Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. I'm going to call the March 19th, 2026 Sammamish Planning Commission meeting to order. Before calling roll, I want to wish everyone who's marking the end of Ramadan a joyful celebration and an Eid Mubarak. Was I close? Yes. Well, thank you. All right. So first we will do roll call. Hisham Al-Khawad.

I'm here.

John Bachman. Here. And Mike Bresco. Obviously, I am here. Suda Sikar.

I'm here.

Next we will do agenda. So any changes to this evening's agenda? All right. consider the agenda approved by common consent. And the minutes from our February 19th meeting, any changes to those minutes? Okay, seeing none, we'll consider those approved by common consent. And so next on the agenda is our public comment. Three minutes are allotted. And we will be having the public hearing later. So if there are comments specifically to the impact fees related, those will be done during the public hearing.

So anybody interested in making comment?

Okay, Mr. Stickney.

Nice to see a couple council members here.

Hello Planning Commissioners, Paul Stickney, Sammamish. My comment today at this first comment period is about a fairly large topic and then a, you know, discussion of the first three topics on your first agenda item a tad. The really big topic is to integrate into the city comprehensive plan a housing direction of HST+. The H is internal housing needs and external regional, then services and then transportation to add value across the board. And three quick statements. I believe our community character and our social fabric have been eroding and weakening because of residents who want to stay over stages of life and don't have the opportunity to. What do we do about it? We objectively quantify housing need factors, compare consequences of meeting those needs or not, inform residents based on genuine need and consequences, and get their input, then consider setting market rate housing targets in this comp plan to meet alongside affordable housing, regional growth, two different sources of numbers. And the thing that I've been proposing isn't about changing the character of 96% to 97% of the city. It's about enhancing it. It makes our neighborhoods stay relatively the same, yet we can offer different and diverse housing in our centers that isn't based on regional need. It's based on our needs over time in a very small form. footprint and this can be done with less than a third of the traffic and students we've added over the past 25 years in our city And about the topics on your agenda, I went back and heard that meeting, and if I have something wrong, please correct me. But I noticed, you know, Debbie Treen and Kent Treen raised some topics, which are the three that you're seeing here, and the mayor, Josh, said he'd like Planning Commission to look at it. What I didn't hear was any deliberation or votes or discussion by the council. So my take is that you've got a free reign to look at this without being hemmed in by a predetermined policy direction. Take a look at these topics. What do you think are the pros and cons? And have some influence in coming up with a good... impartial, you know, well thought out approach to the topics. Anyway, I will talk during the public hearing comment on the impact fees. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Anybody else?

Mary, please.

Good evening, Planning Commission. My name is Mary Wichter. I've been in this city for 25 years. And on March 17th of 2015, 11 years ago, I started doing my first insane public comments. So here we go. In the agenda packet for tonight, if you search for the word landslide or slopes, those slopes and steep slopes are a portion of landslides. Landslides are part of geologic hazards, and there was a word erosion in there I think before, so maybe that should get looked at, and I won't speak more to that. What I am going to speak to, since there is a fiscal imbalance in our city, I've sent in how you rewind your film. So if you search your emails for rewind, you'll find a rewind which wasn't numbered one, a rewind two, and a rewind three from February 12th. 17th and March 3rd that I sent to the City Commission and also the Planning Commission. It's probably the most succinct stuff on how to get your city so it isn't going to be broken, make it into the black instead of into the red. So the first one that I had sent, and this doesn't do the camera on you guys, on this, this is actually done by Urban 3. They're like a nationwide consultant and also international. And then I did a sprawl thing from Bozeman, Montana, where you can see sprawl, and then a fiscally efficient, and then a villages. And then there's a 10-minute video that's a YouTube that if you click on it, it's the best stuff that I can't even summarize it. You just need to watch it. So if you'll just do rewind and see those. But what I am going to talk about is for... This one, they have Highcroft here, which is a single-family development on R4, which is four dwellings to one. And then this is the townhomes, which are right over there. And then this is Sky Apartments, which is up at the top of the hill in town center. And then this is a hamburger joint. It used to be Jack in the Box down by Safeway, and it's Habit. grill now, I think. But anyway, those single standalone commercials, those tend to be more profitable than big box stores, like when Petco got emptied and stuff like that. And Sammamish isn't looking at having big box stores at all, where a small commercial actually pans out pretty well. So what I wanted to do, I know you can't see these, and even if I print them, they're pretty tiny, so you'll be able to do this online. I wanted to talk a little bit about what you get for your acreage. So how many of you know what an acre looks like? Well, I'm a farm girl, so it's really easy for me. So it is 43,560 square feet. Well, what is that? It's an American football field without the end zones. American football, not soccer. There you go. And that's about 48,000 square feet. And then a quarter acre is about 10,000 to 11,000 square feet, just to give you an idea. And this is just an 11 by 17 paper. So the question is, would you rather have $6,800 per acre in municipal tax, which is single family, or 8,300, which is the hamburger joint, or the townhouses, which are almost 19,000 per acre, or 42,000, almost 43,000 dwellings per acre for way less roads? So I'll try to scan these online, but thank you for the time tonight, and I hope you'll do rewind and watch.

Okay, thank you, Mary. And? Okay, I have one more.

Good evening. I'm Fred Madison. We've lived in Sammamish, or what was Sammamish, what is Sammamish, for 47 years. So we've been around a little bit. I would be very cautious about raising any taxes right now because the state is not going to lower our taxes, our tax base. And if you're familiar with how assessments work, you know that in 2024 there were a good number of sales between January 1 and December 31. Those are the comparables for the reassessment or calculation in 2025 for taxes in 2026. As commercial real estate right now is having a little bit of a headache, and as the values for the commercial comes down, residential will fill in the gap. And so that means it's going to be going up. And then, again, dollars, right? When I did these calculations six months ago, we were looking at a cost of $65,000 per residential unit for permit and mitigation fees only to build one home. Now it's going to be far higher than that. So the costs are going up, up, up, and I would hope that you would limit any increases because I know that there's a lot of owners watching, and it's becoming unsustainable for a lot of people who are living here, like us seniors.

Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you Fred. Anybody online?

We have one pre-registered commenter, Mr. Eastman. I'm going to go ahead and promote you.

James Eastman, Sammamish Watch. Appreciate the opportunity to speak tonight. I saw we're going back into these wildlife corridors and I think to myself, you know, we're 95% built out in our town or in our city. And like, if I'm going to put a corridor in for something, where am I going to put it? You know, where am I going to map it? If it's a transmission line or road. you tend to put them where people already are. So the burden lies on the 5%, like me, who hasn't built anything to put these things in. And then on top of that, Those types of items, the city pays for. They're required to pay for. But if we call the wildlife corridor, the onus is on me to pay for these things. And it's usually paid for by me giving up my property and losing areas to develop. And I don't even know how we gauge that. Where you're comparing to somebody that lives within a corridor is forced to give up his land where the guy that owns land and is not in a corridor. He doesn't have to give up any land. So it's inequitable in a lot of ways. But it is what it is. And we just passed it. And, you know, I keep repeatedly asking the question. What is it the city wants? What does it want for their people? You know, let's let's go do it. But, you know, we continually just come back to what we don't want. And I, you know, I feel like. We were just here and here we are talking about bobcats and bears and mountain lions, and I don't. I don't know, like, necessarily if the science says those belong in Sammamish. And if they do, then I'm like, well, what's the number one enemy? Like, you know, bears survive no problem in Sammamish. They know when it's trash day, they'll come get your trash cans. Bobcats will eat your animals if they need to to survive. And I think probably the number one thing, or the only thing that really could probably kill one of these animals, if it's really in their best interest, is a car. So... Like, are we going to put a levy out there to make sure there's road crossings over East Lake Sammamish Parkway so they get to the lake and eat fish if they need to or cross 202 safely so we have connected landscapes and they're not fragmented for these animals? Like, no, that's all we're hearing about right now is, you know, the price of everything is going up. Like, we wouldn't dare ask the residents to pay for... what these animals really do need if they truly need to live in Sammamish, which is protection from something that could kill them, which would be a car. But to me, it doesn't feel like that's what this is about. I feel like we wanted, you know, that last 5% of land, let's go after and just tie it up all we can and, you know, prevent housing and... And, you know, also drive the cost of housing up even further. So I really am anxious for you guys to look at the science behind this, because if we're looking at this for any reason whatsoever, the only thing I could think of would be to make sure they can safely cross a road like they have in Cleveland, which is a great place. you know, project, a great thing to do, but other than that, I'm not following it. Sorry.

Yeah, you passed your time, so. Okay, I can't see nothing.

Anyways, that's my comments. Thank you. All right, great. Thank you.

Evan, that covers the, okay, great.

All right, so we have new business. We have three items that we're going to be covering under new business. They are informational, and so our job is to, you know, ask questions and identify additional analysis that's needed. It's not to make decisions, provide direction. We'll be doing some of that when we get to the public hearing a little bit later. And I thought I would just mention two things. One is, because sometimes these meetings can get long, and this one with the number of topics could do that. So it is fair game under Robert's rules if anybody thinks that we are repeating points to call the questions. So everybody has permission to do that. And the second thing is, as I was going through the agenda packet, I was thinking that quite often, and the Commission here, we're faced with making trade-offs, or at least thinking about trade-offs. And one of those trade-offs is the rights of a property owner. James Eastman was just talking about that. You know, if there's a wildlife corridor, and it might take some of my ability to use my property away. So kind of property rights of the owner, and then what's good for the community and what the community want in making those trade-offs. And I think, you know, several of these things are dealing with those kinds of trade-offs. And so it might help if we have that kind of a frame. And then also, you know, a lot of times we're looking at one specific item, and I think it's important that we also look more broadly at what are the broader impacts. And we do that pretty often. We try at least. But there are also these, you know, unintended consequences, and so to try to think more holistically. So with that, we have a presentation, and we agreed that we would go through each of these three topics in turn. So, Evan?

Okay, no problem. Um, thank you David Pyle Department of Community Development I'm here to provide a presentation as was described by the chair and then we will after each of the topics We'll stop hopefully and have a little dialogue on it and get some feedback The request comes from the City Council on three possible code changes and The first is to reevaluate the codified criteria for quasi-judicial rezone. The second is to reevaluate the list of exemptions to the city's inclusionary affordable housing program. And the third is to evaluate the addition of certain terrestrial animals to the list of species of local importance. I want to be clear that no action is proposed at this time. The council is seeking feedback. These items will be brought back to the city council at their April 14th meeting in the coming weeks where the council will have additional dialogue on this and determine what to do and how to move forward on these items. The first, the quasi-judicial rezone. This rezone was, this process was added to the city's code as a result of the 2024 comprehensive plan update and implementing development regulations. The 2024 comprehensive plan integrated a new, or created and added a new future land use map that created a future land use designation of neighborhood residential. And within the neighborhood residential, there are a range of zoning classifications that are identified as potentially appropriate, R1, R4, R6, and R8. As part of implementation of that, the comprehensive plan and development regulations identify opportunity for upzoning of properties that are adjacent to areas of higher intensity, which means basically that if you have a property that is in an R1 that is next to an R4, if you meet the criteria for rezoning, for quasi-judicial rezone, which is criteria-driven, that you are eligible to go about completing that rezone, which is a hearing examiner process, to complete that step to upzone it, if you will. This is a tool to increase housing diversity. There are other allowances under middle housing. It is important to note that zoning is becoming less important over time as we see things like HB 1110, which the middle housing bill, which requires multiple units per parcel or per lot, that that ultimately upends some of the traditional or historic zoning that we and many of our fellow cities on the east side have had. The general issue statement is that the existing quasi-judicial rezone criteria that was created in December of 2024 do not effectively consider the impacts on properties encumbered by environmentally critical areas. The discussion items are, should parcels with critical areas be removed from those eligible for quasi-judicial rezones? Or should properties with critical areas still be allowed to be rezoned, but the percentage of area encumbered by critical areas reduced? I do note that this is currently set at 50%. What this means is that if you have a parcel, say you have an R4 parcel that is adjacent to an R6 parcel, and you meet the criteria except that the property is encumbered at say 80% by a stream, a wetland, or a landslide hazard area, or its associated regulatory buffer, that you would not be eligible to rezone. And the concept there is that there are properties in the city that might be adjacent to a zone of higher intensity, but that have an identifiable, delineatable critical area on them that might deter us from wanting to have that be rezoned. It might not be the best site to rezone. At the time we initially proposed the rezone criteria, we identified that any property with a critical area or, excuse me, a wetland stream or landslide hazard area or associated buffer was present on a property that it would not be eligible. The council based on community feedback in December of 2024 went about fine-tuning that criteria and decided that because we had just gone through our critical areas update process that we should apply our critical areas rules which restrict development in areas where there are critical areas and that we should allow properties that are not encumbered by more than 50 percent of a wetland, stream or landslide hazard or associated buffer to go through the rezone process. So the question at hand really is, should we change that percentage? Should we go back to the original criteria which said that a property that is encumbered with a stream, wetland or landslide hazard area or associated buffer not be eligible to be rezoned? This is really where the conversation lies. Example code solutions are to remove the 50% condition or modify the limit of percentage constrained. Other considerations are that we do have updated critical areas rules that account for best available science, which include generation of buffers for wetlands and streams and landslide hazard areas. Another is that we use a net density calculation for determining how many units are allowed. What that means is that in order to calculate the total number of units allowed, you take the net usable area and you multiply it by the R factor, and that tells you the number of units. Now, in the middle housing overlays, the MHO1, which is the R1 middle housing overlay, that R1 factor that would be applied changes to three. if you were in the MHO2, which is the R4, that R4 factor changes to 12. And if you were in the MHO3, which is the R6 and the R8, that R factor changes to 18. So you can see that under middle housing, density can go up significantly. However, the units that are allowed under the MHO overlay, those R factors are related to middle housing, which includes accessory dwelling units, cottages, duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, stacked flats, and courtyard apartments. That is not allowed for the purpose of single-family development. So it's a different form of development that applies. With that, turn it back over to the Chair and the Commission and see what questions we might have or dialogue we might have.

Okay. Who would like to go first?

Go ahead, John. I'll just say first, this stuff is complicated. And as we've seen with many of the things we've done with the 2024 comp plan, there have been unintended consequences that we just didn't figure out at the beginning. This might be one of them. I guess... So, David, thank you for particularly mentioning the overlay stuff. So if... My question would be, you have a large enough lot that you have some wetlands along one edge. You would not be able to up zone an R1 to R4, even though there's plenty of room to build two or three single family homes. under our current criteria for critical areas. So that could have, to me, that could have an unintended consequence of restricting that land use where we didn't intend it. Or maybe that's what council was intending. I'm not sure. So I think just on the surface, because I really don't have enough knowledge, it seems like the 50%, the way it is right now, is a reasonable limit. I mean, staff studied that, obviously. But to set it to zero, I think there's just too many unknowns. That's just my first blush. gut feeling. I don't have anything else to back it up.

Next. Anybody want to jump into the fray? I'll go next.

I had the same thought as John about why don't we just follow the critical areas rule and make it the same as everyone else because My mind can be thinking about one lot with one critical area, but I'm sure if we start walking around, we will find there are many different combinations of these. And we don't want to end up, like John said, restricting someone because there's a stream at the edge of the property, and they have a big property that can allow more houses to be built. because we applied the rule and it's the intended consequence.

May I? I do want to highlight one thing, and I think this is worth noting, is that the way the rule is currently set up, the criteria which is listed here, it's highlighted in yellow, is it specifically calls out wetlands, streams, landslide hazard areas, and associated buffers. And we do have other critical areas beyond those. We have critical aquifer recharge areas. We have erosion hazard areas. We have habitat areas. And the challenge is that those areas, the wetlands, streams, and landslide hazard areas, specifically do not allow development in those areas. They are set aside. And they are easy to delineate. They're easy to identify. And they are easy to add buffers to. And you can locate those on the ground very easily. The other critical areas tend to be more challenging to identify. Critical aquifer recharge areas, we have a map. They're They don't mean you can't develop. It just means that there are certain things you have to do on the surface in order to ensure that the recharge area is being managed properly. Erosion hazard areas, that really relates to ground disturbance, seasonality of construction, not wanting the soil to unravel and end up in the lake. um those are what's really the premise behind erosion hazard areas habitat areas are i think often really challenging and misunderstood in my experience working with habitat regulations in other cities where where we had challenges related to development and habitat, the science behind habitat is really focused on features in the landscape as opposed to a delineated area like a wetland or a stream. And it looks at relationships in the landscape between aquatic resources, forage, nesting, different life cycle needs of species. So it is inherently hard because of the list of species and the range of versatility in the species needs to include habitat in this type of criteria here. So I wanted to highlight that because there is some community conversation that I've heard about this and wanting to make sure that you have the opportunity to hear that and understand that additional layer or wrinkle in this whole thing or challenge, I guess. And as you talk about it, understand that we are currently only basing this on wetlands, streams, landslide hazards, and associated buffers. The other critical areas are not included as part of this criteria, just to be clear.

Thank you. When I said my comment, my goal is, it goes back to we are trying to provide more housing. And we are down to the 5% of land. And I hate to restrict that leftover area because of a rule. Because we can go and spend more time out there and study it more. If there's a way to open it, to allow more houses, that's the end goal. Thank you.

My understanding is that council, when they discuss this and ask us to look into it, they're looking at a potential policy change. So when we're looking at the rezoning, I see possibly there are three reasons for that. One is for environmental protection. The second would be growth management. And the third would be neighborhood compatibility. David, can you elaborate on it? Do you know about it? The discussion that you had with the council or your understanding, which one of these more kind of council is leaning towards?

I think it depends member by member of the council. There's two of them here, you could ask them. And I think my understanding is that this primarily came from environmental concern. However, as was stated, We do have recently updated critical areas rules that meet best available science, and as I compare them across jurisdictions on the east side, ours are fairly robust compared to other cities. We are doing a good job managing our critical areas. Now, the question is, are there other environmental impacts that come from that? I know that the one that stood out that I've heard about is habitat and that why is criteria C not including habitat? And my explanation for that is because habitat is highly variable, very hard to delineate, and we would have a really hard time identifying whether or not a property is encumbered in a way that might diminish developable area on it based on habitat. That is a big challenge for us. What we don't want is a criteria that is subjective, variable, and really possibly misunderstood. That is what typically results in two, three, four day hearings at the hearing examiner where nobody's happy. So we want, from my perspective, keeping the criteria as objective and as straightforward as possible so that you can very easily understand what is required for that to happen is very desirable. Now, some might want to do it differently. I understand that. I'm here to implement whatever the city tells me to implement. I am merely just trying to outline the different sides to it. With regard to the other topics that you raised, neighborhood compatibility, residential... residential to residential. There is really not an issue, in my opinion, with that. We are already told by HB 1110, the legislature, and through implementation of that, that middle housing is to be considered the same as single family, and that there really is not a difference with regard to neighborhood compatibility. If you're talking about rezoning it is not a change in use. It is simply a change in density There is no change in use happening with regard to the Growth Management Act I would say that by restricting, similar to comments we heard, that by restricting based on critical areas that are already regulated, that we are veering out of direction given by the Growth Management Act to allow for diverse and affordable housing types, to allow for housing density to develop within the urban growth area, and to allow for the city to develop. However, I understand that community vision and community interest also shapes that, and that having a keeping that interest in mind might want you to be maybe a little more restrictive about which properties are allowed to be rezoned and which ones aren't.

Next question. What is the relationship between rezoning and middle house feasibility?

Well, I think when we- Is it going to be adversely impacted? Is it going to be going parallel side by side or how is- It will be forwarding middle housing feasibility.

How many parcels do you think that would be affected by the rezoning?

Right. So this question was asked by council members, and we are in the process of working with our mapping consultant, our GIS consultant, Flow Analytics, and we are hopeful to have a map that identifies parcels that are eligible under today's criteria and parcels that are eligible if you were to make it zero. and parcels that would be eligible if you were to make it 100%. So, we are looking at that now. Again, that would be an estimate. We cannot map this that precisely due to a lot of unknown and variable factors.

As Chair indicated in the beginning, in the introduction, and he brought up the issue of trade-off. Would it be possible to go on with the list of the trade-off pluses or minuses for each option? That would be a very useful tool.

Yeah, I don't think that would be that hard to do, right? So I think we could look at that.

And you can see side by side the advantages and the disadvantages of each option.

Right. No, that's great feedback, and I appreciate the way you started the meeting with that, so yeah.

Any others?

I do have questions, but I don't know how to formulate it properly.

Do you want to just throw them out?

It's a huge... It's parcel by parcel, right? Because you don't know... person or zero percent it's like where's the critical area is it like at the end of the parcel and then like i want to have adu for my mom and dad and i can't do that but then at the same note it's a critical area you want to protect it so i'm torn sorry i'm brainstorming and talking so you did mention that Those landslide areas, the wetland streams, they cannot rezone those if you have them.

well today if you have them and not more than 50 percent of your property is locked down or encumbered by those areas and you're meeting the standard lot size for the district in which you're proposing to zone to which is listed there as well then you 50 percent of the

Let's say I have a one acre and then half acre is critical area, right? So 50% of one acre that I can rezone or just the 50% that's left?

50% of the total lot area. So if you had an acre in the R1, and you were, let's just for example, and you were proposing to rezone to R4, and you had half of your property that was encumbered, so 21, 500, whatever, right?

Right, yeah, 44, yeah.

Yeah. 22, yeah. Yeah. then you would be able to rezone because you're meeting the standard lot size for the R4 district and you're not more than 50% encumbered by critical areas. So you would be eligible to rezone. However, if 75% of your property was encumbered by wetland, stream, slope, or combination thereof, because you could have any of those combinations, you would not be eligible to rezone. Okay. So the trade-offs are here is that on the one hand, if you decided that it'd be best to not restrict it based on presence of critical areas, then our critical areas rules would be what would apply. And even if you rezoned, you still would not be able to build in a wetland or a stream or a slope or its buffer. The habitat rules would still apply as they're written. The erosion hazard area would apply as written, and the critical aquifer recharge area would apply as written. However, there would be some additional density that would be allowed in the location that was buildable. that so long as it met the zoning controls and the critical areas rules, you would then be allowed to develop at that density. If you'd put it to the other side and you said if you had any critical area on your property, excuse me, any wetland stream, geologic hazard area, or associated buffer on your property, any at all, 1% of the property and you were not eligible to rezone, then you would stay at the same density that you have today. The critical areas would still apply. However, the density of the housing that is developed on the property would be limited to what that zoning was today. because you're not eligible to move up to the next higher zoning level. I think that the couple ways to look at this, I'm just talking about pros and cons, is on the one hand, we're just starting this process. We have a new future land use map. We've got this broader land use allowance within the neighborhood residential. And that will allow for a variety. You know, there are a bundle of properties that are going to be eligible. We're going to map that. We're going to show you where those are located and how many there are roughly. but understanding that because we're just starting this process, there are some parcels in the city, and this is just one way to look at it, there are some parcels that really are ripe for rezoning. They really should be rezoned. And you'll know those when you see them. They're flat, they're near a sewer, they're near an arterial, they have the right infrastructure. So those you might consider should be rezoned, right? And I think the one way to look at this is that We might wanna, we could nudge into it gently. We could start rezoning using our quasi-judicial rezone process gently, and we could limit it, and we could decide to turn the dial on the percentage over time if we find that we don't have adequate land to meet our growth targets and to build to meet our housing needs. That's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is is that most of the city parcels that are buildable are built And that we might need to rezone some of those parcels or some of the unbuilt parcels to make them really deliver the housing that we think is a community that we need. And that if that is our priority, then we shouldn't restrict based on whether there are critical areas there or not, because we have critical areas rules that apply. It really depends on the policy priority. And I think what the council was trying to do in December of 24 is to split the difference. and say well we understand that rezoning is important and we're going to need some additional um you know behind our housing to get some housing built but at the same time we want to be cautious and we don't want to be rezoning a property that is 100 encumbered with critical areas so they they tried to set the balance right in the middle and that's kind of why they landed there but it does have an impact though like for example

If you have one acre, half of it is landslide hazard area. You're like, okay, you can build whatever, like four houses on the other side, right? That will have an impact and it changes the landslide. Totally. In India, like they used to just give, yeah, sure, yeah, just go build, you know. We've seen like buildings collapsing. So it has an impact on it. So that's why it's by each parcel you have to define.

So to be sure that you would be restricted from building in the landslide hazard area plus a 50-foot buffer off of that.

So it will have an impact.

Right because of drainage because of other things.

Yes, and that is part of the the building design consideration that goes into a project Thank you So you captured some of what I was gonna talk about but putting it in far more simplistic terms for my brain is I Given the scope and scale of our critical areas ordinance, a geotech report has to be done even if you're beyond the 50-foot buffer. So if a landowner wants to go through the rezone process, geotech reports biological assessments, whatever's needed for them to go through the process and actually build something. Do we really care if a encumbered lot has 50%, 25%, 1%? If they want to go to R4, they're restricted by what our code says they can possibly build there. And again reiterating from my earlier point or you're at 48% Well, you only get two houses instead of four But that's still a benefit in terms of our housing stock a benefit to the property owner And it's adjacent to other residential uses so I I just don't see a great value to the community in going to zero.

Two questions. David, you have been long enough with the city. Can you give us a history of number of cases that you had to deal with it in the last five years? How many cases, how many requests has been made? Rezoning?

Right. So this was just added in December of 2024 as a result of our comprehensive plan. So you have never had any requests? We have had some. I believe we have three or four in process in the year and a half that we've had these rules on the books. We had one that was just approved by the hearing examiner, and there was quite a bit of neighbor testimony as part of that hearing related to that site. That site is known as the iRide property, and it has a stream in the lower corner of it with a stream buffer on it. However, it was not more than 50% of the property. I believe it also has a slope in the general area of the stream and stream buffers. So that kind of double counted as one, right? And the challenge there was that that is a forested property that is a beautiful remnant forest tract. And although the balance of the property is not a wetland stream or landslide hazard or associated buffer, that there was community concern about it serving as a patch of habitat in a larger habitat connection across the city. And if you look at an aerial photograph, I can see and understand what they're saying, and I'm not trying to refute or debate that part of it. However, That is something that is very hard to delineate in terms of what exactly does it mean and how it diminishes the capacity to develop. That will be taken up as part of the development proposal following the critical areas rules. And it is possible that... if there is habitat there and the habitat professionals do their studies, that the carrying capacity of that site will be significantly diminished as a result of that. It just depends on how the rules apply to that property. So that's one of them. We have another one that is further and gets down more in the the central east part of the city that is actually three neighbors side by side are doing it themselves most of these are that we see are the interest comes in the community that were the inquiries that we've had about this rezone process has come from existing property owners that want to do it themselves We have a couple that are developers that are doing them under contract. We have one just up the hill here on 4th, just to the west of Brownstone's west development, where there's a whole new road and roundabouts put in and that is proposed to be rezoned to R4. where it currently is zoned as R1. So that one is another example. But by and large, we have not had a huge number of proposals or requests or even inquiries about this process.

The other question is that I'm sure that a lot of cities, particularly on the east side, they're dealing with it and struggling with this. Have you had any contact with them to see how they propose as far as addressing this issue?

Right. So every city is different in how its comprehensive plan accounts for future land use map, how and how its process, what its processes are for rezones. We have two types of processes for rezone. I won't burden you with that out of efficiency for time. But other cities do have similar types of rezone process as to what we have. And they, you know, It's not something in my experience that is used so frequently that it becomes a huge burden in a community. I think where it is an issue is where we If we didn't have water and sewer infrastructure or if you had difficulty with stormwater or if you had difficulty with transportation services and our process is designed so that you go through the rezone you have to show you have water and sewer or that you are one of the other criteria is the subject parcel has sufficient water and sewer capacity for development allowed under the proposed zoning district as demonstrated by service levels specified in water and sewer plans. So if you can show in these, in the Spanish Plateau Water and Sewer District water and sewer comprehensive plans that your site is planned to be provided with service adequate to meet the needs of the development, then, then that is a primary consideration. Um, now when you come in with the development, You ultimately will have to do a development extension agreement and get all the water and sewer availability sorted out. And you would also have to go through the traffic concurrency process with the city. And if there was not adequate traffic capacity, then your proposed development could be denied. um so a lot of this really is setting up an allowance for a a slightly higher density with a similar use the same use residential it just is at a different density um i want to also highlight and i'm i know i'm probably taking too much time here so i apologize there's a lot of a lot of background to this no no no we just i just want i don't want us to go too late so um The other thing to keep in mind is that we tried, as part of the design of our middle housing rules, our MHO1, to mitigate against desire to rezone from R1 to R4 with cottage allowances. So if you look at the MHO1, and if you recall when we were working on this, and there was a lot of work we were doing in the summer and fall of 24, what we did was we allow for... unlimited density of cottages in the R1. That doesn't mean you can build unlimited cottages. It just means that other zoning controls ultimately restrict. So you're allowed 40% hardscape, and you could build single family homes at R1 with 40% hardscape, or you could build as many cottages as you could fit in that 40% allowed hardscape. What it does is it promotes efficiency in design for designers. And we think that there is an argument to be made that you could build cottages instead of rezoning to R4, and you could build as many cottages as you could fit in that 40% hardscape, and it might be an easier, better product in the city than rezoning to R4. Now, it depends on what they're building. They could be building duplexes and triplexes, and if they're doing that, you can't do that under the cottage allowance in the R1.

And my last question about the, can you tell us a little bit about state guidelines, mandates that we're supposed to follow?

So the state mandate is regarding our, well, I mean, think about it. We have a growth target, and we have to show that we have enough capacity for our growth target. We do have enough capacity. That's not a question. The next one is our affordable housing allocation, which is not a growth target, and it's different than our growth target. Remember that. And we have to show that we have capacity for our housing allocation in the form of low-rise and mid-rise building types. That's not what's going on here. This is middle housing and single family. So that's not really at play here. The next requirement is that we are allowing for, excuse me, we're allowing for under the ADU bill, ADUs, we do that. That's not really at issue here. That's not something we're dealing with. The next one is that we are allowing for middle housing under the middle housing bill, HB 1110. and we allow for middle housing, this doesn't change that. I don't think we would be found to be in compliance or out of compliance, regardless of whether we change the 50% one way or another. Ultimately, what this has to do with is... financial feasibility, land economics, and trying to find a way to make middle housing and smaller units and those types of things more feasible in the community because you're taking a property that might have only allowed one dwelling unit per acre for single family or three middle housing units and turning it into a property that would allow for four dwelling units per acre, single family, or 12 middle housing units, and the economics of that are significantly different. And it might make a developer who has to, and again, I know some people disagree with this, but they have to show that it's financially feasible for them to build something and for them to build it. We're not building housing. We don't build it. The developer builds it. and a developer won't build it if it's not financially feasible. So given land economics as a big factor, another part of it is, is that, and I'm taking too long, I'm sorry, this is so complex. Another factor that's layered into it is the affordable housing requirements. Now that goes back to our, our affordable housing require, our, our HB 1220 affordable housing allocation. But we have what I call, and you're going to hear more about this in the next topic, hopefully we'll get to it soon, which is what I call our housing ecosystem. All of this is intertwined, and all of this is designed to help us get to smaller market rate units that might be more market affordable. And it is also designed for a portion of the housing that is being built to be built at a certain AMI, and also possibly, or that there is a financial contribution towards affordable housing in the city, which can then go towards us building low-rise and mid-rise development to meet the deeper level of affordability that we are required to provide for. It is, as I described, a housing ecosystem, and it is entirely intertwined.

which makes it complicated. I have a couple of questions. And some of these are yes or no. Earlier, you'd mentioned about whether a property could be rezoned or not and if there was the encumbrances even if there's some issues with the encumbrances you can go and have a docket request for a rezone so there's there's at least two approaches for rezoning one would be this quasi-judicial and then the other would be through a docket request which has a long timeframe associated with it and complexity and costs and all of that. So making changes here doesn't necessarily say thou shalt not ever be able to rezone, right?

That is correct. And one of the approaches we had and the objectives here was to make this accessible to the average property owner in the city.

So then the other piece that you've mentioned, and so I think this might be something we kind of document a little bit more, or maybe it's been sufficient what's been mentioned, but the encumbrance includes the buffer, so you talk about the 50 feet and all, which can take, you know, I just have this stream near my property, but then there's also the buffer, right? And so the question becomes, I'd mentioned earlier, the property rights, the owner rights versus protecting, in this case, the environment and the desire of the community to keep the Sammamish strong from an environmental standpoint. So the countervailing piece to this, I think, and it would be helpful maybe to have a little bit more documentation sort of comparison, is all of the rules, and you mentioned them briefly, that would require at the point where I'm starting to put my permitting together and so forth, all of the requirements that would further restrict impact to these encumbered areas, if that makes sense. Because as I'm kind of understanding it, there's a few protections that we have. And one is whether we're going to allow the quasi-judicial rezone process and obviously the 50% or 0% or whatever, right? But then there's also all the development regulations. the requirements which my understanding and maybe we could clarify this a little bit more sammamish is pretty darn strict compared to most communities and having relatives that live in texas they're like build on you know so it's so different so i think it would be helpful to understand really what the impact will be on the environment and the protection we'd love to have for the environment when we consider not just that 50% or 0%, but also to at least some degree have a kind of a summary of the other protections, I'll call it, that are built into the development regulations. And then the last thing I'll just mention, kind of food for thought, because it is that complexity. We actually had two of our public speakers today talk about essentially taxes. And all of us know that the city has some real challenges with fiscal sustainability or stewardship. And if we fully restrict development, we also restrict the capability to have some additional revenue coming in. I know that adds in a whole other layer of complexity. But at least for me, I think it does come down to how we balance out protecting the environment with property rights, property owner rights. And one way to help sort that through in my mind is recognizing all of the other development regulations that will help to protect these encumbered areas.

One more thing. Mike, you brought it up, so I want to ask the questions. Mike asked you that if somebody wants to go through this, he has two options. He or she has two options. Either go through this rezoning or dock it. If somebody goes through rezoning and get no answer denied, can he or she go through the docket process?

Yeah, they could. Okay. I think that was part of the point. Right. Yeah.

So the follow-up question is that, are there different guidelines applies under the docket guidelines that was not at that time, was not a reason for denial?

Absolutely. One is a legislative process and one is a quasi-judicial process. So the process right away is fundamentally different. Quasi-judicial is typically criteria-based. You meet the criteria, you're approved. Legislative is more legislative, that there's more dialogue. It's up to the council. It's at the discretion of the council.

But it is possible, right?

We rezoned the Santoni property in the town center a few years ago. And you're familiar with that, hopefully. That was quite a process. One of the challenges with that is, and talk to the Santonis about their experience, is it's not accessible to the typical property owner. So one thing we were trying to do here is to... And we're starting to see some property owners, not a lot, but a few... sammamish longtime sammamish resident short-term sammamish resident that is a property owner in the city right um who is able to use this process and they can be an applicant they can fill out the paperwork they don't need to hire a you know 100 000 worth of consultants to figure it out so that was part of it was we wanted it to be accessible to the community i have one other thing i

meant to mention, but you I think you were copied on the letter from Samuel wrote about how to pronounce his name correctly. Very well researched, very thoughtful. And so I think when we come back, or maybe when you share with the council, that addressing some of the points that that, you know, Samuel made would be helpful as well. You know, was he spot on? And, you know, it's all this stuff make perfect sense over some things that might have been missed.

And, yeah, we work a lot with him. He wears multiple different hats. Keep in mind that he is also an applicant for a rezone.

Somehow that didn't surprise me. But still, you know, they were well-researched.

Oh, yes, I'm not trying to diminish his comments. I just want to note that, you know, one of the hats he wears is a resident, one of the hats is property owner, one of the hats is attorney. We work really well with him. I really appreciate the clarity in his comments.

It was super helpful, helped me ask a question or two. So, all right, we should move on to the next topic.

There's more. The next item is regarding exemptions or exceptions from the City's Inclusionary Affordable Housing Program. The Inclusionary Affordable Housing Program was added as part of the Comprehensive Plan Update in implementing development regulations in December of 2024. It was added to the city's development regulations. Um, it requires 10% of all new housing be affordable at 80% AMI. Um, it offers alternative methods of compliance there for, for fractional units. It requires that a fee in lieu be paid. Um, and it excludes units that are under 1,500 square feet. So if you design your development, and that does not include garages, if you design your development to build 1,500 square, which is also where our cottages are defined as, if you're building a development of cottages at 1,500 square feet, you're not required to to participate in the inclusionary affordable housing requirement. Again, that's deliberate. That's part of our housing ecosystem, and it's all intertwined. The issue is that the fee in lieu is creating a barrier for those looking to modify or add to their existing homes to allow them to age in place. Another issue that we've come across recently is we've had homes that were destroyed by act of nature where those homeowners are wanting to rebuild and as part of the rebuild to expand, take that opportunity to expand their home. Maybe it was a smaller home and they want to add some area to meet their needs. and they are finding that they will have to pay the fee in lieu for the additional square footage that they're adding which in that point in time when they're spending a lot of money rebuilding their house and they've been out of a house and they're really trying to recover from that disaster that is something that they're they're seeing as really a penalty to them um So the question is whether units being rebuilt, renovated, remodeled, or enlarged should be exempt from the affordable housing fee and lieu, and whether they should be exempt in all scenarios or just in certain instances. We have an example code solution that clarifies that exemptions for units being rebuilt, renovated, remodeled, or enlarged are exempt. Just other considerations, the fee is set by the city's fee resolution at $34.45 per square foot. The fee is calculated on total floor area and does not include garages or other unfinished non-living space. And one that's also important is the fee is paid at occupancy or for sale of property, not at the point of permit issuance. um so that we do allow that deferral so for builders they're able to defer it and then typically it's rolled into uh escrow at the point of closing when the home is sold um so it's kind of accounted for that way so with that i'll turn it back over to the chair see what questions you might have okay yeah and i'll turn it over to the commissioners which questions do you have i can start i'm sure

You know, it's my favorite topic. Again, a question I asked him before. Can someone show me using numbers, the cities that use this, how much they benefited? I think we are penalizing the larger community, thinking we're making money that we can use to build affordable houses, but actually we are not. And the couple that we exchanged the email about, they're being penalized. So is there anyone who can show me numbers, the benefit that the cities that use this, how were they able to put it in use to make housing affordable?

so this is a fairly new program that many cities are adopting and it comes from our requirement under house bill 1220 to account for our affordable housing allocation and we are required to plan for accommodate remove barriers to incentivize and that used to be what we understood the requirements to be But there's a newer requirement that has come out of some case law with the Growth Management's Hearings Board that states that we are required to address the funding gap related to delivering deep affordable housing. So the alternatives that the city has is the city can create a line item in its budget and can allocate funding from its budget towards affordable housing. It's one option. We do that at a very low level right now with our ARCH. $100,000 or $180,000, I guess I have to think about the other added amount there, towards the ARCH Housing Trust Fund. Or a city can identify ways to at an inclusionary housing requirement, which will result in deep affordable housing being built, and that can include in LUFI. So as part of the housing ecosystem concept here, and the way land economics work as we understand it from ARCH, and if we need ARCH to come explain this at a later date, we can invite them back as they are largely our advisors on this, is that the cost per square foot of housing Luxury single large single-family homes drives up the land cost to a point where it is infeasible to build affordable or even market affordable housing so long as the market is pushing builders to build large luxury homes in order to maximize profit, it will continue to drive up land costs and it will present a barrier to building any moderate or deeper affordable housing. The concept here is that this drives, because of where the exemption is set and because of the types of housing and densities that we allow through middle housing, is what it does is it disrupts land economics and it drives builders to building 1,500 square foot buildings as more of a market affordable type building. or it requires that a builder pay into an inclusionary affordable housing requirement for fractional units, or it requires that builders build 80% AMI, 10% of the units at 80% AMI. The idea behind all of this is that if they're building the units, then they're delivering affordable units at a moderate income. if they're paying the fee, which they could also choose to do instead of building the units, they could pay the fee, that they are doing that, that they are funding the deep affordable units, which allows the city to then have a housing fund where we can then partner with not-for-profit builders with a local share that then makes us attractive as a grant recipient through the Arch Housing Trust Fund and other housing philanthropists and that we then can see how funding is stacked to a point where a project is successful.

Can can we approach this topic in two branches. Can we focus for a moment about individuals building homes for themselves, and then we come back and talk about developers? Because I think the moment we start talking about both of them the same way, we are causing unintended consequences.

So I don't disagree. However, most of the construction activity in the city is from builders that are building odd spec homes.

Can we resolve the individuals first and we come back to...

So respectfully, I don't think you can pry those apart because you cannot apply a different rule to somebody who's building a home for themself versus somebody who's building a home as spec or as a builder for sale.

the i don't want to keep going on but when i was saying to you can someone show me in num using numbers my mind is similar to colleges when they say we offer 95 of our students scholarships but they offered the 95 of them 500 scholarships when they are paying 90 000 in tuition fee This is similar to that. We are taking the money from individuals, and we're thinking we're gonna use it to help others, but I don't think it's gonna help anyone.

And, you know, we, this is a program that we are building from the ground up. We just started it. In fact, we didn't actually adopt the fee until the middle of last year. And we have limited amount of funds collected because it is collected at the point of occupancy or for sale of the property. I would I would say that the challenge is is you've seen articles in the Seattle Times and I'm not trying to you know gloom and doom threat you know this is gonna happen but we do have a complete housing program right now. If we were to remove the inclusionary affordable housing requirement I would not recommend that. That is one of the things that is keeping us out of the crosshairs of the Department of Commerce under the Housing Accountability Act. Fine tuning it, I think, is really where the conversation should be. I think if we lost our inclusionary affordable housing requirement, we would very quickly be contacted by Commerce that they would like to audit our housing element and our development regulations. So that is the cautionary tale because there are multiple cities around us that are currently being audited. So I would say that as much as we could focus on fine-tuning the program and understanding how it might apply to really small actions like units being rebuilt, renovated, remodeled, would be one place to start. If you were to throw out that maybe a vacant lot with a new single one unit going up should be exempt, I think that's about the end of the threshold of where that tolerance would be. And that's from my perspective, and we could bring in others from ARCH or others to help guide us on this, but I'm seeing a lot of time and resources being spent by cities trying to address the state HP 1220 requirements and Commerce's interpretations of those. And Commerce has free rein under the Housing Accountability Act that was recently passed to call cities to be audited at any time they see fit.

I wanna follow up with what Hisham started talking about, and you said absolutely no. And Hisham's question was that can we separate the developer initiative housing proposal versus owner? If there is no change in the ownership, why can't we separate them?

Because there could immediately be tomorrow. I have a lot of experience with that here in the city, Individuals who I don't need to name names But there are some people in the city who have who buy properties and who always say it's gonna be their house they're gonna live in and they always go through the process and and Sorry, I'm gonna say it beat us up really badly about the permit process. I just want to live in this house Why are you treating me like this? I just want to live in it and then they immediately turn around and sell it the minute they finish it Yeah, but that is the abuse of the system, but is it illegal? It's not illegal, but what I would say is that it is, it makes it very hard to apply for city staff.

Can I suggest that we focus a little more closely on the question before us, which was should residential home remodels, additions or reconstructions of any type be exempt rather than the broader No, this is related. I disagree. No, it is not. It is related. Well, they're certainly related, but the question before us as sent down by the Council was a narrower question. That's just my suggestion in terms of our conversation.

And to be sure, there were different voices on the council. There was not a unanimous direction to do something specifically. There were different voices that seemed to all want a little bit of a different approach to this. This is where we tried to triangulate between those voices, and this is what we heard. If you talk to some council members, they don't think that this was even directed to be sent to the Planning Commission. If you listen to the tape, and we've watched the tape multiple times, that we think this is really where the conversation landed in the triangulation of all the different comments and interests.

So going to the question that's on the paper, I guess I do agree that it's probably a good idea to exempt remodels, additions, or reconstructions. The bigger question for me is so that those exemptions are not used to game the system, that a remodel is knocking down three walls, leaving one standing to call it a remodel, and increasing the footprint by, double or triple. So I don't know how you go about that. But in concept, I think the idea of a remodel addition or particularly reconstruction from fire disaster exemption would be a fine idea.

All right, I have a couple comments here. So I actually did an informal poll of residents. Very unscientific. And guess what? They're on both sides of the spectrum. Because one school of thought was we have a real affordability crisis everywhere in the city. And by inhibiting somebody to enlarge a house, by exempting them from these fee and lieu, if that makes sense, they would be less likely to enlarge. And that way you keep smaller housing stock and less expensive housing stock. There's a couple of steps there. And the other was, it's their property. To your point, why would you tax them for that, right? And it was pretty evenly split and kind of pretty strongly stated on both sides. So that was interesting. So one thing that we haven't mentioned, these are kinds of things, David, you pop up all the time and know because There are places not that far from here, over Lake Erie would be one, where people are buying up small homes, like we have some of them here, and all of a sudden this big old house gets put up. And the neighbors hate it, but it's allowed. And of course that raises the cost, the price of the housing stock and the future housing stock. For where I get to on this, and I think I'll echo Hisham, even if I want to do an enlargement and I meet all of the requirements of all of the other building regulations that we have, I'm the property owner. I should not be charged for that. And I get, and believe me, I'm very much supportive of wanting to see some lower income housing. I think that kind of diversity brings richness and longevity, strength to the community. If we really needed to help fund and close the gap between what can be built and the funds needed for lower income, then rather than burden the small number of people that are going to do an enlargement, figure out a way to burden everybody a little bit. And I know we don't want taxes. I really don't. But that's the trade-off. I see it. In this case, I come down on the side of the property owner's rights to be able to do what they want to. They are not a developer. They don't have the capability of... uh building units in lieu of the fee in lieu so for what that's worth um so and i'm sure there's like i said i pulled people and it's everywhere but that's kind of how i i sorted through it back to what

we were talking about earlier that there will always be people who will abuse the system that they will choose to do the wrong thing like whoever you are dealing with i'm not saying they're doing the wrong thing you said they're following the rule but it's There will always be those people, but we cannot penalize the entire community because of the few who abuse the system or choose to do the wrong thing. I truly do not agree with that logic.

I'm just thinking about it from... Complex, you know a lot of levels. I don't agree or disagree. I'm just trying to highlight the pros and cons You know, it's been told to me multiple times in my life earlier. You can't control the world. So, you know, I just Using that mantra, you know can't control the world so

David, can you bring the ADU issue into this? Would that apply if somebody is doing remodeling, but then the intention is to create an ADU within this property?

Yeah, it wouldn't apply because it is less than 1,500 square feet. So the 1,500 square foot exemption threshold would kick in. I think another thing to think about is, as part of our housing ecosystem, one of the things that we hear from residents is that they can't age in place in their home because it wasn't designed to age in place. The kids left. The kids can't move back in. They don't have separate units. They can't rent part of the property. They have a large single-family home. One of the intentions behind this when we were designing it was to try to drive designers and builders and... property owners to building housing stock that is more adaptable. If you wanted to build a 4,000 square foot home and you wanted to build it in a way that included two 1,500 square foot units and 1,000 square foot unit that were built into it that all worked today together as a single unit, but that had, and we see most of those large homes have two kitchens in them these days anyway. So this rule was also designed to drive homes to be more forward compatible with future lifecycle needs. And the idea behind it was is that you could get out of paying the inclusionary affordable housing fee if you were designing your house to be adaptable to your future needs. And also, if you were to sell it, you could later in your life rent out one of the units because it's already built to have that additional unit or two additional units in it. And that was one of the benefits of really trying to drive builders and designers to that. Now, I also understand the other side of it is, well, what does the property owner want to do? How do they want to design their home? It's their home, and I understand that. So we were trying to achieve a lot of multiple objectives with our housing ecosystem through all these different tools and how they interplay with each other.

One more question, David. Can you remind us how many cases in a typical year you have people coming for remodeling?

Currently, we're seeing more remodeling than anything else. It really depends on the economy.

Is that 10? Is that 20? Is that 200?

I don't know offhand. I could look it up, though. That's a good question. It's way more than 20. There's hundreds of remodels.

Do you see any trend more and more every year?

Well, right now, because of interest rates, we're in a remodel. We're in just remodels, not additions. The additions tend to cost more, and we tend to see more additions when rates go down. When the rates go way down, we tend to see more demolition rebuild. It really just depends on the cost of taking action.

All right, so we've got another topic under new business, so why don't we move to that one?

All right. Thank you for your patience. The third topic this evening is adding species to the habitat list for species of local importance. The critical areas regulations were adopted in the fall of 2024. They're updated and adopted. We do have fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas included as regulated critical areas under SMC 21.03.020W. As I was stating before, habitat is a very complex topic. It's often misunderstood and is difficult to readily physically delineate as compared to streams and slopes. We do have a list of species of local importance. You'll see it here. It does include a wide range of species. This list was amended and edited as part of our 2024 critical areas update. And our consultant who has us, who includes Staff with a specialty in wildlife management did provide feedback on this list, and there was an analysis done as part of the best available science study related to habitat as part of this that updated it. I did want to add a note that given the comment that we received from Mr. Radabaugh that this update, depending on its final scope, might not fit within the boundaries of code cleanup as docketed under Resolution 2024-1079. It may need to be independently docketed as a standalone code amendment. Again, that really depends on the final scope of the amendments that are moved forward. The issue is that large terrestrial actually on that if that's the case I spending the money to do to engage the consultants and all that shouldn't that wait until after docketed and then part of a work plan or absolutely so so we'll get to that here in a minute but yeah we'll be taking this back to the city council in april and they can make that decision is depending on the range the extent of the scope if it's very limited in its scope it might fit under the uh the the docket but however if it's if it's going outside of that it would likely need to be docketed and then it would be taken up in the beginning of 2027 once it's docketed. We still have plenty of time to add to the docket for 2027. The issue statement is that large terrestrial mammals such as bobcats, black bear and mountain lions are currently not included on the list of species of local importance. And the question was, should we evaluate adding these terrestrial mammals to the habitat list? And our other questions are, do you understand the steps required to amend the city's critical areas regulations and the limitations under the requirement that best available science present? And what other considerations you might have? I do have a hypothetical work plan if this was forwarded, as was indicated we would bring to you in the agenda bill. If the council was to initiate this in, depending on its scope, in April, it would result in us bringing forward a consultant contract for council consideration. That would result in the consultant picking up scientific analysis, doing a best available science study. That would result in management framework and some management practices that would help inform what code updates need to be done, what policy updates might need to be done, and how ultimately this would impact developability of land in the city. We would strongly suggest doing a community advisory group that's a balanced group of community members and other stakeholders. We've done that in the past with code amendments and it's been very helpful. We would then bring preliminary findings forward to the Planning Commission and City Council and seek formal authorization from the City Council. Once we have that formal authorization that this is the right direction we want to take, we would then finalize code amendments and we would bring those forward to the Planning Commission and City Council for final review and adoption of critical areas ordinance amendments. We estimate that based on this hypothetical work plan, this would take approximately six to nine months. And because of the best available science requirements and the requirement that we bring on board a qualified consultant that specializes in habitat science, that this would cost approximately $60,000 to $80,000, primarily due to the complexity of technical analysis and stakeholder engagement and the length of the public process that would go along with it.

and staff time involved and there'd be trade off between doing this versus some other work plan items. So you might want to include that in terms of how we're deciding if the cost benefit is worthwhile.

Absolutely, there would be a significant amount of staff time managing the public process and reviewing technical analysis and working with the consultant to understand how these types of rules might apply in the city. Just initially, we have talked to consultants about this. We are also in the process of creating a habitat map and a habitat corridor map. That's something we're really trying to get done to better understand where there might be habitat resources in the city. Our initial feedback from the consultant is that if you were to add black bear as a species of local importance, the entire city would be regulated, that the entire city would be black bear habitat, and that that might result in additional design considerations for new homes, might result in additional considerations for things like our trash hauler contract with regard to types of trash cans that we have, the way in which we handle waste, and it might require other considerations for how these animals move around on larger arterials and those types of things with wildlife overpasses or underpasses and additional considerations as part of design for public infrastructure.

Does other cities, Issaquah, Redmond and Bellevue have those in their habitat plan?

So I am not aware of other cities in western Washington, including Bear and Bobcat and Mountain Lion. The public comment this evening that was received does point out that, in fact, Bear and Mountain Lion and Bobcats are actually game animals. that are where there are authorized licenses game licenses granted to the hunting community to balance the population of bear and mountain lion and and Bobcat and that it is a common occurrence for the state to work with the hunting community to help depending on how those populations are trending to balance those out through harvesting.

Hey Dave, can you help me understand what will the community benefit from designating these kinds of animals?

Well, we do hear routinely, I wouldn't say regularly, but routinely from community members about how important these species are and knowing that these species are out there. Mountain lions? People, we do get comments. Some of our photography contests, for example, some of the most prized photos are of bobcats and mountain lions. the community and that people know that these are out there in their community. It kind of gives them that intrinsic sense of being part of, you know, nature.

Are there ones now in Sammamish?

Yes, there are. Our city attorney, in fact, sent me a photo of a mountain lion that was caught on a game camera in her, I think it's Timberline, is that her neighborhood? In the Timberline neighborhood not that long ago.

Yeah, I mean, I get the bobcat and I get the bear in my yard, but I've never seen a mountain lion.

so my rhetorical question is did anybody ask the bobcats um yeah because they certainly use my yard and neighborhood i just saw one yesterday as their private habitat and thankful for them in terms of keeping rodents and other non-desirables that and check so you know the In my thought, I don't have bears in my yard, but we have had cougars show up. You know, these larger terrestrial animals sort of self-regulate in terms of their habitat. And thankfully, we've got a lot of open space in our city, both public and private. So as Mike pointed out, adding this to the work plan would be pretty big lift for something we already know is out there and it seems to be hanging around just fine. I mean, as someone pointed out, probably their biggest competitor is a car. So, but in my neighborhood, deer and coyotes and all of those things hang out and You watch the money population go up and down. So I'm not sure we need to go to a great deal of expense of adding these animals to our list. I agree.

I agree.

David, I'm going to go back to the question that I asked before as far as the gold. Is that because of the habitat connectivity? Wildlife corridor or species prediction? The goal is which one?

I think it's all of those. I think that there are, like I said, we don't routinely receive it, but we do receive comment during development projects or I've heard it at council meetings. I've heard it talking to people in the community about how important these animals are to them as indicators of their quality of life. So I'm trying to think about it from that side. I also understand that we have an interest on the part of several council members to better map and identify and provide for the connectivity and continuity of habitat through the city so that there are areas where a wide range of species can migrate freely and account for their different life cycle needs in the city. So I've heard that as well. And then there was one other one that you had

The last one was species protection.

Species protection, yeah. I think it's part of adding them to the list might be to help protect them and make sure that they have their life cycle needs met.

So are we going to be able to maybe prepare and document criteria that you want to use as far as adding these species to the list?

That is part of this contract is understanding how you might manage these new species, large mammals, in either an ex-urban, suburban, or urban setting. And that... we would need to understand, it's really a literature review, white paper analysis, and talking to other professionals in this field where our wildlife professionals can learn a little more about these species and then bring to us management recommendations. That's what I need to understand is what is a management recommendation if you were to add these species as a species of local importance in the city. what would they recommend to manage that species and that habitat in the city? And I'm not a wildlife specialist. I have a background in natural resources management. I used to work for the Nature Conservancy and did a lot of habitat, or excuse me, watershed management, but not habitat. So that's kind of a new thing to me.

So have we tried, or this is a part of potentially the consultant's work as far as mapping the sightings and the corridors or the habitat areas?

It's a great question. Would it be something that is remote sensing where we would use canopy information and topography information and existing resources like wetlands and streams and lakes and When I think about habitat, you think about what are the lifecycle needs of that species, right? And if you want to have adequate habitat, you need to account for all of its lifecycle needs. which includes, you know, foraging, refuge for birds, nesting, rearing, you know, all of those different things. And the question then becomes, well, what are those? How do you qualitatively address those? And what are the features that those species are looking for? How do you identify those and how do you protect those?

So could that be a part of the scope of work as far as... That absolutely is.

That's definitely... That is number three there. It's compile and evaluate best available science on habitat identification and regulation. And then number four, develop best management practices for habitat protection and management.

Do you have... No, go ahead. Okay. Wow. We've had a lot of complicated things here. I... So... If the desire is to protect part of the habitat for corridors and things like that, I guess I wonder if there's other ways to do that versus saying, here's some animals that are significant. Just say, hey, here's a green area in the city. We're going to restrict development here. because that seems like something we'd like to have as an end state to be able to meet the lifecycle requirements of the critters or the bigger critters. So I don't know if that's a different approach rather than coming at it and saying there are these terrestrial animals that we want to label as significant and therefore there will be areas of the city that would be encumbered by how we want to protect them, if that makes sense.

I think I understand that, but based on the comment we heard earlier from Mr. Eastman, that would essentially result in us Regulating or restricting development on a develop undeveloped properties anything that is forested or has vegetation on it that hasn't been developed would be Restricted in its development and anything that is already developed would be allowed to remain and so there there's a part of me that's why I started with well, this is complicated because

Although that's a little bit different way to approach trying to solve the potential problem. Because it gets away from the whole city being a bare habitat. It still has those challenges with property rights. And so the other consideration these are just things to think about not to debate fully is We know the city's largely built out And yet John has a menagerie in his backyard Somehow they're managing I'm concerned that there are so many Unintended consequences and challenges with this and even if we could get like code in place It will be fine-tuned and fine-tuned and fine-tuned again. So I have concerns So I wonder if there is a a step like there's an initial I don't know Like screening analysis or something like that That would say yep. It's worth going through this entire work plan or not. I food for thought because that looks like you know you start to commission you know a pretty big study all of these things and so the kind of questions that we've been asking are would be helpful to have okay you know here's the potential impact on how we would be protecting the environment the different approaches for doing that impact on property owners Are there potentials for some corridors in the area that wouldn't have, like, really bad impact on lots of property owners? Do we have enough parkland set aside already? You know, just those kinds of things that could be done without a full consultant study or maybe a quarter of that or something. That's a lot of money.

Yeah, yeah.

And for something that will be really challenging to figure out the best way to implement. So just kind of thinking ahead, is there something that can help us make a smarter, a more informed, not smarter, more informed decision about making the commitment for that type of a project?

You can use Google AI.

So our consultant, our critical areas consultant, Facet, who helped us update our critical areas rules and who also we have under contract for on-call work, will be attending the council meeting in April and will be providing a high-level, actually kind of more detailed overview of how our existing habitat rules that are new in 2024 work. We already have regulations that require habitat corridors that require certain features be set aside, and they're going to be providing a detailed overview of how those work and what resources are already protected. We are also going to have a map available that shows all of the cities known. Again, this is not exact. critical areas so wetlands streams those same criticals we're talking about before wetlands streams geologic hazard areas and buffers on a map plus all of the hoa tracks largely their critical areas tracks or open space tracks plus all of the publicly owned properties in the city they'll be shown differently so you could then get an idea about between the um the critical areas and their buffers the hoa tracks which there are many of around the city and the publicly owned properties where the the opportunity might be to manage habitat corridors if that makes sense.

Well, actually, that sounds very much like what I was thinking when I said sort of screening. So if that comes into council meeting, council can make an informed decision whether to initiate the project or not, which would be a great time for us to call the questions on this this evening because we don't have all of that, right?

Question and a comment, David. When we talk about the regulatory guideline that you're looking for, would that be buffer or avoidance or mitigation?

It would be for habitat. For habitat. It would be features. It would be, because the challenge with habitat And you have worked on a lot of projects over the years in Bellevue and in Shoreline. I worked on one too many years ago. That habitat, you don't regulate habitat like you do a wetland or a stream or a geologic hazard area or its buffer. that habitat, you'll have a corridor, but just because you have a corridor doesn't mean you can't develop in that corridor. It simply means that you have to identify what about that corridor is providing for specific lifecycle needs of the species that you are trying to perpetuate. And what are you doing as far as mitigation measures or design requirements with that project that will help perpetuate the species by preserving those features that the species relies upon for its lifecycle needs?

So it's more or less kind of mitigation, right?

More or less mitigation, but it might come in the form of certain types of vegetation being protected certain trees being protected certain combinations of vegetation trees and wetlands and streams being protected it is a case-by-case study and an application in the city and there are Some projects I've seen over the years that have done it really well there are others that have not and and it's We think that our current critical areas rules and habitat rules are far better than they used to be The last round of critical areas rules really was inadequate with our with habitat regulations so we did focus as a big part of our 2024 critical areas updates on habitat and

Now the comment. What is the city's policy on encouraging the citizens to report sightings? Do we have one? Can we have one?

I'd love them to report them, but I don't know what they'd be reporting them to, because we don't have a database that shows them. If that's something that we wanted, then again, that'd be a cost. There'd be a staff person that has to manage that, that has to enter it into that. You know, maybe you could do C-Click fix, and you could say you saw a bear here, and we could add that to a map somewhere. But again, that does... They move. But they don't know the significance of that that reporting that how important that is to the city I have seen other maps that are self reporting, you know, maybe there is an open source kind of thing I don't really know what that means but an open source kind of thing that that allows Community members to go in and and log in, you know somewhere on a map. This is what they saw at a comment thing Maybe that's something that'd be kind of a fun tool to engage the community on part of the project scope. Yep Less of a cost because you want to set it up and there is not staff managing it.

All right. Next on the agenda is our public hearing and talking about impact fees.

Do you want to make a motion to extend?

Well, I was going to suggest that, but also because this could be 45 minutes or something like that. I don't know if you all wanted to. Actually, John had suggested, and I think it's a pretty good idea to maybe take a quick stretch break for five minutes. Let you get some water. So I have, let's see, we'll call it. 2020. If we come back at 2025, and then we'll extend the meeting. All right. All right, we should reconvene. Five minutes goes quickly. I don't know if I have to recall the meeting to order or not. I think we're all gathered back. But we do need to extend the meeting. So is there a motion? Make a motion to extend by one hour. Sure. We'll finish earlier. All right. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. We're extended to 926 and a moment beyond.

all right evan have at it thank you uh and who seconded just for the record because i have to make them okay thank you uh tonight we have our public hearing on the impact fees i'll go through a presentation and then we have uh some questions for direction from the planning commission we need to get before hopefully you all feel comfortable making a recommendation uh just as a note that if we get through tonight and we feel that There would be benefit from allowing more time for public comment. We could choose to extend the meeting until the first meeting in April. But from staff's perspective, I feel like we feel comfortable with what we're presenting and are ready to move it on to the city council. So there are three things to cover tonight. First is, does the Planning Commission recommend the new scaling formula and the parks and transportation impact fees as presented in the packet? And we'll go through the presentation. is does the commission feel comfortable with moving forward and recommending the new code section developed and as a reminder this code the 20 smc 2106045 is a new code section and what we'd be doing is repealing and replacing the existing code section. So we're consolidating and cleaning up and modernizing our impact fees and putting it all in one one section. And then lastly, we have these kind of policy questions that we're looking for recommendation and guidance on before we go to council. And that's you know, how should impact fees be assessed? Should they be assessed at 100% of the calculated rate for all unit types? Or should the council choose to lower that? How should impact fees be applied and assessed specifically for affordable housing? And then should we choose to waive impact fees for residential additions and ADUs? So just as a quick reminder of what the focus of this work has been, it's been about developing a legally defensible formula and methodology for calculating scaling impact fees for parks and transportation. To do this, the consulting provided us with kind of an industry standard methodology that utilizes local capital project lists and assumptions from the comp plan as formula inputs to generate fee amounts. What this project hasn't been about and is not about is amending the adopted capital project lists. This work is... a separate work item and something that actually the council will be taking up later this year as part of their CIP work. But just to be clear, this is about the methodology and the inputs to generate fees and not about the project lists. So just going through for the record for the public hearing, you've seen all of this before, nothing has changed, but impact fees are a one-time charge on new development to support expanding capital systems to help accommodate that growth. The idea here is to maintain the levels of service adopted in our comprehensive plan and ensure that development helps pay to support the growth that it brings. Currently, our parks and transportation impact fees are parks for a single family are about $6,700 and transportation $14,200. And on the right, you kind of see how we compare to neighboring and pure cities. But the takeaway here is really that our current fee structure is flat. So regardless of the unit size, these are the fees you're paying. changes in state law now require that we scale our impact fees with the size of development. So smaller units would pay lesser fee, larger units would pay more. And, you know, we're just also at a moment where not only do we need to update our fees because As you can see, this was due July 1st of 2025. But it makes sense given our fees haven't been updated since 2015. And we have a new comprehensive plan and we've relooked at our levels of service. We've introduced a multimodal level of service. So we're modernizing to be up to date with our current policy direction. So we found it helpful to kind of break the impact fee work down into this framework. So there are really five parts of what we've been talking about. One is the formula or methodology for calculating the fees. Again, this is something that FCS, our consultant, provided us with. It's based on industry best practices. It's used in multiple jurisdictions and really importantly here is that it's legally defensible. The work the consultant done is kind of indemnifying the city from legal challenges around the way these fees are calculated, and that's a really good thing for us. The inputs, step number two of the framework are, again, based on our local capital planning documents and policy decisions. So it uses the capital facilities lists to give dollar amounts to run into the formulas. And it also uses policy decisions and assumptions around growth and levels of service from the comprehensive plan. So number three is the fees, which are generated from steps one and two. number four are those policy decisions which again is how do we choose to assess the fees we don't have to assess impact fees it's a choice so and there's a range of how we could choose to do it the council could choose to adopt 100 or 0 or anywhere in between of impact fees it's worth noting though that rate setting best practice as you know guidance provided from FCS is that we should set a consistent rate for all unit types. So we shouldn't try to step up rates. Smaller units shouldn't pay less and then like a tiered system, which is kind of an idea we've talked about before. If we choose to set a rate, we should set it for all market rate units evenly and then consider strictly affordable housing differently. And then finally is number five, administration. And it implements the fees and the policy decisions through the code, which is that new code section we're presenting. So again, this is something we've seen before, so I won't belabor it, but this is the transportation impact fee formula. Again, it uses the project list, the total cost of the impact fee eligible projects, and divides it by the growth in person trips. And I think I just want to note that person trips is a multimodal level standard. So it considers modes of travel other than cars, along with cars, but it looks at other modes of travel like walking, biking, and transit. And those two give us our transportation impact fee. The park formula is set up on a different structure. It's based on a historic investment structure. Again, it's not really an apples to apples comparison between parks and transportation, but long and complicated methodology to ultimately determine our parks impact fee, but it looks at how much money we need to support future growth and then compares that to our eligible project lists to give us a parks impact fee. So on screen, you can see the updated fee amounts. In the boxes in red there, you see the impact fee per square foot for both parks and transportation. So we have a $3.13 impact fee for parks and $7.44 for transportation. Part of the scaling methodology is determining a minimum and maximum fee amount. And again, this is based on occupancy data. And so we do have set minimum and maximum fees for both parks and transportation. Here's how both of these fees stack up. Parks is on the left, transportation is on the right. So you can see we've kind of maintained our relative positions to our neighboring and peer cities. And our fees have stayed relatively the same. So we got really helpful feedback both from the commission and from the city council in trying to provide examples or ways to look at, to quantify what the impacts of reducing fees for affordable housing would be. So I'm gonna try to walk through this and hopefully this will make some sense. But for this first example, this is looking at 100 market rate units across the city. So I created a spreadsheet where I generated 100 random projects ranging in size from 500 to 5,000 square feet, and then applied the impact fees for those projects. And it generated a total impact fee revenue for those 100 random projects of $2.3 million. Then to think about what would the... impact be of reducing that fee for affordable housing? Remember, we have a 10% inclusionary requirement in the city right now through our inclusionary program. So if you take 10% of that total revenue, we'd be talking about adjustments to about $230,000 of revenue. So on the table below, If we were to reduce the impact fee by 20%, we would then, instead of collecting $230,000 for those 10% units, we'd be collecting $185,000-ish. And then over on the right, you can see the total revenue with the impact fee reductions calculated. So if you were to reduce it by 50%, it's lower, and so on and so forth. So hopefully this helps. give some numbers of what reducing impact fees would be. And I think this would really apply to the 80% AMI range, because citywide, most likely what we would see being developed would be 80%. We do have an example here. The second example looks at a strictly affordable housing project. But thinking about, oops, I've jumped a couple slides there. thinking about you know what would the impact of revenue be for a hundred market rate units with ten percent affordability most likely developed at the eighty percent ami range this is hopefully a kind of a helpful way to think about it and i don't chair i don't know if you'd like to stop now and talk about the this or let me maybe i'll just finish and then we can circle back So the second example is thinking about and looking at the impacts of reducing impact fees for deeper levels of affordability. So this is the same scenario. I've come up with a sample project of a 100-unit affordable housing development. And this could be something like we're hearing interest on the bonus parcels, church properties. say building 120 part of the feasibility study said hey if you gave it to arch and they opened a community community center on the ground floor and built 100 units over top this is the type of project we'd be looking at which would also tying into what we talked about earlier use the funds from our affordable housing program but let's say you have 100 units 20 of them are developed at 30 ami 30 are at 50, 50 are at 80%. And you can see the square footage assumptions there. But when you apply the fee amounts, you would generate about a million dollars in impact fees for parks and transportation for this project. So we've created a couple scenarios here of what impact fee reductions would look like. So on the left there is that same table. But in the middle and off to the right, you can see the impact fee reduction amount. So the top is saying one thing that we've talked about as a commission is we might choose to fully waive impact fees for 30% AMI units and below. Because at that point, they're largely subsidized anyway. actually the second example kind of looks at that. If we just waived 30% AMI, that would be the impact on our revenues. If we stepped down the levels of reduction for 50% and 80%, you can see the impacts there. And over on the right, we've also provided a per unit across, you know, if you spread those fees across a project, kind of a per unit cost. Lastly, the last presentation we did on this, we went through each section of the code and described it. But just to summarize, again, we have created a new code section and are repealing and replacing the old code section. And we do have a specific question for you on that. But I think this is an appropriate spot to stop and go for questions before we dig into the recommendations. Yeah. Chair, I'll turn it back to you.

Okay. Yeah, and what I was thinking about, let's just test this, partly in the interest of time, but also in the interest of being efficient for the public as well, is typically we've, at this point, the presentation will have dialogue for a while, public hearing, dialogue, motions, and so forth. So I was thinking at this point maybe to keep that dialogue for a while shorter by primarily questions for clarification, not like opinions or recommendations or things like that. Because we'll get to that once the public hearing is completed and we deliberate. Does that make sense? I don't want to limit too much, but if we just like, I didn't understand that. Or could you define that kind of comments would be helpful here.

Well, just to reiterate also, nothing has changed since the last couple presentations. So really, yeah, anything for clarity would be great, but I just wanted to make sure that everyone's aware. It's like we haven't switched anything up. There's nothing new here.

Okay, just for clarity, why are there cities with no impact fee? Cities with no impact fee? Yeah, the parks, there are two of them in that slide, Bellevue and I think Snoqualmie, they have no impact fee.

I think it's a matter of local policy decision. They might have other funding mechanisms for their park services. They might have a metropolitan park district where they generate revenue so they don't need to collect impact fees to help fund it. They might have different levels of service where they just might choose to not. All those are viable options, which does make it hard for us to compare ourselves to other cities because we don't know any of those circumstances. But Any of the above could be reasonable.

Other questions like that?

Evan, can you go back to the slide that shows the formula, please? This one?

Right. Yep.

So I know probably you don't have the answer, but I'm going to ask the question anyway. What is the definition of capacity when it comes to the non-motorized? What is the capacity?

I guess I'm not sure what you mean. Capacity, current capacity would be- It refers to the capacity. Well, capacity, current capacity would- Equivalent cost of capacity. Okay.

Eligible cost of the capacity as it applies because we are supposed to have, this form is supposed to be for non-motorized as well, because we have a policy of multimodal. So what is the capacity of non-motorized system?

Yep, I got it. Current capacity would be the existing systems. All of the existing bike lanes, pathways, sidewalks that we currently have. New capacity would be anything adding to that system. So projects that are eligible for impact fee funding are those that would be adding... new bike lanes, road miles, turnpockets, sidewalks to the existing capacity.

So if you have a gravel shoulder or a paved shoulder or a sidewalk that all have the same capacity?

Not your definition? They would be evaluated differently depending on the use type. But for the purposes of what we're doing, the analysis the consultant does based on the project list is looking at does the project listed on the capital facilities project list add capacity? And if it does add capacity, then it would be eligible for impact fee funding.

the second question the consultant report repeatedly makes reference to the eligible traffic impact fee of a project do you know what is definition and how determine that eligibility of the project

Yeah, it again goes to that analysis of looking at, is it bringing new systems and capacity online, or is it repairing existing systems? So ineligible projects are ones that are just maintenance of existing systems, because you're not bringing on extra bandwidth for more users. Eligible projects are ones that bring on extra bandwidth. So some projects on the list, if there are maybe like a resurfacing project, but they could also be adding sidewalks as part of that effort. The sidewalk portion would be the percent that would be eligible, but maintaining the existing resurfacing would not be eligible. So that's kind of the analysis and determination the consultant does when they look at each project in determining how much would be eligible for impact fee funding.

Because I looked at the list, most of the projects that they show some eligibility, there is a magic number 6.33 repeatedly showing up. It looks like that they're using a standard formula and applied no matter what project is.

Yeah. So, again, we appreciate that you're interested in the list and just want to highlight that we're not here to debate the list or the engineer's findings about the eligibility of that project on the list.

That is given. I want to remind my fellow commissioners that at this point, the only item that we should be looking at it, at least from my point of view, is taking position on a formula, but not the list or individual projects.

because i have a lot of concerns about those items uh that's fair and we understand that that's been stated in the past um and i think our planet or excuse me our our city engineer our public works director are very aware of that and that will be factored into the process to update the list which is coming soon right okay thank you should we move on okay

All right, you have more, you had a little bit more.

Well, I think now we could dive into the kind of questions for the commission and maybe do it in chunks. Because we have, I think the toughest questions are here. Okay.

So what I think, what I was proposing is then to do the public hearing now.

Oh, yeah. My apologies.

And then dive deep into these so that we hear, you know, okay. Yep. So with that, we'll consider the public hearing. I'm going to go to my other table first. Put your other hat on, Evan. All right. We'll now open the public hearing. And... Anybody here who would like to make comment? Draw straws.

Before starting the clock, I came across a question that needs to be addressed that I just caught tonight. On prior scaling slides, there was a maximum size of a unit to be charged impact fees at 2,653 square feet. And that was shown tonight on the slide. And this is not a gotcha. It's about getting it right. In the packet I caught today, that size has been changed to 3,500 feet. Is that right? So on page 40 of 61 in your packet, which is why I wanted the opportunity to not have this be a part of my comment, because I had to rewrite some of my comment when I saw that, on page 40 of 61, the maximum proportionate impact size is now 3,500. Now, that's a huge chunk of increase from 19,000 to 26,000. That needs to be talked about. So I just wanted to call attention to that change because I went back and looked in the April, no, February city council meeting. The last time it went there, it still said the 2653, and that was on the line. So I appreciate it, David, and I've heard you talk about it. It's not a gotcha, but this is a point that is a significant number.

Okay, all right.

Well, then I'll go back and read my comment as if it was 2,653 square feet. Okay. Paul Stickney, Sammamish. Tonight I can't get everything in the time allotted, but if anybody wants to meet and talk, I've got... Three statements. I don't like the fact that a 2,700 foot condominium or townhome pays the same thing as a 4,000 square foot single family home. Park impact fees are overstated because they're based on projecting past needs into the future. We're already at a point that we don't need that same pace. And third, transportation impact fees on single family homes are getting a break at the expense of multi-family homes and I'll explain that in just a minute in my opinion there are serious foundational approach errors in the formula there's a fee for single-family or there's a fee for excuse me never mind I'm I'm not going to get off script having one number for transportation and one for the multifamily? I think there should be six. What are transportation and multifamily, excuse me, what are single family in all the neighborhoods? I guess there's only five. And in centers like Town Center, what is the multifamily for parks and transportation with internalization of lower rates? And if we have multifamily outside of Town Center, those traffic rates are all different rates. They can't be one fee. Another issue I caught, 2.75 people for multifamily? No way, Jose. When you get into the newest King County data, they show that the county, which is what was used, have... 2.37 average for single family. Or no, I'm sorry. The average in King County is 2.37 people per household, 2.85 for single family, and 1.75 multifamily. I think 2.75 way overcharges on multifamily housing. So I got problems with trip generation, internalization, the number of people that... And my biggest heartburn is to blend the rates. 85% single family and 15% multifamily blends brings the multifamily rates way up. And if we need those multifamily units, I don't want them to pay less than their fair share, but it seems like they're getting paid way more. And I've got other stuff to talk about. Don't have time, but it's population and growth is not what is stated in this report. So there's a whole lot of foundational elements that are inaccurate.

Thank you, Paul.

Okay, Paul and I didn't talk.

So this is, as I'm sitting here, I'm seeing all of your numbers, which are fabulous. Why are they flat fees at all? Why aren't they percentage? These are for all new construction, right? Everything's new construction. If you have a 3,000 square foot house that sells for $2 million, they paid the same as a 3,000 square foot house that sells for $4 million. Why don't we just throw all this stuff out and go percentage-wise like the excise tax? If it's a condo, you can give them a little bit of a break, but all single family, all condos, multifamily and everything else, why isn't it a graduated rate like the excise tax or percentage of the sales cost paid at the time of sale? Because they're all new. They're not resales. I think you'd do a lot better because right now you've got a real estate that can sell for a 3,000 square foot house, can easily sell for 1.8 or 1.9, or if it's a view home that's 3,000 square feet, it might sell for $3.5, $4 million in Sammamish. I've seen the flat fees for 30-some years in all of the cities here. Maybe it's time to rethink and make it simple. Thank you.

Mary Wictor here. I think the most important thing is when you're trying to build affordable things, the more fees and the more complexity you have, it makes it harder to do. And we are never going to build affordable unless we're building something. And when we do try to build the affordable, we have to be able to give them a break. I think that we need, in order to get affordability, like the 80% AMI or 50% AMI, but the 30% AMI really, really needs help. You just don't get those built with that huge subsidy. And the two people before me have much realtor background. I don't have any. But I mean, when you have a really large house where you can pay the fees and you're paying the same as the smaller one, that just tells you it's out of scope. I like the totaling that Evan Fisher had showed with the TOM so you could see the impacts of things. But I really think where things need to be affordable, you really need to think about what that size needs to be. And I think the percentages and all the corrections that Paul said sound great. I reeled the remainder of my time.

Okay.

Evan, nobody else. All right. So thank you, everybody.

We'll close the public hearing as Evan wanders back.

All right, so now it's time for the commissioners to deliberate and to decide if we will adopt, deny, or continue discussion in April.

So who wants to go first?

I thought you were smiling. You looked at me and smiled. Go for it. That's an indication, right? It's okay. You can keep smiling. Don't make that stop.

I'll just give my opinion. I think it's the same as last time. I do agree with the public comments. It shouldn't be the same for all sizes, right? Because if it's a big house and they're paying $4 million, it should be appropriately... I don't know how much it is, but it should be less for a 1,500-square-foot house, is my opinion. And we should waive the residential additions and accessory dwelling units, the fee.

Just to help maybe clarify a little bit. First is that 1,500 square foot. I mean, this fee is on a per foot square basis. So a 1,500 square foot unit would pay less than a 3,500 square foot. The dollar amount, the per square foot dollar amount would be the same for that smaller unit or larger unit. But inherently, because they're now scaling fees, the smaller unit would pay less than the larger unit. So every new development now would pay $3.13 per square foot for parks transportation fee and $7.44 per square foot for the transportation impact fee. Those do have a minimum and maximum amount set Thank you, Mr. Stickney, for pointing that out. I'm not sure what happens with the 3,500 square foot, but we'll make sure that gets corrected. So it's per square foot? It is per square foot, yep.

And then the... affordable housings are excluded from this, right?

That's part of the conversation we're having tonight and that's a local policy decision. We are under the RCW allowed to choose to reduce or waive impact fees for affordable housing. Okay.

On that, just real quick, in the code draft, And I think, David, you talked a little bit to council about this. I thought when you talked to council you said that there was a discount or reduction and I couldn't, I didn't see that in the code.

Well, I'm glad you brought that up and I should have included that in the presentation. We have not yet included, so our current, the existing code does have reductions for affordable housing at different levels. The code draft, we have not yet put it in there because we're waiting for policy direction. So whatever you recommend tonight, we'll include for the council to consider in the code draft that they see.

Great clarification.

And actually, while we're at it, about the 3,500, and interestingly, the reason I caught that was when I was looking back at the graph of occupancy per square footage and remembering conversations with council in here, that there was a flattening out. That graph, it flattens out at 3,500, not like 25 or 2,600. So then what I saw about the 3,500 is, oh, that makes sense, because if you take a look at that one graph that's in the report, that's about where things flattened. So is it 26-something or 3,500 or what was? 2,653 is what the previous was. I'm sorry. 2,653 is what it was as we understood it.

We've had some different versions of this draft going around, so wanting to make sure what that is actually recommended as. And there's two different approaches here. One is if you got to the point of making a recommendation, we could have that corrected for the purpose of council. Or if you wanted us to bring it back and for the sole purpose of explaining that discrepancy there, we'd be happy to do that also.

If I could just, I don't want to jump too much in front, but because that makes a big difference in the total fees, you'd do another calculation. Because what that does is that we had concerns about the, and I heard council also, there's a lot of houses at 2,600 and then shouldn't somebody who's affording a 3,500 square foot house pay more? And the flattening out in the 26, whatever it was, always felt too low for the impact that larger houses have. And that chart about occupancy per square footage, which does flatten out, starting around 25 thereabouts, but really gets flat at 35, that makes a pretty big difference in our assumptions. So to Paul's point, so some things that we need to clarify here. Sure. Okay.

David, I heard Mr. Stigne was talking about something I wrote it down, zone-based impact fee. Can you elaborate on that? What is a zone-based impact fee? Do you know of any city that has used that?

So, I'm not sure exactly what was meant, although cities do have a practice whereby they set different What's the right term? The area service areas. And you can set service areas for different parts of the city. We have one service area, the whole city. You could do it through transportation assessment zones. For example, you could cluster TAZs together and create a service area for transportation. You know, some cities are able to do that when they're leveraging public transportation like light rail or, you know, bus rapid transit, where they could do that. We don't have that. We're not complex enough, I think, for an argument for us to have different zones or different service areas. So we stick with one service area is what we currently have and what our recommendation is.

And the other gentleman was talking about graduated rate base or flat fee. Can you elaborate on that?

Yeah, I think from what I understood the commenter to be, was using an example of basing the impact fee based on the market rate of sale versus the scale of the development. And that's not allowed by state law. the state law is pretty clear in how it's determining the methodologies we can use to assess the impact fee. And really, I think it comes down to an issue of nexus and proportionality in saying, you know, a 3,000-square-foot four-bedroom unit will house, let's say, It'll add three people to the system. The infrastructure needed to support those three people doesn't change whether the house sells for 1.5 or 2.5 million. It's servicing three people. Yeah.

Actually, just to build on that, sorry. The purpose of the impact fees is to pay for growth, basically, the infrastructure for growth. And it's separate from anything we're really doing around affordable housing. Now, it has an impact on affordability because it's a fee, right, obviously. But because I was thinking through this actually similar that, well, you can drive more affordability of a house if you just put in plywood floors and cheap carpet versus nice tile and upgrade, you know, and still have the same square footage of a house. But just, I guess, elaborating or restating the point, Evan, that you're making, the impact on the infrastructure need for roads, trails, whatever, is the same, whether you've got all these fancy upgraded kitchen appliances or bare-bones stuff. Right. And that's not what we're trying to accomplish here is... We have an impact on affordability because of the amount of the fees, but we're not trying to drive affordable housing in the way that Fee and Lou does. I think I understand that. It's clear in my mind. Yeah, that makes sense.

I think you're right.

Go ahead.

No, no, go ahead.

He wants to hear what I say. Okay, I'll go first. So... Really, you know, when we've discussed this ad nauseum, the scalability, the square footage calculations make sense. It also makes sense what Mike was saying about the maximum going up to 3,500. And possibly you can explain that offline in an email so we don't have to meet about it again.

I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt. Go ahead. Okay. I want to just take a moment to apologize for the 3,500 square foot, because from my perspective, that's a typo from the last round, the consultant, when they did their updates, and I didn't catch it. And so I think, best of my knowledge, I had no conversation with the consultant where they said, hey, by the way, we re-looked at things, and it should be 3,500 square feet. Best of my knowledge, it's still that 2,653. And it's an issue of typo. And honestly, it's just an issue of capacity. We're stretched thin. We're doing a lot. And I sort of just assumed that they gave us the correct version. So that one's on me. If it turns out to be $3,500, I will follow up in an email to help clarify that. But to the best of my knowledge, that has not changed.

okay thank you yep second is exemptions um suda mentioned adus um and additions i think um so i can go back and forth on the on the adus definitely would want an exemption for additions um but the one I think we missed was reconstruction, and that came up in a different topic, but if you're rebuilding your house because it burned down, there's no net change.

And I can't quote the stipulations. Those are already exempt. You don't pay impact fees for rebuilds as long as it's permitted within a certain time span, but you don't pay. You got it covered, good.

And then lastly, my comment on affordability, you had a slide up there where you showed waiving, what, the 30% level, and then reduced amounts for 50 and 80, and be supportive of those.

I was trying to... to make my comment as a question more than an opinion, but I just couldn't help myself. I can't help myself. Because I have a... a complete disagreement about the methodology that's used to come up with the value, especially for the parks. And the fact that we are including the value of all the parks that the city owns today, I think that's inflating the rate significantly. I don't think we don't have enough parks here. I know I asked from before, how many parks do we need per person? And how do we compare to national or regional? But again, we can sit here and say there's no traffic. But when I drive out there and I see traffic, you can't argue with me that there's no traffic. Similarly, if I go to any park today in Sammamish, there are barely people there. And we have plenty of parks. And to continue adding the value of the parks to come up with the estimate, I think that's inflating it. I think we need to improve how our current parks are, add more functions in the parks to make it maybe more attractive, make them different, improve them somehow. you have the list of capital improvements, that's all good. I'm not sure how you came up with the estimates, but I'm assuming that someone who knows how to do construction put those estimates for you, and those numbers are reliable and are true. If I go back to the estimates, and it's a question I asked from before, if I give you today 100 acres, if I donate 100 acres today, Next year, what I just donated, it will hurt the person that is about to build a new house. Because you're going to take my 100 acres, you're going to add them to the value of your inventory. Your inventory now, instead of 400 million, it's going to become 500 million. If you divide that by the 65,000 residents of Sammamish, you just increased it up by $1,500. What I donated, instead of helping you have a backlog or an inventory for future parks, it actually increased the contribution that you need from new residents.

So I went back and watched the meeting from November 6th when the consultant was here, and as far as I understand, any donated land was not the... The total investment that the impact fee is based off is cash. It's what the city has paid for. Donated land is not included. So they don't take the value of that donated 100 acres in your example and then add it to the pile. If the city went and paid for the 100 acres, we would then add it to the pile. So donated land isn't included in that cash investment methodology. It's based on historical investments of the city.

That's good because when I was looking at the list, and I know I don't have enough time now to just go back to the list line by line, but I think you had a section that's called acquisitions or donations that included, so I'm reading here, Big Rock Central donation, 20 acres, it cost the city $6 million. So for the city to accept those 20 acres, the city paid $6 million?

that's what this list says well there would be values of the improvements again we're getting i think ultimately the we're getting into the pretty detailed level i think the thing to remember is that the consultant has looked at this this is an industry standard way the sort of the experts have looked at this and provided this methodology is kind of the best response I have.

That's why I started by saying I have a disagreement about the methodology. And I think it's increasing the value in a way that's not helpful. Again, what's my end goal? Affordable homes. To try to make them less expensive. If I can drive this down, I will help make them more affordable.

Sure. And you can drive them down. And that would be part of what your one of your recommendations would be here is. to the city council, should they choose to assess the full max value of the impact fees or should they assess something less? Because they can, again, assess from zero to 100%. So if it's the commission's concern that the impact fees are too high based on the methodology, you could recommend that they assess 50% of the fee amount. And it's a solution without debating the way it was constructed.

I have actually a clarification, just building on what you were saying. That table, there were two things that I was looking at. One was basically the value of the parkland, all of what you were saying, and that was used to come up with the, right, based on the square footage, and that's what you used for the calculation impact fees. Then they looked at, I guess, the reasonableness was the way I would state it, of that fee. And by doing that, they were looking at that table of the projects that are anticipated, like improving ball fields, improving the area around the new, whatever it's called, Big Rock area. I forget the, across from Big Rock. Anyways, and that was like $31 million. And what they said in the report, if I'm paraphrasing a little bit, was that the amount based on the impact fees, the value of the land and the impact fees associated with that, was less than, significantly less than, the amount of all of those various projects. So in some sense, you could say we're underfunding what we'd like to do. But then they didn't look at all those projects and say, well, this one is going to be needed because of this amount of growth like they did with the transportation side. My head would explode if we tried to figure that one out. So I came away with looking at that thinking. Okay, I understand what you I thought the same thing exactly and I have the same concern But looking at it based on the projects that we would like to accomplish to improve the park systems over time It didn't seem unreasonable from that standpoint So given that the consultant has all this expertise and all, I thought, well, probably okay. It wasn't like tilt, like I think you are. I was like, yeah, kind of okay for what that's worth. So yeah. I don't know if that helped. You could say, no, I disagree.

No, no, using the improvements, I'm completely okay with that. Where I'm just having the hard time is to accept using the value of the park itself plus the improvements. Yeah, no, you need to use the improvements to figure out how much to improve them.

So to me, the methodology, I'm just... agreeing with you here would be much it make much more sense and i don't know why it doesn't like they have very complicated formula that you know it's like all those lines it's like whoa read carefully um to not look at just like in transportation here's the projects we have What do we need to, you know, gather through impact fees to be able to help defray some of the cost of these improvements? And that's not at all what was done. Sure. And apparently not what's done elsewhere, I guess.

Yeah, I think so. My understanding with FCS is that this methodology, this historic methodology is commonly used with park systems, whereas It's just a different way to slice the apple.

That's where I get to, well, okay, they're the experts. Maybe we trust the experts here, but for what that's worth. You all have to decide if that makes sense and if we want to move this forward or see this again in a couple weeks.

Other comments?

I kind of cut you off a little bit. No, I'm good, thank you.

I can tell you anecdotally from the Parks Commission meetings that I go to that they don't think they have enough money. Oh, okay. So their wish list is far bigger than that.

But they don't have enough money to buy new parks or to improve what they have?

Both.

But why do they need to buy new?

Well, I also, if you look at the project list, there's zero dollars in land acquisition. That's not really, from my understanding, that's not really a goal and a focus of the park system right now. Is that, I think some of the parks commission's meetings I did with the comp plan update is they've shifted away from an acquisition mindset to an improving our existing, because we do have a lot of acreage.

it's how do we make the existing systems better so those projects on the list right now are improving our existing adding adding capacity or improving our existing park system but if you go back to where they started and i'm sorry john to jump in the methodology they use to come up with the value it depends on the value of the overall park system not just the capital improvements

Right. I think I can address that to some degree. The majority of the value of any park system is the land itself. And we're somewhat fortunate or budget constrained, however you want to look at it, in that our park system is primarily focused at open space, natural areas, unscheduled. We don't have a giant recreation program. Things are contracted out to the Y or the Boys and Girls Club. So the basis of our park system is mostly land. The ball field would be the biggest exception, I think. And those ball fields are often developed on school property, which isn't counted in this formula.

It's counted.

The improvements are.

The value is counted.

The value of the land?

Of the land in the high schools. It's counted here.

Again, I'm deferring to FCS in the methodology, I guess.

Other comments?

I tend to agree with what Rishon was talking about because I think that it just doesn't make sense looking at the big picture, looking at our cities, that we have so many parks that the big question, and I don't know to what extent it's relevant to the discussion, but I'm going to pose that question anyway, is that do we need more additional park space? You may say that that's not relevant. It's a matter of how the formula calculates the park fee. But I don't know if we need, and Evan, you just told us that there is not that much plan for any land acquisition for additional park. But one question that I have, and I don't know if it's relevant to the discussion, is that, as you know, in the parks, and John probably can elaborate on it, there are some parks called passive and some active. I don't know how many passive parks that we have that needs additional equipment and additional amenities. Do we know that? Do we know how many? John, do you know of?

If you look at the Parks Pro Plan, and I wouldn't call a passive park passive where people are playing frisbee, walking their dog, and hiking on trails. That's pretty active to me. Better reference is scheduled versus unscheduled. The ball field is scheduled. Swimming dock is not. So those improvements you're seeing for the natural areas and open spaces are primarily parking, restrooms, and trails, which can be quite expensive because they're often crossing sensitive areas.

And Evan, are you saying that all these figures as far as that contributed to calculation of the parks fees, is that to do with improvement, not the land acquisition at all?

If the city bought the land, then we had, it's part of that cash investment, or part of our historic investment. So if the city paid for it, that would have been part of our investment, including then whatever improvements we made to it. If the land was donated, we don't count the value of the land because we didn't pay for it. But if we then went and put a barn and swing sets and trails on there, we would count the value of those investments.

But if I recall, Hisham, point was early on, I don't know was it tonight or another conversation that we had is that, Hisham, your argument was that the land valuation was not based on the time that the city purchased that property and they're using current valuation. Right, Hisham?

It says 2025 value.

So if the city bought that property back 10 years ago for $100, the valuation is $100, not the value of 2025 is $2 million.

Well, but you're trying to calculate a fee in today's terms, so you would bring it up to a net present value. I mean, that's like a... She could be fooling herself. We paid $100. Why not... Well, a dollar is different today than it was... I mean, this is how it all works. But to calculate a fee for today, we want to make sure we're using an even playing field, right? So you'd bring up those historic dollars to a net present value so you can calculate the fee amount that would exist in today's dollar terms.

If it is legally defensible, that's fine with me, but I don't know. I'm kind of questioning.

The consultant, just like they can come up with estimates for the capital improvements, can they just come up with an estimate for a park based on the current market values instead of using the historical values escalated to today's values? If they make assumptions that we want to go and buy five acres and convert it to a park, how much would that cost?

buy the land and do the improvements and put the turf and everything you need and use that as your metric I guess I don't know why they would do that it's not it's not a methodology used you know it's not the way this is done so I don't know why they would do it I'm not trying to be like flippant or dismissive of your question I just don't really know how to answer because it's

I mean, it says in the report, right, consistent with previous practices, land value was inflated by the rise in property assessed values in Sammamish from year of acquisition to the current year. Improvements were listed as the original cost dollar amount. the values of each park as well as additions and acquisitions since 2015 is shown and it does to what you're talking about show if you go down to exhibit two park system inventory it lists parks and recreation facilities through 2014 and then it gives us sum total at the bottom and then it lists parks and rec facilities through 2024 and it adds On a total on top of the 2014 amount and it goes from 341 All the way down So basically it gets down to the bottom and it does include the the big rock central donation And it includes the big rock south donation And it includes the big rock park as part of the 2014 number So it does include those as part of the baseline and that is divided by per capita But to set the amount So there's a couple of different ways to look at that. One is that we're trying to understand what the ultimate objectives and how we plan for parks in the city. And because our comprehensive plan, which includes by reference the PROS plan, uses the Big Rock Park as a foundation for planning for recreation services, regardless of whether it was donated or whether it was acquired. that it is considered as part of the park system. And therefore, when planning for delivery of park services in the city, that is part of the foundation of that service. So therefore, it is calculated into the total value of what is the foundation for that service. I understand the different ways of looking at that and that does increase the amount that it cites. you could make a recommendation that you know to the council if you were to choose to recommend this that the council amend the council direct the the staff and the consultant to amend and reformulate how those inputs are put in to not account for donations that have come into the system and I'm not just talking about the donations here like I started I said I have a

complete disagreement about the methodology, the whole methodology. And I can accept the status quo, but I know the city has fiscal issues. And if we don't approach things differently, we're not gonna change them. And if we continue accepting it because a consultant told us that this is the practice, then might as well not just not talk about it. But we have to figure out a way to do it differently in a less expensive way.

So perhaps a better way to look at this, since we're not subject matter experts and I don't even want to think about tearing apart the methodology, is we look at the impact fee per square foot at 313 and consider reducing that by some percentage rather than trying to If we think that's too high, then reduce it by 50% or 25% or... Because I don't know that I would feel comfortable in trying to dissect the consultant's report or methodology.

I'm definitely not the expert when it comes to parks. but when it comes to just common sense i i can say that it can be completely wrong about everything i'm talking about now here but if you were to go and add parks because the population increased you're gonna go and look for land somewhere around here buy that land and convert it to a park what i'm saying if we are today at 65 000 population. We will add parks when we hit 70,000, let's say. For those additional 5,000s, we're going to go and add five more acres. Why don't we use that method as how we come up with the value per person? And I think, Mike, do you want to extend the time? I see that you're jumping to the mic, so you need to say something I know.

We do. We should do that formally now, and then I'll have a couple of quick comments, and then

Make a motion to add 15 minutes. So it would be 9.45.

Okay. We'll see if that works. Do we have a second? Second. All right. All in favor? Aye. No opposed? Okay. I hope this doesn't come across as, I don't know what the right word is, flippant or something. But these comments were made at least one other meeting, if not two other meetings. And maybe it's on us as commissioners for not being clear enough about needing answers. But there were no changes to the report from the consultant. or no addendum that said, we're hearing your concern. Here's why this is what's the common practice. So right now we're trusting that the consultant is using common practice without that further explanation, I guess, while we're getting stuck. So either we say, you know, we'd really like to see more of a explanation, a justification for the way that calculation was made. We're just talking parks right now. Or we say, you know, we trust that they're the professionals, they're experts, and we can move on. And there, we have two tracks. One is, you know, keep it full up, or Like John, you were maybe trying to come up with a compromise and say, well, why don't we pick a number and reduce that fee? Because it seems too high based on how it was calculated. So that's the road in front of us. One says, well, push this through this evening. The other one says, we need to hear something more from the consultant.

What do you all think?

Let me ask you a question.

I go by that we need something more from the consultant because I don't want to be subjective. I can sit here and say, no, I want zero, and it's going to say I want 50. And what's the right number, zero or 50? But I need data from the consultant.

I think if the consultant can explain the methodology, the hesitation is or

we don't dive into the project list itself that we clarify the evaluation basis methodology and then let the yeah we're not just like with transportation we're not looking to come up with new projects and cities again the question about the formula on both or parks as well as transportation so david let me ask question i know that the budget is limited as far as consultant fees and all that what is the possibility of having them coming to the meeting and explain, right, and send in an email and ask a question and answer. Is that a possibility?

We're getting down on our available resources left on this contract. And we did already go back to the city council once and ask for additional resources to support additional meetings. And so I think we have probably enough to have them support one or two more meetings, public meetings. And we have at least one or two meetings that the city council will need to go through on this topic. So my inclination is I would push a little bit on the idea that we have hired experts to do their job. They have provided us with the data and the methodology. It's legally defensible, and we're indemnified by their work. This is part of the reason why it's nice to have consultants is they go out and do it, and it provides us cover. Should we get questions or challenges down the road on the methodology? But what they've said is from the data the city provided, which is the the historic, all these project lists, the inventory lists, that's all stuff the city reviewed and provided. They took it and have run it through and said, this is what the industry standard is. So my mind is, I said this a few days ago, it was like our task is to not have to take this model and reconstruct it ourselves and know each facet of what goes into it. It's more of a higher level judgment call of do we trust the work they've done? Do we feel comfortable with the outputs? And remember the outputs of the parks fee are it's like $6 off the current calculated fee. So the impact is not dramatic. Also, but I know you take issue with how it's calculated.

I was going to say to you, that on its own, it tells me something is wrong. Because are you telling me that building parks today is less expensive than last year? That's what this is saying. The fee is lesser now.

It's not about what it costs to build parks then versus now. We are collecting the fee to build parks, right? For the new population.

Yeah, let me jump in here. So Evan, you started out in the presentation about the legally defensible, all of that expertise. I certainly get that. I think we get that. And having heard that and having looked at this Four times, three times for sure. We've still had that concern. So rather than have them come and the extra expenses of the consultants.

Maybe through the Zoom meeting.

Well, I was going to just say we're looking for some further explanation. Written explanation would be great. It could be an addendum to the report that says not just this is industry standard, I would suggest, and these are other ways that we could have done it. that are also used in industry, or that nobody else does it any other way, grin and bear it. But that would be not as expensive as bringing them in for a meeting and all of that, because we've gotten stuck on this.

Let me give you an example. Of course, this is back to the transportation, but to give you an example. This item was at the council meeting a couple of months ago, and one of the council members, I believe that was Deputy Mayor, she looked at the list and she said that, wait a minute, Mr. Consultant, I think that you're the one that made the presentation, that it made reference as far as the impact of calculation with transportation, showing that the total amount of investment in the next number of years, what is that, seven years, ten years?

Based on the CIP, it's 20... Oh, it's a 20-year list, yeah.

20-year list. The total amount of investment in Sahali Drive was $1.2 million. And the deputy mayor asked, how can you justify that? And I believe that a consultant was there. Well, we apologize. We looked at 2023 CIP list, and we used the calculation based on that. So how can we say that it's pretty much a standard procedure that they're following? And this is an example. They are coming with 2026 impact fee, but they're using 2023 list. So that tells me that, with all respect, they haven't done that much homework to make sure that all the data that they're showing are correct.

just to clarify these were the adopted list the city provided so it's not that the consultant has done anything incorrect it's that these are the lists we have adopted to provide the consultant so it's it's not an issue that they haven't done their research or it's done incorrectly it's this is the this is the this is the project list we have we're working to update them and we'll have updated ones coming down the pike for the council to review later this year but these are the adopted projects Evan we're saying that back in 2023

our projected expenditure projected funding for the Sahali still was 1.2 when we when the council actually had the project approved for the design of 1.5 million dollars just to do the study

Well, at the point in time when Soholly was being considered back whenever that list was created, it was a much smaller project. I understand. And since then, it is a much larger project because they're going out to construction phase and build. So now on the updated project list, because the short-term six-year list changes every year, projects are added and taken off as they're completed. or through different phases of their project cycle, it is a much more expensive project now. And this is something that was the response given to that council question. Yes, at the time, it was in a study phase. It was a relatively, 1.5 isn't cheap, but it was a cheap project then. Now it's in construction phases. $74 million.

Yeah, it's a much more expensive project. And that is why we have recommended that the fees be updated alongside the CIP process and budget process twice, you know, every two years, because then it will reflect the current project lists and the current... values that go in those. So I think, I don't think there's any disagreement about updating the fees frequently based on the formula.

So let's get back to the subject. Is there any possibility that we can have some kind of Zoom meeting with the consultant to be on call? So when we're asking this, deliberating all these issues, He would be able to answer or clarify issues.

I think we'll have to look to do that Well, it would be a trade-off between meeting with you or meeting with the council I think in so that's a conversation we need to have internally I I see at this point the benefit of maybe a written response to the Commission and saving the limited budget we have left so the council can have the consultant there to ask questions and

We'll let you all decide that. I was hoping that we could get to where we can make a motion to accept and it's feeling like we probably wouldn't get a second if somebody even made that motion. And there's a few other topics that we need to at least touch on for deliberation. And and not even getting to like the You know injection reduction in fees those percentages And one is the point that mr. Stickney made I So using the blended rate for single family and multifamily does penalize multifamily. And from a policy standpoint, that feels like not the direction that As a community we've been wanting to go and I think we touched on this before but not as deeply as we did on some of the the project list and the park fees So, I don't know if you could address that and why the blended is used versus having different impact fees for at least you know multifamily versus single and

Can you, David, can you elaborate on the blended fees and how it's going to work?

I mean, I think fundamentally, fundamentally, the purpose of the bill was that that fee should be scaled, not based on whether it's multifamily or single family or duplex or triplex or stack flat or townhome or whatever. It was because we have so many different unit types now and that the legislature saw that. that we'd end up with some crazy scale of, you know, schedule of fees that really didn't make sense, and that instead, the impact fee should be reflective of the square footage, because the square footage really is a driver of how many people live there, and how many people live there is a driver of the impact that that has on our transportation system or our park system.

So then let me... Partly in the interest of time and to save your voice So if you have a multi family unit, let's say a four plex The fees are based on the units the square footage of each of the units so from that standpoint It's clear that using the occupancy by square footage, as was fundamental to the formula, right, that the impact and the need to help fund infrastructure based on the multifamily is directly proportional by averages to the number of people in the dwellings. So that's the justification for doing that blended rate.

I also reject the statement that it's punitive to multifamily. I don't see that. I'm trying to understand that. So I've heard it stated by Mr. Stickney. I've heard it stated again. And I'm rejecting that. And I'm trying to understand what you mean by that.

Well, you look at multi-family there at six thousand and single-family at seventeen and then we're now blending it per dwelling unit. Sixteen.

I don't think that the top two mean anything. I think that really at the way at the end of the day, we're simply calculating it per square foot. You're not going to be paying a multi-family unit amount there. I don't quite understand

why those are even relevant it's an assessment of our system right so the blended fee it's it's an assessment of the impacts of single-family multi-family units on our system and what is if if you think about it our city is mostly single family what 90 something percent single family and then a a single digit percentage of multi-family units and so while the multifamily units have a lower transportation impact fee, when you blend the weight of the impacts of multifamily units next to the weight of single family units, that's what gives you that proportional fee. And we just, the impacts to the system are less because we have far fewer units of multifamily housing types in our system.

And so then you get into the question of proportionality per occupant, right? But it doesn't matter in the end because you get down into the impact fee per square foot, which applies across all unit types, regardless of whether it's a single family, multifamily, middle housing type. It just is a per square foot. So it doesn't really matter whether, and that's where I get into that top box on this chart. And I kind of question whether those first two rows are even relevant.

Then why didn't you show it? Because that was very confusing to me.

I agree.

I was like, if it's just simple impact fee per square foot, it's easy to understand.

Just for the sake of comparison, I think that was the purpose.

It's 9.45.

I think it was for the purpose of contrasting against their current system. So what they were trying to do is show that if you were to provide sort of a typical example, that that's how it would stack up, because we needed to contrast that compared to our existing system. But what I would say is that it is, if you look at the single family, multifamily, it really is applied by square foot going forward. And whether it's single family or multifamily is completely moot.

That's why maybe they just highlighted that saying that that's important and just pay attention to that.

You want another extension?

No.

I don't know if we'll get that one passed. Just real quick, but those were used, I don't want to belabor this, I really don't, but those were used to determine the impact fee per square foot, or was it, say, $7.44 pulled from some other place? I forget now.

It's from the blended fees.

Yeah. So doing that blending has the net effect of increasing that 744.

But again, it's, it's, yeah, it, but it's again, based on the proportionality of our existing system.

So I think if we'd like more multifamily, that's where the penalty comes into multifamily. And that, that's just a, That's just more of a policy.

This simplifies the... Again, it's like we said well earlier, it's a tool to support expanding the systems for the new people added through growth. It's not a tool used to incentivize different unit types. So I think when you think about it that way, it's saying that's the impact of adding new people to the system, our system.

And the amount that we want to charge for that.

Yep. So we do fundamentally have a series of questions that we've been trying to get to.

I know.

And you might sense some minor frustration with staff because we really need answers to some of these other questions. We continue to want to talk about the project lists and the formula, I get it. That's really foundational to the whole thing. But if we could also make sure to find time, if we're not going to do it tonight at the next meeting, to get through those fundamental questions, we'd really appreciate it.

Yeah. No, understood. recognize the need.

David, quick question. Can you give us an example of a series that they use in impact fee per square foot?

Soon they all will be. Most of them. Because it's state law. You know when? Offhand, I don't. All of our neighbors. Because it's 10 p.m. I'm blanking, honestly. I'm losing it. It's part of what the law is.

The only other option was bedrooms. And the only jurisdiction I'm aware of that's using bedrooms is King County. Huh. Yet King County does not even define bedroom. So it's a bit challenging. We've been studying this for school impact fees, and they have a hole in their whole thing because they don't even define bedroom.

If we just hold it and just continue to the next one.

It's been a long meeting. We were actually passed where we agreed to. We've kind of gotten stuck. I hate to say that. I thought we could drive this thing through this evening. So we'd look for you for guidance. What we would do, there's one or two questions that we did ask if we could have clarified. And I know that, I understand your frustration. It's come up enough times that we feel like we probably should do that, really. And then we would come back and really as a Commission be very focused on answering the key questions that are required to make the necessary changes to the draft It is getting close to 10 and We haven't really addressed the core questions that you were asking. I'm very sorry about that so

Well, I would say I hear you, and I appreciate it, and we'll reach out to the consultant and see if they can help explain in a different way the cash, the historic investment methodology, and the other options that could have been considered for calculating parks. I would also ask that homework for y'all watching the November 6 meeting again when the consultant was there because they talked about that system the donations and I may have misheard when I rewatched it today, so I apologize if that's the case but Rewatch that section because we talked about it and what I worry a little bit is the consultant providing the same answer They've already provided and we've made no ground. Yeah, so I'll ask them to try to reframe frame things in a way that's different than they've said before but I think we both have some homework that can help us move forward.

And if it really was covered in that November meeting, send the link to us and tell us, hey, listen carefully. All right. So we should draw this to a close. Sorry about that.

We anticipated this. It's 50-50. completely within the realm of reasonableness and for our homework we should go back and look at the questions that are being posed to us and come prepared to discuss those yeah we really want to make sure we're also looking at the code right the code is a big part of this and and we'd be happy to if in the intervening weeks you have questions feel free to reach out we're happy to talk and

Great point, because there were one or two things in the code that I saw that I think, like, you know, how we would charge if somebody enlarges their house. Right. Back to the fee and lieu conversation that we had, and they would be penalized in here now. So there's one or two things like that that should be considered as a change in the draft or potentially. Okay. Yep. So we've got a meeting coming up, a couple meetings coming up. April, huh?

April 2nd.

April 2nd. I think currently it's a discussion on Title 24A, and we might boot that to give this plenty of space to wrap up. We should nail this thing. And then, honestly, at this point, I can't remember what's the second meeting in April. It's in the agenda packet.

Okay, so we've got that. And then one super fast quick thing, based on the, actually the message that Mary sent and knowing what council's considering about other public comments, said you and I, when we have our, we should actually do this before our usual prep meeting, so that if We want to add a second comment period. That that be added to the agenda bill for that next meeting.

You could also, as a matter of opening up and reviewing the agenda, you could do it then. We do need to amend the bylaws if you want to add that. The bylaws currently state how public comment is to be handled. So I would suggest that you request staff load that for a future conversation. You could bring that back at the second meeting in April. But as a matter of opening the meeting in April, on April 2nd, you would amend the agenda and add a second public comment at the end of the meeting.

We got a plan. Sounds good. Does anybody object to adjourning the meeting? Motion to adjourn. Hearing no objections.

Thank you for your endurance. We'll get there. David, Evan, thank you so much.