Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. Everybody, ask me on Friday. I'll tell you. Welcome to this 02/05/2026 planning commission meeting. I'll call this to order at 06:30. Love doing that. I've been wanting to do that for you. All right. First, we have roll call. Ajay Shakupani. Here. Syed Safavian.

Here.

Isham Akwaad. Here. I'm Mike Brusco. I'm here. John Bachman. Here. And we have a new member today, Mazi Poonawala. And if you would please just give a little introduction to yourself.

So I'm present here. My name is Mazahir Poonawala, Mazi Poonawala. So I'm a Shweshuddin for almost twenty six years. Currently, run my own startup company business from my home, been affiliated with all tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon in the past. Been very vocal on certain issues in the past, but now I realize instead of just complaining, want to be part of the solution. So I want to be part of this commission and help city in whatever way I can.

Okay, great. Welcome. Okay. And we haven't heard yet from Suda, so we'll see if she comes in a little bit late. Next on the agenda is approval of this evening's agenda. Are there any adjustments, any changes anybody would like to make? Okay, seeing none, we'll call the agenda approved by common consent. And next approval of the January 15 meeting minutes. Any modifications to the minutes from January 15? Okay.

Seeing none, we'll consider the minutes approved by common consent. Next we have public comment. Public comment is for three minutes each. I have a few people here in the room. Who would like to go first? They're fighting over it. Okay. Thanks Mary.

Hello. My name is Mary Wichter. I've lived in Sammamish twenty five years. Welcome old and new. You guys are doing great jobs and you're getting rave reviews from a lot of people at other meetings and staff as well too, including Nolina who can actually make sense of my public comment and write my topics down.

So I wanted to talk about a long time ago when I was a kid, people would say a penny for your thoughts and you could give your 2¢ worth. And I wanted you to know that 2 and a half pennies is about three minutes of your two hour meeting time and because we know inflation goes up, the city of Sammamish incorporated in 1999 by 2025 we had to double that. So I think six minutes for us in public comment would be good and how I'd like it split is three minutes on this non agenda, or you can do agenda, and then three minutes afterwards. Otherwise, we never get to respond to questions or be able to inform you about things that you didn't know because we go to other meetings, and I think it just makes sense. Planning Commission used to have seven minutes.

I know that was long, and then five minutes is even maybe long, but I think three minutes before and three minutes at the end or even during the discussion period would great. You kinda do that with public hearings. You get to hear from us in between. So I did wanna speak about the email I sent in. I feel like public comment's sort of been lost in the last year. It's not put in matrixes or tables anymore. It was doing that for a while. You can paste, like, my whole comment and just put in, the top three and either respond to it or not, but at least it gets recorded. I've seen one word used, I've seen a sentence used, and it did used to get incorporated. I don't think it should just happen to the city council because you wanna have all this discussion before, which is what your value is.

So I'd like to see some return to that. Also, there you guys do a lot of good discussion and it's been very valued and you were using a system called Convio, which I've never been in because I'm not part of it. And you guys are having a lot of discussions and asking questions, but I don't think that information was ever released to the public like there was a time it was printed or allowed or a snapshot of it. Because you guys ask a lot of great things at the beginning that maybe if we heard those, we wouldn't even talk about those because we know they had already been asked. So the work's happening.

It's just happening between staff and the city and the commissions, but it's not getting out to the public, and I think it's so valuable that you do. It should be shared at some point in some way, or if there's a website we can go to and click on it or something or other. I also think whenever you're building a team, you wanna make sure that everybody is incorporated and there's feedback loops that have been used and the earlier you get feedback, the better. And just sometimes a new person will come up and say something you never thought of or they'll say something in a different way that spawns another idea for you, or they'll present a lot of data like Mary and Paul do, and you'll pick one key point and go, that really makes sense. And that actually transitions to something in change.

Couple examples I can give you is Bob Keller used to be on council, and there was a lady, Erica Teleakos, who's moved away, and you don't hear from her anymore. But she was talking about the tree code, and she said, we were using should and we need to use shall, and so Bob Keller said, when is a should a shall? And then they decided if you really want it, you gotta say shall, and it changed all the tree code. So that's been adopted, and the tree code was done in 2015. We're not even updating it till, like, next year, so the code really sticks. So you need to listen to everybody. You need to listen to every word. And the stuff that we say, if you guys don't talk about it or bring it up or say it to staff, it doesn't get mentioned. It doesn't move forward. So the only way we can make change with our public comments is for you to act on it. And don't act the next meeting, act the meeting that we give it. Thank you.

Thanks, Mary. Paul looks like you're coming up next.

Good evening, planning commissioners. Paul Stickney Sammamish. I I gave a copy of this to city council on Tuesday, but I didn't have notations on it. And I would point out that all the acronyms are down at the bottom explained. Let's jump straight into the cruxes that are combined here.

Using distinctive resolve and authentic foundations, let's lift our community to a higher level of thrive, vibe, thrill, and delight. Shift long standing housing policies from TH to HST plus and thereby enable HAE. And again, these are all described at the bottom. Set genuine Qi A, B, and C housing targets in the comp plan. Add 5,000 B and C internal housing target to meet alongside the 2,100 A external target.

Our minimal 2,100 regional growth target was market rate housing until King County overlaid a 100% affordable on it. And our city has never set internal chi housing target numbers to meet. 2,100 affordable housing regional growth target is about 25% of local a needs. 5,000 b and c market rate built primarily in centers is under 25% of the 22,000 market rate homes in our city today. What happens if we meet both over twenty years?

A quarter of our workforce jobs would have the ability to stay here versus commuting, and roughly a quarter of market rate homes in Sammamish would have the ability to stay for cycle of life as their needs change. Student and transportation outcomes of these houses under a third of the effects of nineteen ninety nine to 2024 city growth. Traffic has three general outcomes based on land use and multimodal transportation for from a 10% increase to no net change to a net decrease, all possible. Population increase, about one and a half to two people per unit, about 11 to 14,000. The negligible effects of population increase due to demographics and internalization.

Critical mass for transit achieved, yielding useful, suitable, and effective systems. Now some conclusions. Two k affordable and five k market rate are both okay. Only a quarter of local needs met and the ability to measure actual effects over twenty years to precisely guide future chi needs. Say yes to HST and ESS to set a, b, and c chi housing target numbers for HAE.

Say yes to use citywide chi target numbers to inform town center housing numbers. Say yes to distinctive, authentic elevation of Sammamish thrive, vibe, thrill and delight. Appreciate the chance to speak. Thank you.

Thank you, Paul. Is there anybody online?

No commenters online.

No online. Okay. So next we move to new business. New business is the election or maybe selection of the chair and vice chair for this term. And so the process that we'll follow is basically the same as we've done the past couple of years. We'll ask for nominations. And whoever's nominated has an opportunity to say, yeah, I'm okay to do this or you got to be crazy. No way. That nominee will have an opportunity to just say a few words and then we will take a vote. And we'll start with the chair, his role first and then the vice chair.

So we'll open the floor for nominations.

Just to add, you can nominate you can be nominated or nominate yourself.

I would like to nominate Mike Prescott, the current vice chair as a chair. Second.

We didn't we didn't say that there had to be a second. Are there any other nominees? I have to play like Mark did last year, you know? My brisko. That's the second one. Well, I would be thrilled and happy to do that. And actually being vice chair is good preparation for doing this. So we've had a little training. So, okay. So we should take a vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any nays? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. Alright, feels appropriate.

Alright. Going through the same process for vice chair. Any nominations for vice chair? I'd to nominate Syed. Syed.

And I'll second that nomination.

Sayed, would you are you willing to take any words that you want to say other than like No,

I really appreciate working with all of you guys. We have a good team. And I would be delighted to be the Vice Chair. I have been actually, as most of you know, I've been in a different cities, Sequoia particularly, have been doing this service both as a chair, as a vice chair. And in here, of course, I have been working very well with all of you guys and I would be looking forward to see that the good relationship, working relationship to continue as vice chair.

Great. Okay. Any other nominees? Alright. Hearing none, we'll vote. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any nays? All right. Congratulations. Thank you. All right. So we've completed that bit of business. And so next on our new business agenda is Planning Commission meeting procedure and community norms discussion. And Evan you're going to take a ball on that.

Thank you, and congratulations to our new chair and vice chair, and welcome to our new Planning Commission member. So tonight is really an opportunity to just kind of, for many of you, revisit some of the procedures and introduce them to our new commissioner, reminding us about well, actually, let me just go ahead and advance the slide here. We'll look at the packet packet basics, where to find information. We'll talk a little bit about work planning, kind of the policy framework that helps direct your work, commissioner responsibilities. And then within the planning commission bylaws, there's a section that we touched on, I think, probably about this time last year, about meeting norms and what it looks like for the commission to be successful.

And it's always worth at a at a reset, taking a look at those things and making sure our norms are still what they what we want them to be, making sure that we still are defining success the way we want them to be. And then we'd also like the commission's feedback of how we can help on the staff side the commission succeeds. So that'll be the discussion part, the more fun part, once we get through the procedural stuff. So at the very basics, the planning commission meetings are held on the first and third Thursdays of the month. We try to keep that cadence as best we can.

We typically start at 06:30. We do have periods where we have to when we get really busy like we did with the comp plan in the development regs, we'll add a special meeting or we'll have to move stuff around, but we really try to keep that first and third Thursday. Something to note, we typically have an annual meeting with the the planning commission and the city council, which usually comes kinda right after that summer recess. So we hopefully, we'll get back to that that practice and be picking that meeting back up. Meetings are hybrid format.

So commissioners, if you can't make it or if you're on your way from work in traffic and need to hop on virtually, that is always a great option. And we found that most commissioners opt to come in person, which is great for for dialogue, but feel free to utilize the hybrid option as you need it. The agenda packets are published the Friday before the meeting, and the agenda bills are there to provide background, important links, exhibits for your review, and and spell out the, you know, the goals of what we're trying to get out of the meeting. And the images on the right are screenshots. So just just to help guide folks, if you need on the Fridays after we publish the packet, we send you a link.

But if for what whatever reason you needed to go find the packet or a previous meeting's packet, the screenshot at the top is the Citi's home page. And right there in the middle, there's the Citi meetings thing. So if you click that, you'll be taken to the portal where you will see the calendar of meetings. You can scroll through that calendar, find your meeting date, click that, and you'll be able to get to the agenda, the meeting minutes, the video. So just wanted to remind folks where you can go find meeting information.

Yep.

Microphone. And and everyone Evan might be covering this on a later slide. If go back one slide. We're in the process you know, one of the things that you know, hearing the the the commentary about public comments, we're trying to add another tab. So public comments that are written are collated, and there is another tab that's buried in there that's called meeting materials in CivicWeb. We're attempting to add a fourth tab where it says agenda, minutes, video. Want to add another tab there that says meeting minutes or sorry, meeting materials. And if you click on that, it will take you to that meeting, and you can see the presentation. You can see all the public comments that were received, etcetera. So we're working on that.

It's it's challenging because we have to work with the vendor of this software to have them add another button, and they want us to pay more money for the extra button. So we're arguing with them about that right now.

But it was a good comment. So preparing for meetings, the tasks are kind of straightforward. But read the agenda bill. It will provide you with the history of the topic. It will link to former meetings where you can go watch videos or read agenda bills. It it will include the exhibits. And often, these are the things like the draft plans or the draft code language that we're looking for feedback on. A good practice when you're reading and reviewing is take notes and identify the questions you have. And we're more than happy to answer those questions before the meeting. So if you if you wanna reach out to us, schedule some time before the planning commission meeting, feel free.

We really value that that chance to interact. Also, a good practice is reach out, feel free to collaborate with your counterparts in the commission, be in touch with council members to talk about these items. All that is a great practice. And then also, before each meeting, we hold a chair, vice chair meeting, where we meet with the chair and vice chair, talk about the topics, and get their input on how we can present it better or questions they might foresee coming. And it's really been a great tool to help us better present topics.

So just as a reminder that not to meet with more than more than three council or or commissioners. Right? Yeah. And and then also to use the Citi email account if you're communicating by email with fellow commissioners or with council members, not your personal email account. We've had some issues with that in the past, and there's a whole records thing there, so we want to be careful.

So the Planning Commission's role is spelled out in the SMC, and you're here to be the first pass at reviewing items relating to the comprehensive plan, land use ordinances, our development regulations. And, you really are that first step of review input direction before the council takes up, those topics. So you really kinda help shape what the council gets. The planning commission also plays a key role for public engagement. Every meeting is public.

There's a chance for the community to participate and a chance for you all to hear from the community. And we really lean on you to leverage your local experience, your knowledge and expertise to help shape these topics. And I'll echo what Mary said. We the on Tuesday night's meeting with the the council, there was a lot of nice recognition of the good work the commission does. So, big kudos to what you all do.

So work planning and topic review. The work plan is set at the direction of the city council. They'll be working Saturday to, kind of set the work plan for the year and look at what they wanna prioritize. And after that, we'll have a better idea of what the planning commission calendar will look like for the year. The commission doesn't get to pick work plan items per se, but we've done this in the past.

You can make recommendations for council. And that has come up where you say, you know, we've been talking about this, and this one issue keeps coming up. And in our recommendations to council, we've included those things that the commission recommends that maybe the council directs us to look at this, and that has happened. So that is a way you can kind of influence the work plan items. And just to note that we're always dealing with the resource constraints and considerations.

You know, staff time and budget are always considered in in how work planning gets set. A typical topic review cadence in this would be for, you know, your kind of standard code change project. They this stretches out with something as big as the comp plan or the urban forest development plan. But it starts on the left where we get council direction. We bring it to the the commission for kind of an introduction overview, kinda lay the groundwork of what we're trying to get out of the the process.

Then we'll go through some workshops, and oftentimes, we'll add several workshops in there as needed to make sure y'all are comfortable with the topic. And then we wrap up with a public hearing and recommendation to the city council. And then from there on, that gets sent, and the council goes through a similar process to this before they do the final adoption.

Just one thing to add about resource constraints. So we are a small department. We are a small city staff, and we have very aspirational goals with regard to the work we wanna get done. You know, I typically start my day at 06:30 in the morning. I did this morning.

I have a building division that I oversee, so I have to be here when all the building inspectors are ready to go out in the field for the day, work through issues that come up there. And I'm still here at 07:00. So, you know, one thing to consider is that we do have resource constraints that, you know, we also have hourly hourly staff that are here supporting the meetings. Those are all factors that play into this. So, you know, not to change anything, but I just want to make sure that we are considering our limitations with staffing and resources with the work that we're doing.

This is a good slide for

Evan, just to be clear on the workshops, maybe add a quick note that that often involves other city departments and other commissions or or even the council.

Certainly. Yeah. Certainly with bigger plans like the comp plan, we took we worked with the planning commission, and then we would take it to the parks commission to update them and get their feedback on, you know, the parks element. And and we've had recently with the public works team coming and talk about traffic when it as it related to the town center. So, yeah, that's absolutely part of the process. Thank you.

So is there any time to ask questions?

I feel like it's a conversational meeting, so go for it.

Okay. Let's talk about the possibility of having second meeting with the council instead of one because sometimes the topic is so much that you only get a chance once a year. Would it be possible? Of course, you have to get the support from the council, but that is an idea that you may want to get.

So I will say that one of your counterparts on the Park Commission did attend the city council meeting on Tuesday and made comment that the Parks Commission also feels like it would be a good opportunity to meet more frequently with the council. The challenge there is that if all of the commissions that we have in the city were to meet more frequently, we would take up a lot of bandwidth of the council for doing other things. So we will definitely ask the city manager and council about that. I mean, find a lot of value in that. I also want to highlight that it is completely within your responsibilities here to meet with council members individually, just not more than four of them at a time or three of them at a time.

Because, you know, we we something I I used to serve on a planning commission years and years ago, and something that we had was a close relationship with the city council. I find found a high value in being able to go have coffee with a city council member and try and understand different perspectives, different things that they're working on that I might not have been aware of. So one thing we don't have here as a city and haven't traditionally had that I would advocate that we try and work on is closer relationships between planning commissioners and city council members.

If that meeting happens, would that be as a citizen talking to the council members or a commissioner with the council members? Because I

think just I you mean, just you meeting individually with a council member, it could be a citizen or as a as a commissioner. I mean, it's just two people talking about things, trying to understand each other. Now the formality of formal commission council meeting, we highly value those as staff and we would like to see them happen more often. However, you know, it can take up a lot of the time on the agenda. So trying to find that balance, again, thinking of resource constraints and considerations, thinking about the calendar, thinking about our work plan, the timing of those, I think that we could really strategically set those up at the right time of the year, which would help facilitate work getting done because we'll have advanced our common interest or common understanding of the topics that we're tasked with taking on.

Yeah. And just a quick reminder, the council retreats on Saturday, Building 120. I think it starts at eight or 08:30? 08:30. And I'm still not clear if it's gonna get videotaped or not.

That is open to the public,

I believe. But it is open to the public.

It is open to the public.

A portion of it will. The the council voted on that late in the meeting on this past Tuesday. So a portion of the meeting will be recorded. It will not be something that we'll be able to dial in and provide comment on. However, there will be a portion of it that will be recorded. I'm not sure if it will be live streamed, I can't remember. Thanks. From the audience, apparently, the website says it will be posted within three days of meeting being held. So it will be recorded, and then the recording will be uploaded to the website.

A couple of other items. Sorry. Yeah.

Go ahead. That, something to what Syed was saying about multiple meetings with the council. I mean, definitely more conversation and communications always do.

Absolutely. And they have their own workshop, so it could be a combination of the planning. So there's no additional meeting per se, is that if the council invite us to that workshop, there would be a joint meeting between the Planning Commission and City Council. The other thing, David, that I want to kind of bring to your attention is that if it is possible, when we talk about a complex project, particularly in transportation, it would be really ideal to have somebody from the department to be there and answering the questions because in the past, we relayed a message to you. You pass it on to the public words, get their message and bring it back the next meeting. It would be more productive if we can have that way.

We don't disagree that including those discipline experts in the meetings to answer questions and to hear commentary would be really a positive thing. We're working on that. The public works department particularly has been through some staffing transitions, which has really challenged their ability to staff on all fronts. They have relied on us to be their eyes and ears in some cases, and it's less than desirable, although we're working with what we have and we are working to continue to try to staff up. It is interesting that we have a hard time recruiting for certain positions, particularly around traffic engineering and public works engineering. It's a field where there are just not as many candidates available.

Also, talking about the technical documents, I bring I brought your attention a couple of times before. Some of these documents, the funds are so small, particularly when you I want to look at the CIP. I have to go so so many ways to print it and kind of read it to understand. Is there any way that you can pass it on that information that if there is a matrix, if there is any spreadsheet and all that should be in a way that would be easy easily readable?

Agreed. As I approach my fiftieth year here in a few months, I'm in the same boat. There will be some changes coming our way that are mandated by way of federal ADA rules. We're gonna be needing to reboot all of our materials and how we present things, including consideration of meeting recordings that will need to be live captioned, which will make it very challenging for us. So we're in the process with our clerk's office of reevaluating how to present materials, overhaul our websites, all of the above, because there are some fairly significant changes in federal law regarding accessibility, which includes the ability to read certain use certain font types, not use certain colors, certain spacing, etcetera.

So I think you'll see an improvement there. But the takeaway I mean, immediately, yes, I I hear what you're saying, and we will try our best. Sometimes it's a formatting challenge when you're looking at trying to format an 11 by 17 page from a from a flipping book that we use into a 8.5 by 11 packet page. So maybe we might have to look at different ways of presenting that material.

And one more thing that I want to kind of compliment my fellow commissioners. At the last council meeting, repeatedly, quite a number of people expressed their satisfaction and really say a lot of positive things about what are we doing and how we listen to the citizens and taking the time and then try to kind of answer their questions and so forth. So it was really good to hear that from the public.

Just to add to what said was saying about having multiple meetings. I mean is meeting the only way that the council and commissioners can communicate like do we have some kind of a group chat or a Slack channel or something where which is all official because this needs to be all recorded or email where we can go back and forth because I know people have time constraints and cannot meet at the same time, but at least you can communicate back and forth on ideas and things if you have to go back, you know. I don't know. Does the city have that process in place today or it's not technologically available? Whatever it is. I don't know.

Yeah. There's there are many laws around that. Okay. And if, for example, it is considered to be a meeting dialogue when you reply all. Like, if I was to email you and you were to reply all, that is considered under public records law to become a meeting. So we need to be careful about that. We we often put in communication that we send out, please do not reply all. Other forums, I mean, could that is something that I would take up with the city manager's office. Will ask. I mean, I know that uses of different channels have gotten different elected and appointed officials in different communities in trouble over the years.

So we have tried really hard to stay out of those lanes and just focus on the channels we have. They're not optimal. There's got to be a way for us to communicate better on things. But for now, it seems that public meetings and individual meetings are the lanes that we are living in.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. I just yeah, exactly. I just fast forwarded to the slide about the Open Public Meetings Act and public records. And anything with a quorum of the governing body or more needs to be noticed. It needs to be open and available to the public. You can't take actions in those settings otherwise. So it all gets really tricky when you think about something like Signal or Slack or yeah. Also, all of any official business you do, any official city business is a public record. It needs to be findable by the clerk's office. And so maintaining or limiting the number of channels and avenues for public records to be created and stored is important.

And I think that the takeaway from this slide ultimately is be careful with the Open Public Meetings Act. If you're going to meet with other commissioners, make sure it is fewer than a quorum. Same if you're going to meet with council members, be careful with that. That's the same email thread, like David said, a group a group video chat for more the quorum or more. You're gonna be you're gonna be violating the Open Public Meeting Act.

And with public records, I would encourage you to only limit or restrict yourself to using the city channels and avenues and devices for city business. So emails, use your city email address, use your tablets to keep notes and take notes. And that way, if there is a public records request, it's really easy for the clerk's office to go and find those things. So anything else to add on that, David?

No. That was that was good. Thank you. And our clerk's office does do a training every year for the city council on public records, and we'd be happy to notify you when that happens or or provide you the video feed so you can watch it after the fact.

Evan oh, go ahead. Addition to the one on ones, can you touch on the chain meetings? If I talk to you and you go and talk to him and he talks to him, that's also a violation, right?

Serial, yeah. I have to look into that. I don't know unless you okay, so John knows. Yeah, that's a good note. I

have a small question. Are we all City Council as well as Planning Commissioners, aren't we all City officials to begin with? And so if there are three City Council members who meet in, let's say, Mid Market in the cafe at Mid Market. And it's not a public meeting at that point in time because the three of them. And then I walk in and I stand and talk with them. I'm now the fourth one, although I'm not from the city council. Does does that make it a public meeting?

I think we're in the the bullet about quorum. Generally, a gathering of members of a governing body is subject to the o PMA. So you're not part of that same governing body. You're you're a city official, but you're part of that governing body. So I think in that instance

So then a the city council is a separate governing body, and the planning commission is a separate governing body. It's not that all of us are part of the city.

As as best I understand, and we can follow-up with with legal in the clerk's office and send an email to verify that.

Is that a matter of appointed versus elected?

I think it's just a matter of the governing body. You you are a planning commission governing body. The city council is a is a city council governing body.

Right.

So long as no more no more than three of either of those bodies are gathering in the one place at the same time. Neither of those bodies are exceeding a quorum of that body.

Okay. So that is I heard you say he's saying is a is a kind of in between three elected officials and one appointed in Israel.

They're from different bodies.

I see.

Okay. Got it. Thank you.

So the answer was no.

The answer was no. But if

four of us were to

get together, then that'll be a Then that'll be one. Yes. We are all part of the same body.

So we

can meet together.

Yeah.

There are exceptions to that, just to be clear. So if you went to, say, we have a volunteer dinner every year and you were all to attend the volunteer dinner, or if you all were meeting at a

Ribbon cutting.

Or ribbon cutting, and what we end up doing is if it's not related to there are ways around that and how we notice it, so.

Wait, there has been a ribbon cutting volunteer dinner meetings that I've been missing all these?

Gotta check those emails. Every week. I'm joking. Coming up. Told on yourself.

So policy considerations. We wanted to put this slide in just to discuss the framework of kind of how things get passed down from the state to the region to the county. In we we really hit on this a lot during the comp plan process. We've even touched on it through, you know, some of the town center work we did last fall. But a lot of the the policy direction we get starts at the high level and gets filtered down. And we've incorporated a lot of that direction through our community vision and is reflected in the comprehensive plan. But just wanted to remind you that kind of everything we touch trickles down from from many layers as an and has been And often, we're trying to respond to the county and to the region and to the state. And that's often the challenge and the tension that we feel.

Yeah.

Okay. There's one more layer that's not shown here. It's because it's a bit elusive, and that is the courts.

Yeah. That So Yeah. Yeah. That was one thing. The second thing is that if it's a House bill or a Senate bill, it has to become law before it gets called as Washington State Legislature. Right? Just because it has passed the senate, but it has not yet passed the the house signs it. It that doesn't become a one of the points of the Washington state legislature. Am I right about that?

Yeah. Right. It's like commissioner Szabevian says, once it becomes law and is signed by the government passed by both chambers, then then we are bound to Starting the process. Yeah. Yep.

Got it.

We do track those that don't pass because those that are close to passing because they're likely to resurface in subsequent years. So we do keep track of those, and we do try to infuse some of what we're learning from those into the work that we do.

And just as a kind of an interesting point, the city has, works with local lobbyists who advocate on our behalf at the state level for for bills that we think would benefit the city. And, so we have that we have that kind of arm, the the city manager's office works with the council to to pick which of those we wanna advocate and lobby for and

Or against.

Or against. Yeah. Yeah. Or against. So But on but we

can follow your lead on that, right, when it is target law? Right. Close to being law or likely to become law.

Right. I mean, there's a whole range of bills that are making their way through the legislature, and some of them affect us as a city. Some of them affect us as a city in the work that we're doing at the Planning Commission with regard to development, policy, those kind of things. And if if you'd like, you know, we can do sort of a roundup of where the legislature stands or things that they passed and bring them forward.

Well, let me tell you exactly what when we started talking of House Bill eleven ten, we started talking about it here. Definitely, it was in the discussion before we started talking about it over here. But only after we started talking about here did I go back and read that bill to find out if that's the thing. And I've been questioning myself saying, should we have started reading about it earlier than when we started talking about it after its approval? And that's where that question came from, is that should we we follow and read about all of those things before we come in here?

I mean, I think it it ultimately gets back to this resource constraints and considerations. Like, we can we do our best to try to track things that are coming potentially coming our way. A lot of the the legislation dies on the vine. It gets pushed to following years. So there is that trade off. If you spending a lot of time on something that ends up not getting passed, then it's the opportunity cost of what you can be working. So I think it's fair to wait until it's passed. And oftentimes, once things are passed, we get notifications from the commerce department, and they work on guidance saying, hey. This is something now you have to think figure out how you're gonna implement. Here's how we recommend thinking about implementing it.

So there's a a good system in place for when laws are passed to help cities respond to it.

And, you know, so for 12/20, for example, which is another big one that we've that's, you know, we had to work on a lot regarding our housing allocation, that is a good example of how the courts or the legal process plays into that, because there were several appeals filed through the Washington State Growth Management's Hearings Board, excuse me, And as a result of those cases, there is new guidance from Commerce that has just been published in January. So it is evolving, right? So we might read it when it's passed. We might think we understand it. Then the State Department of Commerce staff, who may or may not be aware of local circumstances I'll leave it at that end up passing guidance that we're then required to follow.

Then that guidance might result in us passing regulations that are taken to the state growth management's hearings board, and the growth management's hearings board might rule on those regulations, which then might be counter to what the guidance was from the State Department of Commerce, which is what's happened in the Mercer Island case. So now the State Department of Commerce goes and updates its guidance, and then we now have to be aware of that. And as we continue to report out on our housing progress, we are now conscious of the fact that there is a whole new component to implementing twelve twenty that's been added as a result of the Growth Management's hearings board case that Mercer Island is working to resolve. So these are things that continue to evolve that we track. And just because it's signed by the governor does not mean that it is a done deal by any means.

It lives this long life cycle.

Would it make a sense to either every six months or once a year to prepare a progress report of the items that came to the Planning Commission and the action that the commission took for the public use and also for the council?

Yes. That is a good question. I don't disagree with that. And it's not up to me really at the end of the day. If it's something the city manager wants or the council wants, then then we would definitely do it. I put that back in the bucket of resource constraints. What type of report is that? How complicated is it?

Just a summary a summary of the projects or or the programs that we looked at it and Right.

I could see it being done annually. I don't know about semiannually.

Tools as both for the for the city citizens as well as the council that, hey, you know, we have taken all these projects over the last six months or the last twelve months. Right. We've looked at it and take actions.

Yeah. I I I think it's a good one to consider. I know we are gonna be more deliberate. We have to be more deliberate about reporting out on our progress related to housing. It is a requirement under state law now. So alongside that, we could also report out on the progress that the Planning Commission has made on work plan items.

My recollection, we've actually had like a PowerPoint presentation at maybe about this time where Kelly put together was some year end presentation

type thing.

It was nice to have that.

Yes, it would be nice. David, on a number of occasions on a large project, and I'll give you an example, transit plan, back end pedestrian plan, Sahali Way and if I'm not mistaken, even transportation master plan. The staff, of course, mostly is public works. They come to us a couple of times during the introduction of the project or the explanation of what's happening. But once it comes to the development of alternatives that are taken to the council, it doesn't come back.

I had a number of conversations with a number of of the city council, and they were shocked. They said, didn't you look at it? Is that something that can be done so if the project goes through the process, planning commission is involved in the earlier stage of development of the project. But before the staff take the recommendation of the alternatives, whatever the outcome of that project is to the council, bring it back and say, hey, planning commission, we talked to you. These are your questions and your comments, and this is the response, and ask the ask the planning commission to make some kind of recommendation to the council.

So respectfully, wanna respond that I I'm not sure I fully understand the question. So say, for example, we work on a DCD that is staffed issue, let's say, the comp plan. Right? We bring it through the planning commission, review it with the planning commission, make a recommendation to the city council, write up a recommendation memo that that is reviewed by the chair. I think the is it the vice chair also review it? Yeah. Yeah. Review it and and sign it and send it off to the the council. Then the council takes up that review. Are you asking us to then bring it back again

to No. First of all, I'm talking about the public works projects. I'm talking about the

Transportation there is projects on transportation. Well, I think

Because I had again, I had a number of conversation with the council and when we were talking about then, they asked me the question. I said, well, we didn't really see the alternatives that you looked at it.

I think You of the council. Part of the answer is in the SMC in the work in the scope of the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission's scope is a comprehensive plan and land use ordinances. And what gets tricky in this city and the workflows in this city is that those transportation related projects like the TMP, that stuff kind of falls. I mean, the TMP is in the comp plan, which is why you saw it.

But looking at the Sahali Corridor and the alternatives there and some of those other transportation public works specific projects don't fall into that bucket. In some cities, David, I think there are, like, transportation, billboards, and commissions who specific or were there to specifically focus and work on those projects. And I think that's part of the the tension that we face is in some respects, it would be good to have more time with the planning commission for those projects, but it does fall out of your purview. And, again, we run into that resources constraints issue.

So do require it requires a council action, council direction to the staff?

It would I mean, it would it would be kind of a big reshaping of what the commission's purview is. And I and and I think that would be a larger term discussion. I mean, there could be alternatives too. Like, we could have a transportation subcommittee or something. And I'm not committing to anything, obviously. I'm just giving examples of what could exist. But the reason those things don't come across the commission's desk is because it's not really in the commission's purview as we have it set up.

I see. Okay.

So in running a meeting, with the basics, the chair, vice chair run the meeting. When the chair is absent, the vice chair fills in. A quorum is the majority of the planning commissioners. And public meetings in most scenarios are run through Robert's rules of orders. But obviously, we have a looser format here, and I think that's kind of by design.

Found you know, we've we've, over the years, tried to make it a little less formal. We moved away from the dais and tried to set it up as a table so we could have conversations with each other. But there is, you know, a formal structure for how public meetings run. It's the Roberts rule rules of orders where things are done by motions in seconds. You call points of order.

You you have formal debates during debate periods. You vote on motions and topics. I think, you know, a a big thing, a takeaway that, you know, we wanna focus on is the equal time privileges and obligation is a good thing to kind of stick to even though we don't do the formalities of the rest, making sure that everybody is able to ask the have equal time to ask questions. No one is taking too much airtime. And things are done by majority rule.

And I think there will be times in the future where we might have differing viewpoints and have to take a vote on the direction and the recommendation. And that's perfectly normal and a great thing to do. And we've kind of agreed last year as a practice that in our recommendation letters, not only will we include the majority's vote in that opinion, but we're perfectly willing to include the minority's opinion as well so the council has the full viewpoint of the discussion. And I think, you know, that's something that we're happy to do. So, just wanted to touch on Robert's rules of order.

And should we ever find meetings getting unwieldy, we can revert to a more formal structure if needed. But I think that's a norms conversation. And I think the chair and vice chair can kind of weigh in on how we want to run meetings. But I think the flow we have has worked pretty well. But I wanted to touch on that.

So I totally agree, Evan. And this really doesn't fall under Robert's rule of order so much as staying on point. When we get into some really complex stuff, occasionally the conversation will drift into another subject, and we just need to be conscious to kind of pull ourselves back.

Part of that's on us too. Right? We we tend to want to really we're eager I think we're both people pleasers, we kind of really are eager to want to respond to things. And there are times when we'll have to say that we'll look into that, and we'll bring back some more information as opposed to trying to answer it in the moment and mostly getting it right. I'd rather we get it all right.

Quickly, and I think this is good, you know, following what Mary's comments were today, just revisiting the role of public comment and how we function currently. Comment is taken at every meeting. The procedures are set by the city council. This was a direction change a year or two ago from the city manager's office. We wanna unify how things are done across all boards or commissions, which is why we moved two to three minutes at the start per person comment period.

And really, the the role of comment is to inform the commissioners to wake up your minds, to give you different ideas and inputs, and help that kind of shape your thinking and decision making. And as a practice staff, don't we we don't respond to public comment, and it's not because we don't value it or think it's important. But really, it's the role is to give you guys the input and feedback of the community. And it's, again, goes to that restraints of of resources. We sometimes some meetings, we get a lot of comment.

And if we responded to comment, we wouldn't be doing the work. So all that is kind of weighed into, you know, the practices around comment. On the right, again, David mentioned earlier that public comment written public comment is tricky to find currently. So if you remember on the the slide back here on the home screen, if you click the city's website, if you click that city meetings tab, you're brought to CivicWeb. And in the very upper right hand corner, you'll see portal document center.

If you click on document center, it brings you to this file structure here. And down towards the bottom, the supplemental material supplemental materials for packet items, you click into there. It will pull up twenty years of records. You click into your year, your meeting type, your date, and you'll find the staff presentations and all of the comment submitted for that meeting. And that was what David was saying. We're trying to make that easier to find. So we're working on that, but I just wanted to highlight how you can go find that now.

About the three minutes, and this will echo what Mary was saying, and frankly, how I felt because I've missed those, the comments that came after the presentation. They were very helpful for us to understand from the public point of view and shape our thinking, being able to tie that in. So since the change was made for just the three minutes based on the city council, what would be the process to recommend going back to what we had or some something similar? Would that be talked to the city manager or I'm not a guess, so.

I think it would start with the city manager's office and the city council. And if that's something that they wanted to do, I think the objective there was to try to get all of the procedures amongst the boards and commissions on the same set of rules, that this is how the meeting runs, this is when public comment is delivered. But if there was a reason to allow that comment later in the meeting as well, then, you know, we'll take that to the the city manager and who can bring it up with city council members and see if that's a way in which we wanna change all of our boards and commissions so that they allow for both of those comment periods.

I'm not sure I see why there has to be consistency across all of the commissions and the council. And I know the council does a lot of work. I mean their meetings go on for a long time. I'm amazed at stamina. But you know, we are very much a working body and doing a lot of deliberations going into a tremendous amount of detail and having those additional public comments at the appropriate time I think can be very beneficial. So we'll figure out some way to bring that up and maybe, you know, see if there's a way to make some modifications.

Yeah. The hearing examiner rules a procedure, I think it's section three zero four of the ROPs, are actually do a good job of outlining public comment. And you know what? So during a permit hearing, for example, we'll take public the hearing examiner will take public comment at the beginning, and then we'll take public comment at the end of the hearing in order to try to, if somebody has something new they wanted to raise, you know, that the hearing examiner should be aware of, but the rules of procedure are very clear that hearing examiner allows the public comment the second time, not so that somebody can say the same thing they said the first time again for another period, but it has to be something that is unique or different and is relevant to the topics on hand at the meeting. You know, there are times when people show up and provide the same comment over and over again, and they do provide the same comment at the beginning and yet at the end, and that time cumulatively adds up to a lot.

I understand that we do listen to the things they say. However, we're really trying to be efficient in our time under the resource constraints that we have. I think how many times are we here extending the meeting? Are we extending the meeting so that we can hear the same thing we heard at the very beginning of the meeting all over again?

So I haven't seen it used in this city, but others where they consolidate. If you're speaking on behalf of a group or an organization, you get more time, six, eight minutes versus having 13 people come up and say the same thing for three minutes each.

Another thing is the comments can also be sent via email or other communication, they can be distributed and should be, you know, cognizant of the time. Right? Basically, we can read them later if we need to.

Correct. And they they are located in here. They live on in history, I guess, in that location.

So just some staff reminders. One, the the has been working to try to better track volunteer hours, and I appreciate you all taking the time to log it in the galaxy. And, you know, try if you can, maybe figure out a form a habit of logging it at the end of each month or after each meeting. Just, you know, try to work on time tracking. Do you have some

oh, sorry.

I just thought you No.

I pulled some reminders from the the commission's bylaws about attendance. First is if something comes up, let us know. If, you know, the bylaws say by 04:30, but if something happens after that, just communicate to us, let the chair and staff know that you won't be able to make it. And, you know, that will be an excused absence. Unexcused absences, if they pile up currently, it says four or more consecutive unexcused absences can result in removal from the commission.

There's also a statement about, you know, not meeting your duties that, you know, kind of consistent missing of meetings without excused absences. So just something to be aware of. Just a tech reminder, and, you know, Kim puts our notes on the microphone at at every meeting. This is this is how we want it right here. This and it's sounding like this in the room.

So it just comes through so much better in the video and especially as we move towards those new ADA tools, it will really help make to make sure that, you know, any captioning that's done is is heard, so right right here. And then, again, reach out reach out with questions. We're here to we like like David said earlier, we met with, Mazi before the meeting. We really enjoy having a chance to talk with you. And if you have questions, let us know, particularly, you know, on subjects before meetings. Get in touch. We're here to help.

I think on that note, one thing we try to avoid is being put in the position of the gotcha. It's not a position anyone wants to be in. I know sometimes new things are discovered or there's things that staff overlooked. We weren't purposely overlooking it. We're really trying to learn.

So we're always in learning mode, trying to understand things. And if you see something in the packet and you wanna give us a call, reach out to us. We really appreciate that, and we will do everything we can to update that information or, you know, respond to what you're saying in advance. A lot of times we can thread responses into the presentation to address what you're what you've been asking. So really knowing that in advance and not being confronted with the gotcha moment, it's a bit awkward when that happens, and we go home feeling like we're not doing our jobs right, and I don't want to feel that way or have Evan feel that way or other staff feel that way.

Yeah. Noted. Yeah. As I was talking into the microphone.

Oh, nice.

Yeah. You did great.

10 out of 10. The question I had was regarding, so let us say that we are traveling from let's say Seattle or something like that. There's no intent to miss the meeting or anything of that sort, but you just get caught in traffic. It's 06:00, it takes, it's easily becoming 06:30. I'm not gonna make it in time for the meeting or I'm not gonna make it because it looks like it's going to be there.

Is there a way that we can update the Citi website to include the meeting Zoom link in a very easy, accessible way rather than having to go figure out a fit and find our way through it. Because then you have to go into the meetings, down, figure out where it is and all of those things. And if you're first

of

all, if you're getting late and secondly, this happens most of the time when you're on the road or something like that, you just don't have the flexibility to keep fidgeting on the phone. And so that could be list that you could use too.

Yeah. Offhand, we'll have to think about that more. The quickest thing that popped in my mind is that we could include the Zoom link directly in the email that we send to you with the packet on Friday. We could just pull the Zoom link out and include it right there. That way, you only have to find the email. That's not necessarily easy if you're on the road. So we'll we can think about that one a little bit.

The website is a challenging topic.

Okay.

Just leave it at that. But I will raise that to the clerk's office and suggest that we we try to find a way, you know, just even in the upper corner, there's a banner to today's meeting, join.

Yeah. Well Exactly. Something like that. Lina just reminded me, there's only one link. The Zoom link is the same every meeting. So maybe the best solution is just copy and paste it in your notes app and then your yeah.

Yeah. Got it. Thank you. Got it. That's easy. I've not even noticed that. So thank you. I thought you were in a new one. So

yeah. So shifting gears, we I think we got through the process stuff. If you have any process questions, feel free to ask us. But I pulled the next two slides right from the bylaws. The first is defining success. You know, the public process should be transparent, fair. Outreach should use a variety of modes and methods, and all interested parties should have a chance to participate. All participants have a chance to offer comments and suggestions. Meeting should be conducted in a productive and efficient manner. The commission's submission of to the city council should contain a statement of findings, facts, a summary viewpoints received by the commission during the the public comment process, and a set of recommendations along with reasoning behind those recommendations.

And the commission's process and products should be sufficient such that the city council is able to take action on the recommendation without the need of a whole bunch of extra work. So I think maybe it's a good moment just to pause and see, does this sound to you like a complete list of what it means to be successful as a commission? If not, suggestion suggestions of what could be added or amended, we'd we'd be happy to to take those and update the bylaws. But just a conversation point for the commissioners.

You know, we should hear from everybody, but or at least some of us. I was reflecting as you're reading that having, you know, some of these memos to the council. And I think we probably fell a little short in the summary of viewpoints received in order to keep the letter reasonably long, you know, not too long. So we might want to have, like I was making a note here, have a checklist of these things so when we are transmitting letters of recommendation, it's like we do a check and say, hey, you know, did we have our findings fact, the viewpoint summarized, clear recommendations, those kinds of things. But that's, I think that's fairly thorough.

Are there any things that might be missing that would be part of defining success that's Can complete as far as I'm I?

Like do we want to have some kind of numbers in there saying that, hey, these many agenda items were there that we discussed at the end of the year and then out of this seven out of 10 or six out of 10 were accepted by councils. So that's a success like 70% or 6%. Like do you want to

put numbers? Well, usually, it's a 100%. So you guys Oh, you get

a 100%? Yeah. That's good. If you're getting a 100, that's very good. But I I don't know what's been in the past.

Do we have a record of 100%?

You almost wouldn't want to brag if it was like 90%. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So we are getting 100%. Then that's good. Okay.

Yeah. I mean, I I think usually I mean, again, it goes back to that kind of process. But usually, you get a 100 a 100% because the council gives you direction to tackle an issue. They kind of help guide you in the direction they want it to go, and then you take it up and start chewing on it and figuring out, you know, taking different perspectives and refining it, and then you send it back to them. So usually, you know, the stuff you've sent back is kind of what they're expecting to see. It's just a more refined, edited, and better version. So hopefully that answers your question.

Better solutions. So looking at this and then comparing to practice where clearly we don't always agree. And sometimes we don't get things right. I'm really thinking of recent meetings around the 3,000 square foot. Exactly. Clearly we had some really heavy duty discussions and didn't get it right the first time and came back and revised it again. So against sort of our practice against that, things seem

to match up for me. And that particular item was discussed at the last council meeting, and there are a lot of positive feedback that the time that the Planning Commission has spent to deal with that issue. And I believe that the lady that she had the property that was subject of that discussion, she complimented the Planning Commission that we spent so much time to get it right. And then counsel was happy that we resolved that issue.

Yeah, to that point and to other points when we are discussing whether we need to have some regulation for instance And then we say that probably we don't want to have this regulation. Why should we have a particular regulation in place? Why don't we let it play and we'll find out how it lands on the citizens on the residents of the city and then we can work that out. Do those viewpoints get do they need to have that opposing viewpoint? Do we always I've been thinking about this.

We always go back in to say that this is what the council feels and that's correct because we when we made a decision, we didn't go back for that one decision that we have made. But always to say a secondary viewpoint or a different viewpoint to state that the council, the planning commission had considered these two viewpoints and then came up to this thing. I've started to believe that that's probably a better one to explain just to give them the choice.

A good example was the affordable housing in lieu fee program you all debated And quite a we'll get to that in a little bit here. And that when we did present that to the council for consideration, we did include both in the, I believe it was in the transmittal memo, recommendation memo, it was in the staff report in the agenda bill, and it was in the presentation that there were differing viewpoints on the Planning Commission about that and that there were different perspectives about how it could impact housing production, that it could raise the cost of housing, various things that I don't have the list in front of me right now, so I apologize, but that was conveyed. So we work really hard when we prepare for the council meetings, and we go back and watch planning commission meetings. We Fortunately, you can watch them at three times speed, so it goes a lot faster. But we extract out the different viewpoints from the video files, and it's really helpful for us to be able to watch One thing that's a potential is when making a motion and when deliberating on a motion for a recommendation would be to try to be more deliberate about outlining the other viewpoints that you had heard in your review and that we understand those.

We may not agree, however, that in this instance, this is the best choice we feel and we recommend this for this reason. So try and and we can help you with that too. We'll always go back and watch the tape and look at the public comment. While we're not responding directly to the public comment, it is infused in the work that we carry forward to city council. So there's a lot of ways in which that all makes its way to the surface and is reported out to the council.

But there is two opportunities, being more deliberate about calling out the different viewpoints in deliberation and are making sure to better document those through the recommendation and adding a little bit more information about the different viewpoints that we heard during the deliberation.

That's great idea, Mike. I think that your recommendation is well taken.

Success. So this is about like how we're making deliberations, recommending. My recollection is when we're talking about the comprehensive plan. There was discussion and maybe it might have been even with the workshop with city council about having metrics. Know, so what progress are we making towards the affordable housing goals or other housing goals as one example.

There a number in there. And I feel like it would be nice, and this would be metrics that the city council, I think, would also want, is to, from time to time, maybe quarterly, twice a year, to have just a, you know, thirty minute max, fifteen minute maybe, summary of how some of those key metrics that are in the comprehensive plan and other plans as well are actually being performed. It would inform us even though those aren't necessarily things we own as a planning commission and certainly important for the city council. So I think that's from the city's standpoint and residents' standpoint, some of how success is measured, not how the letters are transmitted and so forth. And so I just wonder what your thoughts are about that.

I mean, offhand, I don't disagree. It's an interesting I agree with the concept. I had Nothing sprang to mind at this latest hour of a long week of what that would look like. But it's something we could put our heads together and think through a little bit and maybe come back.

So I've had a few meetings with some community members, Richard Johnson, for example, who you hear from regularly, where I've met with to talk more about the concept of data, about metrics, about what it means for success, and how we can better report out on that to the community. One the one example is on Tuesday night, the city council asked about contributions towards affordable housing, and one of the other points of contribution comes from the work that we have all done and the council has done through our inclusionary affordable housing requirement, whether it's affordable units produced or whether it's a fee in lieu collected. And we need to be reporting that alongside our contribution to Arch so that it tells the whole story about what the city is doing. That's an example. There were others about housing units produced, about we also have to be reporting under state law now on permit timelines.

There's a bunch of metrics. There's another metric that's always at hand, is how close we get to being fully staffed. So I'll just throw that one out there. But

those are all really good. What they do is give us a window on the deliberations that we've had and the impact that they've had, like the actual performance impact. So if it's possible, it would be nice, at least on something like that, that would be great to be able to

We're going have to be doing it anyway annually. So I kind of feel like let's leverage that and let's add some things beyond what the state and and PSRC and the county are looking for, and let's look at things that actually are meaningful to the community here.

I just want to say I agree with what Mike was saying and what David was also saying that we need some metrics because we are making a lot of assumptions based on our own experiences, our own judgments. And we want to make sure that we're heading down the road that we assume that we will go down. And if things they need to be modified to bring them to where we wanted them to be, we can still

do that. How would you quantify that matrix? What is that? Is that on a percentage basis? Is that on can you explain, Mike, are the one that you brought up. You said matrix. What matrix are you talking about? Can you elaborate on it?

What did I say? We'll have to listen to metrics. I said metrics. Metrics, not matrix.

Oh, I thought that you said, sorry. No, no, Sorry. I thought that's it.

How many houses we built, how much money we collect. Metrics.

I thought that you're talking about Matrix.

We'll report the metrics in a matrix. Yeah.

We all live

in that matrix.

That's different. So

the

So the second bit we pulled from the the bylaws or the community norms. So attending each meeting and arriving on time, you know, contact us if something happens, reading materials in advance, coming to the meeting prepared, and submitting questions in advance, respectful and attentive listening to the speaker with minimal side discussions, speaking respectfully to and about the public staff and other commissioners, allowing all commissioners the opportunity to speak and to speak without interruption, and minimizing unnecessary distractions, phone screens during the commission meetings. So, again, same question. We'll pause here. And does this capture it? Does it feel accurate? Is anything missing? Anything needed and amended?

If I

could add one thing to the second one, which is reading materials in advance. So sometimes you are tasked with large documents, and we try to to take those in smaller pieces, and we those usually result in multiple meetings leading up to a recommendation. But if you ever feel when you look at the packet that this is sort of, I'm never going to get through this, what do need to do, we're more than happy to meet with you, to give you a tour of the document, to give you highlights, to try to try to facilitate your review of those materials. And, you know, we really want you to feel like you're the the materials are accessible, available. So please reach out to us.

I'm happy to stay later in the evening on a Monday, I might be here for a council meeting on a Tuesday and happy to meet before the council meeting starts. I'm happy to do that, so just let us know.

And I'm glad you mentioned that because I think we've been trying to get a little better at clarifying what we're looking for when we give you an 80 page document. Like, hey, just read this line by line or memorize it or identify if the high the big themes feel correct. So we'll continue to work on helping you understand what level of review we're looking for and how to make it efficient.

So my comment here is, you know, disrespect Mike by not listening to whatever he's saying. He can kick me under the table. But Mary Wichter some time ago made a comment that it was really important for us to pay close attention and be respectful of our public commenters. Thank you.

So I got the email from Lena with a document for the questions on Friday that you had sent for the questions that you have to do. Is that is that a practice that we should follow to Is that a process that we should follow to have the questions written in that format and sent to you before we come for the meeting?

Yeah. I would just say if that is a mode that works for you, that's fine. But also, you can just email you can just reach out to us with your questions. And we were trying out the job form as a tool to see the Yeah. The job form. Yeah. Did it catch on? Was it easier for you guys? Was it utilized? And honestly, not really, and that's fine. Instead, we get direct emails with, hey, I've got these questions, and and that that's fine.

So So that was just a choice. It was not a test. Correct. Because I was like, I'm totally failing this test. Well, I didn't respond to this at all.

You keep telling on yourself.

We want to meet you where you're at. Yeah. And Got you all have different styles of how you communicate, how you learn, how you ask questions, so help us understand what that style is, and we'll meet you there.

Got it. Got it.

I'll toss in a couple of These are great, and I think in the past, really, couple years, as far as I've been on the commission, we've really been respectful to one another and really have lived by these. But they're kind of table stakes. And I think we've actually performed above this. And I think about what a high performing team is and there are other things like it's that level of respect. It's having diverse opinions.

Hearing those diverse opinions and understanding them and you know really kind of internalizing a little bit. And sometimes having each other's back. And what I mean by that is that I'm retired, I have some time, but even for me there are other things that sort of could get in the way, and I may be a little less prepared for some meeting than another meeting, and others are here to kind of fill in. And so recognize that life happens and although I think you know we're all really pretty good about reading sometimes a lot of material, you know not everybody can perform to the high level all the time. And so as part of a high performing group or team, being able to kind of fill in a little bit is helpful too.

And I think we do that and do that with respect. So kind of thinking about being high performing for the residents of the city and for each other really. So like I said, table stakes, let's strive to be even better.

Would you recommend if we were to, if we had an AI tool we would have just captured that. We could have just popped it right in there. Would you recommend adding that and bringing it back?

I mean, it's just I don't know, maybe. I could, what I could do is just send around to one or two, you know, some of the characteristics of a high performing team. And it's a lot of this type of stuff, but it's a little bit more too. And I think we've really actually been living that. So it was really a compliment to the members here and to you all too.

Yeah, I think that's great. Else?

No. I wanted to compliment staff because, yes, you worked very hard and you always listened to our comments and try to accommodate answering our questions. And, kudos to both of you as well as your staff that any time that there has been some discussion on some items that requires more time, you take any time and you educate us sometimes and kind of help us understand and help us in a decision, not decision making, making recommendation to the council. So I wanted to say thank you.

Yeah. Appreciate that. And that, you know, we're here we're not here with opinions. We're here with trying to provide you the information you need to make decisions and help inform the council. So that's that's our job, and we appreciate the kind words.

The other thing is that to my fellow commissioners is that I always say that we are eyes and ears of the council. So keep that in mind that that's the responsibility that we have, that they're looking at us. We're looking at the fine prints. We're asking tough questions, but that's what they're expecting from us. Because they either they don't have that much of an in-depth background or the time or both. And they're relying on our decision and our discussion and our our engagement with the staff and kind of give them their feedback. So keep that in mind.

The the last thing is just an is there anything that we can do from the staff side to better support the commission to help better prepare you? Bring some desserts. You gotta invite Miriam. When Miriam shows up, cupcakes show up. So

So can you give us heads up for the next twelve, eleven months or so, ten months? What are the topics that we're to be talking to you?

So one last thing that I realize that we all probably want to talk about is we do, on occasion, I think, have a high school student that is assigned to the commission and we welcome from the youth board. And it does rotate. That person does rotate through as they age out of the high school system. So I don't know if we've met Neil, but Neil's not here tonight but will be, I believe, in future meetings and look forward to that role there. We have had some really great comments from some of the students that have joined us in the past, And I really kind of enjoy hearing their perspective because they have bit of a different view of the world than many of us who've been out there working and doing things in our lives.

So we always want to make sure that we welcome them when they're here. And I know you all have done that. I just wanted to remind us that we do have that eighth person. The eighth I won't call it the eighth man. The eighth person, but yeah.

So the question that I had.

Yes. I wasn't trying to avoid it. Was just So, you know, we have a few topics that are pending. We have a workload that we had set, but what we're really waiting for is to understand the city council's revised priorities, new goals, what they might have, you know. So we're gonna be taking the town center back to the city council for an initial conversation on Tuesday, the tenth, so just right around the corner, which we're looking forward to starting to learn more about how they might want to proceed with Town Center.

Recall that when we left off in November, I think, we had a meeting where we talked about the spectrum of things that we can from the must do in order to be compliant. Remember that under state law, we have to allow middle housing. Have All to those things. We haven't done those in Town Center yet. We were going to do those with the Town Center update. And then the other end of the spectrum is looking at ways to incentivize affordability. How do we add additional affordable units? Does it always require additional density? There are there's a bunch of different ways that could be achieved. We might want to do some more research and explore how to how to better get affordable housing built in the town center.

Other large items we have had on the work plan are what we call a centers and corridors discussion. And what that really is is it's not a traffic thing. I wanna be traffic's part of it, not part of everything we do here. But what

it is

is it's looking at the relationship between Pine Lake, 228, Town Centre, the Lower Savannah Commons, the schools, and Inglewood, sorry. And looking at that core section of the city and trying to understand, you know, it's like a SWOT analysis. Understanding where there are opportunities in the future. Long ago, we started down this path of a new future land use map and a growth strategy for the city, and it largely is centered around centers. It's focused on centers, and a lot of that is related to the concept of repurposing existing asphalt, right?

So in the Pine Lake and in Inglewood and Klahani, those are the opportunity areas. But really, we're focused on that corridor where there's a lot more asphalt, where most of our commercial is. So that would be one of the items we potentially could bring forward, depending on council direction. The next item would be looking at additional sub areas, and that would include choosing one to start with. So after we do the centers and corridors SWOT analysis, then looking at one of those areas to become a planned area, right?

So we could choose Inglewood maybe to start with, where we would look at what opportunities we have to increase density, to add incentives, allow for maybe some additional height not a lot, but some additional height. Again, we're going to have to crack the code, so to speak, on traffic, because I think that is in the background of everything. So there's that. We also maybe would take on a neighborhood center. Recall that our comp plan, future land use map, has this concept of a few neighborhood centers around the city, which are really just four way intersections that might have a corner commercial on it and maybe a dance studio with apartments above it or something smaller, much smaller in scale.

We do have one property owner who's really interested in trying to develop a it's a form of sub area plan. It's a center a neighborhood center plan, James Eastman, the Eastman properties that you've heard about. We did docket that. We did bring it forward. We did complete the docket process contrary to what he said on Tuesday night.

Now we're just waiting for us to get through any work on the town center, followed by a centers and corridors study, and really just sort of we want to build some muscle memory as a city around how to do sub area planning. That is really the future of the city, is trying to find ways to appropriately grow with the interests of the community at mind in sub areas. So that's something that is, I think, one of the biggest work plan items we have going forward, is how do we start to plan for sub areas in the city. Traffic is a big part of that, which is why we appreciate some of the knowledge that we have here. The other big item, and we've been watching what the state has been doing with regard to wildland urban interface, is going to be updating the city's tree regulations.

It's a community conversation that's overdue. Windstorms, people want to cut trees down, threats of fire, concerns about fire. We have blight. We've got laminate root rot problems. We've got insect infestations. We've got an aging conifer population that is kind of what's called an even age stand in forestry terms that we need to think about how to manage it. How does that align with the urban forest management plan? We need to understand where our urban forest management plan can be right sized. It's a pretty large document with a lot of implementation strategies, and we don't have the staffing or funding to take those on, so what are our priorities? Those go hand in hand.

Wildland urban interface fire maps and fire risk and hazard, tree rules, urban forest management. That is one topic, I think, that we would like to start to take on. We also have work to do with some of cleanup on our zoning rules. So we did phase one. We or we did round one of our code cleanup. We did round two. We just finished that. The council just passed that this past Tuesday. That included the 3,000 square foot footprint, a whole host of other things. We anticipate a third package coming forward for you all to work on, not a very big one.

We did receive initial direction from the council on Tuesday night to bring forward to you for consideration for evaluation, research, comment, three primary topics. The first one was the concept of adding additional species to the critical areas ordinance for habitats for species of local importance, primarily mammals, bears, mountain lions, which do exist. Our city attorney sent me a photo of a baby mountain lion in her neighborhood that was taken on a game camera, which is interesting. Bobcats, those types of species that are not listed but that are really important here in the community, and how do we work to protect those and account for corridors for them to migrate through the city. That's the first topic.

The second topic is the How

about wildlife corridor? That was brought up a number of times.

That's all part of that, right. Yeah. So we do have wildlife corridor rules in our code, so we want to look at how to refine those to make them most effective. The second category was the we passed, if you recall, with our comprehensive plan and our implementing development regulations, the concept of a quasi judicial rezone, where if you are adjacent to a property of higher intensity, say you're in the R4 and you're adjacent to next to a property that's R6, that you could upzone that property from R4 to R6 through a hearing examiner process. It's not legislative.

It's quasi judicial. And it's something that could be done. The concept there is that there are some parcels in the city that would be appropriate to rezone fairly simply. We didn't do any real rezoning as a city since incorporation, right? So there are some moves that could be made.

However, there was a list of criteria that was recommended through the commission to the council that was recommended to the council. Those criteria were evaluated. There were some adjustments that were made. And what the direction is, is that we would want to consider refining that criteria and potentially reverting it back to the original proposed criteria. For example, should a property that has critical areas on it be allowed to be rezoned?

Should we limit it to properties no smaller than one acre or maybe no bigger than one acre. It's really there's all these criteria. So what that does is it starts to limit the number of parcels that are eligible, and it allows us to sort of wade into that topic kind of carefully. And if we choose over time to want to open it up to more properties, we could easily do so. So that's the next one.

We'll talk more about that one when we come back. And then the third one is one of your favorite topics, is the fee in lieu for inclusionary affordable housing and whether or not the fee is the right size. If you recall correctly, we landed by way of adoption of a fee schedule amendment by resolution in April was it April '25? That it was set at $34.45 a square foot. We also, as a matter of code, landed on that if you are doing a remodel on your house and an expansion, and that expansion is greater than 1,500 square feet so say you have a 2,500 square foot house and you wanted to add 400 square feet because you need to add some additional space for mobility, to age in place, whatever it might be, that you would then be paying the $34.45 on the 400 square feet of the addition.

So that was an additional fee that would stack up, I think it was something like $15,000 or something like that, that would go on top of your permit fees, right? So that's a precursor to this conversation we want to have is we want to look at exemptions and the size of the fee. There are other cities that are adopting this now. I think that one thing to keep in mind with that is that under the Mercer Island Growth Management's Hearings Board case related to affordable housing, one thing that has become abundantly clear is that we are required to plan for, accommodate, remove barriers to, provide incentives for. And now there's this new category that the state is really, really on, which is we need to address funding gaps.

So that is the thing that the Mercer Island case brought forward and they amended their guidance in January in response to that. So the thing that I want to always caution everyone on is that we have really worked hard on what we call a housing ecosystem here in the city, and that each piece of the housing ecosystem plays a role in getting the products that we want, making sure that we have some funding for housing programs. The question I would argue is not so much, should we have the inclusionary affordable housing program? It's not so much, should we have the fee in lieu. It's more what is the setting on the fee in lieu?

What is the setting on the exemptions? And having a conversation of whether we should add a market factor to the fee in lieu and turn the dial back. For example, Everett just adopted one. It's $9 and change a square foot. Newcastle is looking at adopting one. I think it's $18 a square foot. Redmond has one. It's higher than that. We'll bring back what the various cities are doing. But almost there's a whole range of cities that are now adopting these programs in response to state law and how to bring compliance with state law.

So again, we're trying to stay out of the crosshairs of the Department of Commerce. In order to do so, we're trying to keep our program whole, but at the same time, not have it be so burdensome on the community that it results in hardship or a drop in the number of permit applications that we get. So there's this fine line we're trying to walk, which is the conversation we want to have about balance.

So in the I'm sorry.

No, was me. Have more, but yes, go ahead.

I was going to say that in addition to that, we have been told a number of times that the city in 2026 will upgrade or update transportation master plan, back end pedestrian plan, design standards, impact fee that we have been involved and you had a good discussion at the council meeting on a Tuesday. So I'm assuming these will also will be coming back to us in some form or fashion, right?

So that goes back to this is what our hearing examiner, John Galt, calls the hotter mic. The that goes back to the role of the commission. So there is a question mark on whether those items will be brought back to you in my mind. I feel like the transportation master plan, yes, it is part of the comprehensive plan. It is, by definition, in your purview as a commission. The other items, the pet bike plan or the there were some others that you listed are not clearly in your wheelhouse as a commission.

That will depend on the direction from the council. But the impact fee will come back, I'm assuming.

Well, so that's interesting because there's two parts to that. Impact fees are coming back, and we anticipate Did we say April 2 meeting of March? We'll come back and we'll do another review, keeping in mind that the list everyone wants to always talk about the list we find. It's like the lists are the big magnet. But the list will be updated by way of those other projects that

That's exactly why I asked that question.

So That's exactly

how can you bring back in March, I'm talking about the impact fee, but the impact by March, I'm assuming that the transmission asset plan and all the things that they can't see IP, TIP, all that, they're not going to be probably done by March. We're We're

So we're in May in coming come May, I think, we'll have been we're a year overdue and out of compliance with state law, so we have to update our fees. Now what we're focusing on is a formula. We understand that there are inputs that go into it, whether it's the project list, whether it's growth targets, whether it's per household information. These are all factors that are inputs into a formula, And our formula needs to be legally defensible, which then produces a fee. And as a matter of fee, we can choose how much that applies to affordable housing, etcetera, right?

There's high a maximum defensible fee. And then we need to look at, as a matter of policy, how we implement it. And we need to have code that implements it. So the one thing that we're trying to reiterate is that these inputs come from other processes. They come from updates to those plans you talked about.

They come from census information. And when those are updated, we are planning to update our fees every two years going forward, where we simply will reuse, we'll put the new inputs into the formula, and it will give us new fees. And what we're trying to focus on is telling that story that this is not about these project lists right now. This is about the formula. And what we're adopting is a formula. Sure. It will result in a fee. Yes. However, that will very quickly within the next year and a half be updated with the new project lists, the new inputs that will go into the formula. I hope that makes sense.

It's a I'm trying what I'm trying to stress is that you're right, but at the same time, the the those other efforts are not the point of the impact fee effort. It's There's a point as far

as the amount of impact fee, absolutely.

But those will be updated every two years going forward. So when the new list is available, then that will be put into the formula, a new fee will be updated, then the fee schedule will be amended.

David, what I hear you saying is you're looking for policy direction on developing the formula and the exemptions and high low, and the numbers will fall where they fall based on these external.

That's correct.

So the amount of the amount of high low doesn't matter?

Well, high low is what what what is presented is what the consultant told us is for high low is defensible and lines up with our data and our project list and our growth assumption. And what we're saying is that in March or April, when we come back to you, what we're gonna be asking is to run with what we have right now. We've got a we've got the project list that's in there that was adopted in June '24, I think. So it's outdated, but it's the best we have right now.

Question of questionable input went to the impact.

But again,

as I said in my lengthy email, that is the bottom line, the questionable input.

I'm going to call the questions here because we're starting to get into Totally different topics. The topics for a meeting that's going to be coming up.

Point I'm making, Mike, is that that is something that probably we should be kind of looking at a little bit further delay as far as bringing it back.

Yes, as input

for what? The work Impact plan should fee. Yes. That's all I'm saying.

Yes. Okay. Well, makes sense. So we've started to move into our long term calendar. Were there any there aren't any more because you haven't put anything else up on the screen. So we're finished with that part of the business. The last thing that was on the agenda was just long term calendar.

Mhmm. Yeah.

And so we started to talk a little bit about that. I I just

had one question on or one point to make on the previous topic. You mentioned about the trees and, you know, the blight and everything. I know I've heard this conversation in the past about the Samarit City hiring an arborist. Do we have that position? Do we have a person? Is there an open position? Like, what is the plan for that? Because did mention three, four things about trees and all that, which I think an arborist is somebody would be professionally helpful in that. Right? So

Right. There's there's a variety of perspectives on how to best staff and serve that. The city I live in has an on staff arborist, although the arborist is constantly rotating through. That position's vacant, I think, more than it's full. The question, I think, also is about what the need is and what the liability is.

It depends what the purpose is. If the purpose is to review permits and make recommendations on permits, there's a lot of liability that goes along with that. And we have an on call third party arborist that we use for development permits that serves that need. Tree permits are really tricky in general. Community, guess not recent, somewhat recent conversations we've had with the council about tree permitting going back to 'twenty two and 'twenty three, is the direction has always been that tree permits should be fast, free, and easy.

And in order to have tree permits for community members and everyone alike, we've to treat everyone the same, be fast, free, and easy, we don't have any revenue that comes from that, very limited amount of revenue. So we in order for a fast and easy tree permit to be processed, the overhead cost for city staff is about $600 per permit. So we currently charge for that easy permit, what, dollars 100, I think, in order to make it basically free. It's, you know, there's a minimal cost. We offset the cost of that.

In order for us to and that is a minimal amount of staff time. It's enough, right? We review the materials. We don't do site inspections. We don't do tree inspections.

We don't do tree inspections on replanting. It's an honor system. We have a very low rate of error, very low. There are some issues that come up for sure, right? So if we were to add in site inspections, if we were to add in inspections during removal, if we were to add in so if we were to do permit review inspections, where we go out and look at the trees and verify them, if we were to do removal inspections, where we show up when the chainsaws start up and make sure the right trees are coming down, And if we were to do inspections on trees that are replanted after the fact, it's somewhere in the $1,800 range for a tree permit.

So the cost goes up significantly. And the question then is, where does the funding come from for that, given that community members routinely cite that they want fast, free, and easy tree permits, at least for themselves? Right. So that is a real thing that we deal with. So the question about whether we hire an arborist is where does the funding come from, what is the role of the arborist.

There's an insurance profile, risk assessment you'd have to do hiring an arborist because now you're liable if your arborist is saying, Yeah, there isn't a structural problem with that tree and then the tree falls on a house, who's at fault? Right. So then the public takes on that role and that burden of liability. It's a big conversation, and the last few times we've had that conversation, we've landed on that it is not something that first of all, what is the problem statement? If we have a low a low a low error in tree permitting, errors exist. Do agree. If we have a low error in tree permitting, what is the problem we're trying to solve?

Now, not talking about permitting here, but you talked about things like somebody's cutting fir trees have reached their age or whatever. So those kind of assessment to be made, that is something in our forest would basically That's their cup. That's the area of expertise, I would assume, right?

Absolutely. One of the analogies in favor that I like to make is that we are a city of tree farmers, And farmers tend to have outreach agents that come and help them be successful in farming. And if we want our tree farmers to be successful, we should have an outreach agent available to go help them understand things they should be doing so their crop is successful.

Right. Thank you. David, as a solution, kind of follow-up on Mazir's comment. You guys, you have interlocal agreement with the King County, don't you? A number of issues. You I know that you have one striping. They come and strike the city. So Are you talking

about public works items?

Well, interlocal agreement could be only for public works or could be very general.

We we have an interlocal for historic resources. We have an interlocal for

Right.

You know, there's a wide range of

So have you have you considered kind of addressing that issue through in a local basically hiring somebody, an arborist that works for the county, but charges substantially less than hiring somebody based on interlocal agreement. Have you looked at that as a possibility?

Right. So my experience with interlocals is that it's not necessarily cheaper than hiring somebody unless you're only using it very minimally

for be using it on call. You don't have the full time. You have it on call anytime that you need it.

Right.

You have an inspection, you call them and say, okay, you go on on our behalf and you do the inspection and paying for that.

I don't disagree that you would get the agency rate that that agency basically is paying at a loaded employee, right? Know, so that's what they would be paying. But the question about the I think it's a bigger policy question of what is the problem we're trying to solve. And I understand the tree farmer side of it, that the outreach agent to help with tree health, that's an important thing. Know, we have a lot of homeowners who don't understand their trees, and if they understood their trees, then maybe they we would be more successful in getting them to keep them.

Let me tell you why I asked that question. You were at the council meeting Tuesday night. Remember that lady? She was very frustrated about her neighbors is putting the brand new construction building, and then they come and cut number of trees and inspector was there because he was basically

The two twenty third project

So off that's why I asked that question. So apparently, there have been some cases that some trees cut without the permit and without the proper

So like everything, there are layers of an onion involved, and that topic is particularly complex because those trees were located in the city's right of way. The city's right of way exempts tree retention and does not require retention of trees in the right of way. So in the city's tree code, it specifically calls out that trees in city rights of way and public easements are exempt from retention requirements. So that is just a simple misunderstanding about how the city's tree rules apply. Now, the thing that was, I think, at the point of complaint was that, and I've spoken with Ryan extensively over the years and worked with their neighborhood lot on a lot of things.

I think the biggest point of complaint with that was that the property owner, the developer building the house did not get a right of way permit for staging for tree removal and was felling the trees into the right of way without pedestrian protection, traffic control, and those sorts of things. So it wasn't so much that the trees weren't allowed to be removed. It was the manner in which they were removed.

Okay. Thank you. Okay.

So now are there other things on the long term calendar that you want to share? We're going have a meeting in still in two weeks? Or Yes.

So on the nineteenth, we'll be doing an overview of the title 24 updates that we're we're taking on. And then I think, again, it's all a little still up in the air. The next meeting then would be the second meeting in March when we'd be looking to, I think, come come as a public hearing for the impact fees. And if we need to convert it to workshop or extend the public hearing, we could. But looking at wrapping up the pub the impact fee work and sending that onto the council so we can get that adopted.

Then the following meeting, which would be the first meeting in April, right

Yeah.

We would come back to you with code amendments or or the the the the three concepts that I brought forward, right, the the habitat, the fee in lieu, and the rezone criteria. We'd want to have a conversation. The other thing that the council asked was that you have a chance to identify anything that you all think might be something we should take on with our development regulations. So if you have any ideas that are within the range of what we have resources to take on, you know, we would be all ears and happy to talk about that.

Okay. And does that assume that you start working at six and finish up at 08:30 every day?

06:30, yeah. Not 08:30.

06:30, I'm sorry. I haven't made your day longer. You had to drive in, right?

I left my house at 05:30, yep.

Okay. That's a long day. All right, thank you. Any other business? Okay, if not, entertain a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Second. Motion to adjourn, second. All in favor say aye.

Aye. Any

nays? No. Alright, Thank you everyone.