again. So our STC's are not area based. They're not area based. They're not area based. So they don't actually they're not actually dedicated to the services in the area that they were collected. Correct. Gotcha.

So it's it's a a massive project list of all growth needs for each infrastructure type that then has a a subtotal and factors that create the STC for that pro or for that infrastructure type be it parks, storm, sewer, water, transportation. So this master So the master plan wish list as you said kind of gets conglomerated and then split up among the STC charges and it goes is that true for parks? Yes. So if someone's developing a park and paying an SEC for South Salem, the park could be going someplace else. Is that I thought there was a nexus there

between the the park. So depending on the development, so the development is going to be conditioned depending on a a service needs. So the parks master plan has service needs for different areas. Um but the per dwelling unit or if it's commercial, the per square foot unit SDC rate is the same across the city. So, in an area that has a subdivision that's un that's unserved by parks,

they may have additional impact conditions such as dedicating parks land or paying a temporary access fee to borrow park space that's existing where there's no undeveloped park today. Was that kind of

Yeah. I hadn't realized that the kind of um the SDC charges were a that it went across the city um but also I didn't realize that it was so driven by the amenities that we're putting in our own master plan wish list sort of. I mean obviously adequate sewers aren't an amenity. Uh but there are some other things in there that really you could look at as amenities. you could be making decisions about what um whether we really need those compared to the costs. When we went through our comprehensive plan update, we really didn't have a conversation about the cost of any of these items or the cost of these changes. So, if we say, oh, you know, we want x amount of parkland for the number for our population that's going to cost us this. We didn't really have those kinds of conversations, did we? or

the last methodology update or the comprehensive like our in our master plan conversation, comprehensive plans, we don't say, "Oh, if we want a density of X amount in this neighborhood, that means we're going to have to spend a half a billion dollars to upgrade the infrastructure and therefore we're going to be charging SEC fees of SEC charges of $15,000 per person." Like, oh, maybe we can't do that.

Uh, correct. But we did have um many of conversations with our utility planners who are doing the water, sewer, long-term planning for infrastructure and looked at where we were reszoning property, whether or not it was likely to have that the infrastructure would be there or could be financially feasible. Um you know, maybe you need like a water tower or etc. So, we're like we're not going to reszone that land for higher density because it we're not going to be able to serve it. We had those conversations in terms of the reasoning. Okay, that's very helpful. Thank you for sharing that. Any other Robin? I have one more question. Uh you keep referring to divisions and programs, but I don't have no idea what the divisions are and what programs they administer. Um

we have an organization chart. Um would it be helpful to share that with you and maybe everybody? Yeah. Yeah. It's something um I think with our web revamp, I think it'd be helpful for the community to have that clarified as well. Um yeah, it it is confusing. I understand. And um I think that's something fairly simple to to add. Lisa didn't give a very big nod there. Is that something that Well, our org chart doesn't say what the divisions administer. Yeah.

But I mean, we can put together bullet points. Like it'll just say the planning division and that, you know, I run the planning division and it's got a long range section and a current planning and a you know, zoning inspections, right? But it doesn't necessarily say that we do all we administer the tree code, right? And the tree enforcement doesn't say that. It doesn't say that the sign we administer the sign code, but but we can provide some of them. I think we have a high level um that we prepared for incoming counselors. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. And so there's a lot of programs I just mentioned did development services runs a roadside memorial u permitting program and that was news to me but we're running it. there's a web page coming. Um, so there's a lot of miscellaneous I'll say programs um that I I think we could do a better job um like we were talking about earlier directing the public to who they need to talk to. Um

infrastructure and development. I'm never quite sure is this public works? Is this planning? Who's paying attention to this? Who's regulating it? Who do we talk to? Okay. But also part of this is I think we're trying to help there be more of a central point to go for customer service related questions instead of having to um email three different departments and have everybody kind of pass that email around. We'd rather have just more a central point where it can be directed to the right person without the public necessarily needing to know.

Right. I I often experience that when I ask a question like it goes to like a set of people and then someone will respond that I've never heard of before and I don't know who who they are or who they report to or why they it's always helpful information right but it's just kind of like oh some person answered that's helpful thank you any other comments all right well thank you both very much for your time um And then going on, let's see. Information reports. Is that different than uh is it the planning administrators report? It is different. Yes.

Yeah. Have we had that before? Did I just never see it until today? I'm very tired today. I apologize. Okay. Information reports. No. Okay. Subcommittee reports. Yes, sir. Commissioner Frybeck. Yes. Um we have an opening on the transportation subcommittee. So, if anybody's interested in a uh discussion on transportation, I believe officially it's myself, Marissa, and uh President Slater. Yeah, I was just uh Yes, correct. Okay. Um but uh room for one more. Yes, there is now room for one more. So, if anybody's interested. So, what is the transportation subcommittee?

Commissioner Frybeck.

Yeah. So the transportation um subcommittee we meet once a month to discuss um pretty much preparing for TSP discussions that are probably going to happen. Um so last uh discussion we took a look at the uh Chariots put out a uh kind of a draft um uh service enhancement proposal. Um and uh they're looking for public comment and we were um considering writing up a uh uh the subcommittee would submit a uh public comment to the chariots subcommittee for service enhancement. Um so that's I guess one of the things that we would do. Um but we you know I like to make transportation maps and collect data and stuff like that. So

very exciting and wellorganized uh subcommittee. Yeah. Lisa, do you have any news about our membership that you'd like to share? Yes. Um we did receive the resignation from Commissioner Laura Midkiff. Um he had a a work commitment that will impact his ability to be here on Tuesday evening. So he has resigned from the commission. He was hoping to be able to come to this meeting but to announce it himself but he couldn't come to this meeting either. So we do have one vacancy now. Um so if you have people you know that are interested in the planning commission tell them they can apply online and I don't know when the council will consider applications.

All right. Thank you. I do have a committee report for the streams and wetlands committee. So which I think we'll be meeting next week. hopefully we can uh make some decisions about how best that we're going to move forward. Um but uh a couple points that I wanted to share. One is I think we're about year we're four about four years have elapsed since we started this process of looking at streams and wetlands. Um this process was initiated by the commission's concern that we were unable to condition um a subdevelopment approval on protecting some un unmapped streams. Um so the um the um I'm again I apologize I'm tired tonight. Um so someone came before us and said that uh there are some unmapped streams and could we please condition approval of the subdevelopment not developing those lots to protect the stream and we were all interested in doing that but it turned out that we could not actually do that. We could not consider the testimony because they were unmapped. um because they were unmapped and not officially recognized they didn't exist and because they didn't exist then we couldn't take that into consideration. So I think we were kind of all unhappy with that and we asked the city council to please go ahead and update our repairing inventory which we're doing now and then we formed the the streams and wetlands commission. So I think that was is that right Lisa is about four years ago I think it was mid mid 2021. So COVID happened, employment changes happened, a number of things happened. So this has been kind of a very slow process. Um, and over the past over the past time, I have been looking at, you know, some of the regulatory environment here in Salem and looking at some of the jurisdictional issues, uh, the legal framework around uh, protecting sensitive lands. And what I've really come to the conclusion is that Salem does not have kind of a a a legal

regulatory framework to manage our natural resources or to decide what lands are necessary to protect for ecosystem services or habitat. Most of the regulations that the city has related to natural resources are simply implementing things that other jurisdictions are requiring of us. So we administer the FEMA flood plane act, but we haven't done anything beyond administer it. So if the Fed says this is what you can do, this is what we do. We don't have any additional protections. Um we have not uh adopted any repairarian zone buffers, which we're in the process of doing. Um but the the state suggested that we do this back in 1999, so we're quite behind on that. We don't regulate wetlands at all. Um and I found out that in fact we don't really have our own maps of wetlands. Um, so some of these critical natural resources or s what I would call sensitive lands just simply are not regulated or even kind of recognized by the city. If I were to ask the city and say how many lands do we have that you what piece of land can we not develop because they're protected? We can't actually answer that question. We don't know out of the 35,000 or 50 40,000 acres the city has in its city limits. We really don't have an understanding of what's protected and what's not protected. that kind of surprised me a little bit. Um so that's kind of one of the things that we hope to kind of pick up um at at our next meeting and discuss a little bit about what natural resources should be protected. The state has some suggestions. They suggest uh repairarian areas. They suggest streams. They suggest um animal habitat, which is something that we've never ever discussed. Uh they they uh talk about open spaces, scenic scenic views and vistas. So there's kind of a whole range of things that exist out there in code um that the city really didn't engage. Um and the the point originally of the legislation was not to say you have to go protect everything in these categories, but the point was that the public should have a discussion about

which ones are priorities and which ones we do not develop. Um and so we haven't really had that conversation that we should have had 26 years ago. And so we're getting into these conversations case by case here in land use hearings where it's really not the best way to deal with it. Um and doesn't really involve the public conversation that we should have had a long time ago. So I think you know where this is all going is to have a conversation a broader conversation about what kind of natural resources we want to preserve in the city that we want to preserve from from development what their benefits are how we record those how we manage those in the future. And it's not just a conversation about a 50-oot repairing setback, but it's a conversation about how we balance development, you know, in a in a city that's kind of rapidly developing and is working very very hard to streamline the pace at which we develop with also the need to balance that with preserving some amount of ecosystem services and some amount of habitat in the city. Um, so that's the conversation I hope that we can come back with on the um from the streams and wetlands committee. I'm happy to answer any questions. So, I expect that we'll have a presentation maybe one or two sessions from now um where we can lay out some of these concerns and then probably maybe a month or so after that some more formal written report and um recommendations.

Yeah, please. We're not that formal. We really aren't despite the barriers here. Um have you been engaging with Ken Beerley who's doing the flood plane functions plan? I have. Yes. Okay. We finally got some progress from FEMA this week. You saw that. Okay. Good. Yeah. No, I haven't seen that, but I'm aware that that's happening. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I think it would be helpful um and I know you've given us some feedback initially to um use that as a a stepping stone to the next step for at a minimum protecting some of those flood plane functions for habitat. Um and then looking at um next steps for adopting some interim flood hazard areas that we had started which is above and beyond the regulatory FEMA maps um but haven't finished. So if you need more info on the areas that we've mapped I'd be happy to share that with you. I don't I don't know if we've talked about that yet. We have a lot of mapping information. We started public outreach, but staffing and other reasons prevented us from continuing the steps to get that to council for adoption. But I have lots of maps.

Great. That's very helpful. Um, and I should note, and I shared this, I just received this yesterday. Um, I was talking with DLCD and they pointed me to Corvalis, which had gone through a whole process to set aside uh to recognize essential wetlands, streams, repairarian corridors, and a chunk of their flood plane. Um and then B because they were able to do that then they were able to go in and expand their urban um growth area. So you know the legislation is set up to to allow us to compensate ourselves for setting aside land inside the urban growth boundary by expanding to the you know the broader urban growth area or the reserves area. So that's kind of an important consideration that I think we probably missed out on by not taking advantage of years ago. We've designated a lot of parkland for example in the interim. So thank you.

Yeah. Um are you saying the committee would be making recommendations regarding riparian setbacks or were you just talking about wetlands? I'm just wondering because the official committee for the riparian project for phase two that's going to be looking at the protections is starting and has been scheduled and Commissioner Tub and Commissioner Heler the planning commission. Yes. I think as I understand it, there's a process underway for dealing with the repairarian zones. Yeah. Which is great. Okay. So, you're talking about I'm not expecting to make comments that get in the way. Oh, I just wanted to make sure. Of the repairing. Yeah, absolutely. I think we're trying

I think what's happened over the past couple years is that we've realized this is not about repairarian zones, but it's about a whole range of natural resources. Um, and that's kind of what's coming to the front now. Um, so as the repairarian process is underway, we can start talking about kind of the next couple pieces. Uh, I went back and looked at the letter that we wrote to the city council and it really did talk about the repairarian zone as kind of the first step in moving forward to completing the goal five process. So, um, I think it's kind of maybe kind of all coming together at a good time. I know you'll be done with this and then have free time, right? Sounds all right.

I'll just add one more note on that. Um, go five also has stuff that has nothing to do with natural resources. So, we we'll have to discuss what our scope of if we're going to expand to historical, you know, cultural resources or keep Oh, we are well we are very much in compliance with goal five for archaeological, cultural and historic resources and we have like the best program in the state and the state people will tell you that there's no question about it. So that is the one part of goal five we very much comply with. I didn't include that because Lisa told me that about a year ago. Might have been I'm very very aggressively told that. Very true. So now you're up Lisa.

Um I don't have anything. I was just going to talk about the goal five committee um that it's finally starting to meet. That was the only thing I had. There we go. What What are they doing? Ununice has something I'm supposed to be saying but she's here so she can say it. Oh, planner palooa. Okay. But could you tell us the dates for the goal five committee and and and Sure. Uh the first repair advisory committee meeting is November 3rd from 10 to noon. Hopefully you all got that invite. It's going to be in person, but we just added a Zoom invite um as well. So that'll be the first meeting. We anticipate the second meeting probably being next year at some point.

And what are you doing at the first meeting? We're hoping to have draft results from that inventory um and then we'll introduce uh phase two which is the regulatory side. So we'll have our consultant team that's working on the inventory come and present some of the technical findings um that we'll go first to the repair and advisory committee and then we'll have some sort of public meeting of some sort following that. Is the purpose of the technical committee to focus on phase two? Uh, no. Oh, yes. Education on phase one and then yes, leaning into phase two where there's going to be community conversation. Thank you.

And I'm supposed to say that we are having planner palooa. October is planning month. Um, and uh just found out from some uh research that Kimberly did, it's the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the planning commission. So planning commission was started in 1925. um they all quit in protest in 1926 and then there was a new commission. So um from some of her newspaper articles she found so we are making a poster about it. Yeah.

Very controversial apparently. Um but we are having planner palooa and it's October 15th um from 4:30 to 6:30 at 440 food hall. So um we'll have door prizes this time, not games. Sorry, Commissioner Fryback. Um, but some door prizes, there'll be food. Uh, they do have a bar. We will not be buying drinks, but people can buy drinks if they want. And there'll be planners um from all across the city, the different divisions. Um, and then generally we have planners from other organizations, um, chariots, um, council of governments, sometimes county planners. So, you can come and just meet all the planners that do planning. And we hope planning commissioners will come and attend. And then we have people from the public and just get to meet people and chat about planning and see a poster. will have like the headlines from the 1926 when they all quit and and some of the early zoning codes and and different things. So, and early zoning maps. There were four zoning districts apparently

in the 20s and that was it. There's some inspiration. That's and um I did notice that our mandate includes advising the city council on public morals. Yes. So, I don't know if we do that quite enough, but maybe maybe we should. It was in the very first ordinance. I saw that and I was like, "Wow, some of that stuff is still in the code." Yeah. Sanitation, morals of the city. Hope you guys are working on that. All right. I do. Oh, that sounds very today, doesn't it? Um,

and we want to thank um Chariots and Marian County. had a lot of staff time to train us and on the technology and getting the doors unlocked and all kinds of different things and it seems like it's working out um really well and they said we can use it the whole time um civic is under construction. So great. Thank you. Commissioner Heler, are you still with us? We can't You're muted. I am. I I didn't do a good job of keeping you in the loop. Is there anything that you would like to add after being here for a couple hours and silently?

No, not really. I'm But I'm I think you sent me a bunch of emails about this subcommittee um that is not the repairing rights, but the kind of the general one and uh I've had painters at my house, a sick dog. I haven't read any of them, but I'd like to participate if I could. Great. I'll follow up. H I'll follow up. Okay. Thank you. All right. Anything else for the good of the order? If not, we're adjourned. Oh, he raised his hand. What? Commissioner Fryback raising it. Sorry, Commissioner Frybeck.

Okay. Um, sorry, I'll be quick. Uh, so, um, I heard Commissioner Leavine was appointed. Um however uh he didn't get an interview and I know commissioner uh Tev, myself and commissioners Lara Mk all were interviewed by council under the guise that the uh the pandemic was over and interviews were resumed. Um you know I'm really excited to have Commissioner Lavine here with us um on the commission. I think he's a great addition. Um, but I was wondering if we as a body would want to send a message to council and ask them to adopt kind of a formal policy on when a commissioner should be interviewed, when they're getting appointed to the planning commission. Um, because I read SRC section six and there is nothing in there talking about interviews. Um, and so I think some clarification on when a commissioner should be interviewed um, could be helpful. Um because you know I think I don't I I think the planning commission should be a neutral body and I think um whether or not somebody is subject to scrutiny or interviews um should just be a a process that's described in the code.

Lisa, is this something that merits maybe a special orders of business conversation? I think it's a little more complicated than I can handle right now at a Sure. Yeah, we can put it on a future agenda. Okay. and ask u the city attorney his thoughts on it before we bring it. So you could just submit it as a recommendation to council that you want them to consider. You could ask them to do a code amendment to actually put it in the code. So I think the idea here if I understood correctly was that everyone goes through the same process. Yes. Okay. We'll put it on a future agenda. Cool. Thanks. I'm going to look around more carefully. Any other comments for the good of the order here? No staff comments. You're welcome to. All right. They're just ready to get out of here.